After reading several positive reviews of Jacopo, the new moderately priced bistro by Thibault Sombardier, a media-loving young chef who has a Michelin star at the seafood restaurant Antoine and who was also a contestant on Top Chef, the French dueling chefs television show, I met a friend for dinner with high expectations. The address in the rue Vernet in the 8^th arrondissement seemed to auger well, too, since this street had once been the location of one of my favorite Paris restaurants, Les Elysees du Vernet at the Hotel Vernet when several superb chefs—notably Bruno Cirino of L’Hostellerie Jerome in La Turbie, successively made it a dark-horse favorite with a beautiful setting under a verriere (glass ceiling) design by Gustave Eiffel (this restaurant still exists and is today known as Le V, but I have no opinion on it today, since I haven’t dined here in at least ten years).

On the way to dinner I also found myself thinking that a decent bistro in this business-and-tourist district of the 8^th Arrondissement along the Champs Elysees might spare some other hapless debutant visitor to Paris the ordeal that befell me on my first night in the French capital (mind you, I’m still eternally grateful to this day that my parents considered this trip to Europe to be an essential part of the education of their four children). On that steamy August night, however, a reunion meal was on the horizon, since my mother, two brothers and me were meeting my father and sister at a hotel just off the Champs Elysees after having traveled on our own for two months.

During those two months when Mom ran the show, we’d eaten exceptionally well, too, including a superb meal at Cipriani in Venice and another one at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna. For the occasion of her children’s first night in Paris, my mother, who had decided to throw caution to winds and spend a good chunk of an inheritance on this trip, had booked us at La Tour d’Argent. She wanted us to have an experience of French haute cuisine, the view of Notre Dame and the Seine by night, and the dozens of intricately stitched lessons in gastronomy, worldliness and gallantry such a meal would surely offer.

Steak at Jacopo

Lemon tart at Jacopo

Suffice it to say, my late father quickly reasserted himself as the family’s final arbiter of all things financial and told my mother to cancel the reservation, because it was, in his view, an absurdly extravagant and foolish place to take adolescent children. “Why don’t you children wait for us in the lobby downstairs,” my mother suggested.

So we sat in a strange row of four armchairs upholstered in some prickly fabric, and eventually they emerged from the elevator, my mother with tear-streaked cheeks first. We ended up walking down the street our hotel was located on and having a meal at the very same Pizza Pino that still exists at the corner of the Champs Elysees and the rue Marignan today (for the uninitiated, Pizza Pino, is a French pizza chain that’s not even on par with such sorry options as Pizza Hut or Sbarro). For ferocious pizza-lovers from the American state that has the best pizza in North America—that would be Connecticut, thank you, this meal was so mind-bendingly bad that it brought on a bout of collective hilarity that disguised, if not completely healed, the conjugal tug of war that had just taken place. To this day, I remained convinced that any cook who puts canned pineapple rings on a pizza is in need of a urgent psychiatric treatment, however.

Who knows, I thought as I arrived at the door of Jacopo, maybe if half-decent reasonably priced French food had been easy for us to find all of those years ago, my Parisian learning curve would have had a different point of departure. As is my habit, I read the menu before going inside to meet my friend, and it looked promising—there were lots of things I’d happily eat—and it was indeed quite reasonably priced, too. The long narrow dining room was rather odd-looking, however. With exposed cement walls and ceiling, bright modern lighting fixtures, dark stained parquet floors and Navy blue Fiberglas chairs at small metal edged tables, it looked more like a sports bar in a Sunbelt city than a bistro.

The joint was jumping, though, with a happy mixture of after-work office friends, tourists, and some French out-of-towners who’d must have heard about the place via word-of-mouth. Over a nice pour of Petit Chablis for 7 Euros a glass, a price that sort of par for the game in any central Paris neighborhood if you’re drinking better than plonk, my friend and me studied the menu and the crowd. We were fish out of water here, you see, because like most Parisians, we almost never find ourselves on the Champs Elysees for any reason that doesn’t have to do with some business-specific errand. Though the city of Paris has made a huge effort to enhance and renew the appeal of the avenue, it’s just not a place Parisians gravitate to, because they’ve long since written it off as tourist turf, or sort of a much better looking and considerably less illuminated Gallic version of Times Square in New York City.

I decided to order a meal that was as French at Vercingetorix, the great hero of the Gauls. To wit, onion soup and blanquette de veau, while my friend opted for the oeufs mayonnaise—hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise, another dish as Gallic as Charles de Gaulle’s nose, and cod persille (parsley butter with tomatoes and bread crumbs). Then I glanced at the wine list, which was where I expected the restaurant would be making its margins, and they so they did. If there was one white at 25 Euros a bottle and a red at 24 Euros, it was an expensive roster, an off-page nod at the rents in this very expensive part of Paris and perhaps targeted at a business crowd at noon. Still, two people having a three-course meal and sharing a bottle of wine could get away for about 35 Euros a piece here, and cheaper still with just a glass of wine with their meal.

Salmon tartare

That’s when it occurred to me: We were having dinner in a French version of the Olive Garden (a popular chain of moderately priced fast-casual Italian restaurants in the United States), or a sort of fast casual pastiche of a real bistro designed to deliver familiar affordable indigenous comfort food at easy prices in a setting that forsook the touristy memes of white laces curtains and red-checked table cloths. And this is when the meal suddenly became really interesting, because even if the French supposedly consumed more hamburgers last year than they did jambon beurre, the famous sandwich made with baguette, ham and salted butter, the success of this no-reservations restaurant is a reflection of a deep yearning for the type of traditional French dishes that few middle-class people in France have the time to prepare anymore and which are now most often found in a handful of expensive tourist-oriented bistros in Paris. But would the food be good at Jacopo?

Our first courses were not promising, to say the least. My onion soup was unpleasantly sweet, which made me less unhappy that it had been served in such a stingy bowl, and was garnished with a large obviously pre-made crouton topped with dried out melted cheese. More puzzlingly, the oeufs mayonnaise were frankly terrible; the three egg halves (what happened to the fourth one?) were overcooked and topped with a thick flavorless foam that had no resemblance to mayonnaise whatsoever. “You can’t expect miracles for these prices,” my pal commented as she observed my optimism deflating. Except, that is, when you can.

