Chez Georgette--My Local Canteen, B-

Not surprisingly, people often ask where I go for a good, quick, affordable last minute meal in my own neighborhood, which is the 9th arrondissement in the heart of Paris. I have many local favorites, but the one place that never lets me down is Chez Georgette, a brightly lit little bistro in the rue Saint Georges. Consider that during the last couple of months, I've probably eaten here a dozen times, and under quite different circumstances. Last night, I went as part of a band of six--Bruno, two friends visiting from New York and the French couple they're staying with.

The gang gathered chez nous first for Champagne and nibbles (Auvergnat sausage, caperberries, and a Spanish mixture of deep fried corn kernels and lima beans combined with raisins, peanuts, almonds and hazelnuts). On a Friday night, the gang arrived late, derailing a reservation I'd made elsewhere, so I quickly plucked up the phone and booked us at Chez Georgette at 9.30pm. 

Not only were they happy to take us, but this small dining room with tables that were once French elementary school desks (topped with different primary-color Formica) is a cosy, casual spot that works just as well for an unwieldy group of six as it does for a couple or a quartet. The menu's ideal, too, since they're always several pastas and salads that make vegetarians happy, and a couple of delicious suggestions du jour. Three of us loved the leek, spinach and potato soup that was the day's starter suggestion, four of us had only compliments for the daube de boeuf (one of my favorite French dishes, and a great provencal classic of beef braised in red wine) served with paparadelle, and all of us loved the poached fresh figs with almond ice cream. Other dishes that won raves during our meal were the homemade pate en croute served with salad, bavette (skirt steak) with mashed potatoes, and salmon in a light tomato coulis. Knowing we'd likely have a bottle or two, I steered us towards a pleasant, good-value Cotes du Rhone at 24 euros, and it was a perfect party wine.

Popular with bankers and fashion execs from the nearby Galeries Lafayette offices at noon, Georgette (and yes there really is a Georgette--she's the gentle but bemused proprietaire with the Colette stye bob and red-lollipop framed glasses), it's always packed with a happy sociological totem pole of bourgeois and bobos in the evening. Great French comfort food and an unfailing good time just a few doors down from chez moi--no wonder I'm so happy living in Paris.

Chez Georgette, 29 rue Saint Georges, 9th, 01.42.80.39.13. Metro: Trinitee or Notre-Dame-de-Lorette 

The Pizza Problem in Paris

Though it's been a good twenty-five years now, I am still recovering from the shock I experienced during the course of a meal at Pizza Pino on the Champs Elysees. Why, you're surely wondering, would anyone eat pizza in Paris? Well it was a rainy Sunday night in August, and Mom and Dad, with the four of us in tow, decided to take the low road and head for the pizzeria just around the corner from our hotel in the rue Marignan. We'd eaten in bistros for the previous five nights, and with the rain and the effort of trying to find anything French open on a Sunday in August, the siren sound of the local pizzeria was heard and answered.

What ensued was an experience of communal familial hilarity that was never to be repeated. I mean after all, coming from Connecticut, we know our pizza, and so the menu at Pizza Pino was so utterly demented that we had trouble keeping a straight face when the waiter came to take our order. It was tough, in fact, to decide which was the weirdest pizza on this menu. Maybe the Pizza Hawaiian with PINEAPPLE slices!? Or the one with the fried eggs! Or a topping of salad!!! Clearly, we decided, the French didn't get pizza at all.

Like most blanket judgements, this one turned out to be wrong--despite the gruff service, I love Pizza Etienne in Marseilles, and in Paris, Pizza Vesuvio in Saint Germain does a perfectly honorable pie for a perfectly reasonable price.

Unfortunately, however, a spate of recent openings in Paris prove that the French still regard the pizza like the gastronomic equivalent of finger painting, with the base being a blank canvas that's waiting to be enchanced by odd, expensive and sometimes odd and expensive ingredients. A case in point is the teeth-grindingly named Pizza Chic in Saint-Germain. WIth its trying-too-hard rococo decor, absurdly high prices and pizzas garnished with everything from lardo di colonnata (exquisite Italian fatback best eaten raw) and truffles its a casebook study in Gallic pizza vandalism, but Pizza Chic is just one of the latest outbreak of boffo pizzerias in Paris. Al Taglio in the 11th, which serves sheet pizza, is another, along with the truly deranged Alice Pizza in Montmartre, where I encountered a pizza topped with gorgonzola, marscapone, Parmesan, arugula and Balsamic vinegar-raspberry syrup the other day. 

