You’re invited to join the Ultimate French Mediterranean Food-and-Wine Tour from Marseilles to Nice from October 7-14, 2023.

I’ll be hosting this trip with Ruth Reichl, Nancy SIlverton and Laura Ochoa, and we’ll be learning why Marseilles has become such a superb food town, sampling some spectacular wines, eating the best of Nice, and concluding our intimate gastronomic journey (this trip is limited to twenty travelers and is already half booked) together with a meal at chef Mauro Colagreco’s Michelin three-star restaurant Miramar.

I designed this trip, and I’m really excited about it, because it really is such a fantastic insider’s discovery of Marseille, a city I’ve loved ever since I first visited it as a backpacking student during the year I studied in London, and Nice, which has enchanted me ever since I was a nine-year-old boy and read about it in a book my Aunt gave me.

Full itinerary and pricing here: https://dinnerwithfriendsabroad.com 

Prunier is back, and it’s better than ever. Most recently owned by the late Pierre Bergé, founder of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house with the late designer of the same name, one of the most glamorous restaurants in the world has just reopened under new owners, the Swiss investment group Olma Luxury Holdings, with a new menu by Michelin three-star chef Yannick Alleno.

Laurie Ochoa, Ruth Reichl, Nancy Silverton and me

So when Laurie Ochoa, food editor of the LA Times; writer and editor Ruth Reichl (my old boss at the still lamented GOURMET), baking genius and restauranteur Nancy Silverton and I had one meal alone during the trip we led in Paris and Champagne in October (more on that here https://dinnerwithfriendsabroad.com/), I booked at Prunier, because I knew it would be a festive occasion and wanted to try Alleno’s new menu.

This supremely elegant seafood house and caviar counter just behind the Arc de Triomphe opened in 1924. As I told Laurie, Ruth and Nancy over glasses of Champagne as we began our meal, it was some sixty-three years later that I walked through its doors to meet Yves Saint Laurent, of all people, for lunch.

The reason for this painstakingly negotiated and carefully choreographed occasion with a charming public-relations woman in attendance was an interview I was doing of the designer for a London newspaper after I’d left my job as an editor in the office of Fairchild Publications, the fashion publisher that was once the unforgiving arbiter not only of hemlines and good taste in its garment-industry newspaper Women’s Wear Daily, but the cruel judge of the beau monde’s social cachet in the pages of its slick magazine W.

My English editor wanted something “a little racy and a bit naughty,” but I was wary of delivering these goods, since few people in the world were better protected legally in those days than the late designer. Still, it was an important story for me, and so I was anxious when I showed up for the appointment at the curiously early hour of 11am (“It’s so that Yves won’t be high or drunk yet,” speculated my shrewd friend, the late Christa Worthington).

When I arrived I was stunned by the beauty of the art-deco decor of this place and then dumbstruck and horrified to be ushered to a table a large silver bowl filled with crushed ice and a metal tin nestled in this icy mis en scene. It’s contents were glossy and black, so that even though I’d never eaten caviar before, I knew what it was, and I also knew that it was an extravagance to be personally presented with such a huge serving of this storied delicacy.

Yannick Alleno

Unlike Yannick Alleno, who could probably have finished the entire tin pictured above on his own, I’d never had caviar before and was squeamish about the idea of eating fish eggs.

“Really, Alec!!??” Ruth said.

Yup, really. If I’ve always loved to eat, I arrived in Paris with a pathetically pinched and provincial palate par excellence. Most seafood was off limits, and game was too wild for me.  Thirty-six years later, however, I’ve become an avid omnivore, and so I couldn’t wait to tuck into some of the world’s best seafood at Prunier.

And the interview with Yves Saint Laurent? While I busy tasting my first caviar, something I immediately fell head-over-heels in love with, the designer left the table to—I don’t know what, and never returned. So I sat there with the stricken PR woman for another 45 minutes eating caviar, oysters and smoked salmon, and then I went home to call London and explain that the interview had been aborted.

Coming out of the Metro, I stopped at the Felix Potin, a convenience store, in the rue de Babylone, to buy some milk, and going into the shop, I immediately recognized the man at the cash register who was buying a huge amount of cheap candy.

