During the year without restaurants, it turns out the last one I would go to in 2020 was the Maison Aribert, a Michelin two-star table in the operetta-set-like little spa town of Uriage-les-Bains, which is a few miles outside of Grenoble in the Vercors.

In retrospect, I wonder if we weren’t guided by some sort of subliminal prescience, since the weekend after our trip away, France entered its second lockdown of 2020 on October 30. Once again, all of Gaul’s restaurants and bars were required to shutdown; as of this date, they are expected to remain closed until at least mid-January 2021. One way or another, we were itching for a change of scene after having spent most of the year in our house in a village outside of Uzes in the Midi after the first lockdown ended in late May.

I’d read a lot about chef Christophe Aribert, too, and having previously had an only dimly remembered experience of his cooking from the short stint he did as chef at L’Opéra Restaurant, the hapless restaurant now known as Coco at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, I was curious to discover his food. So we left home on a beautiful sunny day when the vineyards surrounding our village had turned into a sweeping bronze-colored carpet rolling off in every direction, including to the distant violet-colored Cevennes mountains on the horizon, and drove north to Valence. The idea was that we’d dine at Maison Aribert and spend the night there, and then visit the Musée de la Grande Chartreuse in Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse and then Chartreuse liqueur aging cellars in Voiron and Chocolats Bonnat, one of France’s best chocolate-makers, in the same town.

As is my predilection, the French countryside read en route as a succession of delicious foods and wines and remembered meals. The Rhone Valley resonated with the names of many of my favorite wines—Chateauneuf du Pape, bien sur, but also Cairanne, Gigondas, Vinsombres, and Beaumes-de-Venise, among others. A sign indicating the route to Sisteron brought back the best lamb I’ve ever eaten, a succulent slow-roasted shoulder of spring lamb from that town at La Bonne Étape, while the exit to Romans, made me want its tiny cheese-filled ravioli, and a sign for Saint Marcellin brought on a desperate craving for one of my favorite cheeses. More discretely, the road leading from Valence to Grenoble was lined with plantations of walnut trees, which produce the best of these nuts to be found anywhere in the world (F.Y.I., French walnut producers in the Dauphine have had a hard time of it in the face of competition from California and China, but their more expensive product, which has an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, has an infinitely better flavor and texture).

I also found myself eagerly looking forward to eating a meal I hadn’t cooked, since as much as I love to cook, I’ve never cooked more intensely in my life than I have this year. And recently I’ve been missing restaurants, and not just for their food, but as the most vital social fixture in my life and places that have fascinated and delighted me ever since I was a child.

Before puberty lit the fuse of sexuality, food was the vector for sating whatever awkwardly self-conscious sensuality I may have had, and restaurants offered stages for cameo performances that brought self-affirmation and the hope of a larger and more glamorous existence than those of the adults who surrounded me. To be sure, there actually were some rather glamorous people in our town, but most of them had sort of accidently washed up there after the drama of storms and battles elsewhere made them grateful for its silence and primness, a quality they were also wryly amused by.

So I’ve always loved restaurants, beginning with the homely ones that were only occasionally available to me growing up in southwestern Connecticut. I loved Howard Johnson’s—one of America’s original quality- casual restaurant chains, for its terrazzo floors, fries, burgers and peppermint-stick ice cream drowned with hot fudge sauce; the Apizza Center, which produced some of the best ‘pies’ in the pizza belt of pizza-loving Connecticut; and West Lake, a Cantonese restaurant with exquisitely good food we most often ate spooned out of white-paper takeout containers with little wire handles. Even today, thinking about West Lake’s egg foo yung, shrimp toast, egg drop soup, egg rolls, and shrimp in lobster sauce makes my mouth water.

American restaurant culture really blossomed at the same time that I became more and more interested in food, too. If I discovered my passion for restaurants during a first teenaged trip to Europe in 1972, they became a regular part of my life when I went to college. There were modish places like Fitzwilly’s, the first puckishly hip restaurant in Northampton, Massachusetts with its exposed brick walls, spider plants hanging in macrame holders, cheeseburgers in baskets lined with sheets of waxed paper and then elegant restaurants like the expensive Café Budapest in Boston. Moving to New York City after college, I discovered myself and the great metropolis through its restaurants, including places like
Ruskay’s, the supremely bohemian chic restaurant on the Upper West Side with candles that guttered over glass-topped tables and live musicians in a mezzanine, holes in the wall like the Latino-Chinese Flor de Mayo (www.flordemayo.com) and magnificent but wiltingly expensive French cooking at restaurants like Lutèce.

And then I did it again when I moved to London—discovered a city through its restaurants, and another time when I arrived in Paris in 1986. Now with dusk falling on an October day, I was ready to take on the best table in Uriage-les-Bains.

Set on a hillside, the Maison Aribert occupies a handsomely restored former 19th century curists’ hotel, which now offers very five comfortable rooms with Swedish made Hastens beds and lovely views over the surrounding park. Aribert’s restaurant is located at the foot of the hotel in a newly constructed pavilion that is strikingly covered with rough-sawn chestnut planks.

This project represents a triumphant homecoming for Aribert, who grew up here in the Isere as the son of parents who ran a hotel-restaurant and the grandson of a grandfather who was a vegetable farmer. Cooking was not the first ambition of this mountain man, but when a knee injury doomed his hopes of making a career as a skier, he eventually ended up in the kitchen. He worked at a variety of restaurants in Paris, including the kitchens of the Hotel de Crillon when Christian Constant, the father of the modern bistro movement, was there, and La Tour d’Argent before a desire to return to the mountains he loves so much propelled him to accept a job as sous-chef to Philippe Bouissou at the chic Napoleon III style Grand Hôtel d’Uriage-les-Bains in 1997. The pair of chefs won a Michelin star in 2000 and a second one two years later. Aribert took over after Bouissou retired and the restaurant retained its two stars.
Eventually, though, Aribert wanted his own restaurant, and so the Maison Aribert opened in 2019, and the chef kept the two Michelin stars he’d held in his previous post.

Hungry that night, we decided upon the eight-course 200 Euro Menu Degustation, even though I had a qualm or two. One of the many things I’ve learned most intently during a year that’s been nearly devoid of restaurants is that most tasting menus are much too long and over-wrought. This is because they’re the apotheosis of what I describe as show cooking, or a carefully plotted culinary performance that’s intended to make you marvel. In contrast, traditional cooking follows established recipes with the intention of feeding you something deeply satisfying and delicious. The best cooking, of course, manages to do both, to wit, leave you deeply admiring of the chef’s imagination, originality and technical skills at the same time that you’re swooning from some spectacularly good food.

Since the world has so tilted towards show cooking for the last thirty years, a development accelerated by the fairy-tale version of what it means to be a cook peddled with such success by food television, I somehow expected a Byronic flourish as our meal at Maison Aribert began that night. But I was wrong. Aribert’s first dish was as poignant as a naked angel. A small piece of locally raised trout had been cooked to the texture of a cloud, which was made earthbound only by the earthiness of a pleasantly puckering sorrel sauce, fine slices of turnip, blanched cabbage leaves and nasturtium flowers.

Next, a more assertive dish of beets teased by the gentle heat of horseradish and the sweet astringency of a black currant sauce. And the chef played on with a superb dish of brook trout dressed in a bright green sauce of parsley and haricots verts that registered on the palate some kind of vegetal version of mink.

The scales tipped back and forth between the earthy and the empyrean again with a coddled egg with wild mushrooms and herbs being followed by a buckwheat tartelette filled with the perch bellies on a bed of sauteed white onions under a fluffy duvet of celeriac foam. As exquisite as all of these dishes were, at this point in the meal I found myself thinking of something chef Yannick Alleno once said to me, which is that eventually during a tasting menu you have to reach a place where you feel you’ve arrived at the main course; otherwise the meal becomes completely ephemeral and more than a little effete.

Almost on cue, I was served a filet of poached roasted local free-range chicken with a lush dark- brown sauce made from the bird’s own jus seasoned with lemongrass and savory. This was the destination of the meal, and it was a potently lyrical expression of both Aribert’s superb technical skills and his deep love of the terroir of La Chartreuse.

Now with the chef off stage, the meal concluded with an expectedly brilliant cheese trolley—this little resort town is surrounded by some of the greatest cheese-producing towns of France, and then an oddly abstract three-part dessert, which included a chocolate composition and another one of
pleasantly tart apples.

The only blemish on our meal was the decidedly dyspeptic sommelier; otherwise it was a wonderful experience, which proved that Aribert is doubtless well on his way to winning a third Michelin star. N.B. Though hardly cheap, it’s also worth pointing out that this tasting menu at Maison Aribert was relatively good value for the money when compared to what a similar meal would cost in Paris or on the Cote d’Azur.

