ITINERAIRES: A Great New Stop on a Food-Lover's Paris Itinerary

 

Chef Sylvain Sendra, formerly at Le Temps au Temps, has moved to very pretty new digs in the Latin Quarter (5th arrondissement), and with a real kitchen to spread his wings in--he formerly cooked brilliantly in one that was the size of a broom-closet--his delicious market-driven menus have never been more appealing. Occupying a pretty, spacious corner space with lots of natural light and well-dessed tables, ITINERAIRES offers a great snap shot of the best of contemporary French bistro cooking. I dined there the other night with the charming writer Monique Truong (her brilliant novel "The Dish of Salt" has me anxiously awaiting her next one), her charming husband Damian, and the indefatigible Bruno, who was thrilled to meet Monique (he loved her book, which has been translated into French, too).

Sendra's lovely wife Sarah runs the dining room with style and warm hospitality, so we settled right into to a comfortable banquette table, and began the challenging business of narrowing down our options from the chalkboard menu, which really wasn't easy. In the end, we loved our starters of green asparagus in a foie gras vinaigrette with borage flowers and a delicate salad of finely chopped marinated salmon and baby vegetables (peas, fava beans, fennel bulb, white asparagus, zucchini) with an arugula-and-pickled-lemon vinaigrette. Main courses were also terrific: roast baby lamb from the Pyrenees served with a puree of baby peas and fresh mint, an excellent squid’s ink risotto with razon-shell clams, and salmon slowed cooked in a vacuum pouch with the off-beat seasoning of some Lapsong Souchong tea. A wonderful peach tart and an imaginative fruit salad with lemongrass ended this fine meal, which also worked out to be a good buy due to the prix-fixe price of 34 Euros.

Word of mouth means that this place has become very popular, so advance reservations are advised.

5 rue de Pontoise, 5th, 01.46.33.60.11

Mid-Summer's Night Dream

From May 2 through September 30, Le Bristol, the superb two-star restaurant at the Hotel Bristol, moves from its elegant Hungarian oak-paneled oval dining room to a tented pavilion that overlooks the hotel's beautiful interior courtyard garden, and on a warm summer night, they're few better places in Paris for a really special meal.

Granted, it's very expensive, but I've been following talented chef Eric Frechon's cooking ever since he first went out on his own with an eponymous bistro in the 19th arrondissement, and on the basis of dinner the other night, he's never been better. Everything about this meal was superb--setting, service and food.

Dining with a television producer friend from LA who wanted to splash out for her birthday (wasn't I lucky!), we started with a sublime "Tourteau de Roscoff"--Breton crab in a tarragon-flavored green tomato gelee, and "Homard Bleu," lobster with a "canelloni" of avocado mousse and a delicious side of gaspacho that was a perfect seasonal riff on lobster a l'amoricaine, or lobster with tomato sauce. Both of these dishes were as pretty to look at as they were delicious.

Main courses were magnificent, too. "Lapin Rex" was a boneless saddle of rabbit cooked tandoori style and served with a "sausage" of smoked octopus and a puree of fresh peas with Austrian pumpkin seed oil (a great summer ingredient, by the way, since it livens up any salad or vegetable dish with a nutty, toasted flavor), while "Turbot Sauvage" was a thick piece of perfectly cooked turbot that had been larded with Spanish ham and was garnished with baby clams wrapped in lardo di colonatta, the salt-brined Italian fatback that's become a trendy ingredient in Paris.

Desserts have either a seasonal fruit or a chocolate theme. I loved my poached rhubarb poached in hibiscus and strawberry juice with a spoonful of homemade fromage blanc, and the birthday girl flipped for her "Precieux chocolat Nyangbo," runny chocolate in a crunchy carmelized pastry cylinder served inside of a perforated chocolate dome. Nyangbo may sound like the name of a big-game hunter, but is actually a type of chocolate.

