LE SERGENT RECRUTEUR--Better to Be a Draft Evader, C

    Like most Parisians, I always love getting away to the islands, and especially at this time of the year, when the tourist throngs have thinned and they're still leaves on the trees, which soften the beautiful 17th and 18th century facades of the old houses along their narrow streets. During the winter in contrast, the Ile Saint Louis looks as embarrassedly exposed and vunerable as an old woman unexpectedly surprised in her undergarments. Of the two islands, the Ile de la Cite and the Ile Saint Louis, I prefer the latter, because it remains one of the rare places in Paris with a pleasantly pickled atmosphere of palpable history, and it radiates an aura of secrets and mysteries. And as the writer Edmund White, who once lived here in a charming apartment has observed, there are few better places in Paris to indulge in the pleasure of a long and very deliberately purposeless stroll.

   Unfortunately, despite its popularity, the Ile Saint Louis has not had a really good restaurant since the original Hiramatsu moved away. Yes, there's Mon Vieil Ami, but the service there is problematic, it's become too expensive and there are just too many foreigners, so the one place I ever recommend is the perfectly respectable Brasserie de l'Isle Saint Louis, with its charming interior, anthology of decent old-fashioned French dishes and pleasantly teasing and jocular waiters. Still, such a special place has always seemed to warrant an equally special restaurant, so I was intrigued when I read that the hoary old La Taverne du Sergent Recruteur, a tourist table par excellence, had been reborn as Le Segent Recruteur, an elegant contemporary French restaurant.  

   Since this new restaurant was on the expensive side, I plied the long-suffering and increasingly resistant Bruno--he'd almost always rather stay home and cook, since, according to him, "We rarely eat as well in restaurants as we do at home," by making him my guest for dinner. Arriving, the place had a handsome new decor with good lighting and contemporary ceramics in vitrines by Spanish decorator Jaime Hayon, and it was packed with an international quorum of well-dressed couples, most of whom had clearly been sent here by nearby hotels. The open kitchen in the back of the room was a busy hive, but the dining room had a relaxed atmosphere, so we decided to throw caution to the wind and start the evening with a glass of rather dull mono-cepage Champagne (I later discovered that these were priced at a ridiculous 20 Euros a pour, so you've been warned).

   We were hungry that night, so after twenty minutes went by without a menu, I asked one of the numerous wait staff if we could see one and order. He returned with a puckish grin and handed us two triple-folded sheets of paper that had been sealed with sealing wax. This didn't bode well, but I opened mine, and experienced an instant blaze or irritation. Here's what I found:

Partir de Rien: 95 Euros

S'Inspirer: 145 Euros

   Bruno shot me a beady eye, and I asked the server if he might explain the menu a bit further. "It's better if it's all a surprise," he said coyly. I said that we'd really rather know what the sequence of dishes in each menu might be so that we could order a single bottle of wine for the meal. "You're better off having a specially chosen glass with each course," I was told. While remaining cordial, I told him that we didn't like shifting from one wine to another during a meal, and that we'd rather start with some white, if that was appropriate, and then add a glass of red somewhere if that was warranted, etc.

   "As you wish," he replied, followed by a quick sing-song recitation of the bill of fare, a tone that implied we were being sticks in the mud. For two fleeting seconds, I thought of paying up for the Champagne and moving on, since we'd clearly blundered into one of those noisome places where we were expected to bow down in astonishment at the chef's prowess. Or in other words, a restaurant that's not particularly eager to make its clients happy, but which prefers instead to impose its culinary will upon them. 

  So we settled for six-course "Partir de Rien" (Indeed), and another twenty minutes went by before we were served two foamy hors d'oeuvres, pumpkin and herbs. They were just fine, but we still hadn't seen the sommelier when the second hors d'oeuvres came out--an egg shell with a slow-poached yolk and angelica foam, harmless enough but rather deja vu as a concept. After a fair amount of prodding our white Saint Joseph was finally served, much too cold, just as a thoroughly uninteresting carpaccio of beets reached the table with, at long last, some bread and some very good freshly made butter.