My blanquette de veal was so good that I knew that if I found myself at lose ends for a meal in this part of town, I’d pop in to Jacopo again just to eat this delicate stew of tender meat, onions, mushrooms and carrots in a silken and light but flavorful cream sauce.

“This is really good,” I told my pal.

“No!”

“Yes! Have a taste,” I said, and she did.

“It is good, but my fish is overcooked and has no flavor.”

A shared and rather sad baba au rhum concluded this gastronomic foray, and I went off into the night undecided about the utility of this place, because on the one hand, it was better than the fast food places and chain restaurants on the Champs Elysees, and also relatively affordable, and on the other, the cooking was decidedly hit and miss.

Fast forward two weeks. On a rainy day around noon, I found myself in this neighborhood again when I went to collect a travel visa from an embassy located here, and as it started to pour, I found myself standing hungry near the doors of Jacopo just as it opened for lunch, and thought, Why not?

This time round, a steamed artichoke with a vinaigrette sauce as a starter, chicken breast in a nicely made sauce with baby lardons and mushrooms and surprisingly good frites brought on the same sort of pleasantly muddled satisfaction I used to feel many many years ago when I ate at…Howard Johnson’s, the sadly now defunct, solidly middle-class, middle-of-the-road Quincy, Massachusetts based restaurant chain that passed as a treat for their fried clam plates and peppermint-stick ice cream with hot fudge-sauce sundaes.

Everything wasn’t good at Howard Johnson’s—you had to know what to order, and the same thing is true of Jacopo, which is nobly catering to a similar demographic niche, too. To wit, if you know what you’re doing, you can have a perfectly pleasant meal here, especially for this part of Paris. My late father would have loved it.

5bis rue Vernet, 8^th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-42-89-20-22, Metro: George V. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Average 35 Euros. www.jacopo.fr

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When friends recently suggested meeting for Sunday dinner at Le Petit Lutetia, I looked forward to going as much for their company and a good dose of nostalgia as anything else. For the eleven years I spent living in two different Left Bank apartments–one in the rue Monsieur, the second in the rue du Bac, I lived within walking distance of this nice old neighborhood brasserie in the rue de Sevres.

I didn’t go very often, though, because the food was, as the French would say, correcte, or acceptable, but rarely better than that. They did have an oyster stand out front for a longtime, though, and the confit de canard (duck preserved in its own fat and then grilled golden and crispy) was a good meal on a cold night, especially when it came with duck-fat sautéed Sardalais potatoes with a generously sprinkling of chopped garlic and parsley.

The prices were affordable, and it was nice to know that it was there for those nights when I got home late from work and had an empty fridge, or I just wanted a quick bite with a friend without leaving the neighborhood. The waiters in long white aprons were polite, and the art-nouveau dining room itself had handsome stencilled tile floors. Upfront and just inside the door, the bar was separated from the rest of the space by beveled glass partions, the lighting was low and amber, and murky but pretty oil paintings framed in dark molding on the walls gave the place some character. To wit, Le Petit Lutetia was a useful if unremarkable neighborhood place that just ticked along uneventfully from one year to the next.

And like all neighborhood restaurants, this was one with which I had a long skein of memories, some happy–a first date that became a second one very quickly, a tete a tete with a new friend after a movie on a rainy night, and others sad–a break-up dinner that didn’t last until dessert and a final excruciating meal with a visiting relative who shall remain unnamed after we’d just spent four days together in Istanbul that had left my nerves completely macramed.

As we approached the restaurant the other night, however, I was surprised to see a framed notice on a stanchion indicating that they now had a voiturier, or car-parking service. This struck me as odd, because most of the people who dined here came by foot.

Inside, the nice older man with gray hair and steel-rimmed glasses who ran the dining room for many years was no long there, but this came as no surprise. My guess was that he’d retired, and I hope he’d was off somewhere in the Pyrenees fishing for trout or in his home wood-working shop in the Limousin, or something like that. Aside from the absence of the oyster stand out front, however, nothing else seemed to have changed, although I did notice that the waiters were much younger than they’d once been and also that the dining room was busier than I’d expected it might be on a rainy night.

As I slid in on the banquette, it was just as broken-bottomed as it was when I last been here, oh what, maybe twelve years ago. But then I noticed patissier Pierre Herme sitting at a table a few down from us, and further along, a well-known decorator having a dinner with a friend. So even before I opened the menu, I knew something had changed here, since Le Petit Lutetia was most definitely not a place to attract those who assiduously cultivate the public eye back in the days when I was an occasional customer.

And indeed something had changed: the menu, which was considerably more expensive and also rather more interesting than it had once been, with modish to boring dishes like smoked salmon with blinis and creme fraiche, red tuna tartare; a 28 Euros salad of lettuce, avocado and King Crab (the menu specifies, ‘beaucoup de crabe,’ mais quand-meme!), and, perhaps as a sop to the well-bred and habitually parsimonious grandmothers who invite their grandchildren here for dinner, a simple vegetable soup for 8 Euros.

Oh, well, what the hell, even it was absurdly expensive, I feel like some smoked salmon tonight, I thought to myself, and after that, I’ll have the confit de canard for old times’ sake. Bruno went all fish with the tuna tartare and grilled salmon, Carole sank for the soup and then smoked salmon (diet), and Laurent the tuna tartare and then the veal chop with mushrooms, a head-splitting 40 something Euros. Deputised to order the wine, I was fiddling with the list when our bearded waiter arrived, and then it struck me. In a flash, I was certain this place had been taken over by one or more of the Costes brothers. So I asked, and he seemed oddly reluctant to answer my question.
“Very little has changed here since the new owner took over,” he said, somewhat evasively.
So I persisted. Was Le Petit Lutetia now owned by one or more of the Costes brothers?
“Why do you need to know#8221; he said with a stiff smile.
“I’m a very curious kind of guy, that’s all, Sir,” I replied.
“M’oui, Jean-Louis Costes,” he said and scurried away without taking our wine order.

