PIERRE SANG BOYER--Superb Contemporary French Cooking, A-

 

 

  The first two times I tried to go to Pierre Sang Boyer's restaurant in the Oberkampf district of the 11th arrondissement, my luck ran dry. Since they don't have a public phone number, we showed up one night to find that the restaurant was 'exceptionally' closed. Then another time, the crowd waiting to be seated at this compact counter-service no-reservations restaurant was so huge that it would have been an optimistic hour's wait before we were seated. So my interest drifted a bit, because this place seemed so hard to get into.

 

  During the year or so since he's been open, however, the amiable South Korean born chef has received glowing reviews from a variety of colleagues whom I respect, and so at the end of a busy day last week when it had stopped raining for a few minutes, Bruno and I decided to roll the dice again and headed to the 11th. Arriving on early on a Friday night, the place was packed, but they promised a half hour wait, so we ordered glasses of white wine and milled around on the sidewalk for twenty minutes before we were ushered inside. Given the throngs waiting to get in, the first thing that impressed me about this place was the exceptionally courteous and well-organized service. Though there was no written waiting list, the very nice young waiters respected the proper rotation of waiting customers and the kitchen even sent out complimentary hors d'oeuvres--thick slices of toasted country bread topped with pale slices of summer truffle that pleasantly tasted like wet leaves.

 

  When we were ushered inside, we sat at the big oak bar on comfortable stools (they're only a couple of tables for two here, unless you book the one larger table down in the basement, which is the only reservation they'll take) in front of a big sack of delicious looking butter and a huge wheel of Laguiole cheese. The chef himself greeted us, and one of the friendly and impressively efficient waiters set us up with slate plate mats and cutlery. Staring at the cheese, I found myself thinking that whatever proceeded this course in the impending small-plate tasting menu, I could very happily make a meal for myself by shamelessly plundering this heart-stoppingly tempting dairy display.

  

 

  Instead our meal kicked off with a delicious little haricot vert topped salad and a chunk of sesame-seed coated tuna with a small salad of fennel garnished with wasabi peas and a pool of mustardy mayonnaise. Both of these nibble-sized dishes were exceptional for their intricate layering of flavor, intriguing contrast of textures and beauty. And what made them even more impressive is that they were cooked at the speed of light in a tiny open kitchen. Open kitchens fascinate me, but I know from friends who are chefs that they impose an additional layer of pressure on a cook, because everything happens in the public eye. So adding this constraint to the mix made these first dishes even more remarkable. 

  

  Every chef has his or her palate, of course, and I immediately liked the way Sang Boyer backstops the umami richness of his cooking with refreshing but subtle tones of acidulated tastes. And for a small, crowded and very busy restaurant, the service was outstanding, at once playful and professional, and the rythm of the meal was flawless. The short wine list had some really interesting bottles to chose from, too, including the velvety, berry rich Saint Chinian we chose.

  

 

  Next up, a rich octopus ragout served on a bed of quinoa with a light vinaigrette and garnishes of chopped yellow tomato and crunchy crystalline iceplant (Ficoïde Glaciale, in French), which was a deeply satisfying dish. If I loved it on a bed of quinoa, I also found myself thinking that it would be delicious with orrechiette or any other small pasta that would catch as much of the sauce as possible. Both this dish and the fascinating saute of pork and white beans in a rich tomato broth garnished with anchovies and finely sliced radish that followed it were suavely cosmopolitan, at once Mediterranean and then sort of winsomely Asian, a style that's very much a reflection of the chef's multicultural culinary roots. He grew up in the rugged Auvergne as the adopted child of a food mad French family, worked at a French restaurant in South Korea, where he'd gone to explore the food ways of his birth country, and has also worked in Lyon and London.

  

  Throughout this meal, there was a terrific atmosphere in this diminutive dining room, too, and if it was mostly generated by the cheerful staff, another part of this glow of well-being came from an intriguing diverse crowd who hailed from all over Paris and points beyond and who had clearly come here to discover one of the city's best and most interesting new chefs. From the snatches of conversation I overheard, everyone else was as impressed by the cooking and the overall experience of this restaurant as I was, too.

