LE 6 PAUL BERT - Really Good Modern Bistro Cooking in a Great-Looking Venue, B+

The facade of Le 6 Paul Bert brought Georges Braque to mind

   

   Even though I've lived in Paris for a very longtime and go out at least five nights a week, there are still a few restaurants I always look forward to going to again and again--Le Paul Bert in the 11th arrondissement, for example. I've loved this place ever since the first time I stepped in the door a good five or six years ago, because it is such an almost studiously perfect example of a genus very dear to my heart, the Paris bistro. This place isn't some sort forgotten off-the-radar cat-sleeping-on-a-pie restaurant, though, but instead is an exactingly rendered summary of everything the whole world thinks of when it thinks of Paris bistros, from the saucy service to the zinc bar and wonderfully assorted (but again mostly artfully styled) flea-market enriched decor, and a menu that's meant to be a primer of great bistro dishes but which truth be told, somewhat undershoots this mark for lacking many plats mijotee, or long-simmered stews and casseroles like boeuf bourguignon or coq au vin. Instead, most of the cooking at the Paul Bert consists of prepped starters and a la minute grills, and it's very good indeed.

   

  

   To be sure, I've had good and less good meals at Le Paul Bert, but I have such profound respect for and confidence in owner Bertrand Auboyneau, who also owns the very good Ecailler de Bistrot fish house a few doors down from Le Paul Bert, that when I heard he'd opened at second bistro, Le 6 Paul Bert, it was the first thing I did after returning from a Christmas trip to New York. Because we'd eaten lavishly well in New York, where the occasion was a big birthday for Bruno, he wasn't exactly champing at the bit for anything more than salad at our kitchen table on the night I roped him in trying this new place with me, but all reluctance faded immediately the minute we stepped in the door of this very handsome new restaurant and were promptly seated by a charming young waitress (she and the second server, a nice waiter, get kudos, too, for so cheerfully keeping up with orders in an very busy and challenging dining room--small plates mean a lot more to and fro at the table).

     

  The menu came as a surprise for being an assortment of small plates in the idiom of such recent Paris restaurants as Saturne or Roseval, but these rather cryptically described compositions--as is true at Septime and many other new Paris restaurants, dishes are described haiku style as lists of their ingredients, sounded great, so we quickly decided to go with the 38 Euro 3 plates and dessert dinner menu. We negotiated the who was getting what, and then with a bottle of one of my favorite white Crozes-Hermitage wines (Les Baties from Dard et Ribo) and better bread than I've eaten from Jean-Luc Poujauran in a longtime to keep us happy, I mused on a more immediate dilemma--should I say hello to Le Figaro food critic Francois Simon, who was sitting at the table next to me, or desist for fear of calling attention to him if was hoping to remain as assiduously anonymous as possible; I decided to desist--it was very easy to relax in this exquistely decorated and well-lit room. With a small selection of groceries up front and a service bar, young Quebecois chef Louis-Philippe and sous-chef Elsa cook in a small open kitchen at the head of the room, and tables come in a variety of different sizes, including a rectangular one for six up front.

  

 

   

  Our first two dishes--my 'ravioli' of daikon radish, chopped raw beet, tangerines and oysters in a delightfully gentle citrus vinaigrette, and Bruno's grilled squid in a herb oil coulis with baby salad leaves were beautifully conceived and intriguingly referenced by the subliminal tidal pools of the collective culinary imagination of young chefs around the world. While very much his own creations, these cameos indicated that Louis-Philippe is doubtless aware of what colleagues like David Chang (Momofuku, NYC), René Redzepi (Noma, Copenhagen), and Luke Burgess (Les Garagistes, Hobart, Australia) are doing, to say nothing of other l young turks in Paris, including Gregory Marchand at Frenchie, James Henry at the soon to open Bones, or Braden Perkins at Verjus. To wit, these plates exhibited a suave play of acidities and different textures, were sort of raffishly elegant, and packed some powerful pleasure with the freshness of exquisitely sourced produce.