Drinking by the glass meant that my friend didn't have to take out a second mortage on her West Hollywood home (assuming that anyone can even get a second mortgage these days), and also discover some terrific wines, since Jerome Moreau, the sommelier here, is an able charmer who really loves coming up with unusual and affordable wine and food pairings.

The Bristol has a real buzz these days, too, since it's emerged as one of the favorite tables of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, but it's also a great place to do some star spotting. The best stars I saw the other night, however, were those overhead, since we dined right at the edge of the dining room, and so could listen to the fountain pattering and the doves cooing in the huge old magnolia tree in the middle of the gardens. A superb choice for a special occasion.

112 rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, 8th, 01.53.43.43.00

Love Letter

It may never occur to those on the innocent outer fringers of publishing, but implicit in writing a book like HUNGRY FOR PARIS is the ongoing work of assuring that those restaurants I've recommended continue to be worthy of one of your precious meals in Paris. So on this rainy Tuesday night in June, it was a huge pleasure to go back to Le Baratin in Belleville (recommended in HUNGRY FOR PARIS)  and discover that chef Raquel Carena's cooking is better than ever. In fact, everytime I go to this restaurant, I fall in love with her food all over again. Why? Carena, a charming and very handsome Argentine woman of a certain age, cooks from her heart and also cooks from a winsome artistic sensibility that she's probably still unaware of. Think a sort of gastronomic Granma Moses, or a cook who paints with broad strokes of sincerity, innovative, and wit.

Artichokes barigoule--tiny pefectly whittled little artichokes--came in a gorgeously balanced vinaigrette, almost a la Greque, and marinated salmon was generously served as a thick slice with matchsticks of sauteed leek and a winey vinaigrette. Both dishes were superb, as was the bawdy buzz in the dining room (I never eat here without wanting to meet everyone in the room). Main courses were magnificent, too--pork roast with crackling, baby turnips and potatoes, fresh herbs, and pan juices added to a light vinaigrette and veal cheeks with mushrooms, carrots, baby potatoes and herbs. After gorging on a whole and exquisitely ripened Saint Marcellin that could only be described as dairy velvet, we split an apple and red-fruit crumble, a perfect from-the-heart dessert.

The only cloud over this meal is my apprenhension that further mention of this tiny, simple little bistro may overwhelm it. Watching various well-advised foreigners get out of taxis out front, I worried that too much attention could smother the sweetness and bohemian guilelessness of this place. So let my close this appreciation with a stern but well-intentioned warning--Belleville, where Le Baratin is located, is a pain-in-the-neck cab ride from anywhere most tourist are likely to be staying in Paris, the room is tiny and noisy and has little decor aside from a few paintings by local artists, and if you're not sincerely interested in tasting a rare dose of la vie boheme in Paris today, this restaurant is not for you. 

Listless Spring

During the last two weeks, I've been to the two restaurants that are making the most noise in Paris this Spring--the oddly named Etc. and L'Agape, and I've come away underwhelmed. Normally, I don't review restaurants that I'm not at least reasonably enthusiastic about, but having noticed that both of these two new and rather expensive places seem to have done a very good job at insinuating themselves on to the To Go lists of Paris hotel concierges, I thought I might lean on the horn here to save you a meal.

It's not that either restaurant is bad, rather they both lack passion and have fallen into a style-over-substance trap that I find wilting when it comes to good food. As anyone who has read HUNGRY FOR PARIS knows, I am passionate about good food and quite willing to excuse a dreary decor and even the occasional service error or two if the food's really good.

In the case of Etc. and L'Agape, the decors are quietly chic, even rather elegant, and the service is all kid gloves. What's lacking at both of these addresses, however, is real passion and daring in the kitchen. At L'Agape, young chef Betrand Grebault comes fresh from Arpege, Alain Passard's staggeringly expensive Left Bank power table, and if his training is evident in such dishes as green asparagus wrapped in fine ribbons of lardo di colonatta (a starter), a few days later, I remembered almost nothing else about the meal aside from the fact that it was blood-curdling expensive. And perhaps, yes, that I'd had a succulent veal chop for two with a garnish of nicely cooked Spring vegetables. But this is a dish I could handily have made at home, and the baldly self-important service at this place put me off to no end.