  

 

  After a generous serving of the Laguiole cheese I'd been eyeing for an hour and a half--the chef's most overt reference to the region where he grew up, the Auvergne, which was plated with a streak of spiced chestnut puree and more of the same good country bread that we'd wolfed down all during our meal, we finished with an unusual but really good dessert. "This is sort of a riff on riz au lait, but it's not my grandmother's recipe," the chef said puckishly as we tucked into this grand finale, which was made with sticky Japanese rice and eschewed the usual sweet soupy richness of the French version. Instead a rice ball was dressed up with a silky sabayon, slices of nectarine, squash puree, yuzu sorbert, a shard of crispy caramelized biscuit and a dried orange slice to create a sophisticated palate cleansing coda to the medley of gentle acidities that had animated the meal. 

 

  "I come here every other night," said the single man sitting next to Bruno. "Please don't think I've been listening to your conversation all night, but it made me happy to hear people who like this chef's food as much as I do." I told him that since I so often dine on my own when traveling to report on the food in other cities and countries, I was sorry our conversation was so doggedly food-centered instead of offering the entertainment of, oh, I don't know, maybe a bit of squabbling or a spicy anecdote or two. "No need to apologize," he said with a grin. "You talk great food porn." This stumped me for a second, but then I decided to take it as a compliment, and in any event, Pierre Sang Boyer's the kind of place that'll bring out the dirty food talk in anyone.

 

Restaurant Pierre Sang, 55 rue Oberkampf, 11th, No phone, Metro: Oberkampf or Parmentier. Closed Saturday lunch, Sunday and Monday. Average 45 Euros. www.pierresangboyer.com 

OLIVIER ARLOT--A Young Star in the Loire (Montbazon) B+/A-; CAFE DE LA PROMENADE (Bourgeuil)--A Superb Country Auberge, B+

 

  A week recently spent in the Loire Valley, which I hadn't visited for more than a day or two in many years, caused me to fall into love with this magnificent and graciously green patch of France all over again. And this despite the fact that it's not always an easy place to eat. Oh, there's lots of good food in the Loire to be sure, but after two or three of the very old-school French feeds that so many restaurants in the region still feel it incumbent to offer, I found myself squirming for relief from the relentlessness of these heavily formatted meals and their self-consciously serious traditional French cooking. The problem is that many chefs continue to believe this sort of dining is what up-market travelers to the region require when the reality is that most people would be made much happier by simpler, lighter, healthier cooking and a service style that's more relaxed and less sociologically stuffy. As a city-dweller, I'm really not looking for the same thing in the country that I want in Paris either. 

 

  Happily, however, a few local chefs have seen the light, and the best among them is young Olivier Arlot, who moved a few miles from Tours to the pretty little town of Montbazon a year and a half ago and took over the premises of a well-respected local restaurant called La Chanceliere. He gave the dining rooms a modern makeover, too, painting the large old exposed beams on the low ceilings dove gray and installing soft artful lighting. So instead of the tedious faux-chateau idiom you so often find in the Loire, this place comes off as a casually chic country auberge, and that's a good thing.

 

  Having eaten lunch at a pretentious and disappointing one-star restaurant in Blois--the service was glacially paced, the food fussy and unoriginal and the atmosphere hidebound enough to bring on the worst symptom of a restaurant where no one feels at ease, a clientele that speaks in whispers at the table out of misplaced respect some high-handed idea of gastronomically serious meal, neither Bruno nor I were very hungry when we left our hotel for dinner. We might, in fact, have begged off going out to dinner altogether if our hotel had offered the option of a slice of homemade terrine de campagne with a nice big green salad and then maybe some cheese. Instead there were silver candelabras on the tables in the dining rooms and the pale salmon colored linens that are a surefire visual warning that the kitchen could be depended upon to offer a eighties time capsule experience of 'gastronomique' dining. So we went out.

  

 

  Settling in over glasses of Domaine de la Taille aux Loups sparkling Montlouis, my new favorite vin petillant, the dining room was populated by a mixture of mostly middle-aged Americans and Canadians rewarding themselves with a good meal after a long day of the cycling tourism that's popular in the region and shy locals out for a special occasion, and the young staff was warm and welcoming. Though I'm often exasperated by amuse bouches, since they rarely deliver what their name promises, I wasn't particularly interested when ours arrived, but the bright gently sweet flavor of warm fresh pea soup spiked with the jus of gently poached and chopped baby squid was intriguing. The soft brine of the squid did an intriguing minuette with the vividly vegetal flavor of the peas, and our mouths were amused indeed.