   

 

  Bruno's next dish, rollmops (herring) with a cucumber pickle, pickled scallion, beets and cream, leapt back across the Atlantic to the deli traditions of Eastern seaboard cities at the other end of the steamboat borne Eastern European diaspora a century ago, especially New York and Montreal, and was really fascinating for being framed by Paris, a city where Ashkenazic dining traditions have been fading for a longtime. I liked my chunky veal tartare, which made me think of the one served at Les Fines Gueules, although the seasoning was off balance due to too much mustard oil. Both dishes were worldly, well-prepared, and in the context of Paris today, shrewdly daring. Or in other words, anyone who knows what's cooking in New York or Stockholm and other cities right now might not find these preparations especially original, but in Paris they politely make a request to change the gastronomic conversation, and that's a good thing. 

 

  

  

  And with the arrival of our third course, something really fun and unexpected happened--I suddenly found myself in the presence of the first Dude Food I've ever eaten in Paris. People in other cities are actually a tad weary of this David Change cum M. Wells style of eating, but for me, a semi-assimilated Parisian, it was mighty fine. Bruno let me taste his succulent pork belly with baby clams and Japanese artichokes (crosnes, in French) and it was terrific--an immaculately conceived and cooked little still life that just left you wanting more. My barbecued pork on a carrot crepe sounded sort of awkwardly effete on the menu--I kept thinking of a high-school quarterback I once knew who is today married to a very handsome stock broker named Tad in Boston, or a study in troubled masculinity, but all of this smoke and mirror action vanished when my critical sensibility was snuffed out by a stroke-my-belly hit of unexpected pleasure. Hey, I know I'm no Dude, but on the other hand I love meat, smoke, everything fried, most fats and anything that's crunchy and edible. I'm trying damned hard to train myself to like healthy food, too, and this is why I loved getting a pass card with the 'carrot crepe,' which was really nicely seasoned root veg mash with some good crusting. So Louis-Philippe knows how to do North American Dude Food to suit a European sensibility, and that's a mighty fine gastonomic hat trick.

  

 

  By now I'd decided I really liked this place, an impression that deepened with a good cheese course (mine) and an odd riff on cannoli, those deep-fried Sicilian pastry treats filled with ricotta and candied fruit that I used to crave in New York's Little Italy and Boston's North End. Here, though, damn it all, cannoli just meant a round tube of caramelized sugar filled with lemony cream. Bruno said it was great, but I was still in athletic- protector mode after my barbecued pork and only wanted to eat all of my really good cheese.

 

  Aside from the charming service, what I most appreciated about this restaurant is that chef Louis-Philippe has the really long gastronomic antennae needed to cook in the context of what's happening all over the world right now, along with a really interesting nascent cooking style of his own and impressively solid kitchen skills, and these are the reasons I predict he'll become an important chef and that this swell little bisto will be packed solid within a week or two as the reviews roll in. It's imminent popularity notwithstanding, I intend to become a regular here, because they're so few restaurants in Paris today that issue themselves the almost nightmarish challenge of changing their menu every day. 

 

 6 rue Paul Bert, 11th, Tel. 01-43-79-14-32. Metro: Faidherbe-Chaligny. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Lunch menu 23 Euros, Dinner menu 38 Euros, average a la carte 40 Euros.  

 

N.B. Several readers have recently reported problems with their reservations L'Ecailler du Bistrot and Le Bistrot Paul Bert, and when I went for my first meal at Le 6 Paul Bert, it took ten minutes to track down my reservation. All of which is to say that they're a bit overwhelmed these days, so to prevent a frustrating disappointment, my advice would be to book well in advance and reconfirm your reservation on the morning of the day you're going.