280 Allée du Jeune Bayard, Uriage-les-Bains, Tel. (33) 04 58 17 48 30, www.maisonaribert.com, Lunch menus 99 Euros and 125 Euros; dinner menus 150 Euros, 180 Euros, 200 Euros.

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A room with a view

Reinventing a restaurant as famous as La Tour d’Argent was always going to be fraught with problems. Why Well, if some clients might welcome the changes, perhaps even muttering under their breath, ‘Thank goodness, it’s about time!,’ others would denounce even the most reverent tinkering with the experience of a meal here as heresy. “They’ve absolutely ruined the place!” these sanctimonious self-appointed guardians of tradition would fume.

Unfortunately, in Paris, in 2016, the culture of the city is generally more in sympathy with a static status quo than innovation. In almost every realm, the past is reflexively judged to be more perfect than the present, which leads to the city’s bizarre officially sanctioned cantankerous determination to become a sort of genteel open-air museum. It also explains the existence of certain restaurants that are fussy, fretful gastronomic mausoleums that commemorate culinary traditions and a stuffy service style few people enjoy anymore, if they ever did.

But change had to come at La Tour d’Argent, which has been rather rudderless for a longtime. Since the death in 2006 of Claude Terrail, the natty gravely voiced boulevardier whose charm was the axis on which this perched table turned for over sixty years, this restaurant has been on an earnest but occasionally fumbling quest to renew its raison d’etre. The old formula of gallantly pandering to a self-satisfied international beau-monde that kept its reservation book full just wasn’t working anymore. In fact, the framed photos and autographs of the socialites, royals, and other celebrities who adored this place in its post-war hay day from 1950 to 1975 are decidedly momento mori now, and in any event, the general public is less impressed by such pedigrees in the age of the selfie and—woe is me– the Kardashians.

Langouste, soupe froide, cucumber

So leaving the visual possibility of an alarming overly ambitious facelift happily to one side, the kitchen had to be the place for any serious relaunch of this legend, and happily, that’s exactly where it’s happened. But first, for anyone who prefers a short-take, here it is: Now run by Andre Terrail, son of Claude, the Tour d’Argent has a brilliant new chef who has made the restaurant a serious gastronomic contender in Paris again.

With the arrival of the superbly talented Philippe Labbé, it looks like this grande dame of Gallic gastronomy has finally been granted a deeply delicious new lease on life. This means it’s a place you not only can go to again but one you should prioritize if you want an impeccably cooked meal of exquisite classical French cooking in a romantic setting with magnificent views.

I knew nothing about this, of course, when I somewhat ruefully headed here for lunch the other day, having received an invitation from Penelope, aka “Penny,” a second cousin from Philadelphia whom I hadn’t seen in at least a good twenty, maybe twenty-five, years. This is why my first response to her note—the invitation came on a heavy cream-colored monogrammed notecard, was a phone call to try to delicately suggest that maybe we might eat at another classic Parisian table of her choice, one where the food was likely to be better. But she stuck to her guns, saying she wanted to see the view again after so many years, and that she was sure the food would be “just fine.”

Arriving a little early, I lingered on the banks of the Seine across the street from the restaurant, and peering down at the dark moss green waters of the river, I hoped she’d be right and recalled the first time I ever ate there, which was also a good twenty years ago when I was writing a restaurant column in English for the pages that Time Out, the London arts-and-listings magazine, then published in the back of Pariscope. It was an incompatible marriage because the Paris weekly never quite achieved the quality level of the ten-page supplement the British publication edited. To wit, Time Out prided itself on a certain critical acuity and occasionally biting wit, while Pariscope never dared bite any hand that might feed it.

In any event, I had suggested to the editor of Time Out Paris that we might do an eating guide to Paris that reprised my weekly columns and add other new material, and so we did, with the help of many other talented local English-speaking reviewers, including the lovely Rosa Jackson, who eventually became editor of the guide and who now runs a superb cooking school, Les Petits Farcis, in Nice.

In the context of the severely straightened circumstances of editorial budgets in 2016, it now seems astonishing, but Time Out actually paid for every meal that was reviewed in its pages. They were good for a median priced meal for two, plus the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu, with any other extras being at the charge of the reviewer. Since La Tour d’Argent was a big fish, I asked Lemisse, one of the other editors on the guide, if she wanted to join me, and so we met in a café nearby for a Dutch courage glass of wine before we rather improbably cast ourselves into a tableau of la vie en rose that neither of us could have otherwise afforded short of escort work, winning the lottery or an inheritance.

Stepping through the doors, we found we’d unwittingly entered a steeplechase of courtesies that brought us to our table exhausted by the exertions of graciously acknowledging a good dozen or more ‘Bonsoirs’ of varying degrees of warmth and sincerity. Miraculously, though, we had a window table. To be sure it was at the far end of the dog’s leg dining room, and so with a partial view, but it was a window table nonetheless.

When our solemn waiter arrived with menus, he paused first and slowly eyeballed us. His verdict expressed by raised eyebrows and his nose wrinkled into a clenched pink knot like a rabbit was so gloriously theatrical that we had trouble not immediately dissolving into gales of laughter. Because this was exactly what we’d expected. To wit, we’d signed up for that most bizarre of gastronomic coinages, the gourmet meal that was meant to be politely and humbly endured rather than enjoyed.

Chef Philippe Labbé

So we were studying the menu with no small degree of financial trepidation, when someone delivered a testosterone riddled boom of a tableside greeting, “Bonsoir, Madame, Bonsoir, Monsieur!”

We looked up. A handsome older man with steel gray hair was half bowed tableside, and neither of us had a clue as to who he was or what response was expected from us. “Bonsoir,” I finally mumbled back.

“Is this the first time you’ve dined at La Tour d’Argent?” the man inquired. We nodded. “Is it a honeymoon?” We vigorously shook our heads. “I see…” He stroked his chin. “May I advise you then?”

“If you’d like,” I said noncommittally, since I was seeking to head off a serious wound to my wallet with my rent due just three days later. And then, when I noticed the bachelor’s button in  his lapel, I realized with a blood-chilled chagrin that I’d been speaking to none other than Claude Terrail himself.

We ended up with starters of scallops with truffle shavings and artichoke stuffed with crabmeat—nice food, if not memorable, and then we tucked into the Canard de l’An 2000 (Duck of the year 2000), which entitled us to the numbered postcards that are the great souvenir of a meal here—every duck served is numbered, but otherwise disappointed. Instead of tableside service, we were served two juicy ducks breasts in red wine sauce and duck thighs with a vinegary salad on the side. All told, a pleasant if unremarkable meal with a sad and particularly penurious half-bottle of Chinon.

Treating ourselves to a needed night-cap after dinner, Lemisse and I agreed that neither of us would ever need to repeat that particularly experience again, and so this is where I’d left off with La Tour d’Argent. Occasionally, friends visiting Paris did go, however, and their post-prandial comments were generally middling to wilted, with the view usually being mentioned as the highlight of the experience.

And so finally I crossed the street and met my second cousin in the reception area of the restaurant. She was wearing a dress of pistachio-colored linen, a cameo and Victorian style red coral jewelry that I’m sure her mother had bought on a trip to Sorrento around 1880. The retired headmistress of a prestigious girl’s school on the Main Line, she still had an imposing aura about her despite the girlishness evoked by the coral- colored velvet Alice band that held her oat-colored hair back.

The waiters seemed to understand that this was a woman not to be trifled with either, and we were promptly escorted to a table with a spectacular full-on view over Paris that took my breath away. On an intermittently overcast day, the city was heart-breakingly beautiful in its summer-stunned majesty, with the gardens behind Notre Dame sticking into the Seine like a green trident and sea gulls mixing with pigeons against a backdrop of pewter gray roofs punctuated by notable domes and spires.

When the great surprise of Philippe Labbé’s arrival was unveiled while we were having a glass of Champagne, the day suddenly became infinitely festive. Oh, I knew my second cousin, a classicist, would bring up the fact that I had been a terrible Latin student in high school and also ask me why I wasn’t married, but I wasn’t going to let these arrows dim my pleasure in a good meal. And with the passage of time, it occurred to me that however well-aimed her remarks might be, their effect was now more likely to be briefly startling, like pricking your finger on a needle, than wounding, since I no longer sought after or much cared about her ‘good’ opinion of me.

“Isn’t this lovely,” she said when she started reading the menu. “Please throw all cares to the winds, Alec. It’s my treat, of course, and another old relative popped off recently and left me some loot, so let’s spend some of it, shall we?” Emboldened, I ordered the Breton langouste (145 Euros) as my starter, and the beautiful copper-and-calico-colored crustacean was brought to the table live for my inspection before reappearing in an enthereal puddle of cool pink bisque seasoned with lemon verbena. The langouste (rock lobster) had been shelled, and its tender meat road small buoys of cucumber, a beautiful contrast of textures between the crunchy vegetable and the sweet flesh of the lobster.