 

  Blanketed in foam though they may have been, our first courses were outstanding. I loved my chopped white asparagus with a fried egg and crumbled bacon in a light smoky broth, and Bruno's lobster ravioli, too often anonymous and barely tasting of lobster, were tender little crescents of homemade pasta filled with perfectly cooked lobster meat and garnished with more of same and served in an intriguing fennel scented froth. The bread served with our starters was excellent, too, and suddenly we were really glad we hadn't thrown in the towel and missed this meal.

 

  

  Our main courses, which arrived with pleasant alacrity, were outstanding. My slow-cooked guineau hen breast was served on a bed of semolina with pan juices, baby artichokes and black olives, and the luscious meat was perfectly punctuated by the meaty salty olives and the rich deglaze. The suprise of Bruno's cod, which had been slow-cooked with salt butter, was an eminently seasonal sauce of of lemon verbena. "C'est vachment bon," he said after a first taste, and the older French couple sitting across from us grinned. "Il a vraiment du talent, Monsieur Arlot, n'est ce pas, Messieurs," said the nice lady with an enameled pansy pin that her husband had just given her as an anniversary present (I have the hearing of a bat). Our wine, a 2006 Domaine de la Taille aux Loups Montlouis by Jacky Blot was the best white, was the best white I've had in a very longtime--"It tastes like honey and fermented hay," Bruno observed, in a guileless but accurately lyrical remark.

  

  

  In a friendly gesture characteristic of a restaurant that really wants to please its clients, I was allowed the strawberry-and-black-olive tart with basil sorbet even though it was part of the 49.50 Euro menu and not the 39.50 Euro one I'd ordered, and it was witty and impeccably made. It would never have occurred to me that slivers of black olive could make strawberries more eloquent, but they did, and the sorbet was a sweet play on the acidity of the fruit. Bruno was delighted by his soup of white peaches with raspberry sorbet in a nage of Vouvray moelleux with raspberries and a few lazer fine ribbons of basil, too.

 

  When I tweeted a photo of Arlot's lobster ravioli, several people commented that they were weary of foam. I'm not a mad fan of foam--a very consistent element of Arlot's cooking, either, but in this instance, it's there for a real reason. To wit, this exceptionally talented young chef uses it as a vehicle for adding flavor to his cooking without resorting to heavier sauces, so instead of foaming at the mouth, I left the table with the profound satisfaction of having had a truly excellent meal and every intention of returning here again as soon as I possibly can.

  

  Hungry at noon the following day on the outskirts of Bourgeuil, we were preparing to settle for a likely mediocre meal in cafe just to get at some salad and avoid the overly long and filling steeple chase of another gastronomic feed when I noticed we needed gas. After filling up, I went inside to the cash desk to pay and fell into conversation with the voluble cashier, who insisted on speaking English to me because she's currently trying to learn the language before a trip to visit her daughter in Canada. We chatted about traveling in the Loire Valley and about how much I like Bourgeuil wines, and she volunteered that there was a great place to sample them by the glass just up the road, adding that their food was good, too. I protested that I didn't really want a big meal, and she assured me that I'd be happy at the Cafe de la Promenade. 

  

 

  I liked the rustic looks of this place, which occupies an old gasworks, as soon as we stopped, too. To my delight, the menu offered just the kind of light rustic food we were in the mood for too. Though the 'hambourgeuil,' a burger garnished with onions cooked in red wine and sauteed foie gras, sounded tasty, we settled for the formule du laboreur (laborer's lunch) for two, and it started with a superb assortment of charcuterie--lardons confitted in their own fat, terrine de campagne, country ham, and sausage, and continued with a made-to-order bacon tart cooked in a wood-burning oven. The tart pastry was homemade and all of the ingredients used were organic, so it had a lot of flavor.

  

 

  A generous local cheeseboard followed the savory tart, which we ate in the garden under a trellis of vines with glasses of Bourgeuil rose on a hot afternoon. This excellent country feast concluded with a just-baked apple tart with slathered with creme fraiche, topped with fine slices of Golden Delicious apple and sprinkled with Calvados. Service was relaxed and friendly, and there was a lot of teasing banter exchanged between us; Sophie, the proprietaire; and the two well-wined electricians having lunch at the table next to us over coffee. This was exactly the type of light but flavorful country feed we were hoping to find, so we bought a bottle of the rose we'd enjoyed and dropped it off at the gas station after lunch by way of thanks. Karine, the cashier, blushed when I offered her the wine but one kind gesture surely deserved another.