   Things improved considerably, however, with the following dish, a beautiful compostion of succulent mackerel garnished with cucumber shavings, lazer-fine slices of black radish and wild fennel leaves. This was clearly a signature dish, since the chef himself emerged from the kitchen to flurry our fish with a fine snow of frozen horseradish and yogurt. This very appealing dish reminded me a lot of similar preparations I've recently eaten in Stockholm, so a propos of nothing, I mentioned to the chef that it looked "tres Scandinave," which earned me a glare before he wordlessly withdrew from the table. Bruno thought I'd unwittingly cast some aspersions on his originality with my comment, but this wasn't my intention--the dish was tres Scandinave, and it was also the best conceived and most satisfying dish of the evening.

 

   By now, however, we'd been at the table for over two hours, which I wouldn't normally have even noticed, since I love being at the table and could talk to Bruno until the cows come home, but the only way for such an involuntary tasting menu to work is for the rhythm of the dishes to remain relatively well-syncopated. When there are long delays between courses, exasperation sets in, which is what I overhead at the table to my left, where the two husbands staged a rebellion and abbreviated their plodding steeple-chase of a meal by a dessert. This format also requires a lofty level of talent to come off, too, since the diner responds to the heightened expection of it all by focusing intently on every dish. All of which is to say that our next two courses--turbot with grilled artichokes in an acidulated sauce and wonderful suckling pig with caramelized crackling, were good but came no where near the level of David Toutain of Agape Substance, the current Parisian maestro of such tasting menus.

 

   Going on three hours now, we decided to cut things short, too, and concluded with an excellent fresh fig tart with vanilla ice cream. The bill for this meal ran over 300 Euros, which was rather heart-breaking, since it inevitably invited comparison to all of the other places we might have gone instead for a better and more enjoyable meal. Aside from the excruciatingly slow and disorganized service, the problem with this place you see is that the chef is more interested in showing off his culinary prowess, such as it is--and he does have talent, than he is in creating a sincerely memorable evening for his clientele.

41 rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, 4th, Tel. 01-43-54-75-42. Metro: Maubert - Mutualité, Pont Marie or Sully - Morland. Closed Sunday and Monday. Prix-fixe menus 95 Euros, 145 Euros.

BISTROT CAPUCINE--That Great Little Place Just Around the Corner, B

     "Dear Alec, Looking forward to seeing you in a week, and to introducing you to my sons, especially the eldest, who's seems to be just about as food mad as you are. I know you'll be away the first two nights we're in Paris, so I've been poking around your blog to see if I could find a relaxed reasonably priced and decidedly French restaurant just out the door from our hotel in the 1st arrondissement. You've written about some terrific sounding spots in the 1st in your book and on your blog, but what I really need is a 'normal people' restaurant. Anything trendy would be lost on me and the boys, as would anything too cutting edge. Sorry to bother you with this, but maybe you'd have an idea of a friendly sort of meat-and-potatoes spot that won't break the bank but will serve us some good food, and, for dear old Dad who'll be running this excursion and is, as you know, fond of the grape, a nice bottle of wine!"

   This was the message I received a couple of weeks ago from Todd, a college friend from Pittsburgh who was taking his sons to Paris for the first time while his wife was on a long business trip in Asia, and it got me to thinking about how rare 'normal people' restaurants have become in the heart of Paris. With a few wonderful exceptions, only chain restaurants or slickly designed places peddling the ersatz health food that's become the new Gallic noon-time normal for office workers--smoothies, salads, soup, etc., can afford to set up shop these days on this prime turf, and this really can make it a challenge for visitors staying in any of the many hotels in the heart of Paris, or that turf defined by the Madeleine, Place de la Concorde, the Opera Garnier and the Place Vendome, to find a reasonably priced, good quality French meal. So I gave this request some thought. I like the Bistrot Volnay a lot, but knew it would be too fashionable for Todd and his boys. Then I remembered. As luck would have it, however, I actually had found a swell little bistro in this neck of the woods a few weeks back, Le Bistrot Capucine.

  I'd met a friend who's a hotel executive for lunch, and he told me that this friendly little spot with a gorgeous red Berkel slicing machine on the bar (anyone want to know what I'd like for Christmas? Yes! And the machine's painted the very same red as Santa Claus's jacket. Alas, these things run around $5000)--always a good sign, is not only his go-to spot for lunch but favorite new place to have a cave-man dinner, since it just started serving a swell small plate and côte de bœuf only menu in the evening.  

