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.

BENOIT and LOULOUCAM--A Distinguished Parisian Grandfather (A-/B+) and One of His Yearling Grandsons (B-/C+)

  Over coffee in a cafe, I recently spent an interesting hour chatting with a brilliant and charming journalist for a nicely produced economic journal in Prague who had contacted me for an interview, because Slovak language rights to HUNGRY FOR PARIS were acquired by a Bratislava publishing house when the book was first published.

 

  Food is Petra's beat, and passion, and if she loves Paris like I do, I spent months and months in Prague in the early nineties and have a deep affection for the city and the Czech Republic, so we seemed fated to get on. Usually on the other side of the pen and notebook, I also admired her confident manner and good questions. On my way to meet her, it occurred to me that she'd invariably ask me if Paris is still the world's best food city. And if this is an obviously loaded question, it's a much more complicated one to answer fairly and intelligibly than it may first seem.

 

  Sure enough, no sooner than we'd introduced ourselves and ordered, then Petra shot her first arrow. I won't attempt to recreate my response, except to say that I basically believe that today Paris remains first among many equals, because of the spectacular excellence of French culinary training, a public with a deep knowledge of and pride in the country's gastronomy, and Europe's nec plus ultra produce. I also added that as much as I rejoice in the remarkable talent of young French chefs like Betrand Grebaut at Septime, I despair at the ongoing erosion of traditional bistro cooking in Paris.  Every great food city needs a gastronomic ballast, and for me, in Paris that has always been really great bistro cooking. "So when was the last time you had an excellent traditional bistro meal at a place that you could recommend?" "That would be at Benoit a few weeks ago," I said, with the precision that I had gone expressly to eat the special 100 Euro menu they're offering to celebrate the restaurant's 100th birthday. It was was nearly flawless.

   

   "One hundred Euros...." said Petra. "I know, no small change that," I replied, "But when it's becoming sadly easy to spend 70 Euros on a middling mid-range meal in Paris, I'd rather go out less often and spend more, if I must, to eat well. Today in Paris, it's become very expensive to cook honest traditional bistro food, because it's so time-consuming. To wit, the chef needs to be in the kitchen for long costly hours," I added. "Otherwise, I'm very happy to enjoy some of the city's outstanding and very good value contemporary French cooking."

   

  "Tell me about the meal at Benoit," said Petra, with a faraway look in her eyes. I did, but first I explained that ithis table had been created by butcher Benoit Matray in 1912 and remained in the same family until chef Michel Petit, one of his grandsons, sold it to Alain Ducasse in 2005. Since the transfer, I've always found the food irreproachably sincere but uneven. Now, though, since former sous chef Eric Azoug became head chef, the food is often once again as excellent as it was in the Petit era.

  

  "We ate exquisite rabbit rillettes with hot toast and glasses of Champagne, then Monsieur Bonneau, one of the best maitre d'hotels in Paris, slipped in some Langue de Veau Lucullus, because Bruno, my partner, had become all puppy-dog excited when he spotted this speciality of his hometown of Valenciennes in the north of France on the menu--it's a sort of surprisingly light construction of fine layers of smoked veal tongue bound with a mousse de foie, followed by fat green Provencal asparagus in a truffled mousseline. Real Victor Hugo or Gustave Flaubert food!" "Was there more?" "Bien sur! We had turbans of sole on creamed spinach in a sauce Nantua, which is always made with crayfish, in this case from Lake Geneva, and then roast lamb with baby Spring vegetables." "My God, Alec! Do you have pictures?" 

  

  Side by side we furtively scrolled through the snaps I took that night several weeks ago (the menu, by the way may have changed, should you decide to go, but they'll be offering this centenary feed through the end of the year); these were Petra's favorites.