The cashier rang it all up, and spoke the total aloud. The designer stood there blushing and sort of dazed.

I guessed that he had no money on him, and told the cashier I’d pay for the candy. Then Saint Laurent looked at me and smiled sheepishly. “Merci, vous etes gentil,” he said. And then he looked at me again. “I’m very sorry. I’m very sorry,” he said, recognizing me. “I don’t feel well today. I’m very sad and I had nothing to say. My life is very difficult right now.”

A man in a dark suit came into the shop, glanced at the cash register receipt, handed me 200 Francs, and led the designer, who lived just across the street, away.

“I hope you at least enjoyed the caviar,” he said over his shoulder. I did indeed.

All of us started off with l’Oeuf Christian Dior, which is a signature dish on the new Prunier menu. It was a sleight of gastronomic elegance more than worthy of the late designer, too, since it came to the table as a perfectly coddled egg with a generous spoonful of caviar on its crown and a buttoniere of chive in a pool of caviar-speckled cream. Beautiful to behold, it was even better to eat, since following the waiter’s instructions that we dig down to the bottom of the bowl with each spoonful of egg, we discovered the feral genius of this dish, which was a  hidden aspic made with essence of jambon blanc (white ham). In effect, a whole ham had been gently sweated for hours on end and the juices it released had been captured and used to season the aspic. This contrast between the lush iodine-rich caviar and meaty aspic created a perfect and very luscious harmony when napped by the yolk of the egg.

Subsequent starters were superb as well, including the salmon-and-seaweed hand roll Nancy ordered, the langoustine carpaccio with caviar cream that seduced me, Laurie and Ruth.

I knew the minute I opened the menu and saw it that I’d have sole meunière, because it’s one of my favorite of all French dishes, and Laurie had it too, because she feels the same way. Here it was impeccably fresh, perfectly cooked, and beautifully garnished with melted butter, capers, a piece of lemon and a side of ethereal potato puree. Nancy had scallops with seaweed butter and a saffron sauce and Ruth ordered line-caught sea bass with a celery gelee and caviar. All of us were extremely happy with our meals.

None of us had been planning to have dessert until the pastry tray arrived. Assured that the figs were from the south of France and the raspberries from Alsace, we succumbed to these beautifully made tarts, and threw caution to the winds by accepting the suggestion of a glass of Champagne with dessert.

“I think Prunier just be the most beautiful restaurant in the world,” said Ruth And I think she just may be right. One way or another, it’s an excellent choice for that special meal you were planning to treat yourself to in Paris, and it’s also very romantic without making any effort to be so whatsoever.

Yes, it’s very expensive, too, but it’s worth every centime.

And if I may, I’d like to suggest that my gastronomic coming-of-age story MY PLACE AT THE TABLE: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris would be a wonderful holiday gift for food-lovers, Francophiles, and anyone who loves a good read.

16 Avenue Victor Hugo, 16th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-44-17-35-85, Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. Lunch menu 68 Euros, prix-fixe menus 125 Euros, 190 Euros; average a la carte 150 Euros. www.prunier.com

In Hebrew, the word ‘Tekés’ means ceremony, with the implication of a celebration. In Paris, the word now has two meanings–the original Hebrew one, and a second one as the name of Tekés, a very popular new restaurant, which is also a cause for rejoicing, because it has brought modern Israeli vegetarian cooking to a city that’s long been lamentably well-known for its indifference to vegetables.

The long running exception to this generalization has been chef Alain Passard’s shudderingly expensive Michelin three-star restaurant Arpege, but now people who love good food and eat plant-based diets are finally getting a lot more choice in Paris. And many of these new places, including Tekés, are so good that even people who aren’t vegetarian will enjoy eating at them.

Tekés is tucked away in the Sentier, or Paris’s old garment district, which has now become a popular nightlife zone for younger Parisians with lots of bars, cafes and restaurants (Paris-lovers will note that this zone has replaced the superannuated rue de Soif in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, as this once delightful neighborhood has been drained of life by an infestation of identikit luxury brand-name boutiques and expensive pied-a-terre apartments). I liked this warm lively place immediately when I went there to meet a friend there for dinner. It’s run by the same Israeli team led by talented chef Assaf Granit that launched the hugely popular Shabour and Balagan, along with the just-opened Jerusalem street-food restaurant Shosh.

