This year, the meals I’ve enjoyed most in France have been at Le Vivier, a charming, relaxed, reasonably priced and very good seafood restaurant in Le Grau-du-Roi, a busy beach resort that’s also France’s second-largest Mediterranean fishing port on the short shoreline of Le Gard. This French departement is west of the Rhone and bound on the south by the Mediterranean and the North by the Cevennes mountains, and it’s to this beautiful quiet green peaceful place that Bruno and I moved as soon as the arduous lockdown in Paris was lifted.

Heading south from Paris to our house in a little village a few miles west of Uzes, the highway was empty, and we exulted in the enormity of the toast-colored wheat fields, vineyard-covered hillsides and sweeping forests, which came as both a relief and a shock after having lived in 140 square meters (1500 square feet) for ten weeks. During le confinement, as it was called in France, I only left the apartment two or three times to do those errands that required my actual physical presence. Bruno would duck out to buy bread, but otherwise we bought almost all of our food and wine online, and our apartment became our tiny continent, with every room becoming a different country with a different mood and personality, and the kitchen, as always, being the heart of our home and the place we met twice a day for lunch and dinner and to do a huge amount of cooking.

At the beach in Le Gra-du-Roi in Le Gard

We cooked boeuf bourguignon, we cooked pot au feu, we roasted chickens, we made Marcella Hazan’s ragu for pasta and lasagna, we indulged ourselves in chef Jacques Maximin’s sea bass recipe, which is in my book HUNGRY FOR FRANCE, with a fish delivered directly to us by a fisherman in Brittany using Chronopost Fresh, France’s brilliant cold-chain-guaranteed overnight shipping service. We made mapo tofu, we made red bean curry. My main recreation was online food shopping and recipe hunting during the longest time that’s ever passed since I moved to Paris in 1986 when I didn’t go to a single restaurant. Every day, I worked as hard on our meals as I did on any of the articles I was writing, because the pleasure of good food had never been more important to me. With our worlds turned upside down, we needed nourishment, comfort and pleasure.

Blauzac

First day in the new kitchen

On the way south, we ate a picnic we’d bought at Marks & Spencer–BLTs, shrimp-and-mayonnaise sandwiches, salads, and chips, in a highway rest stop and watched a farmer fitting a huge block of salt into a stand for the brown-and-white cows who were eagerly watching him through a scrim of trees. And finally we reached our house in Blauzac, which had been in renovation for the past eight months at the end of an eight-hour drive, cleaned up the beautiful new kitchen and made some pasta, put some sheets on the bed and fell asleep with all the windows wide open so that we could enjoy the sweet smells of the earth and the fig tree in the garden breathing during the night.

The market in Uzes

The next morning, we went to shop in the market in Uzes, and it was while browsing the stalls here that  I realized  how much my corona virus quarantine had changed my tastes in food. Not going to restaurants for almost three months, I emerged wanting food that was simpler, more produce-centered and less complicated. “The greatest dishes are very simple,” said the great French chef Auguste Escoffier, and cut off from restaurant cooking in Paris, I was reminded that this is so true.

When I started going to restaurants again, I discovered even more just how much my tastes had changed. The meals that I enjoyed the most were the ones that sublimated good seasonal produce with an artful simplicity. This is what I found the first time I went to dinner at Le Vivier in Le Grau-du-Roi, which wears twin caps as a beach resort and fishing port. The charming owner suggested some oysters from the Camargue, which she served with a condiment I’d never heard of before, oyster pepper. To be honest, I was skeptical, but a tiny pinch of this blend of different peppers made the brute briny flavors of the firm fleshy oysters incredibly suave.

My main course was excellent, too. Freshly landed squid cooked on a plancha until they were just tender and garnished with summer vegetables, including radishes, broad beans, corn, carrots, zucchini and potatoes composed this succulent and beautifully cooked feast, a meal I enjoyed enormously.