  

Langue de Veau LucullusAsperges Vertes, Mousseline Truffee

Sole NantuaLamb with Spring VegetablesProfiteroles, or the Temptation of Bruno

  "And do you have a reasonably priced new place that I might try tonight, Alec?" I asked Petra where she was staying, which was with a friend near the Canal Saint Martin, and Louloucam, a very sincere new bistro with an intriguing two-speed menu, or a mix of French classics and some clever modern dishes, by chef Jean Matthieu Frédéric, ex La Tour d'Argent, Le Meurice, and Chez Géraud, immediately came to mind. I'd eaten here with a couch-surfing pal in town from New Orleans on a Saturday night, and we'd loved our fun waitress, who'd lived Australlia for a while, the excellent terrine de foie gras, poached leeks cleverly spiked with lemongrass--now that's one to copy, entrecote with pommes Maxim, and great desserts--poached pear in caramel sauce and cream-filled choux as part of a 31 Euro menu.

  

 

  No, I wouldn't rush across town to eat here, but the excellent quality of Frédéric's produce--his meat comes from the Boucheries Nivernaises, his quick but perhaps appropriately cautious creativity, and the relaxed friendly setting make it both a great neighborhood bolt-hole and a fine coda to those who'd doom-say the French kitchen.

  

Benoit, 20 rue Saint Martin, 4th, Tel. 01-42-72-25-76, Metro: Hotel de Ville. Open daily. Lunch menu 36 Euros, 100th anniversary menu 100 Euros, average a la carte 100 Euros.

  

Louloucam, 264 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin, 10th, Tel. 01-40-34-76-87. Closed Saturday noon, Sunday and Monday. Metro: Jaurès, Louis Blanc or Stalingrad. Lunch menu 16-20 Euros, Dinner menu 31 Euros.

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.   

YOUPI ET VOILA--Hurray, and Here You Go! B-/C+

Photo @ Bob Peterson

   Just about the only enjoyable aspect of dinner at the Brasserie Balzar the other night was the wry, nimble and thoroughly professional service which animated an otherwise woefully mediocre and overpriced meal. What made this particular occasion all the more noticeable is that the prevailing service style in so many of the better and more interesting new restaurants in Paris these days lacks any trace of the same tonic and tenacious desire to please and the corollary desire to have a good time together that made this meal a perverse pleasure inspite of the insolently industrial quality of the food. For in France, good service is never a one-way street. In its old-school idiom, or the one I was inducted into over a long learning curve when I arrived in Paris twenty-five years ago, your waiter or waitress wanted both to charm and be charmed--to be sure, you weren't under any obligation to be charming, but the badinage of a successful meal, more common in bistros than in three-star restaurants but always present to some degree, informed every French meal.

  Now, though, this delightful wait style is becoming rare, as is any service style at all, a reflection of the fact that it seems to have been chucked out as silly, bourgeois, stuffy, or a combination of all three, or like, well, whatever. Hey, I'm here to bring you your food, okay? And if you're lucky, and I decide I sort of like you, I might be nice, but if not, I'm just here to bring you your food, okay? And don't think that just because you're paying, you've got any power over me, because I am really not that into serving you because I'm really not into service. You're no better than I am anyway, so don't even think of giving me a hard time, etc., etc. 

  Sigh. So much for what Americans used to call "Old World Charm." In restaurants like this--the newly opened Youpi et Voilà, for example, even if some of the food's good, you barely have the feeling of being in a restaurant. Rather, you've just gone somewhere to eat. So youpi et voilà, or hurray and here you go. Arriving here for dinner the other night with my friend David, we were hungry and in high spirits. I'd just seen his terrific new flat in the 11th, was happy for him, and also thrilled to finally be in Paris for a while after epic professional trips to Asia and South America, and I think that by showing me the apartment, he might have finally seen some light at the end of the long tortured tunnel that's any major renovation project.

  I also love this funky part of the 10th arrondissement, the blessedly less Bobo east bank of the Canal Saint Martin, and any opportunity to gawk at the former headquarters of the French Communist party, one of the most wonderfully weird buildings in Paris. I'd also read that chef Patrice Gelbart, mostly recently cooking in the Tarn, had recently done a guest stint at the wonderful Le Verre Volé, one of the best bistrots a vins in Paris, and that he uses assiduously sourced local-when-possible, almost unfailingly seasonal produce from Terroirs d'Avenir and other small influential provisioners. 