My heart sank, because I just don’t do Costes restaurants. For me, their style of restaurant keeping has done serious damage to Paris by privileging atmosphere and casting–both in terms of dining-room personnel and clientele, i.e. only the rich, famous and/or beautiful need apply, over good food. And the snideness of the service at many of the restaurants they run–Georges on the top of the Centre Pompidou, La Societe in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, L’Avenue on the Avenue Montaigne, and Le Cafe Marly at the Louvre, among other addresses, led me to swear them off many years ago.

Now I understood the sprinkling of recognisable faces in the dining room, the stratospheric prices, and the menu of food for people who are more interested in going to restaurants for social reasons than gastronomic ones. Oh, well, all I could do was hope for the best, which aside from a previous wound to the wallet, was more or less exactly what happened.

My starter of smoked salmon was so generously served it could easily have been a main course–and so it should have been for the price, and its quality was excellent. Bruno and Laurent loved their tuna tartare–nice plump chunks of good quality fish on a bed of mashed avocado with a little cilantro and a bit of chopped scallion, and despite its rather sad pale army-green split-pea color, Carole was content with her soup.

And then our main courses arrived. Was this food excellent or memorable No, but it was correct at a higher level of correctness than the old Le Petit Lutetia once was, and in terms of what this patch of the Left Bank has become today, this seems to suffice for most of its clients, many of whom appeared to be regulars.

But as I tucked into my confit de canard, I couldn’t help but feeling wistful for the inhabitants of the old stables building at the head of the courtyard at 134 rue du Bac, my last Left Bank address. In this odd-bod building, there was a middle-aged lady who was a sales woman at a luxury boutique in Paris and the mistress of a married minister in the French cabinet, a rather deranged American poetess who was no shyer about populating her bed with eager and likely candidates night after night than I was, the widow of a French ambassador to an African country who lived among the collection of arts and objects this life had yielded, a mean old drunk who worked for a bank on the ground floor, a delightful and incredibly talented French-Argentine couple–he, an architect, she, an amazingly talented painter, who lived across the hall from me, and who cheated on each other in such epic ways that they finally flew apart, and, well, me. You see, this curious laundry bag of people was what once made the Left Bank so wonderful. And it’s now pretty much gone, since the same urban story has played out here that has played out in other wonderful funky urban neighbourhoods I once inhabited, Earl’s Court in London and Greenwich Village in New York City. Why None of the inhabitants of the flats in the old stables could afford to live there today, and the complexion of the neighbourhood has changed so thoroughly, that many of the well-heeled newcomers who’ve replaced them would surely look down their noses at neighbours who don’t have the money they do.

So as obvious as it may seem to say so, a ‘neighborhood’ restaurant will always be a reflection of who lives there, and as the great threshing out of the Western world’s major cities continues and even accelerates, places like the Le Petit Lutetia I once knew, or a flock of ordinary West Village restaurants with straggly spider plants in their windows and better than decent cheeseburgers and meatloaf to accompany really well-made Martinis have vanished for ever. Alas. But Bruno’s marinated salmon (soy sauce, mirin, etc.) was very good, as was Laurent’s cote de veau. And I liked my confit de canard, which was just fine, but pleased me more than anything else because it’s a dish you so rarely see on a restaurant menus in Paris anymore. That said, the potato garnish was heat-lamp dried out and not only lacking the duck fat that would have given them flavor but the coarse hash of raw garlic and parsley that has always titillated me, a garlic fiend from birth.

Carole finished up with an Ile Fottante, but the gents abstained from dessert, because we were well fed and quietly wary of the bill. As we sipped our post-prandial coffees, I found myself wondering, would I come back here again. Well, not as a destination restaurant, but forewarned that it would be thumpingly expensive and eager to show some visiting jet-lagged friends what Paris is all about, yes, I’d come back. But with these conditions occurring rather rarely, and so many of my visiting friends obviously arriving on a quest for seriously good and interesting food, I rather doubt that my face will grace this door again for another ten years or so.

Before heading home, I headed for the men’s room, where the glazed ceramic plaque of a little hobo made me think that the last time I’d been here was yesterday.

107 rue de Sèvres, 6th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-45-48-33-53. Metro: Vaneau or Duroc, Average 60-90 € Open daily from noon to midnight.

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Chef Marc Favier’s new restaurant Bouillon in the 9th Arrondissement in Paris has been getting very good reviews, but while I liked it, I’m not sure I’d go back. Why It’s expensive for what it serves, and I found a perceptible lack of generosity in the restaurant’s DNA. To wit, there was no amuse bouche, or little madeleines served with the coffee. Instead, the waitress offered a jar of cheap brightly colored hard candies that were of no interest whatsoever, and when we didn’t finish our 50 Euro roast duck, the leftovers were spirited off to the kitchen while I was outside taking an urgent phone call and Bruno was in the WC; they might have made for a nice parmentier du canard the following day and should have been offered.

So am I right and the others who liked it more eagerly wrong No, since there’s broadly no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to having an opinion of a restaurant. What brought this to mind was an interview I did the other day, when one of the journalists told me that she’d had lunch with a French food critic who “really didn’t like Hexagone,” a place I’ve recently reviewed on this site and like very much. Pause. Longer pause. I wasn’t sure what she was after, so I finally said “Chacun a son gout,” and left it at that.

Of course everyone has a right to their own opinion, and that’s what makes reading restaurant reviews both useful and interesting, since you can usually tease out some sort of reliable truth from the considered judgments of a group of experienced food writers and critics. The thing is, the sacking of critical expertise brought on by the internet and crowd-sourced reviews is still having a huge impact on the way we think about food and judge restaurants for the simple reason that most of the English speaking world has always disdained arts de vivre experts as being pretentious and bit too fancy for their own good. The internet has put this suspicion of pointy-headed experts on steroids, with all sorts of attempts to extrude the truth about food and eating out of the general public through means that are occasionally statistical but more often just everyman (or woman)-gets-a-turn-at-the-mike. So that’s where we are today, and the complicated and finely tuned balance between the subjective and the objective that’s at the heart of all professional reviewing, whether the object being reviewed is a play, a film, an automobile or a meal, goes missing. And this is not a good thing, either for anyone who loves great food or for the chefs who produce it.