  

Café de la Promenade, 1 avenue du Général-de-Gaulle, 

Bourgueil, Tel. 02-47-95-10-87. Open daily. Average 25 Euros. www.cafedelapromenade.com

Olivier Arlot, 1 Place des Marronniers, Montbazon, Tel. 02-47-26-00-67, Closed Sunday and Monday, Prix-fixe menus 29.50 Euros (lunch), 39.50 Euros, 49.50 Euros, 72 Euros. www.olivierarlot.fr 

MONSIEUR BLEU--Dining Chic-to-Chic at the Palais de Tokyo, B-

@ Adrien Durand

  As a child of suburbia, I love cities with a passion that goes back to my earliest memories of trips into New York City from our safe and pretty but hopelessly dull nest in suburban Connecticut. I was hugely envious of cousins who were growing up in Manhattan, and once, on the way back to the woods from a Sunday visit to them in the big metropolis, I infuriated my father by suggesting that they were really the lucky ones to live in New York.      

  "New York is a terrible place to raise children," he said as an edict, and I squirmed in the back seat and asked him why if this was true my aunt and uncle had decided to bring up my cousins there. "The city is dirty, crowded, unsafe and noisy, and it's filled with all sorts of strange people," he said, which suddenly crystalized all of the reasons I loved it so much. Then he added, "You're too young to understand why it's so awful anyway." I don't remember what I said next, but I really got his goat. "That's enough of that, young man! The subject is closed. New York is filled with oddballs and perverts." Well, that did it. I made up my eight-year-old mind on the spot to move there as soon as I possibly could, which I did immediately after graduating from college in even more woesomely bucolic and wholesome Amherst, Massachusetts. And through stints in New York, London, and Paris, with long spells in Prague, Rome, Boston and other cities, I've never looked back on my urban ardor. 

  Instead, I've become a permanent student of cities, observing them, trying to understand and decipher them, and delighting in their differences. It's so innate to me that I rarely even notice it anymore, but the other night when I went to meet a friend for dinner at Monsieur Bleu, the stunningly beautiful new restaurant in the Palais de Tokyo, I found myself meditating on exactly why this restaurant is suddenly so exciting to Parisians this Spring while I waited for my friend to show up, and I didn't have to think very long. As surely as they require supplies of clean water and electricity, along with police forces, street cleaners, and green spaces, all great cities need a regularly renewed wick of glamour to sustain their own myths. And during a difficult spring in Paris, what with the wretched weather, the limping economy, the strident public argument over gay marriage, and the woeful state of French politics, this restaurant comes along as a big votive candle placed on the altar of Parisian elegance, Parisian chic. 

@Adrien Dirand 

  With a truly brilliant design by architect Joseph Dirand, this is not only the most beautiful restaurant to have opened in Paris for a very longtime, but the first one in ages that appeals to all of the different tribes of style-setters who make Paris Paris. To wit, you'll see beautifully groomed as almost only French women can be middle-aged press attaches having dinner with their luxury-brand manager husbands, bien sur, but you'll also see scruffy social media czars who usually hang out in the 10th arrondissement, hen parties from Neuilly with an alphabet of head-spinningly expensive designer hand bags, film-makers, architects, well, a whole panoply of creative Parisians who are sort of surprised but mostly delighted to be finding themselves in the same room. 

  As someone who is still surprised that he was once regularly let in to Studio 54 in New York City (I mean, come on, I must been the only person on the dance floor in penny loafers--we're talking dork with a big D), it's amazing how often restaurant and club owners forget that the best way to light up the night is with go-for-broke off-the-wall social casting. To wit, there's nothing duller than eating a meal in a room full of people who are just like you, so for the fashionable restaurant Monsieur Bleu aspires to become--it's white-hot now, but will this last?--someone with a genuis-level understanding of Parisian sociology has to become the master mixologist. 

   For now at least, it's that trendy new place in Paris people very often ask me to recommend. Or a restaurant which is every bit as much about design, atmosphere and people-watching as it about the food, which is just fine, if rather expensive. Young chef Benjamin Masson, a shrewd and solid Breton, came from Petrus, the luxury brasserie in the 17th, and so had ample experience in terms of cooking for a crowd like this one. The menu's sort of fascinating, too, since it's such a singular snap shot of what Parisians like to eat right now, in 2013, when they let their hair down. 

