A LA MARGUERITE--The Price Isn't Right in Paris These Days, B-/C+

A Table a la Marguerite

   Last week through this website I received an email from a nice lady in Toronto who'd recently been in Paris and who'd had a very disappointing experience at one of the city's most famous bistros, Chez Georges. Following a response from me, she wrote again, and her message was not only a polite plea in favor of continued exigency and honesty in writing about food in Paris, but an entreaty to remember and respect socio-economic diversity. Here's what she said:

   "What this restaurant, their owners, chef and staff may not appreciate is how rare an opportunity it can be for one to travel to Paris, and to be able to reserve a table at what is reputedly one of the best bistros: one works long hours and saves one’s money for such a trip. The evening of the special dinner is meant to be a memorable occasion with delicious food.  They do need to take care to be reminded that their customers may not be privileged and/or rich, but workers/professionals like themselves who come with respect to appreciate French cuisine of ‘excellence’ , to a place of ‘high standards’.  It was so disappointing."

   Musing on this message, I realized that this was a real cri de coeur, and it really struck home with me, because I still remember sleepless nights in a lumpy New York City sofa bed in a tiny studio apartment in Greenwich Village following the crown molding around the room over and over again and wondering how on earth I'd ever find my way back to Europe on a very modest Assistant Editor's salary. 

  So what she was saying is that much of the Anglophone world's food and travel press has drifted off course in the direction of catering to the 1%, or the world's wealthy, instead of the 99%, which is, of course, where I live. This media tack has been for mostly commercial reasons, of course, and its unintended result is to have fertilized demand for the increasingly rich, diverse, well-produced and ecclectic offer of gastronomic information available on-line. One way or another, I am as deeply committed to good value as I am to good food, and in any event, the two often go together like hand in glove.

  The truth of what my Canadian correspondent was driving at had already been much on my mind during the last few months of Paris reporting, too, because this year restaurant prices have just plain gone through the roof. The Beef Club, Les Jalles, and now the just opened A la Marguerite are all practicing prices that make my head spin, and which also evidence a serious disregard for rapport qualite prix, or value for the money. To wit, A la Marguerite, which is the sister of the very good Les Fines Gueules, is a place where it's really easy to spend 65 Euros/$84 a head on a casual meal.  And if proprietor Arnaud Bradol's sourcing is outstanding, the quality of the cooking just doesn't warrant such vertiginous prices. For much less money, I could eat better at the nearby La Regalade Saint Honore, and kicking it upstairs a bit more, I could go to Yam'Tcha or Spring, also in the neighborhood. 

  I didn't know this when I arrived, though, and was musing over the really interesting question of why some restaurants of more or less equal quality thrive while others don't survive--this space was previously occupied by L'Atelier Berger, an earnest restaurant that I went to two or three times after it was opened by a Franco-Norwegian chef a longtime ago but never found compellingly good enough to return to, when I climbed the staircase to the first-floor dining room to meet a friend, Nola Fairhope, who's an old Paris hand like me. We sipped at white Cheverny that wasn't worth 6 Euros for a short pour and studied the chalkboard menu. 

  "Good grief, these prices are rather stiff for a bistro in Les Halles, aren't they?" said Nola. "Hate to be a wet blanket, but I think all of you who write about food have become a bit too cavalier about how expensive many of the city's new restaurants are. You know I can get a very good meal at Lilane, my little local go to behind the Place Monge, for a lot less than we're going to end up spending here."  

   By the time the friendly young waiter came to take our order, I'd already decided I'd pick up the tab for our wine. I'd liked to have invited Nola to dinner for that matter, but unfortunately--contrary to what many people assume, most food writers have only the most paltry of budgets, if they have any at all. So our first courses arrived, white asparagus with a meaty vinaigrette for Nola and seared tuna with an avocado condiment for me. Four spears of asparagus seemed a stingy serving for 12 Euros--a whole botte (bunch) of white asparagus from Greece was on sale for 2 Euros this weeks at Lafayette Gourmet, but they were perfectly cooked and complimented by their sauce. Served cold, my tuna was a bit dull--more my fault for ordering it though than the kitchen's in this case. Still, I was puzzled by the way that this restaurant had almost none of the edgy and delicious mojo of Les Fines Gueules. Obviously, something had been lost in translation here, and it seemed to me that the desire to coin more or less the same formula as that served up at the original restaurant but with a higher price tag was something that wasn't going to fly. Or at least not for me anyway.