So a few weeks later when our plan to drive down to a little beach town in Catalonia was very sadly scrubbed due to a recurrence of corona virus there, we canceled our trip and drove down to the sea coast an hour from our house in Blauzac for a few days in a very simple hotel. If every summer, I yearn to dunk myself in the sea, this year I craved this primal tonic even more than ever. I’d told Bruno about Le Vivier after I’d eaten there alone on my first visit, so we went back for dinner together.

After scarfing down some oysters, I had lieu jaune (yellow pollack) in a perfectly prepared shallot-rich beurre blanc, and Bruno tried the rouille Graulenne, a local specialty made with fresh octopus, potatoes and aioli. Both dishes were fresh, flavorful, seasonal and made with the poignant precision of a chef who is proud of their work and eager to please. Should you find yourself in this part of France this summer or in the future, this is a very good restaurant. It’s also very popular, so reservations are imperative.

After dinner, we went for a walk along the canal that connects the fishing port to the Mediterranean to see the historic lighthouse at its entrance, and somehow the pennant of light sweeping over the sea in the darkness made me feel hopeful. With kindness and common sense and science, we’ll get through this epidemic. Good wholesome simple food will help us, too, and we all have to support the chefs and restaurants wherever we live in any way we possibly can right now.

Living in France, I’m aware that many people reading this post may be in places where restaurants are still closed for public-health reasons. I send them my deepest sympathies and wish them to stay safe and well. The pandemic is not over yet in France either, but the French government has done a generally excellent job of responding to it, and people are generally compliant with the government order to wear a mask in enclosed public places. It’s such a very small and easy gesture to make, both to keep yourself safe and respect the health of other people, too.

The view from Blauzac

I’ll end this post with what I hope you’ll consider to be some very good news, too. Shacked up in the south of France, I finally finished my next book, MY PLACE AT THE TABLE: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris, which will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Spring 2021. It’s a coming of age story about how a kid from the suburbs of Connecticut ends up becoming a food writer in Paris. It’s also a tale of luck, love, dreams, hard work, perseverance, good and bad judgment, occasional bouts of insanity and the fact that I’ve loved the language of food as much as I love words on a page as far back as I can possibly remember. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and I want to thank my wonderful editor Rux Martin and the indescribably wonderful and patient Bruno for the safe passage of my story.

Le Vivier, 7 Rue du Commandant Marceau, Le Grau-du-Roi, Tel. (33) 04-66-53-23-36. Open Wed-Sun for lunch and dinner, Closed on Mondays, Tuesday dinner only, Prix-fixe 24 Euros, Average a la carte 45 Euros, www.levivier-restaurant.fr

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Le P’Tit Canon is perfect and very happy example of a good uncomplicated Parisian neighbourhood bistro. It’s a lively friendly well-run place with a pretty Belle Epoque style dining room with a big bar up front where you can stop by on your own for a glass of wine or a quick bite. In less of a rush, you come for a sit-down meal of well-prepared traditional bistros dishes that deliver a solid flush of French comfort-food satisfaction. Prices are reasonable, and the wine list is interesting, from the well-chosen and accessible house wines to better bottles that carry a much gentler markup over retail prices than is usually found in Paris restaurants.

You don’t come here for cutting-edge cooking, but rather for good solid Gallic grub prepared with high quality ingredients. Still, the menu winks at what Parisians like to eat these days, since there are several meal-sized salads on the menu, along with a cheese burger.

So when Bruno came into my office and asked me if I had an idea of somewhere festive and not too expensive where we could good with his mother, visiting from Valenciennes; his sister up from her home in Florence; her son, who’s studying film in Rome, and his Venezuelan girlfriend, also living in Rome and studying medical technology, I immediately suggested Le P’tit Canon. I knew the menu here would please his cassoulet-loving mother and also work for his vegetarian sister, and that the salads would make the students happy. As for me, a good steak tartare was already on my radar, and Bruno loves confit de canard, which is rarely found on Paris menus very often anymore.