Led by chefs Cécile Levy, who formerly cooked at the Norman Hotel in Tel Aviv, and Dan Yosha, Tekés’s busy open kitchen privileges cooking over charcoal and embers, and it puts on a great show while producing stunningly delicious dishes like grilled zucchini with cinnamon labneh and flambéed eggplant.

The menu leads off with some outstanding breads, including a beautifully fluffy crown-shaped challah for sharing and a buttery sage-leaf garnished galette to tear apart and dip in labneh, and then runs to a suite of Vegan and vegetarian dishes, which are also meant to be shared. These are followed by a regularly evolving roster of Israeli comfort food dishes from different Jewish culinary traditions, which are also meant to be shared, another reason that a meal here ends up being such a good time.

I loved my beet-root chachlik, which came with feta cream and watercress and was every bit as satisfying in terms of taste and texture as any version made with meat, and my friend was delighted by her “The Silk Road,” a dish composed of celeriac, clementine, ginger and shushka. We were also intrigued by the vegetarian chicken liver, which is a composition of mixed mushrooms served with a soft-boiled egg, dates and pine nuts. All of these ingredients arrive table side and are then blended with a mezzaluna before being served. The unguent umami-rich hash actually does have distant echoes of chopped chicken liver, but it’s lighter and fresher than any version made with the fowl. Gnocchi (below) were absolutely delicious, too.

Desserts are intriguing, too, including a brilliant airy mushroom mousse with chocolate granola, a perfect grand finale to the healthy joyous cooking of this very good restaurant.

And walking home after dinner, I couldn’t help but feeling quietly ecstatic that a growing number of talented young chefs are finding ways to create dishes that are not only healthy and environmentally friendly but offer a full flush of gastronomic pleasure as well.

N.B. Tekés has one of the best and most interesting wine lists in Paris, with an especially strong selection of outstanding wines from Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Tekés, 4bis rue Saint Saveur, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 07 81 42 54 74, Metro: Open for dinner only Monday-Saturday. Closed Sunday. Average dinner 45 Euros. http://www.tekesrestaurant.com

Tucked away in a mercifully still ungentrified street in the northern Marais, Parcelles is a very near perfect Parisian bistrot a vins, or bistro with a special focus on wine. It’s immediate charm, which comes from the wake of the addresses that proceeded it at the same address, notably Le Taxi Jaune, is joyously authentic and profoundly Parisian, from the big copper-clad bar to suspended factory lamps and a retro cracked tile floor.

This isn’t some fly-in-amber address, however. Instead, you instantly sense the suave professionalism and seriousness of the staff from the moment you’re seated at a table with a crisp white table cloth. Then there’s the delightful welcome from owner Sarah Michielsen, who’s one of the best young restauranteurs working in Paris today. This is because of her reflexive hospitality but also comes from her extensive experience of running Parisian dining rooms, including, mostly recently, that of Itinéraires, the now closed restaurant of her ex-husband, chef Sylvain Sendra.

Sommelier Bastien Fidelin is similarly cordial and attentive when he comes to the table with his rather fascinating wine list, which features organic and natural wines from all over France and beyond. The importance of his work is reflected by the name of this restaurant, too. In the French terminology of wine-making, a parcelle is a small plot of land with distinctive geographical and geological characteristics that impact the quality and character of the grapes cultivated.

Chef Julien Chevalier’s menu is regularly revised according to what’s seasonal and best in the markets, and his style is wonderfully produce centric. To wit, he aims to enhance the natural flavors of the produce he cooks rather than temper them into other tastes. In this cautiously and hopefully post pandemic moment, this simplicity and authenticity is exactly the way we want to eat right now.

So Parcelles is a sophisticated but relaxed modern bistrot a vins that aspires to and often achieves a wonderfully low-key excellence.