For my part, these days in Paris, when prices have been rocketing up at an eye-watering rate, I find myself becoming more exigent than ever for the simple reason that we’re good cooks, so when I go out, I’m not only looking for good food, although that’s always my priority, but charm, generosity, atmosphere and value-for-the-money. Otherwise, I’m very happy to go down the road for a good bottle of wine and a nice sea bass or pork roast and hit the pots and pans in my own kitchen. What I’m less likely to do, however, is roast a duck, since weekday dinners usually have to be a bit more expedient than that with Bruno often getting home late from work, and so I was totally game when he suggested we have the roast Bugaud duck with baby potatoes, jus de viande and salad.

While the duck was roasting, we nibbled on some stale bread while waiting for our starters, a ‘Coca’ for Bruno and some ham with guindillas, or Spanish pickled green peppers for me. Coca is a Catalan dish of flatbread with various different possible garnishes, so I asked the waitress if the chef had worked in Spain. “Mais non!” she replied, explaining that he was from the Roussillon, or that leaf shaped southeastern corner of France that the Spanish ceded in 1642 after the Thirty Years war. To do this day, though, it has a decidedly Catalan tint, and given the prosperity of Catalonia and the allure of Barcelona, the Roussillon is increasingly being drawn back to its Catalan roots for reasons both cultural and economic.

Bruno’s Coca was a curious hybrid of French and Catalan when it arrived, since it was made with puffy pastry instead of the flatbread the Catalans use. Then it was topped with sautéed onions and an anonymous sort of fritto mist, a few squirt-bottle blazes of anchovy cream and some fresh herbs. “It’s okay,” said Bruno when I asked, and I offered the same response re my plate of curiously wan-tasting ham. When I asked the waitress where the ham was from, she replied, “France!” So I left it at that.

The duck was a beautifully roasted bird when it came to the table in an enameled yellow casserole some minutes later. Some people looking at the photo may conclude that it was under-cooked, but the French like their duck rare, and I agree, since the bird loses all of its flavor and juicy goodness when it’s overcooked. If the salad garnish was a nice idea, the somewhat crudely carved bird awkwardly sat on top of a generous pile of baby potatoes in a lush and deeply flavored jus de viande.

All things being equal, this was not a very successful or logical presentation, since the bird seemed crammed into the casserole and it was difficult to get at the nice little nest of spuds below. The other thing that went missing, however, was the flickering sense of having ordered anything special. I don’t expect that a bistro with a single server could possibly undertake table side carving every time an order for the bird comes in, but there should have been some cue from the staff and the kitchen that they knew we had decided to treat ourselves to something nice. The duck was delicious, and so it should have been for 50 Euros, but deprived of any sense of the ceremonial, our pleasure was somehow dented.

So since the desserts weren’t very appealing, we concluded our meal with a coffee, and then refused the canister of hard candies which were presented when the bill–over 120 Euros for two starters, the duck, a small bottle of water and a very good Cotes du Roussillon–came to the table. For the same money, I’d have happily gone back to Clover, Jean-Francois Piege’s delightful new bistro in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, or Le Bon Georges, our local go-to bistro, or the wonderful nearby Pantruche if it hadn’t become so difficult to get a table there.

A proper restaurant meal is almost always an optional choice, and this is why a certain joyful ceremoniousness and generosity is required to make it a success.

Bouillon, 47 rue de Rochechouart, 9th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 09-51-18-66-59. Metro: Poissonnière, Anvers, Cadet, Closed Sunday and Monday. Lunch plat du jour 14 Euros, average a la carte 50 Euros.

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It’s also true that the social context of my first meal at the restaurant had been emotionally arduous, and that several weeks ago, I’d received a castigating email from someone who’d read of my struggle to be fair to chef Philippe Excoffier (reviewed on this site), given his association, however tangential, with the Bush administration. In that instance, the reader had not been very alert, since I admitted to my prejudices, explained their origin, and went back to this restaurant several times before offering a public verdict. In any event, I try to be as fair as I possibly can, always, but it’s also true that eating is an emotional and psychological experience, and that we bring ourselves to the table as we are of a given day, or a given meal, and that this inevitably influences the way that we perceive of what we eat. That said, I do my best to use as much of a self-critical tuning fork (sic) as I possibly can to find an equilibrium between gastronomic subjectivity–the inevitable, and objectivity, the hopefully professional.

So after I was invited to dinner here a few nights after it opened by a colleague, and emerged from the meal totally befuddled and rather disappointed, I went back in the hopes that maybe it had just been an off night. Unfortunately, however, this will never be a restaurant I enjoy, and that’s for a variety of reasons beginning with the fact that the concept–Pic’s new place serves a choice of three expensive prix-fixe menus that are themed to the fragrances born by a panel of three paper scent strips that are presented to you with the menus, is at once too high-concept and then much too precious to be really enjoyable (It actually made me think of the famous fumble at Alain Ducasse in New York, when he offered a variety of fountain pens with which to sign your check, or hotel pillow menus, for that matter, both studies in pink-cheeked errancy when simplicity gets keel-hauled in the name of marketing). Then there’s the fact that I never warmed to designer Bruno Borrione’s decor, which is decidedly feminine–the pink-tinted Italian glass wall-sconces, and, to my American eyes, jarringly tract-house, with the white faux brick on the walls, which brought to mind the “finished basements” of yore, where we repaired as teenagers to smoke joints while watching late-night movies and eating frozen “Tree Tavern” pizza with snitched beers. This decorative wash-out was puzzling, too, because Borrione did a gorgeous job decorating Les Avisés, the hottest new hotel-restaurant in the Champagne region.

