Alexander Lobrano

By Alexander Lobrano Coming through the door for the first time on a warm Sunday night, Au Petit Panisse delighted me, since it was such a perfect sketch of everything I miss about Paris when I spend a long period of time away from the city. This is because Paris is now

By Alexander Lobrano British chef Ollie Clarke has bought the legendary La Régalade in the 14th Arrondissement and is transitioning it towards a new name, Origins 14 – La Régalade. In all likelihood, this will be shortened to Origins 14 once Clarke has settled in, but for the time being, the moniker

  By Alexander Lobrano Named for his signature dish–a composition of smoked eel with reglisse  (liquorice root), apples and hazelnuts, Restaurants Eels is the best new table of La Rentree (the Fall season) in Paris. The solid allure of this place is foremost due to the superbly witty, inventive and assured cooking of chef Adrien Ferrand,

By Alexander Lobrano The Divellec is one of the most beautiful new restaurants to open in Paris for a very longtime. As wonderfully louche as Studio K.O.’s Miami-meets-1940s Casablanca-in-Paris decor may be, however, what always matters most to me at a restaurant is the food, which is superb. Still, even

By Alexander Lobrano At Restaurant Jean, just down the street from me in the beautiful but increasingly booshie 9th Arrondissement, a lavishly well-inked young chef has given an exciting new life to a table that had been lost for a little while. If fact, Jean-Frédéric Guidoni, this restaurant’s amiable owner,

By Alexander Lobrano As Jean-Francois Piège has proven once again at the Clover Grill, his casually chic and wonderfully convivial new grill restaurant in an ancient side street in Les Halles, he’s not only a superb chef but a brilliant restauranteur. If this convergence of talents might seem logical, even

By Alexander Lobrano Chef David Rathgeber’s restaurant L’Assiette is not only the best bistro in Montparnasse, but one of the best bistros in Paris. Why? I’ll let the chef himself explain why it’s so good. “I don’t like la cuisine d’assemblage (the modern mode for plates of food that are

By Aexander Lobrano So there are two things you need to know right away about Les Arlots, an excellent new bistro near the Gare du Nord in Paris. The first is that this tiny place is going to become very popular, so if you want to go, please pause now, pick-up the

  By Alexander Lobrano Papillon, chef Christophe Saintagne’s new bistro in the 17th Arrondissement, brings a bracing shot of hipster energy to a very bourgeois part of Paris. From its cobalt-blue facade to its friendly suspender-wearing waiters and market-driven Nordic inflected modern bistro menu, this relaxed, happy place with a

By Alexander Lobrano In Paris, the assiduously institutionalized exultation of the city’s past poses the same sort of risk as the sugar water in a bee trap. Like many people who live here, however, I forget how easy it is to succumb to the easy nectar of memory and to