“This is just like those Paris bistros you see in the movies,” said Matthias, Bruno’s Italian nephew when we arrived here, a hungry multi-generational group speaking four different languages at the table. “Tres charmant, est bien Parisien,” pronounced Bruno’s mother, who hadn’t been to Paris for several years. So we translated the menu aloud for those who don’t speak French, and everyone found something to make them happy.

The Italians were craving foie gras, which is made in house and served with raisin-bread toast and onion compote or as part of a salade folly (crazy salad)–green beans and mushrooms garnished with foie gras. Bruno couldn’t resist the marinated herring, I love their terrine de campagne and Madame Midavaine fancied some escargots, and his sister opted for the oeufs mayonnaise. Since everyone preferred white wine, and I suspect we’d likely get through several bottles, I ordered a fresh easy-drinking Viognier from the Gard at a very easy-on-the-wallet 21 Euros, and it was very pleasant.

Everyone ordered different main courses from those I predicted, since there were three andouillettes with mustard sauce and frites, a cassoulet, a steak tartare and a salad garnished with goat cheese and salmon. I haven’t gone near an andouillette, a rather pungent tripe sausage, since a first rather unhappy encounter with one the first week I was living in Paris, but they made Bruno, his mother and his nephew happy. Bruno’s sister was quite content with her salad, and his nephew’s beautiful girlfriend loved her steak tartare. For my part, a good ruddy cassoulet with two types of sausage, a generous piece of confit de canard and a generous portion of white beans in a soupy tomato sauce was exactly what I wanted at the end of a busy day when I’d had to walk all over Paris–transit strike oblige, buying last-minute Christmas presents.

At dinner we had an interesting conversation that spun on a question ventured by Bruno’s sister: “What are the two greatest cuisines in the world#8221; she asked us. The Italians all predictably affirmed that the Italian kitchen would be one of them, while Bruno’s mother announced the grandeur of Gallic gastronomy. For my part, I insisted on six: French, Italian, Indian, Moroccan, Chinese and Mexican. And you?

Dessert was a stretch for me, but the Italians couldn’t resist the baba au rhum and a nicely made creme caramel. An inevitable question was directed my way during the sweet stretch of our meal: “Alec, what were your best meals of 2019#8221; Here, in no particular order, are the tables I most enjoyed during the last twelve months

**La Scene, Paris

**KGBbis, Paris

**Pavyllon, Paris

**Maison par Sota Atsumi, Paris

**Shabour, Paris

**Substance, Paris

**Racine, Reims

**A Pignata, Levie, Corsica

**Frevo, New York City

**Stubborn Seed, Miami Beach, Florida

**Ixi’Im, Chochola, Yucatan, Mexico

Our joyous meal concluded with little snifters of Chartreuse, a holiday gift from the charming proprietor of this eminently amiable restaurant, and, as it turned, out exactly what we needed to ended up watching the first two episodes of the new season of “The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel” when we got home. So Le P’tit Canon ably hit its target, and a very good time was had by all.

N.B. This is a great address for a late lunch or dinner, since serving hours are 10.30am to 3.30pm and 6.30pm to 2am.

36 rue Legendre, 17th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-47-63-63-87, Metro: Villiers or Pont Cardinet, Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday dinner only, closed Sunday. Average 35 Euros. www.leptitcanonparis.fr

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Mieux, which means ‘better’ in English, is a wonderful name for a restaurant, because it declares gastronomic ambition but with a certain appealing humility. This charmingly decorated and cleverly designed bistro just five minutes from my front door in the rue Saint Lazare delivers better than just better, though, since the contemporary French bistro cooking is delicious, and the service is charming. Restaurant Mieux also has a very good wine list.

The bistro, which opened last May, is the project Baptiste Bayle, Giulian Maiuri and Thomas Bonnel, three nice guys who did all of the work of renovating this space themselves, including pouring a cement bar, buffing the Fifties tiles they discovered when they pulled up the floorboards, combing flea-markets for the great-looking bric-a-brac and chairs from a French school that gives this place its homey atmosphere and renovating a secondhand Spaziale coffee machine, which is now used to make great java with Brûlerie de Belleville beans. Guilian, who formerly worked at the Maison Breguet and the Trianon Palace in Versailles, heads up the kitchen.