There’s a small open kitchen upfront, and too many tables in an awkward room, a space that’s really not ideal for a restaurant. And then there was the problem of the young and decidedly hidebound service. I don’t know where they found these folks, but they need some serious coaching. When I politely reprimanded our waitress for so insistently speaking English to two Americans who’ve done a lot of work to master Moliere’s mash, she excused herself by saying, “The thing is, I just like to speak English.” Someone should send this crew on a remedial weekend to Danny Meyer’s restaurants in New York, or even across the Channel to Dabbous, where the team in London’s hottest restaurant hits it out of the park by being so earnest, alert and charming.

Ultimately, all of this wouldn’t have mattered much, or would have mattered much less, if the food had been consistent with Pic’s substantial talent. But I had a hunch that our meal might underwhelm when we were presented with two perfumed butters–tonka bean and Matcha, with our bread. Neither seasoning really added much to the butter, but instead recalled the sort of over-perfumed culinary mannerism practiced by chef Bruno Loubet when he was still cooking in Lourmarin. Our Pacojet first courses mystified me, too. The peaks of mozzarella foam, apparently seasoned with vanilla and rum, were pretty to look at and tasty enough despite being too salty, and with red and yellow cherry tomatoes tucked away in their peaks, this preparation came off as something conceived to please a difficult starlet in her (his?) dressing room. I much preferred my cauliflower foam with a finely sliced Gillardeau oyster since the threatened jasmine essence was blessedly absent, and the combination of shellfish and cauliflower is a fine old Breton sawhorse.

But when perfume is always such an intrinsic part of gastronomic pleasure, why would a great chef chose to make such an evidence of it when these liasons are most exciting when they’re discreet, even subliminal And as if to inter any subtlety whatsoever, our next course, a delicate if not exactly seasonal green-pea puree on a bed of alarmingly licquorice (reglisse) flavored flan nearly short-circuited the meal. The pea extrusion was such an elegant final dose of chlorophyll before the green world shuts down for winter, but it was unpleasantly dynamited by the aggressiveness of the reglisse, which also completely knocked out our wine.

By this point in the meal, I found myself profoundly wondering why Pic had decided to come to Paris. From my perspective, this restaurant adds nothing to the capital’s gastronomic landscape, and quite honestly, I had trouble believing that this project was something she had originated–it’s just so far removed from the exquisite elegance of her restaurants in Valence or Switzerland, especially given the fact that for 75 Euros, they’re lots and lots of other restaurants in Paris that offer better food and service in a more felicitous setting–Jean-Francois Piege’s upstairs gastronomic address in the 7th most notably among them within this spectrum of ambition. Our meal finally sort of found its footing when our main course was served–impeccably cooked Bresse chicken with baby spinach and finely sliced razor-shell clams in an angelic sauce that was just slightly wrong-footed by orange-flower water. Then we had a trio of Picodon (goat cheeses) from the Drome, which were variously seasoned with rosemary, beer and honey–none of which we could taste, thankfully, and desserts, which weren’t memorable.

It kind of makes me cringe to say so, since critical restaurant reviews are very much out of fashion in Paris these days, but I honestly can’t imagine who this restaurant was designed to please–especially in this neighborhood, the rue du Louvre, which is a long way from the expense-account big-spenders of the 8th arrondissement and La Defense, and why Anne-Sophie Pic signed off on a place that so improbably bears her signature. And as if you didn’t need any more confusing inputs, in French, La Dame de Pic means “The Queen of Spades”…say what?

20 rue du Louvre, 1st, Tel. 01-42-60-40-40,  Métro: Louvre-Rivoli. Closed on Sunday. Lunch menu 49 Euros; prix-fixe menus 79, 100 and 120 euros. www.ladamedepic.com

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

Sure enough, no sooner than we’d introduced ourselves and ordered, then Petra shot her first arrow. I won’t attempt to recreate my response, except to say that I basically believe that today Paris remains first among many equals, because of the spectacular excellence of French culinary training, a public with a deep knowledge of and pride in the country’s gastronomy, and Europe’s nec plus ultra produce. I also added that as much as I rejoice in the remarkable talent of young French chefs like Betrand Grebaut at Septime, I despair at the ongoing erosion of traditional bistro cooking in Paris.  Every great food city needs a gastronomic ballast, and for me, in Paris that has always been really great bistro cooking. “So when was the last time you had an excellent traditional bistro meal at a place that you could recommend#8221; “That would be at Benoit a few weeks ago,” I said, with the precision that I had gone expressly to eat the special 100 Euro menu they’re offering to celebrate the restaurant’s 100th birthday. It was was nearly flawless.

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

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

“We ate exquisite rabbit rillettes with hot toast and glasses of Champagne, then Monsieur Bonneau, one of the best maitre d’hotels in Paris, slipped in some Langue de Veau Lucullus, because Bruno, my partner, had become all puppy-dog excited when he spotted this speciality of his hometown of Valenciennes in the north of France on the menu–it’s a sort of surprisingly light construction of fine layers of smoked veal tongue bound with a mousse de foie, followed by fat green Provencal asparagus in a truffled mousseline. Real Victor Hugo or Gustave Flaubert food!” “Was there more#8221; “Bien sur! We had turbans of sole on creamed spinach in a sauce Nantua, which is always made with crayfish, in this case from Lake Geneva, and then roast lamb with baby Spring vegetables.” “My God, Alec! Do you have pictures#8221;

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

Langue de Veau LucullusAsperges Vertes, Mousseline Truffee

Sole NantuaLamb with Spring VegetablesProfiteroles, or the Temptation of Bruno

“And do you have a reasonably priced new place that I might try tonight, Alec#8221; I asked Petra where she was staying, which was with a friend near the Canal Saint Martin, and Louloucam, a very sincere new bistro with an intriguing two-speed menu, or a mix of French classics and some clever modern dishes, by chef Jean Matthieu Frédéric, ex La Tour d’Argent, Le Meurice, and Chez Géraud, immediately came to mind. I’d eaten here with a couch-surfing pal in town from New Orleans on a Saturday night, and we’d loved our fun waitress, who’d lived Australlia for a while, the excellent terrine de foie gras, poached leeks cleverly spiked with lemongrass–now that’s one to copy, entrecote with pommes Maxim, and great desserts–poached pear in caramel sauce and cream-filled choux as part of a 31 Euro menu.