Meeting my friend Tina, another American journalist in Paris with a French spouse,  for lunch we got through a good hunk of media gossip over a glass of excellent Champagne (Elise Deschannes – Essentielle), and decided to order different things to give the menu a broader sampling. My steamed clams in a marine broth with fresh herbs were succulent and remarkably fresh, while Tina’s pumpkin fritters with herbed Fromage blanc were perfectly cooked in a feathery tempura-like batter.

My choice of a main course may have made Tina shudder, but I can’t resist ris de veau (veal sweetbreads), because I love their resonantly carnal taste and texture. Here, they were impeccably cooked, with some light crusting and garnish of fried sage leaves, and served on a bed of buttery potato puree with a beautifully made silken sauce of veal stock and pan drippings. Tina’s guinea hen was a succulent piece of bird with garnishes of spelt risotto, a thick asparagus spear, and some tapenade. Both plates were generously served and the cooking was. light, precise and full of flavor.

The wine I somewhat begrudgingly allowed sommelier Bastien Fidelin to chose–I’d been leaning towards something from the Cotes du Rhone or Languedoc, was outstanding with this meal, too: Saint Veran – 2019 – Les Pommards by Jessica Litaud, an exceptionally talented young winemaker.

We concluded by sharing a truly perfect creme caramel and the fuzz of well-being that follows a delicious and beautifully served meal (N.B. Don’t miss the lemon cream crumble if it’s on offer).

Since I’m still savoring every meal out with a quiet sense of grateful wonderment after the misery of the two restaurant shutdowns in France, I couldn’t help but thinking that it’s restaurants like Parcelles, not the over-hyped tables of the latest winners of the competitive cooking shows on French television, that form the ballast of Paris’s enduring reputation for gastronomic excellence.

Creativity has its place in the kitchen and can be rather fascinating, but Gallic gastronomic classicism delivers a purring pleasure that is truly timeless in its elegance and sensuality.

13 rue Chapon, 3rd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01 43 37 91 64, Métro : Arts et Metiers. Open Mon-Sat. for lunch and dinner. Closed Sunday. www.parcelles-paris.fr Average a la carte 50 Euros.

Chef Tom Meyer

Stepping through the front door of talented young chef Tom Meyer’s restaurant Granite in Paris unleashed a rush of memories and also inspired hope during a profoundly testing time. Though the COVID epidemic is still very much with us, as of this writing (December 16, 2021), restaurants in France remain open, with assiduous verification of your vaccination status before you’re allowed inside, and the Gallic gastronomic scene has recovered smartly this year with the opening of many outstanding new restaurants.

Deprived of restaurants for much of 2020, the French have a deeper, fresher and more urgent understanding of how important they are to their well-being today than probably at any time since 1945. This is of course because they love good food so much, but it goes way beyond simple–or complex, gastronomic pleasure. What we all missed terribly last year was the easy conviviality, piquant social voyeurism, and random sociability of dining out, since no other idiom more powerfully feeds and frames the finely grained drama of daily life than a restaurant meal.

So while it was exciting for me to be trying this new restaurant for the first time, it was also a poignant occasion. Because it takes a lot of courage to open a restaurant right now when we’re still pretty much flying in thick fog. The fact that people chose to do so, however, seeds hope, because it implies that this too shall pass, and reminds us that we’ve often been delivered by human ingenuity. Cooking is a act of supreme ingenuity, because it creates pleasure from the essential act of daily nourishment.

And of course I knew this space intimately from its previous iteration as chef Daniel Rose’s restaurant Spring. It’s been completely remodeled and redecorated since Rose cooked here, though, with a sort of Scandinavian modern look of cut-out wooden paneling on the walls and bare wood tables surrounded by cosseting topaz-upholstered pedestal chairs. The open kitchen that was a defining feature of Spring survives, however, as Meyer’s compact and densely populated work space.

Chef Tom Meyer, 30, previously worked as sous-chef to Anne-Sophie Pic at her Michelin three-star restaurant in Valence and was the runner-up finalist in the Bocuse d’Or cooking competition in Lyon in 2019. Meyer was tapped for Granite by restauranteur Stephane Manigold, who has become one of the most astute judges of emerging gastronomic talent in Paris and one of the city’s most innovative taste makers. Aside from Granite, Manigold’s other Paris restaurants include the superb Substance, Contraste, Liquide, Maison Rostang and Bistrot Flaubert.