  Arriving, the small storefront dining room looked like many of the other great young-chef restaurants that have opened in Paris recently--Chatomat, Le Galopin, etc., and though it took forever for him to get around to us, our waiter was friendly when he finally showed up and sort of teasingly explained they only serve a single four-course tasting menu in the evening. We nodded. He grinned.... So, I paried, how would we know what wine to order with this mysterious meal.  "Oh, it's vegetables, fish and meat, with a dessert." 

  After a half-hour, our first course showed up--white asparagus with a coddled egg, a slice of delicious country ham from the Lot, and a scattering of chopped black olive, or a pleasant cameo of angelic springtime eating I've eaten in many other places. In the meantime, forty minutes passed, which was fine in a way, because I was enjoying our conversation about, among other things, how massively over-covered the Paris food scene is these days relative to the real interest or importance of what's going on here, but finally I was about to signal the waiter and find out what was going on, when he showed up. "Have you had the fish yet?" Nope. Fifteen minutes later, a small salad of shaved fennel with garlic flowers and a tiny piece of seared bonito arrived. It was fine, but hardly memorable, and by this time, the balking rhythm of this meal and cheerfully amateur and disorganized service was beginning to test our patience. Even though I strenuously dislike stuffy, formal, pretentious service, and am, like David, inclined to be very forgiving of the staff or kitchen to a fault, because I've been the one standing, the one cooking, it was exasperating that our meal had become sort of a very slow rolling catastrophe.

  When it finally showed up, the pan-fried pigeon on a bed of bok choy and wheat berries in a red pepper coulis was delicious. The excellent quality bird had been cooked rare, and the garnishes flattered the thick putty texture of the meat and deepened its fine wild flavor. A glass of red wine, maybe a nice Minervois, would have been terrific with this beast, but I knew we'd be done with the dish before it arrived, and it was getting late.

  It had taken two hours and fifteen minutes to reach this dish, and even though I can spend hours on end at the table, this kind of short-order cooking didn't justify so much downtime. Dessert, a soggy slice of griddled spice cake with rhubarb compote was dull, and we paid the bill, and dashed off into the night in different directions to catch the last Metro. 

 I've since spent a week puzzling over this meal, and have concluded the crew here would be much happier if they were cooking and serving their friends instead of running a general-public restaurant, and also that the metier of waiter or waitress that France so brilliantly perfected over the course of many centuries is in danger. Oddly enough, in fact, with the exception of a brilliant maitre d'hotel at the new fish resaurant Helen in the 8th arrondissement, the last few times I've experienced the sort of serious, charming service that used to be a signature of Gallic gastronomy were in New York and Buenos Aires. 

Youpi et Voilà, 8 rue Vicq d'Azir, 10th, Tel. 01-83-89-12-63. Metro: Goncourt, Château Landonor Colonel Fabien. Closed Sunday and Monday. Lunch menu 20-25€; plat du jour 15 €- prix-fixe dinner menu 36€. 

LES SAISONS--A Terrific Neighborhood Bistro in the 9th, B+

   The longer I live in the 9th arrondissement, the more I like it, and one of the main reasons why is that my neighbors in this wonderful quartier really love good food. If it was an admirable pitch of turf when I first crossed the Seine twelve years ago, it just keeps getting better and better, too.

 

  "From what I've seen during the few months since I opened, the locals know and love good contemporary French cooking," amiable chef Jonathan Lutz told me when we had a chat after a very good dinner at his new Les Saisons restaurant. Lutz previously headed the kitchen at Glou, a painfully pretentious wine bar cum bistrot a vins (bavins) in the Upper Marais, but it turns out that the mostly assembled -and-plated dishes served there were actually hiding the fact that he's a talented young chef. Oh, and by the way, Lutz had absolutely no idea that I'm a food writer.

 

  To wit, allow me remind regular readers, and clarify my intent and methods to new ones, by avowing that I remain as anonymous as I possibly can when I dine out in Paris. No, I don't wear fake noses or yellow-yarn wigs, but the last thing in the world I'd ever want is for any Paris chef to consider me a 'buddy.' I know, like and respect many of them enormously, but a certain degree of arm's length distance really is essential to doing this work honestly.