L'ATELIER RODIER--A Charming and Very Good Neighborhood Bistro, B

   

  Though I really regret the socio-economic homogenization that's taking place at an ever accelerating rate in the 9th arrondissement, because I loved the more motley mix of inhabitants I found when I first moved across the Seine in 2000, there's one way that this change is having a brilliant impact on the neighborhood. As I've observed before, a week doesn't go by without another really good new restaurant opening its doors to feed the hungry throngs of affluent bobos, who are mostly too busy to cook themselves but love good food (oh, and yes of course I know that longer term residents than me might be tempted to tag me as a bobo, or bohemian bourgeois, too, but I think that at this stage of the game I'm shading towards eccentric, since being bohemian is a privilege of those under 40, and while I might be accused of being many dubious things, one I'm most decidedly not is bourgeois).

 

  In any event, the 9th arrondissement has become an irresistible location for ambitious young chefs like the tandem who have just opened the very promising L'Atelier Rodier, the wonderfully named Destin Ekibat, a delightful and talented young chef from the Congo, and Santiago Torrijos, who was born in Colombia (note, too, that the wonderful influx of international culinary talent to Paris shows no sign of stopping). They met while working in a suite of the same kitchens, including those of Robuchon, the Bristol, the Westminster and the Plaza Athenee, before going their own ways to the Raphael and Guy Martin respectively. But they knew they wanted to do a restaurant together, and so they shopped for a space for several years, finally found this old cafe in the heart of Bobo Land. 

   

  They did a lot of the work here themselves, too, and now it's a handsome space with exposed stone walls hung with photographs, pleasantly kitsch seventies wallpaper and an open kitchen with paned windows in the back. Arriving, the waiter offers to take your coat, and there's a drinks trolley that suggests an aperitif, perhaps a nice red Cinzano like my friend Odile and I had before dinner on a rainy week night. So in terms of its look and its service, it immediately presents itself as someplace that’s more ambitious, grown-up and customer-service alert than the average new neighborhood place.

  

   

  The 37 Euro prix-fixe menu was immediately appealing, too, so that even if an amuse bouche of foamy under-seasoned cauliflower soup under-whelmed, both of us like our nicely executed first courses—a tidy rectangle of dressed crab, which needed salt, on a bed of chunky celery root and cubbed Granny Smith apple for Odile and an open ravioli of wild mushrooms with a lemon-verbena spiked cream sauce and garnish of Spanish ham, which also needed salt, for me. Aesthetically soignee, made with well-sourced produce and generously served, both dishes were pleasant but also previewed the pardonable but recurring problem in this winsome young kitchen: a timidity with seasoning. 

   

  Odile suggested that the Spanish ham on my ravioli would have been better frizzled—she was right, for reasons of both texture and the richness of a little fat, and I added that the lemon-verbena sauce needed the texture of some piment d’Esplette or some other quiet fire. Herbs—maybe chives and cerfeuil, would have given similar relief to her crab, but in the end both dishes were well-prepared.

  

 

  Not very imaginatively, we both had the same main course—the last thing I’d ever do to anyone with joins me on a mission of discovery is bludgeon them into eating something useful to my review. I, of course, could have ordered something different, but on a cold wet night when I was tired I wanted the pot au feu de volaille, especially after seeing it served at a neighboring table. So we both loved this dish, which came as a beautifully prepared large dice of grilled autumn vegetables—leeks, celery root, turnips, parsnips, potatoes, Japanese artichokes and a succulent slow-poached chicken breast in a bowl filled with a superb gently spiced (star anise? clove? cinnamon?) bouillon. Madame and I agreed that this was a lovely dish, and couldn’t really find anything to improve, although I couldn’t help thinking that a couple of pot-stickers filled with a stuffing of chicken thighs and legs would have been welcome.

  

 

   When one of us of ordered cheese—a generous serving of excellent Salers, they served it to both of us, and then did the same with the slightly too gelatinous and under-seasoned lemon cheesecake. “This is a very easy restaurant to like,” said Odile over coffee, and I agree enough so that I went back a few days later and had a sensational dish of braised beef cheeks with a saute of artichokes, oysters mushrooms and girolles glossed with a light but thrillingly potent jus de boeuf. 

  

 

  If Ekibat and Torrijos are cooking this well in early days on their own, I think they’ll be doing some really spectacular food within a few months time as they become more confident, this kitchen gets broken in and they understand their clientele. I certainly intend to be on hand to find out, too, but in the meantime, my next stop will be at Premices, the other new restaurant in the rue Rodier and a louche, cool-operator looking place just aross the street from the sincere and very sweeting L’Atelier Rodier.