  To be sure, my main course--an exquisitely cooked rack of butcher Hugo Desnoyer's lamb on a bed of white beans with piquillo peppers and garlic--was so good that it almost warranted its 29 Euro price tag, but Nola's fish was overcooked and the courgette 'spaghetti,' a fun idea for a home cook perhaps, but a bore in a restaurant for having become such a cliche, was a letdown, especially at 26 Euros. Neither of us much liked the 28 bottle of Papaton, an organic Coteaux de Loir wine that we'd ordered as much by price as anything else, since it remained as rigid and square shouldered a half hour after it had been opened as it was when I took a first slightly fizzy sip.

  Since Nola never eats dessert, and I was so well-fed from my fine rack of lamb, we demured on a sweet and called the meal to a close. "There wasn't much emotion in that cooking," she said as I walked her to her bus, and after it had carried her off into the night, I found myself even more perplexed by the rather charmless offspring of a restaurant that I'd always liked so much than I'd been a few minutes earlier until I finally realized what A la Marguerite was really all about. All of the enthusiasm of really good locavore sourcing and the excitement about organic and biodynamic wine that had made Les Fines Gueules such a hit has been turned into a marketing ploy for a restaurant that's gunning for high-spending hipsters--a jazz club will be opening in the cave here sometime soon, and with Les Halles on a obvious upswing due to the renovation of the ghastly cement wart of a shopping mall that replaced the main food market of the city of Paris in the seventies, it's inevitable that shrewd restauranteurs are already packing into a neighborhood that will surely enjoy a serious redux once the dust has cleared. 

  One way or another, I have to doff my hat to Bruno Doucet and the remarkably good food he continues to serve at the very reasonably priced La Regalade Saint Honore, just a hop, skip and a jump from A la Marguerite. It's my go-to address in their neighborhood.

Restaurant A la Marguerite, 49 rue Berger, 1st, Tel. 01-40-28-00-00. Metro: Les Halles; Louvre-Rivoli; Pont Neuf. Open daily. Lunch menu 29 Euros, average a la carte 65 Euros.   

QUI PLUME LA LUNE: Pretentious and Over-Priced Franco-Asian Cooking, C-

  A long time ago the space occupied by Qui Plume la Lune, a new Franco-Asian restaurant near the Cirque d'Hiver in the 11th arrondissement, was occupied by a very sweet little restaurant called Au C'Amelot, and since this was a place I liked a lot, I set off for dinner with my friend Judy, another very long-time American-in-Paris, with the hopes that we'd find the latest gastronomic incarnation of this narrow dining room with exposed stone walls to be as happy as its predecessor. I arrived before she did, and was immediately puzzled by by the desultory welcome of the two-member team here. Despite having made a reservation, I instantly had the impression of being an intruder on these premises, but I ordered a glass of Quincy and decided that maybe it wasn't them, it was me, since I'd had a very busy and rather trying day. This reflex seemed pretty fair, too, since even before we show up in a restaurant, we're arriving charged with our own good or bad mood.

  Still, I found myself musing over the fact that the first thing any restaurant should do is offer you a warm welcome and assure that you're comfortably seated before your meal begins, but for reasons that escape me, they're a lot of new and very popular restaurants in Paris these days where one feels as though one's presence is an imposition of some sort. To wit, the bluff attitude you experience when you arrives says 'we're hot, we're hip, you're lucky to be here'. For my part, I wilt as soon as I detect this posture, because the most essential motivation of any chef and his team has to be a desire to offer people pleasure and the decision to have a meal in a restaurant is a profoundly optional choice. 

  Then Judy arrived, and as we studied the menu, I knew she wouldn't be happy about the prices--there was a two-course 43 Euro menu, a 53 Euro menu--two courses and cheese or dessert, and a 63 Euro four course menu. Many of the dishes were rather mysterious sounding but it didn't occur to the waitress or the restaurant manager to explain them, so we had a lot of questions when the latter came to take our order. Responses were terse, and a request for a carafe of water was met with exasperation, since we'd already been asked several times if we wanted mineral water, which we didn't.