If I were the Italian ambassador to France, I'd send Alice Pizza the diplomatic equivalent of a cease-and-desist letter. In the meantime, I'm happy to head for my old standby, which is Pizza Vesuvio in Saint Germain. They bake their pies in a wood-burning bee-hive oven, are graciously willing to add a couple of capers to a Margherita if asked, and serve decent Italian reds by the half-bottle and carafe. They're also open seven days a week, and so when the pizza urge strikes, it can be easily satisfied by heading for this place, which really is the only pizzeria I'd recommend in Paris.

Pizza Vesuvio, 1 rue Gozlin, 6th, 01.43.54.94.78. Metro: Saint-Germain-des-Pres.  

Le Meating--Say What? A Gallic Steakhouse

Le Meating certainly won't work for everyone, but if you' know Paris well and are enough of an intrepid gastro-sociologist to sacrifice a slamp-dunk good meal for one that's oddly interesting, you might enjoy this very popular steakhouse in the 17th not far from La Porte Maillot. Since Americans have been doing their own riffs on various bandwidths of the French restaurant spectrum for years, it's actually sort of fun to see what the French get up to when they decide to have a crack at one of our emblematic tables, the steakhouse.

Before diving in on an account of my recent dinner here, I'd pause to note that a broad spectrum of Parisians truly love this place. Show biz types, Mohammed Qaddafi's daughter (seriously, she was sitting at the table next to us), pairs of yuppie ladies on a let's-splurge night out, and the 17th arrondissement in all of its curious splendor--nouveau riche, ancienne regime riche, etc. packed out this place with a low-lit lounge-bar decor of patterned carpet and flower-motif appliques on the walls.

What's got the gang really going, though, is the new 34 Euro menu here, which includes three courses and a half bottle of very decent Bordeaux (a la carte, it's much pricier). Settled in at a table overlooking the sidewalk outside, which the genial host referred to as "La Mer" (the sea), we loved our starters--a delicious tuna tartare garnished with bean sprouts, fresh coriander, lime zest and ginger and a scallop carpaccio served on a bed of diced celery root. Squid sauteed with oyster mushrooms was delicious, too, as was the bread that came with these first courses.

Next, la viande, bien sur. My Nebraska-raised pave de boeuf (well-marbled steak) came with first-rate potato puree in a copper sauce pan and a trio of sauces--bearnaise, a good beef jus, and a curious slightly peppery barbecue-sauce inspired gravy, while Bruno's veal chop from the Correze, was succulent, flavorful and perfectly cooked. The included-in-the-menu Bordeaux was good, too, as were sides of mixed green veg (snow peas, strin beans and zucchini) and a saute of button and oyster mushrooms.

To be sure, most Americans would find the portions dainty compared to what you'd get in a New York steakhouse, but in the habitual context of this idiom, it was a relief not to be leaving behind a sadly wasteful amount of food by the time our plates were cleared.

Desserts, however, are decidedly French, including a citrus salad served in a water glass capped with a hollowed out orange half filled with meringue and rice pudding with a clever assortment of garnishes--salted caramel suace, pop corn, and candied nuts and dried fruit.

All told, this was a very pleasant meal, and one I'd recommend to anyone who wants a night off from more adventurous dining during a trip to Paris. It'd also be an ideal spot for a business meal, since service is courteous and brisk, the room is quiet and tables are widely spaced. The only thing that went missing? Onion rings, but otherwise the Gallic refinement applied to a decidedly red-white-and-blue restaurant staple was very welcome.

Le Meating, 22, Avenue Villiers, 17th, 01.43.80.10.10. Metro: Pereire

The Modern Problem in Paris

A suite of disappointing meals during the last few weeks have had me wondering why Paris has such a hard time being modern. To be sure, they're brilliant contemporary chefs in Paris, including Inaki Aizpitarte at Le Chateaubriand, Pascal Barbot at L'Astrance, William Ledeuil at Ze Kitchen Galerie, and Christophe Pele at La Bigarrade, but these are are restaurants d'artistes, or one-man shows that exhibit a specific (often brilliant) personal culinary sensibility. 