I first noticed Restaurant Mieux on the way home from doing some errands in the rue des Martyrs, and immediately liking its look and menu, I went in and booked for dinner for me and Bruno that same night. And I marveled at how gastronomic my own neighborhood has become, and in just the terms I like best—intelligently creative contemporary French bistro cooking that highlights carefully sourced seasonal produce and spins on an axis of sincerity and generosity.

Little did I know that the 9th Arrondissement would emerge as one of the best restaurant neighborhoods in Paris when we crossed the Seine from the tiny apartment where we once lived on the rue du Bac and bought our first, and then second, apartments in this arrondissement. But the 9th has turned into a sweet-spot location for restauranteurs, because the offices in this central Paris district assure a busy lunch crowd and then the food-loving locals and tourists from the growing numbers of hotels in this charming part of the city take over in the evening.

Arriving, the welcome was warm and the service immediately warm and alert but relaxed, which explained why the dining room was filled with such a cross-section of residents of the district once known as La Nouvelle Athenes, because so much of its architecture was originally inspired by ancient Greece when this part of the city was first developed from 1819 onwards. During the 19th century, this quartier was popular with artists, writers, musicians and actors, including George Sand, Eugène Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas, Frederic Chopin, Victor Hugo, Théodore Géricault, Pissarro, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. It was also known for being a neighborhood of kept women.

This arty liberal tradition lives on in the 9th, which is still home to many writers, photographers, artists, musicians and other creatives, and it’s that increasingly endangered but wonderful thing—a peaceful and unselfconscious historic neighborhood in the heart of a great western city. Gentrification is making it more affluent, but the social tone happily remains unchanged.

The menu here runs to three starters, three main courses and three desserts, sometimes more, which change regularly to reflect the kitchen’s desire to cook spontaneously. “The produce writes the menu here,” our waiter told us when he came to take our order.

On the first night of the year when there was an early autumnal chill in the air and after a summer of salads, I started with the homemade terrine of chicken livers and pork, with the livers adding an earthy unctuousness and the pork some carnal resonance and bite, which came with pickled onions and carrots. Bruno’s bonheur was the veal tartare made with marscapone and seasoned with crushed roasted cashews—an excellent idea, chervil and chives. And because we’d both been curious about the other starter that night, the waiter thoughtfully brought us a little tasting plate of the tomatoes with watermelon, cucumbers, feta, mint and Kalamata olives, a wonderfully refreshing dish that tasted like a happy souvenir of a summer vacation in the Greek Islands.

Our main courses were outstanding, too. Bruno’s free-range pork chop from the Auvergne was succulent and garnished with coarse ground polenta and roasted carrots from the Ile de France and a wonderful saute of wild mushrooms. I was tempted by the risotto with sage butter, zucchini and smoked ricotta, but  I’ve lived in Paris for too long to ever to order this dish in a restaurant I don’t know, because the rice is unfailingly overcooked. So I ordered with maigre (croaker fish) with potatoes, cabbage and clams in seaweed butter, and it was so skillfully cooked that I wouldn’t hesitate to trust the kitchen with rice the next time I come here. Portions were so generous that all we could manage at the end of the meal was a shared portion of stewed juicy ruby-red peche de vigne—the world’s best peaches, with lemon-verbena ice cream and hazelnut crumble. An excellent selection of cheeses was also available.

Restaurant Mieux is a place where you can easily become a regular, and it’s a table I’d happily go on my own, since they have a few spots at the bar for solo diners who’d rather sit on a stool than at a table. It also has several large tables that accommodate groups of six, eight or twelve, which makes it a great choice for an easygoing night out over a very good meal with a group of friends. It’s solidly good but unpretentious restaurants like Mieux which assure Paris’s enduringly superlative gastronomic credentials.