  That pretty Indian summer day, I loved chef Jean-Marc Berthelot's market-driven menu, and we had a terrific lunch--roasted smoked mozzarella with artichoke cream and cherry tomatoes, poached cod with really nicely made squid's ink risotto, and some brie de Meaux to see us through a last glass of a wonderful bottle of Minervois. It was while we were lingering over the rest of our wine and a coffee that we fell into conversation with the amiable Berthelot, who opened this restaurant in 1998 and who recently went through a royal battle with his landlord to prevent himself from being priced out the neighborhood.  The reason that this later subject came up is that I'd been talking about how all of the 'real people' places in the neighborhood had been priced out of existence, and specifically reminisced about the excellent traiteur where I used to buy lunch almost every day when I worked in the rue Cambon. The nice lady who owned this place smoked the ham she sold in the chimney of her country house and made all of the salads--celeri remoulade, potato salad, grated carrot, etc., from scratch everyday and they were delicious.

   Berthelot, whose interesting and accomplished career includes stints at Chez Pauline--the great now-gone bistro in the rue Villedo, Guy Savoy, various London kitchens and as a private chef on Caribbean yachts sailing out of Saint Martin, despairs of the economic gentrification that's making it hard to find a good meal in the heart of Paris, and this is why he not only put up a fight to keep his restaurant, but takes pride in serving only the very best organic produce, which he buys himself at the Marche de Vincennes or the Marche d'Aligre, and sourcing his meat at the Boucheries Nivernaises. He obviously loves his work as a chef and a host, so it came as no surprise when he mentioned that execs from nearby Chanel like to privatize his place for let-their-hair-down feasts in the evening every once in a while.

 

  In need of a similar let-down-your-hair meal a month or so ago, Bruno and I headed over here for dinner and had a terrific night. We sampled almost all of the small plate starters, including big fat fleshy Sicilian olives, grilled artichoke hearts, salami and sublime ham, and then tucked into a terrific côte de bœuf. This superb mountain of first rate meat came cooked perfectly medium rare with a generous side of sea-salted roasted baby potatoes and a chlorophyll bright sauce verte that was vivid with the tastes of flat parsley, chives, chervil and a little basil and tarragon. It met the char on the meat as a real treat, too. But since this dinosaur dinner weighed in at 900 grams, or almost two pounds, we struggled to finish it despite the fact that it was juicy flavorful meat with a perfect texture--it firm enough to require a sharp knife but was easy work under the blade.  

  Over coffee and a slug of great Basque eau de vie, we chatted with Berthelot and his wonderfully wry bar tender, and beyond politics and food, everyone railed about how no one makes time for a good time anymore--work has just about gobbled up everyone's lives, and about how they're fewer and fewer 'real' streets in the heart of the Paris anymore. By this we meant, streets with shops that sell things that you actually need and/or can afford, but a few survive, including the rue Vignon and the rue Caumartin, both of which we all like a lot.

   So on the way home, I ressolved to try and cover more 'real people' restaurants on this blog, and I also sent a message to Todd about the Bistrot Capucine. A few days later, I had a response.

"Alec, Thanks so much! We were pretty jet-lagged when we wandered into Bistrot Capucine, but Jean-Marc was so welcoming, speaks great English, and his beef was some of the best any of us have ever eaten. We liked this place so much we went for lunch a day later. I persuaded the boys to try Jean-Marc's cod steak with risotto and they loved it! Big step for American teenagers who will only eat pasta, pizza and burgers at home! See you on Friday and maybe we can talk them into some foie gras...or keep it all for ourselves! Best, Todd"

22 rue des Capucines, 2nd, Tel. 01-49-26-91-30. Métro: Madeleine or Opéra. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Lunch menu 28 Euros; average la carte dinner 30 Euros

LE GRAND BISTRO BRETEUIL - Branded! B

   

      For many years, Le Bistro de Breteuil has been a very well-liked restaurant in the silk-stocking 7th arrondissement due to its lovely location overlooking the Place de Breteuil, its charming sidewalk terrace for al fresco dining in good weather, and most importantly of all, its perfectly decent good value prix-fixe menu. For 42 Euros, you got an aperitif, starter, main course, dessert, half-bottle of decent plonk, and a coffee, and the quality was respectable enough so that it pulled as many staffers from UNESCO and parsimonious loden-wearing owners of those vast neighboring flats overlooking the ur-bourgeois Avenue de Breteuil as it did tourists. It was also a perfect place for any group dinner, because there wouldn't be any tiresome haggling about who owed what, and offered some of the best people watching in Paris.