  

17 rue Rodier, 9th, Tel. 01-53-20-94-90. Metro: Anvers, Cadet, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Open for lunch Thursday-Saturday; for dinner Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.latelier-rodier.com

Lunch menu 18 Euros, dinner menu 37 Euros, five-course tasting menu 55 Euros, average a la carte 40 Euros. 

PASCADE--Aveyronnaise Crepes by Alexandre Bourdas, C+, And What a Gimmicky Year it's Been in Paris

   

  When Mme. Penny de Bay-Shore, an American friend who runs a wonderful B & B in Honfleur (La Petite Folie) first tipped me off that Alexandre Bourdas of Sa.Qua.Na., a chef from the same delightful seaside Normandy town whom we're both big fans of, was opening a restaurant in Paris, Pascade, my pulse raced. Why? For anyone who loves really good food, it's been an odd year in the French capital, with a variety of popcorn-like novelties--cheeseburgers, burritos, hot dogs (never thought I'd see this day in Paris), eclairs in sweet and savory versions, and other foods that are part of the media-annointed cannon of upstairs-downstairs trendy cosmo eats, getting a lot of ink from the French press and all of the international outlets that feed on its teats, but with many fewer good new serious restaurants. So I hoped we might see out the year with a bang, i.e., a really good new restaurant after so many wet fire crackers, ego annexes, marketing step-children and other new spots that were almost anything but interesting and sincere. 

  

  To be sure, there have been some great new restaurants in Paris in 2013--Roseval, Abri, Semilla and Terroir Parisien (all reviewed on this site, please use the search engine) come to mind, but otherwise, the year really has been much about gadgets and bold-faced names. So in the hopes that Pascade would go beyond these wearisome compass points and serve some really great food, I met a friend from New York for lunch last week. But before sitting down to the table at Pascade, it might be helpful to have a bit of background on Alexandre Bourdas, the chef-owner of this new place.

  

  The Aveyron born and raised Bourdas ran Michel Bras's restaurant on the northern island of Hokkaido for five years and was profoundly marked by the cuisine and aesthetics of Japan. Returning to France, he set up shop in Honfleur, where his intriguing and intensely disciplined cooking at Sa.Qua.Na shook up the well-heeled Parisian bourgeois clientele who weekend on the Norman shore but also brought immediate renown. Today he has two Michelin stars, and it's necessary to book several weeks in advance to get a table at his spare but handsome dining room in Normandy.

  

  Well, by the time I got to the table, I'd already learned that a 'pascade' is sort of an eggy crepe along the lines of a Yorkshire pudding, and that this was all Bourdas's new place served, in savory and sweet versions. Still, I thought on my way to lunch, there aren't many good bet places for a meal in the heart of Paris--Pascade is equidistant to the Opera, the Place Vendome, the Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre, so perhaps this place would be a happy alternative to all of the faux health-food takeaway places that cater to the strike-of-noon paper-bag lunch crowd--think soup, salads and more salads, quiche, and sandwiches.

 

  Arriving, I liked the looks of this place--think ryokan meets cutlery atelier in Saint Etienne in the heart of Paris, or a Zen industrial aesthetic, despite the fact that the service struck me as a bit arch--it was as if staff were already rather taken by the fact that they were in the employ of a much esteemed chef and thus considered that you should cross yourself as you stepped through the door.

  

 

  There was a big oak and wrought-iron framed table d'hotes in the middle of the room here, but happily, my pal was seated at a table for two, and so after we got over how expensive the wines by the glass are here, we eye-balled the menu and decided to try a pascade with lamb ragout, pak choi, fromage blanc and black cardamon and another with country ham, lettuce, endive, celery remoulade (which I never found), roast chicken jus (which I never found either) and melba toasts.