  They're a few predictable surprises, like the box of modish American comfort foods--bacon cheeseburger, fried chicken sandwich, lobster roll (written in English), and a feint or four at the continuing popularity of westernized Asian dishes (turbot in a teriyaki jus) and Italian cooking in Paris. But what I liked best is the good Gallic grub--a Parmentier of Ospital boudin noir, steak tartare, frogs' legs with garlic and parsley, and a sublime calf's liver with a sauce of pan juices elongated with a bit of pomegranate juice (gotta get those anti-oxidants into the act somewhere). 

  Sorry, I didn't do any photos of the food. My iPhone was almost out of juice that night, and beyond that, the lighting in this restaurant is so golden-glow perfect that my fumble-fingered attempts at photography probably wouldn't have looked like much. Instead, I just enjoyed the charming company of my friend Karen and a simple if very pleasant meal. Oh, to be sure, I'd have liked a little more foie gras in my warm salad of baby new potatoes with a soft boiled eggg, and her dressed crab with coriander, beet roots and wasabi was timid. But my roast chicken with morels was a succulent French bird, and her calf's liver came rare as ordered with silky potato puree. The caramel sundae with caramelized pecans hazelnuts propelled me back to being the exasperating boy I was when I irked my erroneously well-intentioned father by challenging his decision that we should live in the suburbs, and Karen kvelled over a slice of Rachel's cheese cake.  

  Since I hadn't intended to write about this meal, I had to call the press officer for pictures the next day. And when they came, I understood exactly why I'd love these rooms so much. Joseph Dirand has sure-footedly reprised the interrupted glamour of the late art deco, early art modern Palais de Toyko by making it modern, warmer and comfortable. And in doing so, he leapt over some seventy-five years or longer during which almost anything decorative in interior design or architecture was disparaged. With their Lalique (original) inserts, green marble, and brass ocean-liner lanterns, these dining rooms are a sight for sore eyes and a real balm for anyone who's hoping that this still cutting-its-teeth new century might see a modern revival of the Gallic genuis for sensuality in interior design. 

  My priority when I go out after-hours is seriously good food, but this restaurant is so alluring that if the weather, or rather, when the weather changes this summer, I look forward to organizing a mid-summer's night party with a bunch of friends on the terrace in front of the restaurant and enjoying one of the best views of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (next time round, I'll go for the tuna tartare and sea bream with artichokes, too, come to think of).

 @Adrien Durand

Monsieur Bleu, 20 Avenue du Président Wilson, 16th, Tel. 01-47-20-90-47. Metro: Alma-Marceau. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Average a la carte 65 Euros. www.monsieurbleu.com 

HUGO DESNOYER Table d'Hotes--A Great Place to Meat, B+/A-

 

   Often there's no faster route to high spirits than a sudden surge of spontaneity and a good dose of extravagance (deeply considered penuriousness somehow just never seems to work). So on a gloomy Saturday morning, Bruno and I set out on a gastronomic expedition that I was certain would raise our weather-dampened spirits. We were heading to the new butcher shop that Hugo Desnoyer had opened in such a remote and very quiet corner of the remote and very quiet 16th arrondissement that it barely seemed like Paris when we got there.

 

  Or at least the Paris I know, but then everyone inhabits the same city differently. Almost from the moment I arrived here in 1986, I developed an indifference shading to aversion to the 8th and 16th arrondissements, which have always struck me, with the exception of certain small neighborhoods, as epitomizing a certain bourgeois smugness. And since none of my friends live in this part of the city and most of them feel the same way that I do, I very rarely find myself in these western arrondissements. Still, there's some handsome architecture deep in the 16th, and it's also very green. And at this time of year, rain-filled lilacs are tumbling over wrought iron fences, and you catch a glimpse of an occasional bank of peonies on a private garden here or there. (Oh, how lovely it would be to have a private garden in the city! But failing that, I'm awfully glad to have the Jardins de Luxembourg).

 

  In any event, Monsieur Desnoyer's new butcher shop turned out to be neat as a pin, and the staff just as polite and helpful as they are at Tiffany's---if you find other similarities between these two businesses, you're not wrong either. But our destination was the solid butcher block table d'hotes on a raised platform in a corner of the this immaculate white space. What we'd decided, you see, was to take ourselves out for a carnivore's feast, something Desnoyer only previously offered in a do-it-yourself version. 