Lobster Bellevue with a macedoine of Thiebault vegetables and homemade mayonnaise

   Now, restaurateuers Willy Dorr and his son Garry have rebranded this address, along with three of the other bistros they own, and the reboot means a new name, Le Grand Bistro Breteuil, and a new decor--out goes the sort of anonymous, inspired by one of those Louis somethings decor in favor of a louche lounge look that spins on a black, red and white color scheme and low lighting, an effect that comes off as both aspirationally Costes and urban Saint Tropez. They've also given the place a serious gastronomic gussying up in terms of a new 42 Euro menu that represents the apotheosis of a seemingly accelerating local trend towards giving a big shout out to one's brand-name suppliers. So on the new menu at Le Grand Bistro Breteuil you get oysters from David Herve, vegetables from Joel Thiebault, olive oil from the Chateau d'Estoublon, cheese from Marie-Ann Cantin, Poujauran bread and butter from Jean-Yves Bordier. You can also order a steak, veal chop or pigeon sourced from star butcher Hugo Desnoyer for a 9 Euro supplement to the main menu, or content yourself with meat from Frank Samoyeau.

   I have very mixed feelings about the branding game, since on the one hand, all of the people mentioned above do seriously excellent produce, and it's extremely important to make people aware of all of the variables that can affect the quality and healthfulness of what they eat, and yet on the other hand, the whole branding business seems to be getting wearisomely out of hand. I mean even the lousy little menus on Air France now note the brand names of all the spirits, soft drinks and liquors they serve, i.e. Cola de Chez Pepsi, or some such. And the simple fact of the matter is that branding has always been designed to incite and assure loyal consumption of the branded product, whether its laundry soap, a hotel room, or, more recently, a restaurant meal. When it comes to cooking, however, you can stock a kitchen with all of the super-luxe pedigreed produce you like, but it's sort of a lost cause, if the cook isn't any good. And much more alarming than that, in some restaurants, branded produce seems to be intended as some sort of surrogate for real cooking. Or in other words, 'Well, of course it's going to be good! it's Poulet Bio du 9eme Arrondissement d'Alec Lobrano (TM)!"

  Anyway, I've never counted my chickens before they've hatched, and since they're not going to as long as I'm living in Paris, I went off to meet a bunch of friends for lunch at Le Grand Bistro Breteuil with a lot of curiosity. Would this be an If-it's-not-broken, don't-fix-it story, or a substantial improvement to a deservedly long-running restaurant? 

  

  Well, I have to hand it to the Dorrs and to their culinary consultant, the charming and very talented chef Jean-Jacques Jouteux, since the food here is not only solidly good but even a little better than that for the fact of being made with such high quality ingredients. And the service is charming and well-drilled, too, which makes this place just the ticket for the very same demographic it so thoroughly pleased before being revised. To be sure, this is a meat-and-potatoes restaurant and not a place to come in search of cuisine d'auteur, and I also have a feeling that some of the locals aren't going to like the rather flashy new decor. But putting that to one side, Le Grand Bistro Breteuil has been successfully retooled as a useful work horse of a restaurant for a century when Paris cooking is so auspiciously shading towards the locavore, organic and generally healthy. And hey, where else are you going to find black Hawaiian sea salt on the table without boarding the hot-air balloon of haute cuisine?

   For an extra 4 Euros, I got a huge plate of French (as opposed to eastern European) girolles as a starter, an excellent buy in my book, while pals were delighted with their lobster Bellevue--a real Belle Epoque beauty of a dish, that one (+9 Euros); Thiebault vegetables with sauteed squid; and very good foie gras. None of these dishes bore any particular chef's signature, but rather they demonstrated a well-disciplined kitchen, solid technical competence and honest respect for product.

  Main courses were first-rate, too, including my perfectly cooked Desnoyer veal chop, an estimable grilled sole with beurre noisette, griddled sea bass with sauce vierge and a very good Desnoyer steak sauteed with Sarawak pepper. Appealing side dishes added to the festive, generous nature of this meal, too--you get a choice of potato puree made with Bordier butter, real frites, wok-sauteed Thiebault vegetables, sauteed spinach with green onions or arugula dressed with Chateau d'Estoublon olive oil and organic lemon. 

  The house Bordeaux was just fine, and we hemmed and hawed over the dessert selections for a while, because there were so many things that sounded good. In the interest of research--visitors to Paris just love crepes Suzette, and I do, too, I ordered same, while the others had the daily special of baba au rhum, a superb tarte fine with organic apples and freshly made vanilla ice cream, and profiteroles with more of that just-made vanilla ice cream and Valrohna chocolate sauce.  