Quenelles de brochet

I was so engrossed in the elegance of this dish, so lost in my own selfish trance of pleasure, that I was surprised to hear someone speaking to me, my cousin. “Would you like to taste this?” she asked, and of course, I did, since she’d ordered a “Quenelle du 21eme Siècle” as part of her lunch menu. Looking as my second cousin’s leonine profile as she sipped her Chassagne Montrachet, it fleetingly occurred to me that she could be a lesbian, but then again, she had been married to the late Oliver, a nice soft-spoken book editor at a now equally defunct Philadelphia publishing house (all of publishing is now extinct in Philadelphia, to my knowledge, and this is a shame, since these small houses often took chances on books that were judged too unlikely to be financially successful by the New York editors).

The pillowy quenelle, a pike-perch dumpling native to Lyon and environs and one of my favorite classical French dishes, was simply brilliant in an impeccably deconstructed sauce Nantua (crayfish sauce) that was a richly flavored as it was astonishing light. Ornamented by a little ring of tiny girolles mushrooms, baby peas, and fragile leaves of salad burnet and woodruff, the quenelle was very beautiful, too. I guessed that it was these vegetal garnishes, and perhaps a tiny dose of vanilla added to the sauce Nantua, that made the dish 21^st century, since it was otherwise a flawless homage to Escoffier. And yet it was also very subtlely modern, since Labbé has an extraordinary talent for calibrating infinitesimal tweaks to a dish that move it almost imperceptibly off-center and make it his own.

As we ate there was family chatter between us, including a reminiscence by Penny about a Thanksgiving dinner at my paternal grandmother’s during which another cousin suddenly decided to breast feed her baby at the table. I was just on the verge of adolescence at the time, but it struck me as a perfectly normal thing to do and also sort of fascinated me to see the baby going at the distended nipple so greedily. For almost everyone else, though, it was a high distasteful lapse of good manners. And then there was another cousin who came with his Bolivian girl friend—he’d been in the Peace Corps there, who had long thick black braids and wore a black bowler hat to lunch and cracked and sucked on the bone of her drumstick.

We laughed over these memories, but I couldn’t quite place Penny’s sympathies during their recitation.

What I left unsaid, however, was that my main interest in going to that particular meal was the thrill of blowing on the embers of the hopeless crush I had on another second cousin, the smolderingly handsome Bart, who had unwittingly won my ten year old heart the summer before when he looked after me and my brother at a Long Island beach club.

My honey-roasted Challans duckling breast was served in a sauce of vinegar-spiked pan juices with candied peaches, fresh almonds and a side of Szechuan pepper laced muesli. Now, this was one very sexy dish, and a sly one, too, since Labbé had had his own way with the restaurant’s traditional fowl. Juicy, flavorful, and a perfectly toothsome balance between chewy and tender, this bird struck me as Labbe’s own edible version of La Marianne, that kitschy female incarnation of France that appears in bust forms in government buildings.

Meanwhile, across the table, Penny was apparently very happy with her John Dory filet in an acidulated sauce seasoned with lemongrass and ginger with garnishes of girolles, radishes, and tomatillos, the first I’ve ever seen in France. We exchanged a smile or two while were ate, but were otherwise quiet like some companionable long-married couple. Or so I thought.

When our plates were removed, she cleared her throat. “Alec, you know I’ve always been rather jealous of you.” I think she enjoyed my look of surprise. “I mean the reckless, selfish throw all cares to the winds way that you moved to New York City after college, studiously avoided all of the ‘nice’ young people your Aunt wanted you to befriend, and threw yourself into, as I’ve been made to understand, a whirlwind of nightlife and sex and illicit substances.”

I said nothing.

“Well, I just wish I’d had the courage to do the same thing. I wish I’d gone to Studio 54 and dated famous dancers and, well, all of that. I mean, it must have been so much fun.”

“It was. But then so is this lunch. Life changes, and new pleasures come along to replace the old ones,” I said.

“Yes, but I’m sorry I didn’t know any of those old ones,” Penny replied.

When waiter interrupted us to take our dessert order, I caught the gaze of the heavily rouged, kohl-eyed older woman with a necklace of apricot-sized amber beads and a silver-headed cane at the table next to ours, and she winked. Ah, so we had an audience, and suddenly the previously matronly looking dining room with its royal blue carpet with a bronze flourish patter, mirrored ceiling, and royal blue velvet covered Louis XVI or something chairs revealed a side of itself as a setting that might have tantalized the late photographer Helmut Newton. I ordered caramelized white peaches with lime sorbet and lemon-verbena yogurt. Penny chose strawberries marinated in wine with black olive puree and sugared scrambled eggs with pistachios, a fascinating entremet.

We smiled at each other when our desserts were served, but after a single strawberry, Penny put her spoon down.

“Did you know that I did a junior year abroad in England?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, in London, where I studied ancient languages and Victorian literature.” She looked out the window, and I respected her long pause.

“I went away for a weekend once with one of my professors, to Brighton we went, me and Charlotte, and we had a lovely time. I often wonder how different my life might be today if I’d stayed. I was in love, but, well, I just couldn’t see how it could work out. Or rather, perhaps I just didn’t have the courage to make it work, so I went home and married Oliver.”

I put my hand on top of hers on the table. So this was why she’d wanted, or rather needed, to see me so badly.

“Mais Cherie! Vous etes toujours tres belle! C’est jamais trop tard!” called our neighbor, and Penny started laughing so hard she had to blot up tears with her napkin. Then the lady excused herself with a chuckle and a little wave and slowly made her way across the dining room.

A minute later the waiter reappeared and poured us some very good Champagne, explaining that it was a gift from ‘Madame.”

Like Philippe Labbé’s superb cooking at La Tour d’Argent, perhaps a life well-lived then is all about the appreciating the seasons, celebrating subtlety and getting the details right in the end. I hope I don’t have to wait another twenty years before I return to this wonderful restaurant.

15 Quai de la Tournelle, 5^th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-43-54-23-31, Metro: Maubert-Mutualite or Sully-Morland. Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.tourdargent.com Average a la carte 250 Euros, prix-fixe menus 210 Euros, 220 Euros, 350 Euros; Lunch menu 105 Euros.

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They’re few dining rooms in Paris that are so deeply invested with a long and mostly very happy album of memories for me than Lucas Carton, the magnificent landmarked restaurant with a spectacular art-nouveau decor by Louis Majorelle just across the street from the Église de la Madeleine in the heart of the city.

So I was a little anxious when I went to dinner here the other night for the first time in a very long time–my purse doesn’t allow me to be a regular, and ultimately relieved but not surprised to rediscover that young chef Julien Dumas’s cooking makes him a brilliantly worthy successor to Alain Senderens, who had billing as head chef here for almost thirty years, despite the fact that it was his lieutenant Jerome Bactel who’d actually been running the kitchen on a daily basis for a while.

In fact Bruno said that our meal reminded him of his initial experience of Yannick Alleno’s cooking, or a dazzling first encounter with a startlingly talented and rapidly rising young chef, and I quite happily agreed. Dumas is exactly what Lucas Carton needs to remain a relevant and desirable restaurant in Paris in 2015. So ultimately I was able to add another gastronomic sketch to the brief but privileged album I carry around in my head of occasions spent on these premises.

To be perfectly honest, the one that really sticks out in this slender volume of memory is deeply tinted to this day by trauma. When I arrived in Paris from London to work as an editor in the rue Cambon offices of Fairchild Publications, this restaurant was the setting for one of the most excruciating meals I’ve ever had in my entire life. Sifting through the still tender shards of remembrance attached to that evening, I don’t find the name of my host or hostess, but I know it was a Paris fashion designer and that the chic little supper was intended to size me up and ‘welcome’ me to Paris, in that order of importance.

To say that things did not go well that night is a massive understatement. My eight years of French failed me miserably within minutes of being seated between the attache de presse who’d organized the evening and a druggy middle-aged Countess who immediately told that she thought les Americains were “des sauvages” (savages) and who regularly left the table for five minutes or longer to then return with white-powder-rimed nostrils. In retrospect, the least she could have done in those days before I became sensible and settled was to offer to share her loot. In any event, the meal was a horror, and the worst of it was a starter salad, a tumble of pretty little leaves, that looked innocent enough until I noticed a tiny gnarled bird’s leg sticking out of the greenery. This leg was so tiny I couldn’t imagine anyone would actually want to eat it, and I found myself wondering if it might have found its way into my plate by dint of some horrific accident in the kitchen, or maybe it was a practical joke, or maybe….

