JAJA--Stylish Mediocrity in the Marais, C+

  

  Meeting a friend for lunch at Jaja in the Marais on Bastille Day, I thought, maybe this time I'll be lucky. Just a week earlier I'd had a decidedly mediocre and expensive meal at the embarrassingly named new Pamela Popo, and on the way home I found myself wondering why the restaurants in this otherwise delightful neighborhood are so often disappointing. To be sure, the Marais has a couple of my favorite tables, like the wonderful Cafe des Musees and Le Carre des Vosges, but this popular and charming precinct also supports of a bewildering number of sub-par eateries, including a lot of crummy see-and-be-seen fashion-driven restaurants. The reason, I think, is that a lot of young Parisians come to this 'hood to hang out and then grab a cheap bite after a few drinks and before a few more, plus there's a lot of tourist traffic.

  

  Jaja is the latest address of French food personality Julien Fouin, who he once ran a good food magazine, is often on Gallic culinary television, and who opened the popular but not very good Glou in the nearby 3rd arrondissement two years ago. Fouin knows how to source good product, though, and also how to put together a really good wine list, and since 'Jaja' is French slang for 'wine,' I was pretty sure that at least we'd drink well.

  

  Arriving, the courtyard space down a passage where Jaja serves during the summer is a lovely place for a meal, although I'd hate to eat in their vaulted stone cellar dining room, which smelled musty and felt claustrophobic when I went downstairs to wash my hands. My friend, another Paris based food writer, and I studied the menu, and she decided on both of the daily specials--an artichoke and arugula salad with Parmesan shavings and roasted tomatoes to start and then the grilled sea bream. Hungry after a not very good Vietnamese meal in the 5th the night before, I started with the 'Chinese' style noodles with grilled shrimp and then the pluma, a delicious cut of tender and flavorfully fatty Spanish pork, with sauteed potatoes and salad.

  

  We were well into a discussion about the total madness of the current American budget negotiations when we both noticed that the white Saumur we'd ordered by the glass wasn't very good, and then our starters arrived. Her salad was attractively presented, but canned artichokes were a let down, while I liked my nice little wooden skewer of firm grilled shrimp on a bed of ginger brightened 'Chinese' noodles. The crowd around us ran to a lot of well-heeled couples who'd clearly come to troll the neighborhood's many good boutiques, a Swedish family with two notably well-behaved children, and several tables of buzz-cut boys with tatooed biceps, a source of envy to both of us, since you have to have pretty meaty biceps to make a tatoo work, and alas, this isn't the case for either of us.

  

  

  Deciding to ditch our Saumur, which my friend aptly described as a "head-achy' wine, she ordered a glass of Coteaux d'Aix rose and I had a sublime pour of red Clos des Fées, which was a real discovery, since I love the whites from this Cotes du Roussillon producer. When I asked her about her main course, she said, "It's fish. Period." I fared better with my succulent pork, but some of the potatoes were mushy and everything lacked seasoning. 

  

   

  Intrepid, she tried the red fruit soup for dessert, while I had a pelardon (one of my favorite cheeses) that had too recently been in the refrigerator with a smear of fig jam and a few salad leaves. "Sorry about this," my pal said over coffee, since it had been her idea to come here. No problem, I replied, since I enjoyed our chat, had been curious about this place, and forever on the look-out for good restaurants in the Marais. Unfortunately, this place not only didn't fill the bill, but doesn't hold a candle to such really good recent Paris wine bars as Frenchie's Wine Bar or Vivant. Overall, aside from the good produce and the interesting wine list, we came away with the distinct impression that this is one of those restaurants where no one's in charge and no one really cares one way or another if you're happy with your food and the service. This is a shame, too, since the setting's so pretty, this place is open daily, and the kitchen has the privilege of working with great produce. One way or another, neither of us felt that Jaja lived up to the little phrase printed on the business card that arrived with our bill: "Vins & Cuisine Sympathique."

 Jaja, 3, rue Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie, 4th, Tel. 01-42-74-71-52. Metro: Hôtel de Ville, Rambuteau or Saint-Paul. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Average 40 Euros.

Le Carre des Vosges (B+), a Great Find in the Marais, and La Fontaine de Mars (B+), a Very Good Bistro

Tearing myself away from my new SEB Acti-Fry, an ungainly but otherwise remarkable new machine that makes enough frites for four with a tablespoon of oil and also does a terrific risotto on which more later, I met my friend Robin for lunch in the Marais. An American who grew up in Paris and now lives in New York, she knows and loves her food and wine, and also appreciates a bargain, so I booked at Le Carre des Vosges, a quiet restaurant that's in the Marais and which has been on my go-to list for ages.