Knowing and loving the lyrical beauty of Anne-Sophie Pic’s cooking both in Valence and at her Michelin two star restaurant at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Lausanne, it was as fascinating to discern her influence on Meyer as it was to thrillingly discover his own precise, muscular, full-bodied style. I especially appreciated his ability to be elegant without ever becoming fussy or over-complicated.

Meeting a friend for lunch here, we reminisced about the days this address housed Spring and chatted about how much the gastronomic landscape in Paris has changed during the almost twenty years that have passed since it opened. To wit, menus are shrunken and contemporary French cooking spins harder on an axis of local, seasonal produce than ever before. And if Parisians, including me, often go to restaurants for an experience they’re incapable of creating for themselves at home, there is now a prevailing impatience shading to disdain for the excesses of molecular cooking and also what I describe as the difficult Outward Bound dishes in some high profile restaurants in the Nordic countries, which bully people into sort of a cowed submission.

Continue reading…

Chefs Pierre Toitou and Cyril Pham

The new Drum Cafe at the LUMA Foundation in Arles is an excellent example of how good a museum restaurant can actually be when someone cares about serving good food instead of the usual bland industrial food-service catering too often found at museums. The food at the Drum Cafe is so delectable that it’s very much coming here for a meal even if you’re not planning to the visit this new contemporary arts complex, which was recently created from a decommissioned rail yard and train-carriage maintenance workshops.

My curiosity about this place was first aroused very early in the morning a few weeks ago on a train from Nimes to the airport in Marseilles when I looked up from my book just long enough to catch a sudden thrilling glimpse of the new Frank Gehry designed metal-clad tower that has become the emblem of the LUMA Foundation. It came and went so unexpectedly that my reaction was all instinct–backdropped by the morning sky, the tower was intriguingly strange and oddly beautiful.

I’ve been reading about LUMA ever since its creation was announced  by Maja Hoffmann, the philanthropist heiress to the Hoffmann Laroche pharmaceutical fortune, but hadn’t yet found the time to go during a year made so busy by the publication of my new book MY PLACE AT THE TABLE: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris (Mariner Books). Then I learned that Pierre Toitou, whose cooking I’d loved when he was at Vivant and Deviant in Paris, had been cast with Cyril Pham as the first chefs for the museum’s new restaurant, the Drum Cafe.

So on a beautiful Indian summer Saturday in Provence, Bruno and I headed south for lunch and a visit to the museum.

The restaurant is located on the ground floor (rez-de-chaussée) of the Frank Gehry tower on the grounds of the LUMA Foundation. Coming through the door, there’s a bar and a few tables in a dark foyer, while the main dining room has a single large horse-shoe shaped table at the bottom of an atrium lined with book shelves and decorated by polychrome pipes overhead that reminded me of the Centre Pompidou; all of these years later, this architectural feint is still fresh and fun, too.

Seated, we immediately ordered two glasses of a delicious organic white wine made in the Camargue from Viognier grapes and a plate of panisses with cured anchovies and fried sage leaves to nibble on while we studied the menu. Ever since I first ate a panisse (a chickpea flour bar) in Nice as a backpacking student a very longtime ago, I’ve never been able to get enough of them, and the ones served here were very good.

The menu was fascinating, too, since Toitou is such a gastronomic vagabond. As I over-heard him explaining to a neighboring quartet, “My father (Jean Toitou, founder of the Paris fashion label A.P.C.) is a Tunisian Jew and my mother is Russian and Norman. Growing up we ate a lot of Japanese food at home, because my parents love it and traveled to Japan often, but we never had French dishes like boeuf bourguignon, because no one knew how to cook them.” Toitou has cooked everywhere from the Hotel Plaza Athenee (Alain Ducasse) in Paris to London (Sketch by Pierre Gagnaire) to Uruguay. He’s also previously done a Pop-up in Arles with Arrmand Arnal of La Chassagnette and is an avid traveler.

Continue reading…