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

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

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

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A Table a la Marguerite

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good grief, these prices are rather stiff for a bistro in Les Halles, aren’t they#8221; said Nola. “Hate to be a wet blanket, but I think all of you who write about food have become a bit too cavalier about how expensive many of the city’s new restaurants are. You know I can get a very good meal at Lilane, my little local go to behind the Place Monge, for a lot less than we’re going to end up spending here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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Photo @ Bob Peterson

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

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

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

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

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

After a half-hour, our first course showed up–white asparagus with a coddled egg, a slice of delicious country ham from the Lot, and a scattering of chopped black olive, or a pleasant cameo of angelic springtime eating I’ve eaten in many other places. In the meantime, forty minutes passed, which was fine in a way, because I was enjoying our conversation about, among other things, how massively over-covered the Paris food scene is these days relative to the real interest or importance of what’s going on here, but finally I was about to signal the waiter and find out what was going on, when he showed up. “Have you had the fish yet#8221; Nope. Fifteen minutes later, a small salad of shaved fennel with garlic flowers and a tiny piece of seared bonito arrived. It was fine, but hardly memorable, and by this time, the balking rhythm of this meal and cheerfully amateur and disorganized service was beginning to test our patience. Even though I strenuously dislike stuffy, formal, pretentious service, and am, like David, inclined to be very forgiving of the staff or kitchen to a fault, because I’ve been the one standing, the one cooking, it was exasperating that our meal had become sort of a very slow rolling catastrophe.

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

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

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

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

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Bruno pondering Aux Verre de Contact

A perfect example of one of the most welcome recent trends in Paris–relaxed and affordable wine bars serving interesting small plates and ‘natural’ or organic wines (others include Le Dauphin, Vivant, Les Fines Gueules, Frenchie Wine Bar, and Le Verre Vole), it occupies an old atelier space and is furnished with an appealing mix of flea-market finds (N.B. The decor may have changed, because they were planning a major renovation during the summer). The chalkboard menu changes daily, but runs to edgy modern French comfort food that offer delicious cameos of James Henry’s fertile culinary imagination, and it’s quickly become one of the most popular addresses in town with the smart, younger tribe of chefs, wine merchants and food writers who are propelling the wine-bar trend. Everyone seems to know each other, so there’s a lot of chatting between tables and stepping outside with glass of wine for some fresh air or a smoke. It doesn’t feel clubby, though–everyone’s welcome and there’s zero attitude here. Instead, this crew really seems to enjoy what they do and in sharing it.

Just sitting at the table with a glass of white wine waiting for my friend Ona, a glamorous Turkish journalist who’s new in town, I was having a good time, which led me to reflect on the fact that good hospitality is often the X factor in a restaurant. A chef can be really talented but if he or she and their team don’t actually like the front of house side of this business, which is greeting and serving, a restaurant can fall flat, a regretable example of same being Guillaume Delage’s just opened Aux Verres de Contact (reviewed below). Chefs who don’t like their customers make me think of travel writers who disdain tourists, it just doesn’t make sense. Anyway, the crowd here was clearly having a great time, and it became more obvious to me than ever that this new breed of wine bar have filled the gap left behind my the rolling demise of Paris’s traditional neighborhood bistros, i.e. casual, affordable places where you get a good feed while having a great night out. As they’ve become rarer but still much sought-after many bistros have gone decidedly upmarket in terms of their prices and serving style, a case in point being Au Bon Accueil in the 7th arrondissement.

When Ona showed up, tousled but beaming after an assignation with a very famous French business man (married, bien sur), it took me a while to figure out what she meant by “I hoped it would not become like Mr. Rarfeller,” which I finally realized was a surprisingly arcane reference to Nelson Rockefeller’s amorous demise–you just never know what’s going to come out of this one’s mouth, and that’s why she’s so much fun. That solved, I wasn’t interested in more details, so we ordered a bottle of Loire Valley coteaux de Giennois and savaged the menu. We started with a salad of Joël Thiébault vegetables, octopus and squid and a terrific vaguely Catalan dish of seared tuna chunks, mussels and tomatoes with just a whisper of saffron and pimenton in the light mayonnais-y sauce, and both were delicious wolfed down with real country bread–thick crusted and tangy, made by chef Thierry Breton of Chez Michel, which is one of my favorite bistros even though it now runs 50 Euros a head–restaurant prices have gone through the roof in Paris this year.

Though it’s become pretty ubiquitous, we also ordered some burrata with heirloom tomatoes–I can’t ever get enough burrata, that creamy cousin of mozzarella from Apuglia, and glasses of an excellent red Sancerre from Pinoz Dauny to go with a superb steak tartare and the best dish of the evening, which was seared steak with kimchi style cornichons that James Henry had made himself. Though there’s doubtless some arcane Parisian law against doing so (drinking in a public space), everyone ended up taking their bottles outside and standing around chatting until 2.30am under umbrellas in a driving but warm summer rain storm. This is a swell spot, and I’m sure I’ll be here often this Fall.

Because he’s a very good chef, I’m sure I’ll also give Guillaume Delage’s Aux Verres de Contact another try, too, but my meal here with Bruno and friends Laurent and Carole didn’t hit the sweet spot I’d been hoping for. Delage is the chef of Jadis, a bistro in the 15th that I’ve been crowing about for a while, but I haven’t been back there for the last couple of months either. Why It’s dispriting to travel to such a remote location–Jadis is in the deep 15th near the Porte de Versailles, and experience exasperated and long-suffering service. The waiters at Aux Verre de Contact were friendlier than the dining room staff at Jadis–and mind you, I don’t like Saint-Bernard-in-heat-style all-over-you service at all, but still distracted and absent minded. Our aperitif glasses were still on the table when we paid our bill, and a request for some much needed salt elicited a rolled eyes response; I wish restaurants would just put the salt and pepper on the table and be done with it. The absence of this duo often communicates a chef-knows-better sort of attitude that’s never a good sign.