It was the druggy Countess who see me straight by making me the object of shrieking hilarity for the rest of the meal. “Eeets a delicacy, Alexandre! Un grive, a leeetle wild bird with a good funky taste!” Oh, of course. A good funky taste, well now we’re talkin’. Eh bien sur, I used to see packets of grives all the time at the A & P in Westport, Connecticut when I was a child. Not. So I gnawed on the little nugget of meat on the tortured avian leg, and it to my surprise it was fleetingly delicious, because, well, it had a good funky taste.

Over two decades later, I’m still astonished by the fact that the eleven other people at this table not only did nothing to put me at ease or get to know me better, but actively enjoyed my discomfort and repeatedly maladroit manoeuvres. Walking home, I couldn’t help but thinking of one of my mother’s well-worn anecdotes, which was about a boyfriend from Kansas who accompanied her to a clam bake on the North Shore of Boston one summer night, and after being served his lobster before everyone else, he attempted to open it with a knife and fork like a piece of meat, and, frustrated, said, “This is the toughest lobster I’ve ever eaten.” Everyone else agreed heartily, and then encouraged him to pull the beast apart and crack it up with the lobster-claw-shaped aluminum pincers posed on his napkin. “I only put them out when I know the lobster’s going to be tough,” explained the hostess.

What’s nice today, then, is that Lucas Carton no longer intimidates me. In fact, there’s almost no place left in France that does, since I’d dare to say that I’ve long since cracked the codes of Gallic luxury so thoroughly I’ve actually come full circle and recovered my original innate New England preference for simplicity, which never fails in the kitchen or any other realm of life as far as I’m concerned.

Happily, Julien Dumas, who worked with both Alain Ducasse and Jean-Francois Piege, but whose true gastronomic maitre is Jacques Maximin, one of my favorite French chefs, both for his cooking and his personality, is another acolyte of the late great French food critic Maurice Curnonsky’s dictum that ‘Great cooking is when things taste of what they are.” I first tasted his cooking when he was working at Rech, Alain Ducasse’s seafood brasserie in the 17th Arrondissement, and I was immediately impressed by the delicious gastronomic symmetry of his impressively lucid style.

Much too often the pretentiously named amuse bouches (amuse the mouth, a fancy name for the similarly fancily named hors d’oeuvres) that begin a meal come off more as a fiddly waste of calories than anything that actually provokes pleasure. But not at Lucas Carton, where they do exactly what they’re supposed to do, flirtatiously excite your interest in the meal to come. Dumas’s Parmesan madeleine with citrus rind and deliciously acidulated puree of ‘chou pointu,’ or tender turban-like Pontoise cabbage that’s at its best in the Spring. with match-stick slices of dried mullet were racy little pleasures that couldn’t be dampened even by the rather sullen waitress who brought them to the table.

After a composition of morels and shaved squid that was such a brilliant terre-et-mer (earth-and-sea) pairing that I disregarded my reportorial duties in favor of pleasure, the next course was a luscious lobe of roasted beet-juice lacquered foie gras with roasted beets, beet greens and potato puree. Recourse to the superlative is slippery ice by definition, so I’ll moderate myself and say that I think this was the best foie gras I’ve ever eaten, with a dusting of herbs that included rosemary, plus Maldon salt, and the texture of just set custard.

I hadn’t been to Lucas Carton in such a longtime that I’ve forgotten about the way that meals here are rather insistently trellised to the idea of serving a glass of wine with every dish. I’m not a huge fan of this idea, since I find hoping from on overwhelms the palate and gizzards. That said, the Reisling Kabinett 2007 Piesporter Goldtropfchen Riechsgraf von Kesselstatt from the Moselle in Germany napped the foie gras perfectly by reprising the distant sugar in the beet garnish.

This last remark makes the meal sound awfully serious, and alas, it was, which runs contrary to the reason that most people decide to treat themselves to an expensive meal, which is in the hope of gastronomically amplified pleasure. Unfortunately, French haute cuisine has developed an encrusted, rigid and rather joyless service style that often wilts high spirits instead of teasing them. But hopefully over time the urgency of Dumas’s brilliant cooking will induce a psychic or sociological change in the stiff posturing of the dining room staff.

Dumas is one of the best fish cooks in France, so I was especially curious about the next dish, Whiting with buckwheat. The perfectly cooked filet came encased in a crispy buttery buckwheat crepe in a pool of sauce that tasted like a pil-pil sauce with the addition of buckwheat. It was an elegant and deeply satisfying dish.

Roasted pigeon with a sauce of Sicilian pistachios from Bronte was an inspired idea, too, and Dumas’s perfectly crusted sweetbreads in an sauce of carrot juice and veal stock gentled spiked by mustard seeds marinated in verjus was lusciously earthy.

The La Spinetta Moscato d’Asti served with a dessert of Mara strawberries garnished with jasmine petals, caille, yogurt ice cream and buttery caramelized wafers was a brilliant pairing, too.

Ultimately, this was an excellent meal, which made me eager to go back and try the more affordable menu du march served in the more relaxed dining room upstairs and also the relatively good value lunch menus served in the Majorelle dining room at noon. And since Lucas Carton is now back on my list of special occasion tables both for myself and for anyone who asks, here’s hoping they’ll also soon bite the bullet and remove all and any trace of Senderens wildly ill-considered interior-design attempt to turn one of the world’s most beautiful dining rooms into something trendy. Cooking as good as Dumas’s warrants the head-on beauty of the original room.

9 Place de la Madeleine, 8th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-42-65-22-90. Metro: Madeleine. www.lucascarton.com Menu du Cercle (lunch): 89 et 99 euros. Tasting menu: 179 euros. Average a la Carte: 150 euros. Brasserie le Marché de Lucas (casual dining on the first floor): 45 euros (lunch) et 52 euros (dinner). Closed on Sunday and Monday.

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Yannick Alléno @ Geoffroy de Boismenu

Please note: This restaurant has now been renamed as Alleno Paris; it was awarded three stars in the 2015 edition of the Michelin Guide to France.

When chef Yannick Alléno  turned on the gas at Alleno Paris, formerly known as the Pavillon Ledoyen, on July 1, 2014, it was poignantly apparent to all early visitors to his new restaurant that he was exultantly relieved to be cooking again. After all, he’d been without a Paris kitchen of his own for over a year and a half since January 2013 when he left Le Meurice, the opulent dining room at the Hotel Le Meurice where he’d won three Michelin stars. And for anyone who’s known him as long as long as I have–we first met after the excellent dinner at the Hotel Scribe in 1999 that pricked my curiosity about who’d cooked it–he’d seemed a bit at loose ends during the well-earned sabbatical he’d claimed for himself after a decade as chef at Le Meurice. The reason is that despite some reasonably successful efforts to coin Alléno as a celebrity chef, he’s still much more of a feet-on-the-ground cook’s cook than he is anything else. Or at least for the time being anyway, although I very much doubt the world will ever bear witness for the full Kardashianization of Yannick Alléno. It’s just not his style.

If Alléno backed away from his job at Le Meurice, however, it was both because he needed a physical and creative respite from the ardors of running the huge culinary plant of a major Paris luxury hotel, but also, I think, because of an inchoate ambivalence about the way in which his job duties were evolving beyond anything to do with making a perfect beurre blanc, to say nothing of inventing a new recipe. In this eccentrically mannerist age where the trope of celebrity dictates that it’s more important to be talked about than to actually even have anything interesting or important to say, much less a real talent, the metier of Parisian chef has been awkwardly caught up in the nets of celebrity and the social media that fuels it, too. Suddenly, just being a great chef is no longer enough to land a spot running one of the most glamorous dining rooms in Paris. No, now you also have to be a persuasively charming, seductive, photogenic media personality to boot. You should also show up as often as possible in the people pages of the glossy magazines and beam from the screens of high-traffic websites. You should pen opulent cookbooks, get a TV gig, make your own wine, endorse all sorts of probable and half-probable products, and think of dozens of reasons every month that you and your restaurant warrant a sound-bite or a Tweet. A Kim Kardashian shaped cupcake Hey! That’s a great idea!

The problem here, of course, is that many of the men and women who are drawn to this physically punishing and relentlessly hard-working metier do so out a real dedication to their craft rather than as a vehicle to fame. To be sure, almost none of them would fly-swat a Michelin star or three if it came their way, but the passion that drives a love of bone-achingly hard work and constant repetitive stress day in and day out isn’t a desire for creative expression, although this certainly becomes part of the metier of any fully evolved chef. Instead, it’s a behind-closed-doors love of great produce, the precision of culinary chemistry, the camaraderie of the kitchen and a collective quest for excellence that begins all over again everyday when the lights go on in the kitchen. This is the world that beckoned to Yannick Alléno as a shy fifteen-year-old apprentice to chef Gabriel Biscay at the Hotel Royal Monceau, and it remains beloved ballast of his career in the same way that it does that of any seriously talented chef.