21 rue de Saint-Lazare, Paris, 9th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01- 71-32-46-73.
Métro: Trinite or Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Open Monday noon-6pm, Tuesday-Friday noon to 1am, Saturday 6pm-1am. Sunday noon-6pm. Lunch menus 21€ and 26€, average a la carte for dinner 40€. www.mieux-restaurant.com

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Because 2019 is still so new, telling you the meal I had at Ibrik Kitchen the other night was one of the best I’ve had all year doesn’t deliver adequate praise for the excellent “neo-nostalgic” Romanian cooking of chefs Ovidio Malisevschi and Bogdan Alexandrescu a.k.a. Dexter chef (check out his Instagram feed: https://www.instagram.com/dexterchef/). So instead I’ll only say that this dinner was not only the best non-French meal I’ve had in Paris during the last twelve months, but one of the best ones full stop. In fact, this art-gallery-like little restaurant on a side street in the Sentier came as a delightful surprise in almost every way. And now when people ask me what ‘foreign’ kitchens I recommend eating during a trip to Paris, Romanian will now join the usual Israeli, Moroccan, Tunisian, Laotian and Vietnamese.

@Pierre Lucet Penato

This is because these two guys have found a way to serve up the cooking of their homeland that has a frankly brilliant gastronomic equilibrium between tradition and modernity. To wit, they’ve managed to make dishes like sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls) lighter and fresher without losing their authenticity, and they are also keenly attuned to the aesthetics of the Instagram era.

Further, this pair are a happy testament to one of the best things about eating in Paris today, which is that the city has never been more of a beacon for ambitious young gastronomic talents from all over the world. They come here, like Ovidio Malisevschi, to attend cooking school–the Cordon Bleu in his case, and then stay on to do a stage (apprenticeship) or two–he cooked with Frederic Simonin and at La Dame de Pic, Anne-Sophie Pic’s place in the rue du Louvre, before launching projects of their own.  For his part, Bogdan Alexandrescu, one of the best young chefs of his generation in Romania and a star of Master Chef Romania, is a native of Cluj, the beautiful city in northern Transylvania, and recently attended l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes du Goût in Paris.

@Pierre Lucet Penato

To be honest, on a rainy Tuesday night, I headed out to meet my friend Agathe for dinner at this new place with modest enthusiasm, because it just seemed so unlikely I’d find food anywhere near as good as the home cooking I enjoyed at several guest houses during a trip to Transylvania, one of the most beautiful destinations in Europe and a place with landscapes on par with those of such famously scenic places as Tuscany or the Loire Valley, last October. Why This type of sincere, hearty, rustic farm cooking almost invariably loses its character when it’s translated to a big-city setting in a foreign country. And memories of my very occasional meals at the other Romanian restaurant I know in Paris, a long-running place on the Left Bank that’s gone slightly senile, dampened my expectations, too. Still, Agathe’s father is Romanian, so she knows this cooking from vacation visits back to the handsome city of Brasov.

Just a few weeks after the holidays, my appetite was skittish, too, but my friend, who has recently moved to the lively young neighborhood with a lot of good restaurants that the Sentier (2nd Arrondissement) has become, insisted I’d be happily surprised. Sitting in the Metro, though, I found myself musing on my first experience of Eastern European cooking at the long-gone Cafe Barna, a Hungarian place in Westport, Connecticut, which served up a memorable annual Cub Scouts banquet of soggy dolma (stuffed grape leaves), alarmingly scarlet goulash and stuffed cabbage that was more like meat loaf draped with wilted cabbage leaves than the real McCoy. Still, it was quite a gust of gastronomic exoticism for me as a seven-year-old kid.

@Pierre Lucert Penato

Over an excellent glass of Slovenian white wine, we perused the menu, and I recognized some of the decorative totems of the dining room from travels in Romania, including a hairy mask from the Murmes region, the tell-tale heart shape decoration on a hand-forged wrought-iron coat rack–it’s a traditional motif in Hungarian speaking regions of Romania, and a couple of willow-switch fly swatters on the wall. Then we ordered from our charming waitress and were engrossed in conversation when our first courses arrived. Immediately I knew this would be a wonderful meal.