  

  Since the menu offered no starters, we tucked into the pascades as soon as they came to the table, and if they were pleasant enough, neither of us found them to be so urgently good that we'd want to return to this restaurant. I was also troubled by the fact that the batter of mine--the one with the ham, had too much sugar in it for my tastes, which prompted my friend to comment that they really should have separate batters for the savory and sweet versions.  

  

 

  Partially out of curiosity and partially because we were still hungry--a French food writer friend had already responded to a tweet I'd sent out announcing this lunch by advising me: "Plan on a serious snack--soup, bread and cheese, later in the day--you'll be hungry, and poorer for it"--we decided to split a dessert pascade, which came garnished with Armagnac soaked prunes, whipped cream, cookie crumbs, nougatine and yuzu. We both liked this dessert pascade more than our savory ones, and I could even imagine stopping by just for a prune pascade pick-me-up on a rainy afternoon, but when our bill came, it was over 80 Euros for two glasses of wine, three pascades, and two coffees, which is an awful lot of money for a meal that we'd have liked a lot more at 20 Euros a head, a much more appropriate price.

  

  So as much as I welcome Alexandre Bourdas to Paris, and as much as I love the idea of someone trying to do something different in the heart of the city, this place just wasn't special enough to make me want to come back again. If you're staying in a nearby hotel, however, and don't mind the stiff prices, it's just fine for a light bite.

  

14 rue Daunou, 2nd, Tel. 01-42-60-11-00. Metro: Opera or Madeleine. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Average 30 Euros.

L'ECOLE FERRANDI - Tasting New Talent at Le Premier and Le 28, the School's Charming Restaurants

 

  As someone who passionately loves good food, there's nothing I find more fascinating than the privilege of visiting a working restaurant kitchen. When they're busy and well-directed, working kitchens often offer the same magnificent but unselfconscious spectacle of the physical and cerebral metaphysically melded together as one finds at the ballet, the difference being that dance is usually better lit and deprived of the same olfactory teasing a kitchen subjects you to.

  

 

  So I was delighted when the friend who'd invited me to the 'Diner des Chefs' four-handed dinner cooked in tandem by chefs David Toutain (Agape Substance) and Alexandre Couillon (La Marine) wangled us behind the kitchen doors for a few minutes before we ordered our meal. This was a special night in the kitchen of Le Premier, one of the two open-to-the-public teaching restaurants at the Ecole Ferrandi, the school of culinary trades in the 6th arrondissement which has recently trained many of the most distinguished chefs in France, including Adeline Grattard (Yam'Tcha), Bertrand Grebaut (Septime), William Ledeuil (Ze Kitchen Galerie), Francois Pasteau (L'Epi Dupin), and Matthieu Viannay (La Mere Brazier, Lyon), among many others. Just before the night got very busy, the last prep was being done in this immaculate kitchen by a bunch of poignantly eager, intense and very serious young students under the direction of the school's permanent fulltime teaching professors, while Toutain and Couillon met with students in smaller groups to go over the details of the plates they'd be cooking and serving together. 

  

 

   Back at the table with several other friends, we sipped Champagne and enjoyed the expectant atmosphere in a dining room that's unlike any other in Paris--the lighting may be a little harsh, but the joyous sort of maternity-ward atmosphere here just brims with expectation and a desire to please, and the first indication that this would be a slam-dunk of an evening in terms of great food was a stunningly beautiful little amuse-bouche of dressed crabmeat in a pool of deeply reduced shellfish bouillon by David Toutain. Then while waiting for our first course, our table with British, Brazilian and American guests, shared an interesting conversation on the current state of food in Paris--even if the quality of the food in its brasseries and cafes remains pretty much appalling, the city's in the midst of a pretty spectacular revival of the neighborhood bistro recoined for a new century, and just exactly why this revival is taking place. Well, we didn't really have to look very far or very hard for an answer to this last question: the awesome and thoroughly admirable rigor of a classic French culinary education equips young chefs who train at the Ecole Ferrandi to spread their wings with real confidence, because they know how to do everything. And armed with a deep knowledge of the past, it's easier to dare a bit of modernity and succeed. One of the huge global misapprehensions about professional cooking is that it's all about creativity (much of this nonsense comes from the inane cooking shows that have become so popular). It's not. Instead it's all about a relentlessly rigorous execution of technique and ferociously exigent and ingenious sourcing...with a just pinch of creativity.