  So we ordered and chatted about the ridiculousness of the San Pellegrino restaurant awards, an annual rating of the world's 100 best restaurants that has produced risible results year in and year out. Le Figaro's fearsome food critic Francois Simon wrote a spot-on post about same the other day, and Judy had a good laugh when I showed her the list of the "World's Best Restaurants." Among other truly ludicrous results, it seemed nuts that London's Hibiscus should have ranked higher than Restaurant Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athenee. Perhaps what's most surprising about these rankings, however, is the attention they receive.

  Then our amuse bouches arrived, and as best we could fathom, these identical dishes were comprised of a small piece of barbecued eel on a bed of wilted bean sprouts and cabbage in a bright red sauce that was described as a reduction of red wine, but had been sweetened with something, probably Mirin. Our bouches were not amused, but our first courses did offer a chuckle when they arrived.

Scallops with primitive radio transmiter  Judy's pair of seared scallops sat on two little beds of anonymous sweet baby-food-like puree and were accompanied by a small salad of purslane and a ball of sorbet in a bamboo holder with two strands of toasted soba topped with a tangle of purslane, an object that resembled some sort of primitive radio transmitter. My tataki of salmon proved a better choice, although it was rather monastic--a slab of lightly griddled salmon garnished with a generally appealing assortment of baby vegetables, including an asparagus spear, several Jerusalem artichokes, a baby carrot, a radish, a green onion, several fronds and that dead giveaway of a young chef trying too hard, a starchy purple potato.  

Salmon tataki   If my salmon was pretty to look at, generously served, and intelligently sourced, it was also decidedly ascetic. I had chosen this restaurant because I'd liked the cooking of chef Jacky Ribault when he cooked at Shozan in the 8th. Ribault has an impressive resume, too, having cooked at Taillevent, Pierre Gagnaire, Arpege and with Pierre Herme, so I was expecting some really interesting food. Neither of these dishes delivered, but to be fair, I'm not a great fan of sorbets as a garnish and my palate prefers umami and salt to anything sweet in the context of savory food. 

  Main courses were peculiar as well. Judy's small pieces of poached sea bass were topped with strawberries, an idea that pleased neither of us, and came in a small white pond of timid tasting liquid at the bottom of which was a very good puree of fresh peas. 

Sea bass with strawberries--why? My lamb was perfectly cooked rare, tender and flavorful but unappealingly slathered with an unpleasant green paste, tinted by Matcha tea, but not tasting of same, and the garnish was identical to my first course. An orange sauce added some color to the black plate but had no discernible flavor.

Lamb with legumes bis  Since the service seemed to grow tetchier as the evening progressed, and it was a beautiful warm night, we decided to stop here and head for a sidewalk terrace on which to enjoy a coffee. Cheerfully received at the nearby (and good) Vache Acrobate, it was a relief to get a breathe of fresh air, and to have escaped from the precious and slightly hostile atmosphere of Qui Plume la Lune. I don't know who plumes (plucks) the moon, but I do know who plucked us, and I couldn't help but contrasting this disappointing meal with a delicious dinner I'd had on Wednesday at La Regalade Saint Honore, which I reviewed here last Spring. We were eight at this dinner, and aside from an imprecision here and there--David's cabillaud demi-sel was too salty, the food was delicious and the prix-fixe menu at 33 Euros remains one of the best buys in Paris, especially when you can get at dishes like scallops with Parmesan and tiny croutons, black rice with shrimp and garlic chips, and Ospital pork belly with lentils. So again, bravo to chef Bruno Doucet!

Scallops with Parmesan at La Regalade Saint Honore

Qui Plume la Lune, 50 rue Amelot, 11th, Tel. 01-48-07-45-48. Metro: Sebastien-Froissart. Open Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. Prix-fixe menus at 43 and 53 Euros, lunch menu 23 Euros.

LES AMBASSADEURS, A Diplomatic Success; LA REGALADE SAINT HONORE, Delicious and Maybe the Best Buy in Paris This Spring

Les Ambassadeurs restaurant at the Hotel de Crillon @ Eric Cuvillier  I think it's partly attributable to a certain lingering distaste for conspicuous consumption that's a symptom of the very deep and still slowly healing recession that afflicted most western industrial countries and also a sign of a certain strident generational cleavage among the major clans of French food writers, but recent local coverage of any Paris restaurant where a meal costs 100 Euros ($130, at current exchange rates) or more has been sour to overtly hostile during the last few months. As the recurring and recurrently scornful script would have it, you don't really need to spend this much money to have a really good meal in Paris this days

  This is a real shame, too, because without those tables that serve as the pinnacle of the Gallic food chain there will be no one to enforce the exigent training that underpins the deceptively simple bistro cooking of chefs like Yves Camdeborde or Thierry Breton (Chez Michel). What brought all of this to mind was the tepid reception accorded to talented young chef Christophe Hache, who has just taken over the kitchens at the Hotel de Crillon.