  So, great food? No, but good food, and with that swell terrace, late serving hours seven days a week, and a 19 Euro children's menu, all I can say to the Dorrs is, shame about the decor, but hey, come on, baby, light my fire; this is a respectable and very useful restaurant.  

3 Place de Breteuil, th, Tel. 01-45-67-07-27. Metro: Duroc or Sèvres - Lecourbe. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Prix-fixe menu 42 Euros, average two-course a la carte 34 Euros. 

LA DAME DE PIC--Scents & Sensibility, B-/C+

   I have the greatest respect for Anne-Sophie Pic, because she's both an exceptionally talented chef and a lovely person, and I've also eaten several superb meals in her restaurants in Valence and Lausanne. And since it's not even remotely her fault that scent strips--you know, those paper wands used for smell sampling at the perfume counters of department stores, induce a reflexive fit of fear and loathing in someone whose sense of smell was once nearly extinguished by a two-week stint selling gloves adjacent to the dueling perfume counters on the ground floor of the now defunct Filene's department store in Boston as a broke college student at Christmas, I decided it was imperative that I eat several times at La Dame de Pic, her new Paris restaurant, and give it a long muse lest I come to any hasty conclusions. 

 

  It's also true that the social context of my first meal at the restaurant had been emotionally arduous, and that several weeks ago, I'd received a castigating email from someone who'd read of my struggle to be fair to chef Philippe Excoffier (reviewed on this site), given his association, however tangential, with the Bush administration. In that instance, the reader had not been very alert, since I admitted to my prejudices, explained their origin, and went back to this restaurant several times before offering a public verdict. In any event, I try to be as fair as I possibly can, always, but it's also true that eating is an emotional and psychological experience, and that we bring ourselves to the table as we are of a given day, or a given meal, and that this inevitably influences the way that we perceive of what we eat. That said, I do my best to use as much of a self-critical tuning fork (sic) as I possibly can to find an equilibrium between gastronomic subjectivity--the inevitable, and objectivity, the hopefully professional.

  

   

  So after I was invited to dinner here a few nights after it opened by a colleague, and emerged from the meal totally befuddled and rather disappointed, I went back in the hopes that maybe it had just been an off night. Unfortunately, however, this will never be a restaurant I enjoy, and that's for a variety of reasons beginning with the fact that the concept--Pic's new place serves a choice of three expensive prix-fixe menus that are themed to the fragrances born by a panel of three paper scent strips that are presented to you with the menus, is at once too high-concept and then much too precious to be really enjoyable (It actually made me think of the famous fumble at Alain Ducasse in New York, when he offered a variety of fountain pens with which to sign your check, or hotel pillow menus, for that matter, both studies in pink-cheeked errancy when simplicity gets keel-hauled in the name of marketing). Then there's the fact that I never warmed to designer Bruno Borrione's decor, which is decidedly feminine--the pink-tinted Italian glass wall-sconces, and, to my American eyes, jarringly tract-house, with the white faux brick on the walls, which brought to mind the "finished basements" of yore, where we repaired as teenagers to smoke joints while watching late-night movies and eating frozen "Tree Tavern" pizza with snitched beers. This decorative wash-out was puzzling, too, because Borrione did a gorgeous job decorating Les Avisés, the hottest new hotel-restaurant in the Champagne region. 

  

  There's a small open kitchen upfront, and too many tables in an awkward room, a space that's really not ideal for a restaurant. And then there was the problem of the young and decidedly hidebound service. I don't know where they found these folks, but they need some serious coaching. When I politely reprimanded our waitress for so insistently speaking English to two Americans who've done a lot of work to master Moliere's mash, she excused herself by saying, "The thing is, I just like to speak English." Someone should send this crew on a remedial weekend to Danny Meyer's restaurants in New York, or even across the Channel to Dabbous, where the team in London's hottest restaurant hits it out of the park by being so earnest, alert and charming.