  

 

   For the first course of this special meal, we had a choice between 'egg, corn, cumin seeds' or 'sea scallop, parsnip, blueberry,' or Toutain and Couillon respectively. On a raw night, anything with an egg was irresistible to me, and the exquisitely comforting little dish that arrived is something I could eat a pair of everyday for breakfast for the rest of my life--a perfectly poached egg yolk on a sunny creamy bed of corn pudding with wands of cumin-spiked corn bread. Next up, a choice between scallops with romanesco (green cauliflower) and Madras curry or cod with butternut emulsion, goat milk and mint. Both dishes were excellent, and emblematic of the type of superb contemporary French cooking students at the Ecole Ferrandi are learning today.

  

   

  Though this dinner was a one-off event, it still served as a discreet showcase of the skills of the current class of students at the Ecole Ferrandi, and they cook to such an exceptionally impressive level that I'm really looking forward to coming back for a 'normal' service. 

  

 

  A superb composition of rosy veal with bluefloot mushrooms in clove emulsion and a gorgeous chocolate-caramel-coffee-cream pastry with clementine-pear coulis round-out this excellent meal, an evening of real charm heightened by flawless service and the awareness that we were some of the luckiest guineau pigs in Paris. The friend who invited me advised me to try dinner on Monday or Tuesday at the more intimate Le 28 the next time I come, which I'll look forward to, but the other mental note I made is that the 25 Euro lunch menu at Le Premier is excellent value for money in a setting where the tables are widely spaced and there's lots of sunlight during the day. So it's an original and very convenient spot for a business meal or a tete a tete on the Left Bank. And of course the implicit fun of dining here is that you may very well catch a rising star before he or she becomes fodder for the Michelin guide.

   

L'Ecole Ferrandi, 28 rue de l'Abbe Gregoire, 6th, Tel. 01-49-54-17-31 (mornings only) or email resaresto@ccip.fr. for reservations in the school's restaurants. Mo Saint Placide or Rennes. Opening hours: Le Premier - Tues-Fri for lunch, 25 Euros; Occasional Thursdays for dinner, 40 Euros; Le 28 - Wed-Fri for lunch, 30 Euros; Mon, Tues for dinner, 40 Euros. www.ferrandi-paris.fr 

   

LE BISTRO URBAIN--Urban and Urbane in the Old Table-Top District, B

   In the three cities I’ve lived in longest, know best, and have minutely observed during the course of my adult life—New York, London and Paris, I’ve always been fascinated by the way a single restaurant can serve as the catalyst for major urban change. The archetype that immediately comes to mind for me is Ruskays, a long gone restaurant on the Upper West Side of New York City, while the most vivid recent example is Le Bistro Urbain in Paris’s 10th arrondissement. 

 

   At a time in the late seventies when Manhattan north of Lincoln Center seemed increasingly on the skids from Broadway east to Central Park, Ruskays, a candle-lit duplex space with a big picture window façade, offered a vision of a dramatically different Columbus Avenue—in this take, it would be—like the restaurant, fashionable and popular with creative young urbanites. I ate at Ruskays dozens of times but have zero memory of the food—instead, what intrigued me and made me go back was the idea of identifying with and becoming part of the simmering urban glamour in the room.  Also in New York, Raoul’s in Soho did the same thing—although here the food was actually good, while the original Square Trousseau in Paris offered a perfect snap shot of the young chic of the Bastille and the Faubourg Saint Antoine when this turf began its long evolution from being a neighborhood of working-class artisans to Bobo central. Sudden constellations of popular new restaurants have also signaled major changes in London’s Soho and Notting Hill Gate, both quarters being so stylish today that it’s almost impossible to imagine that the former had once been the city’s massage-parlor filled red-light district and the other a rough-and-tumble area with a large population of inhabitants from the Caribbean islands.