Stopping by for a lunch recently, I was dumbstuck by the opulent beauty of this gastronomic boudoir of a dining room all over again. I love the frescoes of the puttae depicted building the Hotel de Crillon, the marble checkerboard floor, the heavy silver, the superb service, all of which are intended to be offer a potent dose of the aesthetics that underline French civilization.

And I liked my lunch very much, too. To be sure, a tiny piece of gold leaf on an amuse bouche of marinated salmon with fresh peas struck me as gilding the lily, or rather le poisson, but my starter of ormeaux sauvage (wild abalone) with mousseron mushrooms, peas and lardons was superb, and Hache, who previously trained with Senderens and Eric Frechon, among others, really showed his well-drilled technique with impeccably cooked veal sweetbreads with crushed cashews and sauteed cabbage. A tart of Gariguette strawberries for dessert was magnificent, too--perfect berries mounted on pastry with lemon cream under a round pane of transparent caramel. 

To be sure, Hache's cooking doesn't have the creative muscles of Jean-Francois Piege, his predecessor, and he's unlikely to launch at revolution from this culinary pulpit the way that Christian Constant did when he cooked here and deliciously thumbed his nose at the traditions of haute cuisine by associating luxury produce with such homely ingredients as pig's feet and offal. But as almost everyone knows, the Crillon is currently for sale, so Hache is clearly meant to be an intermediary chef who is doing a quietly luxurious menu of those classical French haute cuisine dishes that appeal to the world's well-heeled until such a time as new owners arrive.

And with these obvious marching orders in mind, I think he's doing a fine job, and would recommend Les Ambassadeurs 68 Euro lunch menu as a terrific way of enjoying a fine feed in one of the most beautiful rooms in the world.

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Meanwhile, there's a brilliant miniature gastronomic revival taking place on the edges of Les Halles in the 1st arrondissement. This is where Daniel Rose's new restaurant will open shortly, and in the meantime, I'd strongly advise anyone who loves good food and a bargain to make a bee-line for the new La Regalade Saint Honore, which is one of the most brilliant restaurant openings Paris has seen in a while.

Doucet bought chef Yves Camdeborde's La Regalade in the 14th arrondissement when Camdeborde took a sabatical before opening his place at the Odeon in the 6th, and if his food there has consistently been excellent, many people were resistent to make the trek to this somewhat remote location after the buzz had worn off. Now, happily, they don't have to, since Doucet's second address is bang in the heart of the city and an easy walk from the Louvre and many of its other most popular attractions.

Doucet's food at this new address is baldly delicious, too. My chicken-broth-and coconut-milk soup with grilled shrimp and spaghettini was one of the best things I've eaten anywhere recently and a huge nacreous piece of demi-salt cod steak came to the table on a bed of wilted baby spinach garnished with tiny cubes of chopped tomato, crumbed hard-boiled egg and microscopic croutons in a very light and refreshing vinaigrette and was simply superb. I loved my rhubarb compote, too, and meanwhile across the table, Bruno was blissing out, too.

He loved his marinated salmon with a salad of fresh herbs, sea bream with grilled squid and shellfish cream sauce and a Grand Marnier souffle. And with a nice bottle of Jurancon sec, the bill was less than 100 Euros, and so a blindingly good bargain in my book. So book this one now before it becomes completely impossible to get into.

Les Ambassadeurs, Hotel de Crillon, 10 place de la Concorde, 8th arrondissement, Tel. 01-44-71-15-00. Metro: Concorde. Open daily. Lunch menu 68 Euros, Tasting menu 140 Euros, a la carte 160 Euros.

La Régalade Saint-Honoré, 123 rue Saint-Honoré, 1st arrondissement, Tel. 01-42-21-92-40. Metro: Louvre-Rivoli. Closed Saturday & Sunday