What Paris sorely lacks, however, is someone like New York City's Danny Meyer, a spectacularly gifted restaurant entrepreneur who has an almost Freudian aptitude for understanding what New Yorkers want to eat. From Blue Smoke (barbecue for city slickers) to the Burger Shack (terrific burgers in Madison Square Park) to the Gramercy Tavern and the always popular Union Square Cafe, Meyer always gets it right, and has coined a whole new service idiom of intelligent, informed, enthusiastic servers who function as the managers of your meal. I suppose the closest Paris comes to a serially successful restauranteur are the Costes Brothers, but I find their formula--dumbed down menus, attitude, decor uber cuisine--so wilting that I can't really even consider them in the same breathe. 

For a while I thought that Thierry Costes, one of the movers of the Hotel Amour, which I enjoy, might break away from his father's and uncle's beaten path and do something new, delicious and important in Paris, but after a dreadful meal at Thoumieux, and an even worse one at La Fidelite, his remake of Les Zingots, I'm ruling him out for the time being. Lunch at the Zingots was so wrong in so many ways that it barely warrants comment. Suffice it to say that it's one of those restaurants where you get the sense that no one's in charge--it just sort of drifts along--and then they didn't have half of their very short menu and were also missing a wine list. Yup, no wine list, although the pleasant waiter did recommend a bottle of Beaujolais, which we might have gone for until I asked how much it cost: 42 Euros. So instead we drank heady-achy Gamay in a pichet, and I'm convinced it came from a cardboard box somewhere behind the bar. Re the food, my tomato beignets made with tempura batter were pleasant enough, but essentially the only real cooking that occurred during our meal, since my steak came with leathery baby potatoes (frites would have been too much work) and an awful ramkin of industrial Bearnaise and my friend's whole John Dory was served without eyes, which led me to assume it had been frozen. We toyed with the idea of dessert, but apparently we toyed too long, since the waiter told us the kitchen had already closed. Ultimately there were only two things I liked about this place--the pale pink and mint green neon sign that flashes LA FIDELITE above the door and the Bazooka pink statue of Micky Mouse with a huge engorged phallus by Marc Newsome just inside the front door. Neither of these distractions, however, would ever tempt me to return for another meal.

Happily, depair lifted when I went to dinner at the Cafe Moderne a day later. Despite the fact that a friend rightly describes this long, narrow dining room across the street from the old Bourse as a "difficult space," restauranteur Frederic Schall-Hubig has created a charming spot that's at once cozy and chic, with red banquettes, soft lighting, and a pretty chocolate-and-white décor. He's also just hired an excellent young chef, Jean-Luc Lefrançois (ex-Astor, ex-Prunier), a quiet-man talent who impressed me with a tasting menu of truly innovative and delicious dishes like scallops with parsnip puree and grilled bacon; a salad of lentils, baby onions and deboned pig’s feet that could convince even the most reticent of the deliciousness of this latter ingredient; and a succulent sea bass filet with a spice-bread crumb crust—truly excellent food, especially for such modest prices. Service is delightful, too, and Schall-Hubig runs a superb wine list and generously serves some pretty terrific bottles by the glass. Since Schall-Hubig also runs the ever popular Astier in the 11th, I can't help but wondering if maybe Paris won't end with its very own Danny Meyer after all.

Cafe Moderne, 40 rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, 2^nd, Tél. 01-53-40-84-10. 

THOUMIEUX--Non; LES TERRINES DE GERARD VIE--Oui!!

Though it was the setting for one of the most uncomfortable meals I've ever had--a brittle and endless Sunday lunch during which my English landlord and his French wife tried to set me up with their obese and middle-aged but brilliant daughter, who had once confided to me that she was only attracted to Africans--I've always had a soft spot for Thoumieux, a brasserie in a side street off of Les Invalides that had quietly become a monument during the very near to a century it's been in business. To be sure, the food was never brilliant, but rather serviceable, and I always ate the same things anyway--cabecou chaude en salade (warm, melting little disks of goat cheese on salad) and then an epic cassoulet. Not surprisingly, however, I almost never thought of going here. Why? It was a little more expensive than it was worth, and aside from Sunday lunch, it had a tendency to be empty. 