Dining room at Ledoyen @ Philippe-Vaurès

So it was exciting to go off to Ledoyen on a soft summer night for dinner with a very witty and food-loving colleague from London. For openers, I couldn’t wait to see what Alleno would be up to, but I was also eager because Ledoyen is one of the loveliest restaurants in Paris. Just a few minutes from the heaving traffic circle that is the Place de la Concorde–it suddenly strikes me that this beautiful but automotively encumbered square offers up an obvious opportunity to retool Paris towards being a greener and more pedestrian friendly city in the 21st century, since it’s an absurd extravagance that the whole square is given over to cars–Ledoyen is a romantic white wedding cake of a building tucked away in the gardens at the bottom of the Champs Elysees that offers a surprisingly instant respite from the aural and mental roars of city life without leaving town.

Star decorator Jacques Grange did the beautiful first-floor dining room, which over look the crowns of the surrounding plane trees to give the airy space the feeling of a very luxurious tree house, in 1994, and since he was directly inspired by the good directoire bones of the pavilion’s architecture, his look has aged beautifully. Here and there, though, the room had been discreetly freshened up with more modern table settings and very comfortable celadon velvet chairs that flatter the willow green scheme that dominates the room. The decor was of rather little interest to me, however, since I was champing at the bit to see how Alléno would present himself gastronomically at the debut of a new chapter in his career. Or in other words, now that molecular cuisine is well and truly over and a central Paris location rather limits the locavore reflex for the time being, how could, how would he be new?

Meanwhile, my colleague was well into a second vodka tonic when I got there. Seeing me glance at her glass, she said, “Not my fault, Dearie! You’re the one who’s always late, and anyway, I’m hoping the booze will have burned a place in my poor old gizzards for dinner, since I didn’t finish lunch until quarter of four.” I asked her what she’d had for lunch. “What I had is a a nice coq au vin, the perfect combination of two of my favorite things, cock and wine.” The waiter waiting to present us with menus guffawed, and with my some of favorite reading fresh in hand, he explained that Alléno’s idea here was to begin with an assortment of tasting plates and then settle on a main course before the meal concluded with some dessert hors d’oeuvres and then a dessert.

Our first dish was dazzling. Marinated mackerel arrived in a cool red pool of acidulated hibiscus juice with a pair of sesame-seed garnished poached tomatoes and a refreshingly mentholated tasting shiso leaf. It was what a perfect hors d’oeuvres should be, which is simple, limpid, well-reasoned, and beautiful to behold. It was also winsomely summery, which might make you wonder why it’s taken me several months to get around to writing about this meal, and the answer here is that I this food needed some serious meditation, and also that I knew I’d have to go back again before offering a public opinion. If it’s normal for food writers to revisit a restaurant, what’s more uncommon is such a long critical gestation time, and this says as much about what Alléno is up to at Ledoyen as almost anything else. This modern French cooking offers an intriguing new equilibrium between technicity and sensuality, with a subtle but profound fascination with the transformative power of sauces and an  exhilarating but understated commitment to both healthy eating and sustainable produce.

What else could possibly explain a dish as intricately and satisfyingly engineered and executed as foie gras poached in Rivesaltes wine and garnished with a slice of pear with a meringue skin and a pepper and juniper berry gastrique?

Not every dish worked. Butternut squash with grilled seeds and a sauce of fermented bread might have been foreshadowing autumn that night, but it was too timid and too rustic in the context of such urbane gastronomy and didn’t real feel like a natural gesture on the chef’s part.

If I enjoyed the lush artistry of Wagyu beef served with crispy ravioli, olives and green tomatoes, the dish that stunned was a stuffed cep mushroom head prepared en civet, a braising method using red wine, orange peel and juniper berries that’s usually used for game. “What a brilliant idea! This dish alone was worth my train ticket,” crowed my colleague, and I agreed. It was genuis to apply the en civet method to ceps, and to have kept it dialed down enough so that the natural taste of the fleshy and impeccably cooked mushroom permeated the orange and juniper berry seasoned ragout that had been made from its long thick steam. This luxurious hash was then sealed inside of the mushroom cap under a fine fan of laser fine mushroom head and baked, with a final garnish of lardons being added just before it was sent to the table. “So sexy, but also modest, because it just seems like the most natural idea in the world, no#8221; said my colleague. Well, yes, actually, and one small perfect example of why Alléno is a truly great cook and deserved the trio of Michelin stars he won at Le Meurice.

Dessert was lovely, too–pearls of orange coulis sunken into a cinnamon foam as sort of a Gallic riff on a Moroccan orange salad, and with the kitchen performing to such a high standard days after opening, I can only predict good things here in the future. We were dawdling over coffee at the end of the meal when Alléno emerged from the kitchen to greet various friends and clients. During a brief chat with us, he said that he eventually intends to design the menu so that it offers a choice between his own gorgeously imagined dishes and Escoffier style classics, adding that sauces will continue to be more and more important in his cooking, because “Sauces are the expression of an evolved cuisine.”

And to answer the two final and perhaps most urgent questions you’re likely to have about this restaurant–Is it worth the money and is this a good choice for that one special-occasion meal you might be thinking of treating yourself to during a trip to Paris?, the answers are ‘Yes’ and “Very much so,” respectively.

1 Avenue Dutuit, 8th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-53-05-10-00, Metro: Champs-Elysées Clemenceau. www.yannick-alleno.com/restaurant/le-pavillon-ledoyen/ Closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday lunch. Lunch menu 128 Euros. Dinner 295 Euros, Average a la carte 240 Euros.

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The best restaurant on the Cote d’Azur, the storied Mediterranean stalking ground of the world’s rich and famous that’s known as the Riviera in English, is Mirazur. It makes me happy to be this blunt, too, since the Riviera–I’ll opt for the English parlance, is encrusted with fussy over-priced restaurants where eager gastronomic novices flock every summer only to be fleeced and disappointed. Oh, to be sure, they’re many wonderful restaurants along the coast, but they’re usually the simple ones not the fancy places with waiters in tuxedos and food that’s served under silver-plated domes. I’m talking about great little bistros like L’Armoise in Antibes or Agua and L’Ecole de Nice in Nice. So the definitive superlative I’m awarding here is in the context of what the French call haute cuisine, or the very best cooking, and at this most ambitious and most expensive end of the food chain, very few of the restaurants exalted by famous guidebooks warrant the wound to your wallet.  Mirazur does.

I hadn’t been here since I came for lunch two years ago when I was researching HUNGRY FOR FRANCE, and as much as I enjoyed that meal, I wasn’t able to really lose myself in the beauty of chef Mauro Colagreco’s cooking, because I was with a photographer who was shooting every dish we’d ordered for the book. So this time was different. For one thing, I was alone, which was fine, since sometimes it’s a pleasure to embark on a long leisurely meal by yourself and especially with a stunningly beautiful view of the Mediterranean as company. So I sipped a flute of rose Champagne and looked forward to the tasting menu that was shortly to unfold. It began with a trio of delicate hors d’oeuvres, including a sampling of fresh tomatoes from the garden that Colagreco has on the hillside just across the street from his restaurant, a beignet of smoked eel, and a seaweed strewn clam on the half-shell with an intriguing garnish of leche de tigre, the Peruvian sauce that’s used to make ceviche and which is a liquefied mixture of fish, lemon, onion and ají.

The clam brought on a rush of pleasure with its simplicity and also because it awoke my memories of why I’ve always loved Colagreco’s cooking. The Argentine born chef, who trained with a variety of great French chefs, including the late Bernard Loiseau, Alain Passard, Alain Ducasse and Guy Martin, has a lyrical gastronomic signature all his own–his food is stunningly fresh and exudes a tenderness both in its execution and its aesthetics. This makes it a surprise to meet Colagreco, by the way, since he’d make a good rugby player, but then again, looks are often, or even usually, deceiving. And as if to confirm my musings, the first course of my meal arrived, a plump Gillardeau oyster with shallot cream, tapioca pearls, and a riff on the pear that include balls of the fruit and its juice. It would never have occurred to me that pears could make an oyster more eloquent, but the sweetness of the fruit teased the lactic flavors of the bivalve, with tiny sprigs of salicorne, or crunchy seaweed, serving as punctuation. This dish was a quiet elegant edible surprise, which is what the best haute cuisine is always about.

The salad of beans with fleshy almost black Napoleon cherries, pistachios and razored slices of zucchini was similarly delicate, completely unexpected and deeply refreshing. Eating it with some of the hot bread that was served at the same time with a little pool of olive oil and a brilliant poem about bread by Pablo Neruda, I resolved to attempt some version of it at home, but I rather doubt I’ll be able to find cherries as good as Colagreco’s in Paris. Freshness and a mastery of cooking times so precise they seem calibrated to the quarter second are the fundaments of Colagreco’s cooking.