  

   

  So we settled in at the table, and decided to share the faux-filet for two with a very good bottle of Haute Cotes de Beaune. No sooner than we'd ordered than the handsome and courtly Monsieur Desnoyer arrived with a complimentary plate of charcuterie, not because he knows me from a hole in the ground, but rather because with the opening of this new address, the butcher's shop where he began his career as an apprentice many years ago and is now the boss, he's celebrating his good fortune and hard work by sharing. Not only was it a generous and charming gesture, but it reminded me of why he's my favorite Paris butcher. In the suddenly testosterone jumped up big bad ego world of star butchers in Paris, Desnoyer is the quiet man who gets on with his craft and who's real pleasure is in selling people the very best meat he can possibly find.

  

   There were three other people sitting at the table, and if we were reciprocally polite, no conversation with our neighbors occurred until a kindly and very familiar looking man and an Asian friend sat down at the table, and I racked my brains trying to figure out why I knew him. When our meat arrived and we grinned wolfishly, he wished us a "Bon appetit!," and we fell into conversation. He told us he owned a a little restaurant on the Left Bank, a steakhouse, and I suddenly recognized William Bernet, the owner of the wonderful Le Severo in the rue des Plantes. Mais bien sur! He'd come along for lunch to support his star supplier, and because these two gents are really good friends beyond anything having to do with commerce. So then he ordered a really good bottle of Burgundy, and insisted we try it, and the table suddenly became very jolly as a previously shy crew recognized one another as lovers of la bonne chère (and chaire).

  

   Just as our meat arrived--a sublime and perfectly cooked piece of Limousin beef so big we took half of it home and ate it for the next three days (here, parsimony is much advised as the basis for real delectation), the brilliant and voluptuous Valerie Solit arrived for lunch. Perched on six inch heels, wearing a turban and a sexy but demure A-line coat dress the likes of which I surely hadn't seen since some long distant Easter Sunday, Solit, with her sapphire eyes, galvanized the shop. A charming lady, she's a press attache, and among her clients are the Federation Francaise de Boucherie, so of course she was coming by Hugo Desnoyer's new shop for Saturday lunch and to see how her chou-chou was getting on. I didn't dare photograph her, by the way--I just don't see myself brandishing my iPhone, which is all I had with me that day, at such a lovely lady, but there's always Google for the curious.

  

 

    William Bernet nicely offered us a bit more of his wine, which we refused (uniquely out of politeness, since it was superb), and an atmosphere of great conviviality blossomed during what had unexpectedly started to feel like some sort of primal tribal feast. I was delighted by the only element of our meal that wasn't animal derived--a copy-this-idea medley of tiny new potatoes and radishes sauteed in salt butter, but by the time we'd eaten half of our steak, it didn't even occur to me to wonder if there was a dessert option on the brief table d'hotes menu.

   

   During lunch, we'd discussed what we'd agreed would be our v. reasonable butcher's order. It was, we decided, time to stop being so open-handed everytime we went shopping together for food and wine, we really needed to start saving more money, and after such a good lunch, it would surely be easier to be more reasonable. So we joined the polite but wide-eyed line of customers waiting to be served. Staring into the cases at Desnoyer, one's pulse really does quicken, too, which is why our very recent self-exortions promptly derailed the moment a polite young butcher in a pressed white jacket started serving us. So we'd have a veal chop, and some of that goreous jambon a l'os (ham on the bone), and a slice of the pistachio-studded veal terrine, which I just can't resist, and some of the head cheese Bruno likes. Oh, and also that nice little rack of lamb, and the pork loins look good, too, and finally another faux filet to put in in the freezer. 

  

  Watching the butcher trim the meat that needed it (before he weighed it, thank you), and then wrap it--first in waxed white butcher's paper, then in brown paper, before he tied it up with red string and wrote the name of the contents on the edge of the package in loopy black script, I was very happy, since the precision of these details communicated an ample but humble pride. And he also took the time to offer a warm, low-rolling set of suggestions as to how the morsels we were buying might best be cooked. So not only had I just eaten a wonderful lunch, and not only did I know I'd be eating very well again for a few weeks to come, but I so admired the art and grace with which these butchers practiced their craft. Of course we left after paying a big thumping bill, but that's okay, because we actually don't eat very much meat anymore, and besides that, the only logo sweat shirt I think I'd ever be comfortable wearing would probably say: Carpe Diem.

  

Boucherie Hugo Desnoyer Table d'Hotes, 28 rue du Docteur-Blanche, 16h, Tel. 01-46-47-83-00. Metro; Jasmin or Ranelagh. Average a la carte 50 Euros. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.regalez-vous.com Reservations essential for the table d'hotes.