   

 

   

 So Bruno and I tumbled through the door on a icy night, ordered glasses of excellent Vouvray, and settled in at a cozy table with a nearby silhouette cast by the polished-and-engraved glass window adjacent to us that was so profoundly Parisian I know I'll never forget it. Fortunately, Lutz didn't touch the gorgeous engraved glass front windows when he pulled off a really attractive redecoration of what had always been a rather ungainly space during previous incarnations as the very good Velly and more recently the unimpressive Villa Victoria.

  

 

  Before we really got to work on the chalkboard menu, however, I couldn't help noticing that this restaurant has a warm and friendly atmosphere, and that the staff, including Lutz's delightful Japanese wife, fall all over themselves in a desire to please, which certainly sets up the food in a very positive way. I also rather liked the fact that the dashing dandy Alfonse de Lamartine, the great French poet, writer and politican who gave his name to the street where Les Saisons is located, was gazing at us from the entryway of a hotel across the street while we built our meal.

   

 

 

   Since the menu was very appealing--I almost ordered the sauteed duck foie gras with Jerusalem artichoke hearts, was tempted by the oysters, and toyed with the artichokes barigoule before settling on what seemed the more seasonally appropriate lentil salad with shavings of Beaufort cheese and country ham as a starter and mushroom risotto, both part of a good value 32 Euro prix-fixe menu. Yes, the risotto was risky, because it's always risky to order risotto in Paris--the rice is almost always overcooked and French chefs have a baleful tendency to add creme fraiche to a preparation where the creaminess should come from the starch released by good arborio rice, but I was pretending to eat light before a twelve-hour plane flight the following day. To be sure, the cod with "unusual" (insolite) vegetables in a dashi bouillon would have done the trick, too, but I was craving mushrooms and Parmesan, as I have since I first gave up the Gerbers many years ago.

    

  Bruno can't stay away from salmon, which was just fine with me, since I wanted to taste the tataki (the Japanese word for seared salmon, which has become a fashionable cliche on Paris menus recently) with horseradish cream (Chef Lutz isn't an Alsatian for nothing, and I am a huge horseradish fiend), and then, good Frenchman that he is, he went for the rumsteak before an onslaught of fiery soups, dumplings and noodles in Asia. Me--I'd been dreaming about this fiery, flavorful Asian food for weeks already.

  

  But before the Laotian dips and the pho, I thoroughly enjoyed my lentil salad, which was generously served and nicely seasoned with a light vinaigrette that included a really good Xeres, and terrific risotto, which came topped by a frizzle of fried leeks and dashed with a really nice herbal pesto. It was full of shitakes and morels, too, and was impeccably well cooked. Served on a square of slate--another recent Paris table-top trend I'll be glad to see receed in the same way that oddly shaped plates seem to have bitten the dust, Bruno's salmon was good quality fish, nicely cooked and seasoned, and the same was true of his steak, which came with good but rather poignant homemade potato croquettes. In America, we'd call them Tatter Tots, but other freezer-counter versions of this preparation--mashed potato rolled in bread crumbs, lurk in the U.K., Canada, Australia and many other countries, which is why there was something winningly earnest about a chef who actually went to the trouble of making them from scratch; they were good, too, with a gentle whiff of nutmeg.

  

  We split a slice of excellent apple tart for dessert, chatted with Lutz, and then walked home buoyed by that great sense of well-being that comes from having had a really good meal to do our packing. Thinking about this meal this morning as I listen roar of the surf rolling in just out my window overlooking the South China Sea, it's every bit as appealing as it was that chilly night in Paris last week, and I look forward to rediscovering Lutz's cooking when I get home and also during three seasons to come.

  

Les Saisons, 52 rue Lamartine, 9th, Tel. 01-48-78-15-18. Metro: Cadet, Notre Dame de Lorette or Saint-Georges. Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Closed Sunday and Monday. Lunch rmenu 15 Euros, prix-fixe 32 Euros, a la carte 40 Euros.