His palate is restrained and very subtle, too–he wants you to taste his beautiful produce and would almost never do anything that would obscure its natural flavors. Sometimes he sublimates them, though, by matting them against a contrasting flavor, as was true of my next course,  sea snails, squid and zucchini in a gently tamarind seasoned broth, and the brilliant dish that followed, seared squid finely sliced into ribbons with a bagna caudal, the Piemontese sauce made with garlic, anchovies, olive oil and butter.

This meal may be starting to sound like a lot of food, but it wasn’t, because portions hit that sweet spot between fiddly tasting plates and a full serving, and the pacing of the meal was impeccable. It helped, too, that the general atmosphere in this restaurant is palpably happy and relaxed, or light years from what one might usually expect at a Michelin two star table. The dish that followed was my favorite, a filet of Chapon on a ragout of chickpeas, tiny zucchini, and cod tripe with fennel flowers. The various textures of the ragout flattered the fish and the gently contrasting tastes constituted one of the most magnificently subtle Mediterranean muddles I’ve ever tasted.

Roasted shoulder of lamb pirouetted away from the primal tastes of the Chapon with a vivid sauce of fresh plums and vanilla that served as an elegant prelude to dessert. On this warm afternoon, with dessert looming, I found myself hoping that they’d be small and refreshing.

So I was delighted when a rosewater granite with raspberries and blueberries came to the table. For me, this superb meal could have ended here, but Colagreco had a final surprise in store. Once I’d shattered the transparent pane of sugar on top of the bowl it came in, the saffron-flavored cream with a foam of new almonds and orange sorbet was just about the most perfect summer dessert I could imagine, since the saffron had the effect of gently tucking the palate in for a nap after the delicious ardors of a spectacular meal. Colagreco is a brilliant chef.

Mirazur, 30 avenue Aristide Briand, Menton, Tel. (33) 04-92-41-86-86. Email : reservation@mirazur.fr  www.mirazur.fr  Summer hours (mid July to the end of August): Open Thursday to Sunday for lunch, open daily for dinner; Winter hours (mid-February to early November): Open Wednesday to Sunday for lunch and dinner. Prix-fixe menus 47 Euros (not served on weekends), 70 Euros, 100 Euros, 140 Euros.

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@Bob Peterson for Hungry for Paris

“No, no, that’s not the right color. That’s cream, not almond,” an older man said to his colleague as they stared at a tiny piece of stone down on their knees on the mosaic floor they were creating. “The almond is too dark, the cream would be better. This is a corner of the room and the light in Paris is so often gray,” said his colleague.  They changed it back and forth several times, and finally settled on the cream. I’d never seen such a large and elaborate mosaic being created before, and I never enter this room without remembering their pride and their seriousness.

Roasted figs with creme fraiche

So a passionate attention to detail really does underlie the experience of a meal at one of the most legendary dining rooms in Paris, and this is why I was so curious to go to dinner the other night. Chef Yannick Alleno, who presided at Le Meurice for many years and won three stars there, moved on during the winter of 2013, and now the restaurant has joined the stable of tables run by Alain Ducasse, who placed Christophe Saintagne from Restaurant Alain Ducasse at the Hotel Plaza Athenee, a sister property to Le Meurice, since they’re both part of the Dorchester Group, in the kitchen now that this latter hotel is about to be renovated.

Waiting for Bruno in the street, I couldn’t help but wondering if the impending meal might feel like finding a different bird in the nest another one had built. Then Bruno showed up in his Mini convertible, and it was amusing to watch the top-hatted valet park this nice little car between a Bentley and a Lamborghini. When we went inside and were ushered through the discrete door behind a panel in the lobby, the dining room was not only every bit as magnificent as I remembered but also pleasantly more subdued. Several years ago, designer Philippe Starck had tinkered with the original post-renovation décor, and since I don’t want irony-inflected wit to move the sort of double-barreled grandeur I experience so rarely off-center, I’d never really taken to his tweaks.

Alain Ducasse is both extremely discreet and a real aesthete in the best sense of this word, so it was fascinating to register the subtle but powerful changes he’d made at the restaurant just a few weeks after it became one of his. The only ornament on our ecru linen dressed table was a plump ripe yellow tomato on a small smooth shake of timber (we later learned it came from one of the many trees felled in the forests of Versailles during a terrible storm several years ago), and it was a pregnant clue as to the visual and gastronomic sensibility of the meal that followed.

The first dish to arrive at the table was a small square sandwich of toasted country bread filled with fleshy pleasantly feral tasting cepes and a veil of smoked country ham. At the same time it appeared a waiter brought the salt and pepper in a series of gray porcelain cubes that briefly grabbed my attention with their stark beauty before I was distracted by the arrival of our first course, a black cast-iron casserole. When the lid was removed, we saw a small pretty still-life of vegetables that had been cooked on a bed of gray sea salt, and the waiter then supplied us with long thin forks to spear them with and dip into a tart green herbed dairy sauce. The vegetables—carrots, potatoes, onions, baby leeks—were homey and satisfying, and the gently astringent sauce cleansed the palate for everything to come. This communal dish also whispered that the pleasures of the table are often best shared. As much as this opener surprised us, we were both transfixed by the plate and the small fragile ramekin the sauce came in. “It must be him,” said Bruno, but we couldn’t gracefully upend anything to check until a few minutes later when we saw Belgian ceramicist Pieter Stockman’s named printed on their bottoms.

We’d first discovered Stockman’s exquisite ceramics in a boutique in Antwerp, and I’d later seen them at Restaurant Jean-Francois Piege in Paris. What transfixed me, though, was deciphering what these very carefully objects were saying. What I surmised is that in the 21st century, luxury should pure and delicate, or a series of simple evanescent pleasures that are humble and healthy rather than ostentatious and self-indulgent. Clearly Ducasse had decided to make Le Meurice his laboratory for reinventing French haute cuisine for the 21st century.

This extended to the deeply considered casting of the staff in this dining room, where I happily saw more women working than I ever had before in such an exalted restaurant. Among them, the charming and enviously polyglot Spanish woman who explained the haiku-like menu to us, and then the sommelier, Estelle Touzet, whose love and knowledge of wine and eloquent and thought-provoking way of describing it became one of the major threads of pleasure that animated our evening.

Bruno loved his sautéed autumn fruit and vegetables served with a deglazed sauce of cooking juices and cider vinegar—a varying palate of acidities and different shades of bitterness is another recurring element of this kitchen, while my pate chaud de pintade au chou came as an elegantly fragile cartridge of pastry filled with chunks of tender guinea hen and Savoy cabbage bound by a baked mousse of liver and gizzards.

The nearly nude way in which our fish courses were prepared further emphasized the angelic intentions of the kitchen. A magnificent lozenge of butter-basted turbot came on an identically sized piece of fine toast lightly spread with tapenade, all that was needed to emphasize its natural flavor with the foil of a little salt and texture. It reminded me of the innocent simplicity with which fish is often cooked in Scandinavia, while John Dory, also cooked on the bone, was presented on laser-fine slices of fig with coin-sized pieces of turnip and a salad of herbs. Here, the fine graininess of the fig seeds flattered the fish, while the gentle bitterness of the turnips punctuated its natural sweetness.

Main courses were even more plain-spoken in an almost Amish sort of way. Bruno’s colvert (wild duck) was cooked rare and garnished with halved black grapes, kernels of corn and a luscious salamis (the bird’s bones pounded to a smooth paste with red wine and stock), while my veal sweetbreads surprised me even after the detailed explanation of this preparation I’d been given at the beginning of the meal. A perfectly round slice of sweetbread was topped with a fine crust of toasted golden bread crumbs and came with a comma-shaped side dish of roasted heirloom tomatoes with a few melted shards of Parmesan. Restraint was the clear intention of this preparation, with the tomatoes intended to provide an acidic foil to the rich creamy flavor and texture of the sweetbreads. Since I love sweetbreads, this was the one moment in the meal when I yearned for a bit more, but in terms of the logic behind my menu, it was impeccable.