     

  Within recent years, the long-standing tradition of urban life in western cities which held that these three cities would be home to a diverse array of different socio-economic groups has been pummeled by huge changes in the global economy. The upshot of these disruptions and dislocations is that the world’s wealthy once again covet the beauty, character and convenience of the historic hearts of these cities, with the result that lower-income people are pushed out to the less-expensive periphery of ever-spreading metropolitan areas.

     

  What this means is full-gallop gentrification in these places, and in this context, a single restaurant can have a huge impact on the popular perception of a neighborhood—Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster, for example, being absolutely vital in the accelerating sociological transformation of Harlem. 

   

  In central Paris, the 10th arrondissement has been emerging as a dramatically more up-market neighborhood along the Canal du Saint Martin for at least a decade, but now this is spilling over into the formerly grotty triangle of turf bounded by the Boulevard Magenta, les grands boulevards and the rue du Faubourg Poissoniere that was once the showroom hub of the French table-top industry, and it’s been intriguing to watch the area become hip, a transformation led by a clutch of trendy new restaurants, bar, cafes and wine bars. Many of them, including L’Office, Vivant Table and Abri, have become destination tables in terms of attracting people from outside of the 10th. 

   

   This is why even though I love all three of these tables, I have developed a new gastronomic soft spot for Le Bistro Urbain, which holds up the same hopeful (and perhaps parlous--look what Columbus Avenue eventually became) mirror to the 10th that Ruskays did to the Upper West Side so many years ago. And the similarities between these tables don’t stop there—both share the same sort of effortless and unselfconscious low-key urban chic and take their primary vocation—making sure the locals eat well and have a good time, very seriously.

   

   Coming here with Bruno and our friends Laurent and Carole for a late and impromptu dinner the other night, all of us liked this place the moment we came through the door. Why? There was a nice friendly welcome from the proprietor, the room was well-lit and visually interesting, with an open kitchen that might have inspired Edward Hopper and an interesting wall installation of overlapping white rectangle, and the tables were correctly spaced.  

   Then the good-value chalkboard menu proposed a lot of dishes that were a perfect bull's eye in terms of the type of meal we were gunning for--exalted French comfort food. So three of us had the marinated salmon with an excellent remoulade sauce and a trio of freshly baked miniature rolls, and the third tucked into an excellent warm salad of deboned rabbit with rosemary on salad leaves. Though I had not gone to dinner with my professional food writer's cap on, I couldn't help but noticing that the food was really well sourced, and eventually asked one of the owners if he worked with Terroirs d'Avenir, the ur trendy and excellent super well-sourced provisioner to many of Paris's best young chefs.

   Like the magician who's afraid that the audience might be on to how he pulled the rabbit out of his hat, he was initially startled by the question, but then answered with a nod and a grin while he scrutinized our table for a clue as to why we might know of this wonderful little company, a cook's secret. Our main courses, by chef William Ransonne, ex-Les Parisiennes, were very good, too.   

Partridge

Onglet

Bruno and Laurent went wild--with partridge and wild dove respectively, for a reasonable supplement to the prix-fixe menu, Carole was happy with her maigre, and I scarfed down a juicy onglet (hanger steak) served with baby potatoes and a creamy sauce of mustard, cream and deglazed meat juices. 

  Desserts were excellent, too--petit pot de crème à la chicorée (chicory flavored custard) and ravioles aux coings sauvages (dessert ravioli stuffed with wild quince), and by the end of our meal, we were in really good spirits. "This was a really good meal," exulted Laurent, adding, "The food was great, but it's also really wonderful see the renewal of the neighborhood bistro by a new generation of talented chefs and restaurateurs." 

  It is indeed.

103 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, 10th, Tel. 01-42-46-32-49, Metro:  Gare de l'Est, Poissonnière & Château d'Eau, www.bistro-urbain.fr  Open Monday-Saturday for lunch and dinner, closed Sunday. Lunch menus 14.50-19 €, dinner menu 25-30 €.