As four, we were able to eat our way through most of Aux Verre de Contact’s menu, and if the food was pretty good, it was also very expensive for it was and everyone hated having to order side dishes at additional expense. Among our starters, Laurent’s marinated herring was the star, athough the warm potato salad mentioned on the menu had been replaced by lentils vinaigrette with no warning; Bruno’s marinated salmon was decent but dull; and Carole’s salade du jour of roasted peppers and little balls of goat cheese brought catered business lunches to mind. My shrimp with curried vegetables and smoked duck breast didn’t really coalesce in terms of tastes and textures either.

Main courses were pretty to look at and better-than-average, too, but none of them were memorable. I had to ask for the aioli that came with my cod, and the overcooked fish really needed it, too, but Bruno’s steak tartare was excellent–as well it should have been for 23 Euros with a few leaves of salad and a couple of soggy fries. Seventeen Euros seemed like an awful lot of money for a couple of fried eggs with ratatouille and a few slices of smoked tuna, which is what Carole had, and Laurent would have liked his pork breast both crunchier and more tender, too.

Since I like Delage’s cooking so much, and it was my idea to come here, I was more tempered in my opinions than the other three. The kitchen obviously cooks with excellent produce, and I’d much rather eat here than at any brasserie I can think of, but in the end, I had to agree with Laurent’s assessment of the meal: “Pas mal, mais trop cher et service a revoir” or “Not bad, but too expensive, and the service needs work.” Dog days of August oblige, I’ll give Aux Verres de Contact another chance, but really hope they move over to a prix-fixe format before I come back.

Au Passage, 1 bis passage Saint Sébastien, 11th, Tel. 01-43-55-07-52. Metro: Sébastien Froissart, Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Average 30 Euros.

Aux Verres de Contact, 52 boulevard Saint-Germain, 5th, Tel. 01-46-34-58-02, Metro: Maubert Mutualite. Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Closed Sunday. Average 40 Euros.

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With a name that makes it clear they’re making a play for the fashion-business lunch crowd in the heart of Paris, including, rather panderingly, staff from nearby Chanel, Camélia is the ‘second’ table of the just opened Mandarin Oriental Paris hotel. It’s also under the aegis of the hotel’s chef Thierry Marx, and weather permitting they serve outdoors in the hotel’s attractively landscaped interior courtyard garden. So deciding to take advantage of a woefully rare break in the ceaseless rain falling on Paris this summer, and also curious about what Marx would get up to at a ‘second’ table, Bruno and I made a dash for it and went to dinner here the other night.

Both of us found the fiber-optic pin pricks of light in the carpeting at the entrance to the hotel alarmingly Dubai in terms of taste, but the garden itself, which is divided in half between the restaurant’s terrace and the bar’s outdoor serving area by a shallow black stone fountain, is lush and lovely.

 The ivy cascading from layers of planters on the back wall of the atrium added an odd Seventies touch, though, since this vegetal arrangement reminded me of the first John Portman designed atrium-centered hotels for Hyatt Regency, and with this visual cue, I kept expecting Captain & Tennille to turn up on the unfortunate Musak that aurally inhabits this space.

The service from the nice young women who work here was immediately charming, though, and we settled in over a glass of bone-dry sparkling Montlouis, a very nice wine and much more reasonably priced than any of the Champagnes they serve by the glass. I was surprised that the menu was so short, but not that it was so expensive–the Mandarin Oriental is positioning itself to compete with such estimable grande dames as the Ritz, the Bristol and the Plaza Athenee as one of the first 21st century luxury hotels in Paris.

After nibbling on olives and some surprisingly mediocre bread, our first courses arrived. I was in a smoked salmon mood and got a dainty chunk of same accompanied by a salad of herbs and a candy-bar shaped potato cake that was saved from being hopelessly bland by four little salmon eggs and the salt I added.

  Bruno did much better than I did with a sublime terrine of beef–shredded braised meat that was full of flavor and surrounded a somewhat superfluous nob of foie gras. The little pansy garnishing this earthy, old-fashioned profoundly Gallic dish was as silly as spotting Arnold Schwartzenegger with a red hibiscus blossom behind one ear, but it was heart-warming to come across such an impeccable example of this rock-of-ages and very labor-intensive French treat. The accompanying salad of herbs included a few sprigs of tarragon that flattered the terrine, too.

My curiosity got the better of me when the waitress explained the sliced Hereford beef filet as being like “Le Tigre qui Pleure,” which is served at the Hotel Costes next door. Surely the Mandarin Oriental Paris doesn’t think it’s going to pull the same crowd as the Costes One way or another, I didn’t see a lot of people alighting in front of the Mandarin Oriental from one of those in-your-face four-wheel drive gas-gulping brazonly environmentally unfriendly monsters favored by Costes customers. And the garden here was curiously absent any of the many face-softening candles that this same crowd likes when they’re strutting their Roberto Cavalli or Gucci.

Anyway, for anyone who doesn’t know it, this modish dish is a sort of a riff on beef carpaccio, served at the Costes with a gingery sauce, and at the Mandarin Oriental with a puckery sauce that tasted mostly of Worcestershire sauce. It came with a tiny side dish of undercooked turned potatoes and a couple of braised shallots and was completely forgettable.

Bruno, on the hand, had a wonderful spelt risotto with finely shaved ribbons of squid and a bright lemony sauce, a much happier example of Thierry Marx’s cooking than my beef. The highlight of the evening here, during which we drank the cheapest wine on the short wine list, a red Crozes Hermitage at a thumping 50 Euros, was spotting Carole Bouquet and Jacques Attali seated inside of the raised egg-shaped VIP table at the back of the garden. Marx was chatting them up, and she was beautiful and drop-dead chic in a fluttery oyster-colored toga-like dress.

Desserts here are a selection of the pastries that the hotel sells at a pastry counter–a popular amenity in Asian hotels, just inside the entry to the restaurant. We had our hearts set on splitting a slice of lemon tart, but the last piece was sold before we could order it, and we settled for a slightly soggy slice of peach tart instead.