LES CLIMATS--Suave Contemporary French Cooking, Brilliant Burgundies, B+; WANDERLUST--Good Eats Where the Wild Things Are, B

 

  This year in Paris, a late, damp and often overcast Spring has been pushing and pulling my appetite in all different directions. To be sure, I've eating as much French grown asparagus--both green and white, as I can get my hands on, but the gray skies and cool temperatures have left me yearning for sturdier comfort food than I'm accustomed to craving at this time of the year. Then I went to dinner the other night at Les Climats, a very pleasant new restaurant in one of my favorite restaurant venues in Paris, the elegant Belle Epoque dining room of a handsome old dormitory building that once housed young single ladies who worked for the P.T.T. (Poste Telegramme, Telephone), and found my seasonal groove again.

  

  In the early nineties when this place first became an open-to-the-public restaurant, it was called Le Telegraphe, and it enjoyed a two or three year run as one of the most fashionable restaurants on the Left Bank, despite the fact that the food was never better than a little better-than-average. Tipped off by a friend who lives nearby that it had recently re-opened yet again--it's been through several middlingly successful incarnations since it was Le Telegraphe, Bruno and I decided to treat ourselves to what we hoped would be a good dinner on yet another drizzly cool Friday evening. I knew nothing about the chef, but my friend did tell me that it had a 'lush' decor and that the wine list was all Burgundies, right down to a Cremant du Bourgogne instead of Champagne, and since I find Burgundies, especially white ones, absolutely perfect drinking for Spring, I thought we might be able to will the season into existence over a good glass of Burgundy or two.

   

  Arriving, we had a choice to two different settings, the dining room up front with lots of scarlet wing chairs with leopard print trim and some very beautiful Secessionist style art-nouveau reproduction chandeliers, or a pretty terrazzo-floored terrace with white wicker chairs and a greenhouse walls overlooking the lush courtyard back garden where meals are served at noon only in deference to the neighbors. Since the dining room was one of those spaces that look too designed to be comfortable, we opted for the terrace, with its mix of British colonial and art-nouveau references. 

  

 

  Over a glass of very good Cremant de Bourgogne--I long ago learned that these sparkling wines not only offer exceptional value for the money but are often excellent, we studied the menu, which had clearly been been constructed to flatter the restaurant's remarkable wine list. Willing summer to begin, Bruno ordered the sea bream carpaccio on a bed of razor-fine cucumber scales garnished with ambered colored gelee flavored with Xerex vinegar, a brilliant idea, and I had an impeccably well made Opera de foie gras on a bed of spice-bread sponge with Gewurtztraminer gelee. The steely artistry present in both of these dishes made me curious about the chef, and whom our very nice waiter informed me is Phan Chi Tam, a young Frenchman of Vietnamese origin who had most recently been working for Thierry Marx at Sur Mesure, his restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Paris.

 

  The smart counter-casting of the eager young serving staff, most of whom commute to this plush corner of the Left Bank from far afield suburbs, leavened the atmosphere of the restaurant in a useful way as well. To wit, even the stuffiest B.C.B.G. poseurs were guilessly brought to heel by the sincerity of this trying-so-very-hard-to-please young crew. 

   

   

   Our main courses were excellent as well. Bruno loved his steamed turbot with baby clams and a rich foamy dashi broth and was delighted to get his hands on a glass of the same sublime Puligny Montrachet I'd had with my foie gras (in addition to the spectacular wine list, they also offer a terrific variety of pours by the glass). My veal tartare, a fine foil for good wine, was coarsely chopped excellent quality meat that was garnished with a puree of fava beans and baby peas and very timidly seasoned with a little bit of citrus zest. Even though it was lovely with a glass of Hautes Cotes de Beaune, a little pinch of piment d'Espelette and a light sprinkle of coarse sea salt with sea weed would have given this fine product more personality.

  

 

   Desserts were excellent, too, including the Pierre Herme inspired litchi and fresh raspberry macaron I enjoyed and a lime-flavored 'boule de neige' (frozen dairy confection) with ginger-and-passionfruit coulis that Bruno chose. Though it's rather expensive at dinner--you could easily spend 130 Euros a head with a glass of wine or two, I suspect this sophisticated, worldly and well-conceived place will be hugely popular this summer at noon, when they serve two reasonably priced prix-fixe lunch menus (36 Euros and 45 Euros) in their secret garden. And after all of the years during which this type of restaurant--serious tables with seriously good French cooking for a well-heeled and well-dressed clientele, have been dying out, it's nice that even during this balkish Spring, a welcome trend to their renewal continues not only with the charming Les Climats, but Goust and places like Les Tablettes de Jean-Louis Nomicos, this latter restaurant being a real forerunner of this gastronomic redux. 