Ducasse is now producing superb chocolate at an atelier in Paris near the Bastille, and it supplied the raw materials for a stunningly good finale—chocolate ice cream decorated with fine broken panes of caramel on a bed of almonds and an accessorizing cocoa mousse and a pitcher of hot chocolate. Following the waiter’s instructions, I spooned up some of the mousse and ice cream with a nut or two and dribbled it with melted chocolate before experiencing an avalanche of pleasure that was propelled into even higher relief by the deceptively modest tone of the proceeding meal. The glass of ten-year-old Barbeito Bual Old Reserve Madeira, which sommelier Touzet explained she’d chosen for the faint flavor of the salt in the island’s soil expressed through the grapes behind the foreground tastes of caramel, leather and tobacco, added a deeper glow of sensuality to this shudderingly good concoction. Bruno enjoyed his roasted figs, which were served in a fragile bowl of mesmerizingly aromatic dried fig leaves with a granite of red wine atop a hazelnut cream, and we were more relieved than surprised when the traditional trolley of post-prandial sweetmeats was brought tableside and contained freshly made fruit compotes and sorbets instead of the usual mignardaises, candies and pastries. This gentle and planed down proposal was much more in keeping with the prevailing—and even invigorating—theme of restraint that had informed our meal than a selection of sugary little cakes would have been.

There was nothing ascetic or puritanical about the moderation that was the rudder of this meal, however. Instead it recognized that many people coming to a restaurant of this caliber today are there to be entertained as much as they are to be fed, and that almost anyone who can afford such an experience probably leads a life of habitual abundance.

Ultimately, this was a superb and very daring meal, because after making his reputation with an

exactingly disciplined take on the simple but naturally baroque character of European Mediterranean cooking, Ducasse has completely revised and reinvented his repertoire. What he instinctively understands, you see, is that as the conventional summit of the French culinary experience, haute cuisine has always been a mirror of our aspirations, pleasures, and even fears, and in his stunningly astute reading of these evolving codes in a still emerging new century, he’s come up with an intriguing new recipe for pleasure. Gallic gastronomic luxury should be simple and wholesome.

Restaurant Le Meurice – Alain Ducasse, Hotel Le Meurice, 228 rue de Rivoli, 1st, Tel. 01-44-58-10-55,

Metro: Concorde or Tuileries. Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Average a la carte 235 Euros, Five-course tasting menu 380 Euros. www.lemeurice.com/le-meurice-restaurant

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Whispering Maitre d’Hotel, hard-working chefs at La Scene

Within minutes of sitting down at La Scène, the new restaurant at the exquisitely renovated Hotel Prince de Galles on the Avenue George V, I concluded that this is very shrewdly conceived new table indeed. Belgian designer Bruno Borrione, whose work I had last admired at Les Avises hotel in Avize in Champagne, has created a beautiful and boldly contemporary restaurant, which suddenly makes most other hotel dining rooms in Paris look stuffy and dated. Here, chef Stéphanie Le Quellec, one of the most talented female chefs in France, works with her team in a stunning matte-finished white-marble-lined open kitchen that’s surely the ‘scene’ to which the restaurant’s name refers. This breaks major conventions of upmarket restaurant protocal in Paris, too, since the kitchen, usually hidden, is in full view and the cooks are cast as characters in the evening’s entertainment.

Suffice it to say, however, that this is a very very serious show.

Borrione fleshes out the idea of this restaurant as a sort of gastronomic supper club with white leather lined tub chairs at white marble pedestal tables, low lighting, good sight lines, and a sort of minimalist cosmopolitan aesthetic that wisely reprises the good art deco bones of the hotel, which just reopened after a two-year $100 million renovation that was accomplished with impeccable good taste by Borrione for the adjacent bar and dining room and most public spaces and the ever-present Pierre Yves Rochon for the rooms upstairs. And FYI, the Prince de Galles, which opened in 1928, owes its name to its original ambition, which was to welcome the Prince of Wales, future Edward VIII, son of King George V, to Paris during his annual visits.

Bar at Hotel Prince de Galles

Despite an entirely absent welcome from the very agitated seeming maitre d’hotel, we settled in over glasses of pink Champagne and read Le Quellec’s brilliant little menu, which hits a perfect bull’s eye in terms of the prevailing gastronomic gestalt at the highest end of the Gallic food chain in 2013. Suddenly, the goal at this most exalted level of French cooking is all about cross-hatching a serious commitment to healthy eating with an equally serious desire for gastronomic pleasure.

So I started out with several meaty Joël Dupuch oysters, sliced and garnished with tiny fava beans and penja pepper in a sauce of Matcha tea under an aromatic foam of Umbrian olive oil, a dish that was intensely satisfying for its simplicity, juxaposiiton of textures and rippling notes of complementary flavors. Bruno’s beautiful vegeteable starter made reference to the cooking I remembered Le Quellec doing while she was Executive chef at the Terre Blanche hotel in Provence when it was still run by Four Seasons. To wit it was precise, delicate and extremely subtle, with the baby vegetables and tofu being amplified by plum vinegar, a pistachio condiment and an herbal sorbet. Needless to say, it made the increasingly herbivorous Bruno very happy.

I eat less meat than I ever have before, too, which means that it was a real treat to tuck into impeccably cooked veal sweetbreads with an exquisite riff on a Grenobloise garnish that included tiny cubes of lemon and croutons. The jus was magnificent, too–deeply flavored but wonderfully light, as was a garnish of miniature girolles.

Bruno’s turbot with fresh hazelnuts, wild garlic, crayfish and a foamy shellfish jus showed off the wiry mettle of a really talented chef, too, since everything about this dish was impressive–the immaculately cooked fish, the clever garnishes, and the superb sauce. While my veal sweetbreads were textbook perfect, it was this fish dish that showed why Le Quellec, 30, is destined to become one of the great chefs of France–it was as powerfully original as it was technically perfect.

Desserts were excellent, too. Bruno had an ethereal looking and pleasant tasting pastry composed of lemon-verbena foam, panes of sugar, and raspberries, while I savored a sort of post-modern riff on a millefeuille, which was excellent, with parchment thin and crispy pastry and an airy aromatic vanilla-bean flavored pastry cream.

Service was a little shirty all through the evening, but once the team relaxes–it’s too stiff and too self-conscious, I think this is going to become an excellent and very popular restaurant and rather expect it to emerge as one of the big hits of La Rentree. It was doubtless with this goal in mind that the restaurant wisely did a quiet opening at the end of May, which gives it the time to find its rhythm during the summer. N.B. It will be closed from July 28th through August 18th.

La Scène, Hotel Prince de Galles, 33 Avenue George V, 8th arrondissement, Tel. 01-53-23-78-50, Metro: George V. Open for lunch Monday-Friday. Open for dinner Monday to Saturday. Sunday brunch only. Reservations required. Prix-fixe menus four-courses 125 Euros, six-courses 165 Euros, average a la carte 120 Euros. www.la-scene-restaurant.com 

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L’Oeuf Eclate

The new 138 room Mandarin Oriental hotel opened its doors in Paris today, and brilliant chef Thierry Marx fired up the ovens at his new Parisian restaurant, a stunning looking space by Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku called Sur Mesure that will seat only forty covers. If you’re not familiar with Marx, you will be soon, and in the meantime, you might want to read a piece I wrote about him for the late but still lamented Gourmet Magazine several years ago: http://www.gourmet.com/restaurants/2009/05/the-new-marxism-in-france

Among the dishes Marx will be serving at Sur Mesure are such light and beautiful compositions as L’Oeuf Eclate, a richly imagined declension of a hen’s egg, with a roll of scrambled egg white, an egg yolk, and a small savory square of Parmesan custard and a Semipris de coquillages, longuet caviar, a luxurious cameo of chopped razor-shell clams in an iodine rich foam garnished with a buttery finger of toasted caviar-topped brioche.

Semi-pris de Coquillages, Longuet Caviar  Main courses will also demonstrate Marx’s prolific gastronomic imagination, commitment to healthy eating, and fascination with both Japan and new culinary techniques, including his signature risotto of bean sprouts and truffles in soy milk foam, a sublime dish I sampled when he was cooking at Cordeillan Bages, and boned quail with spices and a jus d’herbes.

Bean Sprout and Black Truffle ‘Risotto”

Quail with Spices and a Jus d’Herbes

Desserts will be spectacular, too, including an olive oil tart with red fruits.

Biscuit a l’Huile d’Olive et Fruits Rouges

Stay tuned for a complete review of Sur Mesure within a week or two.

Sur Mesure par Thierry Marx, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 251 rue Saint Honoré, 1st, Tel. 01-70-98-73-00, Metro: Tuileries or Louvre.

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Langoustines in ginger-lime bouillon

Well the old fellow hung on for another twenty years, during which time I occasionally visited their town house in a major European city to enjoy one of the most extraordinary private art collections in Europe–Durer drawings, a Degas or two, a Bonnard, a Renoir, and more–after making a fortune by inventing a small but essential industrial valve, this concentration camp survivor, a really lovely and tremendously cultivated man, rightly knew how to live large.