  

  

   

  Ultimately, all of this wouldn't have mattered much, or would have mattered much less, if the food had been consistent with Pic's substantial talent. But I had a hunch that our meal might underwhelm when we were presented with two perfumed butters--tonka bean and Matcha, with our bread. Neither seasoning really added much to the butter, but instead recalled the sort of over-perfumed culinary mannerism practiced by chef Bruno Loubet when he was still cooking in Lourmarin. Our Pacojet first courses mystified me, too. The peaks of mozzarella foam, apparently seasoned with vanilla and rum, were pretty to look at and tasty enough despite being too salty, and with red and yellow cherry tomatoes tucked away in their peaks, this preparation came off as something conceived to please a difficult starlet in her (his?) dressing room. I much preferred my cauliflower foam with a finely sliced Gillardeau oyster since the threatened jasmine essence was blessedly absent, and the combination of shellfish and cauliflower is a fine old Breton sawhorse. 

  

 

  But when perfume is always such an intrinsic part of gastronomic pleasure, why would a great chef chose to make such an evidence of it when these liasons are most exciting when they're discreet, even subliminal? And as if to inter any subtlety whatsoever, our next course, a delicate if not exactly seasonal green-pea puree on a bed of alarmingly licquorice (reglisse) flavored flan nearly short-circuited the meal. The pea extrusion was such an elegant final dose of chlorophyll before the green world shuts down for winter, but it was unpleasantly dynamited by the aggressiveness of the reglisse, which also completely knocked out our wine. 

  

   

  By this point in the meal, I found myself profoundly wondering why Pic had decided to come to Paris. From my perspective, this restaurant adds nothing to the capital's gastronomic landscape, and quite honestly, I had trouble believing that this project was something she had originated--it's just so far removed from the exquisite elegance of her restaurants in Valence or Switzerland, especially given the fact that for 75 Euros, they're lots and lots of other restaurants in Paris that offer better food and service in a more felicitous setting--Jean-Francois Piege's upstairs gastronomic address in the 7th most notably among them within this spectrum of ambition. Our meal finally sort of found its footing when our main course was served--impeccably cooked Bresse chicken with baby spinach and finely sliced razor-shell clams in an angelic sauce that was just slightly wrong-footed by orange-flower water. Then we had a trio of Picodon (goat cheeses) from the Drome, which were variously seasoned with rosemary, beer and honey--none of which we could taste, thankfully, and desserts, which weren't memorable.

 

  It kind of makes me cringe to say so, since critical restaurant reviews are very much out of fashion in Paris these days, but I honestly can't imagine who this restaurant was designed to please--especially in this neighborhood, the rue du Louvre, which is a long way from the expense-account big-spenders of the 8th arrondissement and La Defense, and why Anne-Sophie Pic signed off on a place that so improbably bears her signature. And as if you didn't need any more confusing inputs, in French, La Dame de Pic means "The Queen of Spades"...say what?

  

20 rue du Louvre, 1st, Tel. 01-42-60-40-40,  Métro: Louvre-Rivoli. Closed on Sunday. Lunch menu 49 Euros; prix-fixe menus 79, 100 and 120 euros. www.ladamedepic.com

ABRI-- A Superb Little Restaurant with a Brilliant Young Chef, B+

 

  Two of the most interesting things going on in the Paris restaurant scene this rentree are the turbo-speed rate with which the 10th arrondissement continues to go gourmand and the wonderful acceleration of the internationalization of the culinary talent pool in Paris. As I've mentioned before, in much the same way that Paris has long been the global beacon for talent in the fashion business, it's now attracting ambitious and talented young chefs from other countries in such numbers that it's no longer a surprise to learn the chef who just cooked your dinner in Paris is Mexican or Italian or American or, most likely of all, Japanese. The Japanese, you see, continue to revere French cooking with a seriousness and passion that's long since dwindled in other countries, and this is why talented young Japanese chefs come to France in droves to do apprenticeships in the country's restaurant kitchens and also why so many of them stay on to open their own restaurants. It make great sense, too, since the the culinary cultures of the two countries venerate best quality produce, admire technicity, and are profoundly fascinated by aesthetics of everything edible.

  

  A perfect example of why France is so lucky to be on the receiving end of all this talent is young chef Katsuaki Okiyama, who worked at Robuchon, Taillevent and l'Agapé Bistrot before opening Abri, his very simple storefront restaurant in the 10th arrondissement not far from the Gare du Nord a few weeks ago. Meeting a friend for lunch, I walked by this place, since the plastic sign hanging overhead at this address says CITY CAFE, and when I first stepped inside, I wasn't sure if I was in the right place either, since it only just barely presents itself as a restaurant. Instead, the decor is sort of Berlin proletariat coffee shop, which I like a lot, actually, with a few bare wood tables up front, along the wall and in back. Okiyama works in an open kitchen with a plancha and a grill, which occasionally fills the narrow space with a mist of finely aerated cooking oil which might be vexing were it not for the fact that the food he cooks is not only intriguing but deeply satisfying. 