I’d ordered pastramă, the roasted Romanian brined beef known as pastrami in most English speaking countries, and it came to the table in a bell jar filled with fragrant fumes. When the smoke cleared, I found myself before a pretty little pile of sliced beef garnished with black Transylvanian truffle shavings. Served with excellent bread from Terroirs d’Avenir, the meat was succulent, gently brined and full of flavor. My friend’s starter–mămăligă cu smăntănă, or cornmeal porridge shaped into patties, then grilled and garnished tangy sour cream, was almost miraculously light and tasted pleasantly of toasted grain. Both dishes were winsomely impressive in terms of their presentation and the quality of the produce the chefs worked with (most beef served here comes from the celebrated Polmard butcher, dairy goods from Laiterie Les Fayes).

During dinner, I also talked about my recent trip to Transylvania, and how good the food had been. What’s been driving this transformation is tourism, and especially agro-turismo style rural guesthouses established in some of the region’s most beautiful villages, including Copsa Mare and Viscri. Much had changed since I’d first visited the region in 2012 to write this article for SAVEUR Magazine: https://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Eternal-Terrain But better still, most things hadn’t, including the small-scale traditional agriculture and the way so many people still grow and produce much of the food they eat themselves.

Our main courses were excellent, too, with a remarkable lightness and freshness continuing to be the signature of this kitchen. What I especially loved about my sarmale was that the cabbage leaves had been brined before being stuffed, which added a bracing tang of ferment to a dish that’s otherwise as gentle and consoling as a baby’s flannel blanket. The funky garnish of crumbled pork crackling was very welcome, too.

With a pronounced taste of green peppers, Agathe’s chicken goulash displayed the heterogeneity of the Romanian kitchen, which has been heavily influenced by Hungary, Austria, its Balkan neighbours, and most recently, Greece and other Mediterranean countries, especially Italy. The ethnic diversity of the country, which once had a large Jewish population and still has sizeable minorities of Hungarian speaking Szeklers, Moldovans, and Gypsies, is reflected in its cooking, too. In Transylvania, another local cooking tradition is that of the ‘Saxons,’ or German-speaking colonists from the Moselle valley, Luxembourg and the Rhineland who were invited to settle on what were then the lands of the Hungarian crown beginning in the 12th century. They arrived with their food ways, including a love of charcuterie and smoked meats and herbs like lovage and marjoram. When the Communist Ceaușescu regime collapsed in 1989, approximately half a million Saxons fled to a newly reunified Germany under the German nationality law known as Auslandsdeutsche, which offers citizenship to ethnic Germans wishing to repatriate to Germany.

“What makes this dish more Romanian than Hungarian is that it doesn’t include lashings of paprika and sour cream the way it might in Hungary. Instead, the vegetables–onions, tomatoes and peppers have been slowly stewed into almost a thick jam to which the chicken was then added to cook. This explains its succulence and richness,” Agathe observed. Served with  homemade potato puree, it was deeply satisfying, as was the organic Hungarian red wine from Sopron that we drank with this excellent meal.

While we ate our main courses, I had been eyeing the delicious looking beignets being shared by the couple at the table next to us. Called papanaș in Romanian, they’re filled with fromage blanc, garnished with jam or jelly, and they’re irresistible. Since we were lavishly well-fed, we decided to share a dessert, and since it was Agathe who had shared this discovery with me, I let her chose our sweet finale. “You have to try the pistachio cake,” she said, and a large slab of this dense, pudding-like cake filled with fruit and pistachios and topped with a simple sugar glaze and more pistachios arrived at the table. It was so good, I was almost tempted to order a piece to bring home, but caloric caution had me think the better of this indulging this yearning.