The bill for this meal was almost 200 Euros, a thumping sum that led me to some musings on what the ‘second’ restaurant in a luxury hotel should be. Supposedly they exist as both a service to hotel clients who don’t want to go out or as a way of enticing Parisians on to the premises and creating a link between these sanctuaries and real life in the city. Oddly, almost none of the luxury hotels in Paris gets this type of restaurant right, although I do find the very occasional meal at the Relais Plaza at the Plaza Athenee amusing for its beau monde crowd and pretty good food. If it were up to me, though, I’d create a knock-down good Paris bistro on my premises that serves all of those foods that people dream of when they’re sitting in a Paris-bound air-plane cutting up chicken with plastic knives–onion soup, escargots, terrine de foie gras, boeuf bourguignon, blanquette de veau, and roast chicken, for example. “Real” old-fashioned Paris bistros have become so sadly rare that it would be terrific to see one of the city’s palace hotels deploy their ample resources towards adding to this diminished flock, and I suspect that any such address could be a huge success.

Camélia, Mandarin Oriental Paris, 251 rue Saint-Honoré, 1st, Tel. 01-70-98-74-00, Metro: Concorde or Tuileries. Open daily. Lunch menu 45 Euros. A la carte 75 Euros.

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I rarely find myself in Saint-Germain-des-Prés anymore, because it’s become the cockpit of luxury-priced tourism in Paris, and no longer exerts any pull whatsoever for anyone in search of good food. Still, so many visitors to the city have recently complained to me about the dearth of good restaurants in this storied neighborhood, I decided to check out the new Left Bank branch of Chardenoux, a beautiful old bistro in the 11th arrondissement that was once one of my favorite restaurants in Paris. Unfortunately, the current version of the original Chardenoux is a pastiche of the old one, serving decent but timidly seasoned and over-priced bistro food.

The just-opened Left Bank branch has been getting good reviews in the French press, and with a strategic location in the rue du Dragon, I decided to go for dinner on a Saturday night with a friend who lived in Saint Germain for many years before being priced out of the neighborhood. Meeting for a drink before dinner on a pretty early summer night, we decided to see what the newly renovated version of the Cafe Bonaparte on the Place Saint Germain des Prés might be offering, but after happily scoring a front row table for some people watching, we opened the menu, saw the prices and decided to bolt. Pre-renovation, the Cafe Bonaparte was the local fail-safe address for anyone who didn’t want to pay the exorbitant tabs at the Cafe de Flore or the Cafe Deux Magots. No More. Prices at this well-located cafe have sky-rocketed, and as handsomely renovated as it may be, neither of us want to spend that much money to sip a ratty Gamay from Touraine, one of my least favorite wines. So we went to dinner at Chardenoux des Pres early, and settled in over glasses of 11 Euro Pouilly Fuisse, still over-priced but at least good wine.

Since the cute little rue du Dragon has been pretty much colonized by indifferent Italian restaurants–sadly, even the half decent Korean Barbecue restaurant that was a place I went after the movies for years, has decamped to the rue de Ponthieu in the 8th arrondissement, surely driven away by exploding rents, I really hoped that this place would be good. Unfortunately, things got off to an unhappy start when we were asked three times with ten minutes if we’d made our choice. No, we hadn’t made our choice, we were trying to enjoy our aperitif, which, it should be noted, was served without radishes, saucisson or any other snack that might be warranted by its 11 Euro price tag. Chatting about this pestering, we concluded that they wanted to turn as many tables as possible on a Saturday night, and while I don’t begrudge any restaurant the need to make a profit, this motivation should never been as egregiously obvious as it was here.

Finally we gave in and ordered in the hopes of gaining a little bit of peace, and the sommelier was instantly upon us, speaking to us in English and suggesting ridiculously over-priced bottles that made no sense with the homey bistro cooking on offer. When I ordered a red Coteaux du Giennois, a perfect summer red that would work as well with my cote du porc as my friend’s fish for what was on this list a low-ball 30 Euros, he was visibly surprised. “It, It’s a very good wine, yes, yes, a very good choice,” or not something that he expected from the tourist pigeons who are so clearly expected to alight at this address.

Still, the irritatingly rushed service notwithstanding, our first courses were good, if under-seasoned. Langoustine stuffed ravioli came as delicate pockets of pasta stuffed with a delicate but pleasantly chunky forcemeat of the crustaceans in a buttery foam and dressed crabmeat was generously served, free of shell, and topped with a corsage of oven-roasted cherry tomatoes.

Langoustine ravioliDressed crab with a bonnet of cherry tomatoes  And speaking of crab, we had a good one over the prices at this place. The average bill per head for a three-course meal here could very easily run 50 Euros without wine, which struck us scalping. Yes, the kitchen is able enough, and the food’s pretty good, but when did 50 Euros become an acceptable tab for a casual bistro meal As my friend, American born but a fellow Parisian for over thirty years, pointed out, “You get a double whammy here, because it’s Saint Germain des Prés, tourist central, and you’re also paying for the celebrity chef name tag,” in this instance, the association of French television chef Cyril Lignac.

Unfortunately, our main courses were rather ordinary. Though I loved the pommes dauphine (mashed potatoes mixed with choux pastry and deep-fried as croquettes) that came with my cote du porc, it was overcooked, and even slicked with a vivid red and appealingly spicy sauce that was more diable than the sate described on the menu it was dull and too expensive at 27 Euros. Ditto my pal’s John Dory with green peas, cubes of chorizo, and a curiously tasteless sauce on curiously tasteless piece of fish.

Cote du porc sauce sate

John Dory with peas and chorizo

Happily, things ended on a sweet note with good vanilla-ice-cream stuffed profiteroles in an excellent dark chocolate sauce and pain perdu with black cherries and pistachio ice cream, but even if both of us loved the ghastly roses-on-a-black-background wallpaper that reminded us of the dives we both stayed in as student travelers, neither of us would be inclined to revisit this tourist-targeted money spinner again with the very possible exception of a one-course meal in desperation on a Sunday night as a way of avoiding Paris’s even worse brasseries.

27 rue du Dragon, 6th, Tel. 01-45-48-29-68. Metro: Saint Germain des Prés. Open daily. Lunch menu Monday-Friday 25 Euros, Average a la carte 50 Euros.

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