So I was very curious when I read that Thierry Costes, the shrewd young restaurateur who has made such a deserved success of the Hotel Amour in the 9th, had taken over this old warhorse in cooperation with Jean-Francois Piege, the brilliant young chef at Les Ambassadeurs at the Hotel de Crillon. Maybe at long last someone was going to try and seriously rebirth the brasserie for the 21st century, to create a stylish place beyond the stale Costes brothers idiom of pretty but snippy waitresses, dead simple food for people who don't really care about food, and a lounge music soundtrack and decor? 

On a rainy Sunday night, the restaurant was nearly empty when we showed up but this didn't prevent the wannabe model maitre d'hotel in a tight brown suit from forgetting to greet us when we came in. Instead he very carefully studied the reservations roster and seating plan clipped to a large "official" clipboard and indicated a table with a nod of his head. "That was rude," said my friend Carole after the four of us were seated. All four of us instantly noted the lounge-bar sound-track and the fact the house cat, a wheat-colored monster who has been on the premises for longer than anyone can remember, was still occuping an impressively large portion of a shelf. Next, a cursory glance at the new menu revealed that it had been cut almost in half in terms of the previous offer, and that there were very few new suggestions. 

Determined to see how this place might be evolving, I ordered a very Alain Ducasse inspired macaroni-jambon-fromage-truffe starter and chicken baked with Boursin. The first course--long tubes of macaroni stuffed with long thin slices of ham and glazed with cheese and drizzled with a sort of porcini gravy--was pleasant enough, but lukewarm, overpriced (16 Euros) and hardly a revelation, while the chicken would have been better if I'd cooked it at home. When food finally came to the table, Laurent stared down at his calf's liver in an under-reduced vinegar sauce and hit the nail on the head. "The major change here is that the portions have shrunken a lot." And wine prices have gone through the roof, and a wilting fashion attitude has affected most of the staff, even the old timers. What a missed opportunity.

Les Terrines de Gerard Vie, on the other hand, is a very happy comeback story that has added a pleasant new bistro to their dwindling number on the Left Bank. Vie was chef, bien sur, at the lovely Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles for many years, and many still remember his delicious foie gras and wonderful vegetable dishes, to say nothing of the magnificent dining room at the hotel (now completely remodeled and the fiefdom of Brit chef Gordon Ramsay). On a dank late January day at noon, this happy place was packed with a jolly cast of neighborhood characters (the two course 24 Euro lunch menu with a glass of wine surely helped this mirth) --boutique owners, insurance agents, retirees, and a few fashion folk, and the charming Monsieur Vie himself presided gently over the dining room, in the center of which is a serving table that displays a country ham on a stand and a nice selection of cheeses from Quatre Hommes, the terrific cheese shop in the rue de Sevres. 

A generous, talented and wonderfully well-seasoned restaurateur, Vie has finger on the pulse of 2009 like few other chefs in Paris. What Parisians want right now is edible comfort, or solid, honest, fairly priced old-fashioned French food with a nostalgic, rustic , and this is why the five terrines on his menu--herring, rabbit, vegetable, white beans and pigs feet, and chicken--are such a good idea. There's also a different daily special, i.e. if it's Wednesday, it's time for boeuf bourguignon; Thursday, cassoulet, etc. 

Otherwise, main courses include shoulder of lamb with quinoa and preserved lemons, a sublime pork chop flamed in ham drippings, a steak (faux filet) with shallots, and beef ribs with carrots and potato puree. A nice selection of wines by the glass, mostly from the Languedoc and southwest, are served, and the chocolate mousse is epic. No English was heard in the dining room the day that I went for lunch, but I suspect that this place will very quickly find it's way onto the favorites list of the many North Americans for whom Paris is Saint Germain des Pres. But those who see the city in broader terms would probably enjoy it, too.

Les Terrines de Gerard Vie, 97 rue du Cherche Midi, 6th, Tel. 01-42-22-19-18. Metro: Duroc

Thoumieux, 79 rue Saint Dominique, 7th, Tel. 01-47-05-49-75. Metro: La Tour Maubourg