In fact I knew that he’d probably be grudgingly glad know that his widow had invited me to lunch at this legendary Paris restaurant–remarkably astute, unfailingly shrewd, but also vastly generous, he loved to offer empty-pocket types like myself pleasure at the table but was wildly jealous when his wife was in the company of another man, even a perfectly harmless childhood friend. So I showed up on a frosty January day desperately hoping that the dogs would have been left behind at Madame’s hotel. And, Yes! No dogs, which was great not because I don’t like dogs, but because the tending to this trio would have ultimately become more important than the tending to us during lunch.

Everytime I go to Lasserre, it’s a special occasion, since this two-story town-house restaurant in the 8th arrondissment still breathes the glamorous Paris that seduced me as an elegance-starved child in suburban Connecticut. Arriving, a livried door-man hops to it, and then a kindly older lady makes off with your coat and hands you a chit before you’re ushered into the lift to go to the upstairs dining room.

On my way over, I wondered how things might have changed since Christophe Moret, most recently chef at Restaurant Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athenee, had taked over from Jean-Louis Nomicos, the last chef and also a Ducasse alum. To my relief, making a dash to the men’s before going upstairs, the double-basin pistachio-colored lavabo in the WC, a weird Gallic design on par with certain vintage Citroens, had not been carted way–in my experience, restaurants, shops and hotels invariably decided to remodel just at the moment when their ‘old-fashioned’ decors have achieved a perfect vintage charm. Upstairs, though, an effort had been made to make this special dining room less Auntie Mame–most of the walls–formerly upholstered, have been repainted in a pleasant cocoa brown. Otherwise, though, nothing had changed, thank goodness–there were pots of white orchids around the room as always, and the swell  and very serious brigade of professional middle-aged waiters in fitted black jackets was still in attendance.

In a world gone “GAP,” Lasserre still delivers an exquisite, classical unself-consciously French experience of gourmet dining. But wait–why does this matter Who cares about traditional French haute cuisine Anyone who really loves good food. Why Because rather out of fashion though it may be, this ancestral battery of culinary skills is still capable of rendering a swooning lushness and a dose of weak-knee-inducing pleasure that no other kitchen can.

Proof After a contentious but caring conversation with Madame–how the hell has it happened that such a brilliant woman’s only pulse-raising interest is in paying the smallest amount of taxes possible, Jeesh, we implicitly truced over an identical starter of langoustines in a ginger-lime spiked seafood boullion, and God were they good–four little perfectly poached sea critters nestled in a ruddy vaguely Asian-nodding broth of deeply reduced but very refined shellfish stock.

Next, tender but firm slices of sea bass with with a brilliantly extravagant garnish of black truffles shaved at the table, and so good that I knew that Moret was really galloping after breaking free of the Ducasse stable. And so it went at this lunch, with venison filets cooked perfectly rare with pepper and juniper berries, and finally a sublime “Croustillant aux pommes facon tati, glace vanille,” or Tarte tatin style apple in pastry with homemade vanilla ice cream: exquisite.

So in response to the many people who ask me where it’s worth going in Paris for a grand-slam full-flight high-altitude French meal, I’d have to say that Lasserre hits it out of the park, and bravo Christophe Moret and pastry chef Claire Heitzler.

Lasserre, 17 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 8th, Tel. 01-43-59-02-13. Metro: Champs-Elysees-Clemenceau. Closed Sunday and Saturday lunch. Lunch menu 75 Euros, Tasting menu 185 Euros, Average a la carte 220 Euros.

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An Elegant Parisienne

The only things that would unfailingly draw me out of my warm lair on a wet and very wintry night in Paris are the possibility of eating really good food and spending time with a favorite friend, so on Wednesday I bundled up and headed off to the 10th arrondissement for dinner with the delightful Dorie and, as it turned out, an excellent meal at Philou, a superb new bistro on a side street just off the pretty Canal Saint Martin. Arriving, I knew I’d like this place right away, since it was friendly and cozy, and the white Saumur Champigny that Dorie and I sipped as an aperitif was a very pleasant pour.

This is the new address of amiable restauranteur Philippe Damas, who formerly ran Le Square Trousseau, so I arrived with solid expectations, too. We studied the chalkboard menu for a while, and finally decided on two starters, a scallop and oyster tartare for me and winter vegetables sauteed in salt butter with sea snails and a light herb pesto for Dorie, and both of them delighted when they arrived. The iodine brightness of the chopped oysters was perfect punctuation for the creamy scallops, which were mixed with finely diced baby endives and a few scattered lingonberries that added some color and bright sweet-and-sour notes to this light and quietly elegant winter preparation. The lightly dressed herb salad atop the tartare was a nice touch, too.

Scallop and oyster tartare

Dorie’s vegetables–salsify, daikon, parsnip, potatoes and snow peas were perfectly cooked and the plump chewy sea snails gently poached in a court bouillion brought a touch of oceanic succulence and texture to this beautifully conceived dish.

Our main courses were outstanding, too. My cod on a bed of Le Puy lentils with chopped carrots, celery and lardon was at once light and stick-to-the-ribs consoling on a cold night, while Dorie’s wild duck came with a wonderful half of honey-braised eggplant, a brilliant foil for the rich wild meat.

Desserts were less successful. My caramelized banana mille feuille with coconut ice cream was a good idea, but the pastry was tasted commercial and card-boardy, while Dorie’s lychee gelee garnished with raspberries, a lady finger and some tea ice cream was conceptually wonderful, but not perfectly executed, since the tea in the ice cream was astringent and the glazed lady finger was dull. The wine list is brief and runs to fashionable lesser known regional pours like the red Arbois with a pleasant red cherry nose that we chose as being sturdy enough for the duck, light enough for the cod. Service is efficient and amiable, and this places attracts an exceptionally good-looking crowd of arty young Parisians, many of whom were repairing to canvas enclosed terrace out front for a brief assignation with Philip Morris. If this bistro was in my neighborhood in the 9th, I’d eat here all the time. One way or another, it finds a solid place on my to-go list, especially since it’s also a very good buy.

Philou, 12 Avenue Richerand, 10th, Tel. 01-42-39-04-73. Metro: Republique. Closed on Sunday and Monday.

Formule 15 and 25 € (lunch), menu-carte 25-30 € (dinner).

————–

Ever since I first discovered his cooking at the now defunct Restaurant Eric Frechon in the 19th arrondissement, I’ve been a huge fan of this chef. Not only is he one of the nicest and hardest working cooks in Paris, his brilliant style, a combination of impeccable classical technique and an earthy, sometimes even funky love of French produce, never fails to deliver a truly exquisite meal.

I don’t, of course, go to the three-star Le Bristol very often–it’s rather beyond my means, so I was very happy to be invited for dinner the other night. Arriving, the lobby had a festive atmosphere created by a very pretty Christmas tree, and I immediately noticed that the door to the beautiful Hungarian oak panelled dining room had been moved to one side, a clever idea, since this small change instantly makes this beautiful room more intimate.

Though I very much enjoy the company of my host, this was a business meal, which meant that it was a challenge to remain focused on the conversation when I was experiencing so much private pleasure from what we ate. Instead of a jacket and tie, I wanted to be wearing cashmere pajamas and tucking into this feast in front of the fireplace at home so that I could give it full attention. A first course of Sologne caviar–French caviar just gets better and better, was served atop an airy mousseline of ratte potatoes and smoked haddock, a sublime preparation that was accented by a buckwheat pastry tube filled with delicate citrus cream.

The sommelier supplied a blessedly room temperature glass of excellent Vouvray that was ideal with the caviar and also my first course, a carpaccio of some of the best scallops I’ve ever eaten (you’ll note that I like my scallops raw) with a brilliant sorbet of oysters and a sea-water ‘boule de neige’ topped with caviar.

Next we tasted the Vosne-Romanee aux brulees 1er cru Domaine Meo-Camuzet 2001 that would accompany the rest of our meal, and it was quite simply the best wine I’ve had all year long. It was so good, in fact, that I am still stung by the tragedy of leaving behind a good inch and a half in the bottle, good manners oblige. The wine was sublime with my main course, too, veal sweetbreads cooked in a tobacco leaf and served with a puree of Jerusalem artichokes with a coffee and reglisse jus. Nothing I’ve eaten all year provided more solid evidence of the absolute genius of French cooking either.

Another tragedy struck when the cheese trolley was turned away untouched–I’d have savaged this load of lactic pleasures, but the invisible hour-glass on the table informed me that this wouldn’t be appropriate, so I concluded with a dessert that was lovely for being so simple and refreshing–skinned pink grapefruit segments with a hibiscus gelee, Campari sorbet, and almond meringue.

Sitting in the Metro on the way home from this stunning meal, I couldn’t help but musing on how this meal had been the very definition of a three-star feed and also thinking that the world be an infinitely poorer place without the very occasional pleasure of such transporting gastronomy.

Le Bristol, 112 rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, 8th, Tel. 01-53-43-43-40. Open daily. Average 250 Euros.

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