  

   

   A few days later, an old friend came to town and expected me to pull a rabbit out of a hat. She'd read about Septime, which is probably at the top of the list of almost every visiting foreign food-lover this Spring, and wanted to go for dinner. Needless to say, Septime had been full for dinner that night for many weeks, but as it happened, I'd read that chef Bertrand Grebaut had designed a menu that's being served at Wanderlust until June 21, and never having been to this table at the curious-looking lime-green Cite de la Mode et Design perched on the banks of the Seine near the Gare d'Austerlitz, I booked us a table.

  

 

  Arriving, I could see that Laurie hadn't changed a bit from the days that we worked the night shift at a bakery on the Upper West Side of New York. Her blonde rasta plaits were bundled up in a sort of scarlet do-rag and she still sported the same surgical steel ring in one nostril that she had all those years ago. As serious but slightly crazy kids who liked to have a good time, we spent many lost nights together at Paradise Garage, a big thumping night club on the Hudson, before she moved off to the woods of Pennsylvania with a Puerto Rican lady mechanic. These days, though, she lives in Austin with her cow-girl partner, whom I've never met, and we hadn't seen each other in well over twenty years. "Well, aren't you looking all Euro guy these days, Babe," she said and gave me a hug. I noticed that she'd put on a fair amount of weight, inevitable, it seemed, for a professional baker, but certainly wouldn't have said a word about it to her. "Hey, you've, um, filled out a bit, huh!? You used to be skinny as a reed, but your face still looks good." Small mercies, or something.

 

  Both of us liked the restaurant, any airy open space with an outdoor terrace, too cold for that night, overlooking the Seine and a staff of good-looking hipsters who also happened to be incredibly professional about their work. After we'd muddled the passage of time a bit with Bourbon cocktails--a sort of a riff on a Julep, we ordered, and if the food lacked a little bit of the finesse of Grebaut himself, it was still delicious and more generously served than what you get a Septime.

  

 

   I loved the buttered bread crumb garnish on veal tartare (I'm single-handedly denuding the pastures of France this Spring) on potato puree with tassels of fresh tarragon, since it was sensual study in textures within a shy band of flavors, and Laurie, who says she misses really good fresh fish in Austin, was delighted by her sea bream tartare.

 

   

  Our main courses were very good, too. A perfectly cooked cod steak with a mussel-garnished vinaigrette and grilled baby fennel for me, and baby chicken with faiselle and new potatoes for Laurie. "I love this food. It's generous and hearty, but delicate and original, too," said Laurie. 

 

  When I asked her if she wanted dessert, she shook her head and said no, "I need a smoke, and I have a little surprise for you." So I invited her to dinner and paid the bill, and then we found a bench on the quai next to the Seine and she got out a tin of the oatmeal cookies she'd carried all the way from Austin and a little bottle of Southern Comfort. "You've probably gotten too fancy for Southern Comfort, but I'm here to remind you that you used to love a Southern Comfort and Coke when we'd go clubbing." 

 

  I don't like Southern Comfort anymore, as it turns out, but Laurie's cookies were delicious. She's still a wonderful friend, too, and Wanderlust is a great idea for anyone who wants to eat Bertrand Grebaut but can't land a reservation at Septime. Oh, and as their guest-chef menu rolls on into the summer, the next up will be Christophe Pellet, who used to cook at La Bigarrade in the 17th arrondissement. 

 

Les Climats, 41 rue de Lille, 7th, Tel. 01-58-62-10-08. Metro: Solferino. Open daily. Lunch menus 36 Euros, 45 Euros. Average a la carte dinner 120 Euros. www.lesclimats.fr 

 

Wanderlust, 32 Quai d’Austerlitz, 13th, Tel. 01-70-74-41-74. Metro: Gare d'Austerlitz. Open daily: Lunch noon-3pm, dinner 8pm-midnight, Sunday brunch noon-4pm. Lunch menu 20 Euros, 25 Euros; dinner menus 35 Euros, 40 Euros. www.wanderlustparis.com