  

     The only choice we had to make on the 22 Euro lunch menu was between fish and duck as our main course--we both went with the fish, a nice fleshy chunk of lieu jaune, or yellow pollack, and after I'd ordered exactly the same terrific wine, Quartz, that brilliant and very modish white from La Sologne, I'd had the night before at the reformated Vivant, now known as Vivant Table and also employing several Japanese chefs, we'd resumed our vageuly tongue-in-cheek conversation about the future of gastronomic journalism. My pal earnestly wondered aloud if there's still an audience for serious food writing, or if all people really want are recipes and the interesting first-person fulminations of the food world's better bloggers. Insofar as I'm concerned, I'd like to think there is, even if it's also true that so many people seem puckishly pleased that blogging has so righteously pummeled the validity of expertise.

  

   

  I was in the midst of telling my pal about the dinner I'd had at Vivant Table--it was good, but there were some imprecisions in the cooking, and the meal was expensive for what it was, when our first course arrived and stopped the conversation. Composed of a thin slice of beet, a succulent tomato, and shelled crabmeat in a gently meaty nutty miso vinaigrette, it was stunning for being so vivid, light and fresh. To be sure, the earnest Mrs. Dalloway becomes a Zen Master small-plate aesthetics here were similar to those deployed by almost all of Paris's most ambitious young chefs these days, but that didn't stop them from being pretty and sincere.

  

  

   When our next course arrived, it suddenly it made perfect sense that half of the people at lunch that day were journalists, artists and food bloggers. Not only was this potato potage with coffee-cardamom foam delicious, it was as witty and artful as a netsuke. And part of a four-course 22 Euro lunch to boot! My head spun when I thought about what a great buy this place is, especially since we'd spent over 70 Euros a piece at Vivant Table the night before and even the new ratty little Thai restaurant on the rue Taitbout that I'd tried a day earlier had run 20 Euros with a lunch menu and a can of peach-flavored Nestea. And not only was Okiyama's food exquisitely sourced and cooked, service from the Japanese staff was gracious and charming.

  

   

  Next up, grilled yellow pollack with spinach, Chinese cabbage, and yellow squash in smoked-salt butter sauce with a dusting of Cayenne pepper--a subtle composition of delicate and potent flavors, soft and sinewy textures that was exceptionally satisfying. In fact, the only regret I had here was that the portion wasn't larger, a meagerness that echoed something chef Yannick Alleno said to me last week and with which I completely agree: "Tasting menus are fine, but ultimately, we really need and want a substantial main course or we don't feel fed." My neighbor's duckling with duxelles (fine mushroom hash), spinach, artichoke, and carrots in a velvety looking pan-juice sauce looked superb, too, and I immediately decided I'd be back here in a heartbeat for the 38.50 Euro six-course dinner tasting menu. To be sure, anyone whose idea of Paris is Saint-Germain-des-Pres might be discombobulated by this scrappy if perfectly safe 10th arrondissement neighborhood and some people would doubtless be put off by the ur-bohemian setting and under-powered ventilation of the open kitchen, but if these aren't obstacles, you'll likely love this place as much as I did.  

    

   

  Okiyama's cooking was so excellent, in fact, that I was already a semi-ecstatic convert by the time dessert arrived. Instead of being just a sweet little P.S., however, it delivered an unexpected knock-out punch. We're talking about the best millefeuille I just might ever have eaten--a magnificent rubble of delicately caramelized buttery brown pastry leaves garnished seconds earlier with vanilla-flecked creme patissiere and lazer fine slices of dried and fresh nectarine. This was easily the best happy ending I've enjoyed all year, in fact, and it underlined the 360 degree excellence of this miniature kitchen and its remarkably self-exigent high-performance staff. This inflection of charm, excellence and affordability won't last long, so go now.

   

92 rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, 10th, Tel. 01-83-97-00-00. Metro: Gare du Nord, Poissonnière or Cadet. Closed Sunday. Four-course lunch menu 22 Euros, six-course dinner menu 38.50 Euros.