Etc., one of the worst names for a restaurant in Paris in a longtime, I think, is the luxury bistro of very talented chef Christian Le Squer of Ledoyen. Le Squer isn't around, of course, but rather has put chef Bernard Pinaud in charge. Arriving on a Friday night, we had to wait for almost 25 minutes before we were seated, and though I rather liked the funky James Bond film-set decor--butt-end wood parquet tile floors, beveled brown tile walls, and adonized aluminum looking stainless steel cutlery from Christoffle, I was indifferent when it came to the house-smoked salmon--a shy riff on gravlax, and only a bit more impressed by room-temperature gnocci served in an a la grecque (vinaigrette) sauce with asparagus. Fascinated to see if their take on a boudin aux crustacees (shellfish sausage) would be any different from that of Joel Robuchon's, I took the plunge, and if my coral colored shellfish mousse lozenge with chunks of lobster was pleasant enough, the small slabs of pistachio ice-cream that accompanied it were mannerist and uninteresting. Seared marinated cod steak topped with salad and garnished with currants and raisins was likewise pleasant but not something you'd remember a few days later. Ultimately, the best dish of the meal was a deconstructed tarte fine aux pommes--a miniature apple tart cut into quarters and served with diced, cinammon seasoned apples.

If both meals were good, neither restaurant is likely to see me again, especially at such vertiginous prices, and I can't help but wondering if these cautious perfomances aren't a sign of the times, i.e. a response to economic anxiety around the world--it's almost as if the respective chefs were holding themselves back too much in the hopes of being uncontroversial and discreet.

L'Agape, 51 rue Jouffroy-d'Abbans, 17th, 01.42.27-20-18

Etc., 2 rue La Perouse, 16th, 01.49-52-10-10

J'ai faim! I'm Hungry for Paris and Los Angeles

One of the misconceptions about being a food writer that surprises me the most is the widely held belief that culinary scribes only like "fancy" food. I was thinking about this today at lunchtime when I was much too busy than do more than make a very quick omelette a la campagnard. The omelette was just fine, too--fresh organic eggs, potatoes, lardons (bacon chunks) and Gruyere, but while I consumed this solitary feast, I couldn't help but thinking about a sublime lunch I'd last week in a fish restaurant called La Luna, one of the best seafood addresses in Paris.

   I started with the croustillant de langoustines pictured above (pastry filled with sauteed baby leeks and plump langoustines) in a light bechamel sauce. Next, an exquisite sole meuniere with a side of whipped potatoes made with olive oil, and finally, a massive baba au rhum, to be dosed with real Rhum Agricole from Martinique (the world's best rums come from Martinique). It was a superb feast, and a meal I'd love to eat at least once a week. Price of the meal, with a glass of white Mont-Louis: $120

  But I also found myself thinking about another recent lunch that I'd very much enjoyed, at Chico's Authentic Mexican Food in Los Angeles. This cheerful, yellow-painted cinderblock restaurant in the corner of a strip mall parking lot near Mount Washington serves up really delicious home-style Mexican food, including a combination plate of chiles rellenos with beans and rice that was a huge treat for someone from a city with no decent Mexican restaurants. Price of the meal, with one dark beer: $9.

So did I prefer one meal to another? No, they were both perfect on their own terms and both feeds profoundly satisfied a different band on the spectrum of my gastronomic cravings. This is why I included l'As du Falafel in HUNGRY FOR PARIS, along with L'Astrance; both of them are superb and both of them excel at their respective levels of the food chain. Haute cuisine or street food, what really counts for me is excellence, which both La Luna and Chico's Authentic Mexican Food deliver in spades.

La Luna, 69 rue du Rocher, 8th, 01.42.93.77.61

Chico's Authentic Mexican Food, 100 North Avenue 50, Highland Park, CA 90042, 323-254-2445