Tucked away behind the magnificent Place des Vosges, it's a good looking restaurant in a beautiful 17th century mansion on one of my favorite streets in the Marais. Stepping through the door, I knew we'd eat well. Why? The welcome was cordial but professional, the place was packed with local boutique owners, and it smelled delicious. We opted for the 29 Euro three-course lunch menu, an excellent value, and it was exceptionally good. I started off with one of the best risottos I've ever eaten in Paris, perfectly al dente and topped with tiny pan-fried squid, and Robin had a delicious galette of roasted pork shank meat mixed with lentils and foie gras. "This is terrific," she said, "and this restaurant is exactly the kind of place we'd kill for in New York. The ingredients are first-rate and there's so much technique in the cooking, but it's reasonably priced, low key and quiet." Next, cod with a crust of buttery crumbs and fresh herbs for me and a daube de sanglier (braised wild boar) for Robin. Neither of us could resist the tarte Tatin for dessert, and we were wise to sucuumb, because it was beautifully made with soft tart caramelized apples and a flakey buttery crust. We were dawdling over coffee when the chef, young Marc Ouvray, emerged, and during a friendly chat, he told us that he'd previously cooked with Eric Briffard, now chef at Le V at the Four Seasons George V and one of the most exigent classically trained chefs working in Paris today.

Though the wine list and a la carte menu are more expensive (we drank a very good Corsican red from Ajaccio for 29 Euros), I can't wait to go back for dinner.

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Sunday lunch in Paris is always a challenge because so few really good places are open. I'm not a big fan of brunch in restaurants--I can do a much better one at home and don't have to change out of my home gear uniform of an over-sized T shirt and sweat pants to eat it, and most of the cities brasseries, the weakest link in the Parisian food chain, are at their worst at Sunday noon. The main reason is that the Sunday lunch crowd usually orders the cheap prix fixe menu, but service is likely to be slow and the kitchen sloppy, since no one really wants to be working in the middle of the day.

So I gave it some thought when Frances, a new friend from California, suggested we meet for lunch. Knowing that she loves old-fashioned Paris, I booked at La Fontaine de Mars, the 1908 vintage bistro that was selected for a very public private dinner by President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle when they were here recently. I hadn't been to this old-timer for a while, but knew the atmosphere would make Frances happy--red-and-white checked table cloths and a pretty setting overlooking a fountain on the rue Saint Dominique and also that owners Jacques and Christiane Boudon are consummate pros. 

Suffice it to say, we had a very, very good meal, and that this place has vaulted to the top of my Sunday lunch list. The elegant Frances didn't want a starter, but I couldn't resist the oeufs au Madiran "facon meurette," which are as good a reason as I can imagine to get out of bed on a Sunday before noon---two perfectly poached eggs in a sauce of reduced Madiran wine with onions and lardons (bacon chunks). A charming Dutch woman at the table next to us had the foie gras de maison mi-cuit and probably because I couldn't take my eyes off it, very kindly offered me a taste on a toast point, and it was excellent.

Frances ordered the steak bearnaise with homemade frites because "the beef in France has so much more flavor that it does in the U.S.," and I had free-range chicken in a cream sauce that was generously loaded with morilles. My chicken was juicy, tender and wonderfully infused with the taste of the morilles, and after Frances put a serious dent in her beautiful pile of golden frites, I finished them off. Her bearnaise was homemade, too, a sad rarity in Paris these days, with a lovely bite of tarragon preserved in vinegar. 

Finishing up over first-rate mousse au chocolat and baba au rhum, I concluded that the presidential minders had made an excellent choice for the first family, whom, I gather really like their food. Putting politics to one side, I'm all for a president who loves the superb Mexican cooking at Rick Bayless's Frontera Grill in Chicago as much as I do.

I'm also heartened by the fact that Michelle Obama is taking such an interest in healthy eating, and word is that my batterie de cuisine shares something in common with that in the White House, since the kitchen there is apparently equipped with a SEB Acti-Fry, too (The Obama girls love fries). As I mentioned, this brilliant new appliance, the fruit of ten years of research by the French SEB appliance company, makes a whole load of fries with any oil you care to use--olive, duck fat, etc., and it does so via an ingenious system that uses hot air from a small electric fan to crisp the fries. By avoiding the traditional deep-fry method, these fries have a fat content of 3% instead of the 20% you find a Mickey D's, and the most miraculous difference between SEB fries and traditional ones is that they actually taste like potatoes. I cut tiny Rattes du Toquet potatoes in half the other night, tossed them with sea salt and herbes de Provence and cooked them with tablespoon of Greek Kalamata oil, and the results were terrific. The other advantage to this machine is that it doesn't leave your house smelling like a MacDonald's for a day or two.

Le Carre des Vosges, 15 rue Saint Gilles, 3rd, Mo Chemin Vert. Lunch menus 22 Euros (2 courses), 29 Euros (3 courses), Avg a la carte 50 Euros.

La Fontaine de Mars, 129 rue Saint Dominique, 7th, Mo Ecole Militaire or Pont-de-l'Alma. Avg 40 Euros.