So the next time I come for a meal here, I already know what I’ll be having–whatever ciorba, or soup, is on the menu, the grilled trout, and an order of papanaș.

Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering, an Ibrik is a small fluted metal pot with a long handle used to make Turkish coffee, which is very popular in certain parts of Romania, large swathes of which were once part of the Ottoman Empire.

9 rue de Mulhouse, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-70-69-42-50. Metro: Bonne Nouvelle. Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Sunday for brunch and dinner. Closed Monday. Lunch menu 15 €, average a la carte meal 40 €  www.ibrik.fr 

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In the dialect of the Bearn region of southwestern France, Jòia means “joyous.” But ever since chef Hélène Darroze’s new restaurant by the same name opened in Paris, it also means great eating and good times.

“I found this space when I was looking for a new address for my gastronomic restaurant on the Left Bank,” Darroze told me and Bruno when we chatted with her across the counter that separates the counter seating in the dining room from the busy open kitchen where half the staff are women at dinner the other night. “It wasn’t right for my gastronomic table, because I’d been thinking I wanted to be somewhere in the 8th Arrondissement, but I fell in love with the space and decided to do a new restaurant-bar that would serve the kind of southwestern French comfort-food I make when friends come over for dinner. So this restaurant is about relaxing, sharing, and having a good time,” said the chef, who’s spending most of her time in Paris again, with just a few trips monthly back to London to oversee her Michelin two-star table there at the Connaught hotel. (N.B. Darroze’s gastronomic restaurant in the rue d’Assas is currently closed for renovations and is scheduled to reopen in Spring 2019).

Over hors d’oeuvres of velvety jambon noire de Bigorre and mash-and-season-it yourself guacamole–a clever idea both for the resulting guacamole but also the restaurant theater, I explained to Bruno why I admire Darroze. To wit, after business school in Bordeaux, she ended up working in the offices of Alain Ducasse’s Louis XV restaurant in Monaco until the day when he came in and told her she had more business being in the kitchen than in front of a computer. This was doubtless because she comes from one of the most distinguished gastronomic dynasties in southwestern France, a family which ran an eponymous restaurant in Villeneuve-de-Marsan for more than a century.

So after a stint cooking in Monaco, Darroze took over the kitchens of her family’s restaurant and became the fourth generation to run them. She won a Michelin star for her food at the family table, but left to move to Paris and open her own restaurant in 1999 (the Darroze’s original restaurant in Villeneuve-de-Marsan is now closed).

“She must have felt sort of intimidated when she started cooking,” Bruno said in response to my timeline.

“Perhaps, but I don’t think she probably had any other choice,” I replied, musing vaguely on a question that a young journalist writing about the New Yorker during the days that my grandfather was fiction editor there had posed to me during a telephone interview recently.

What he asked was: “Was it difficult for you to find your own voice and style when you had such a famous grandfather and also an aunt who worked at the New Yorker#8221; I didn’t hesitate. “No, not really, because my voice is mine, and the vector through which I’ve chosen thus far to express it has been food in the broadest sense of the word.”

Insofar as Ms. Darroze is concerned, her love of the foods and cooking of southwestern France is evident at all of her restaurants, but her style is quite different from the food I ate several times at her family’s restaurant before she took over the kitchen. To wit, it’s fresher and lighter, with more legible seasonings and shorter cooking times.

Delicious examples of Ms. Darroze’s style arrived with our first courses, a sublime creamy garlic soup made with l’ail rose de Lautrec (yes, that Lautrec, since the painter Toulouse Lautrec came from the same town), which is my favorite French garlic for being gentle but umami rich both cooked and raw, and my sauté of wild mushroom with foie gras and an egg yolk confit. This blissfully autumnal dish is one I could eat every other day for the rest of my life, because it’s such a perfect symphony of earthy tastes and textures.

Both starters paired beautifully with the wine our charming Italian waiter suggested, too–a Fontanasanta Manzoni Bianco from Italy’s Alto Adige region by winemaker Elisabetta Foradori. Interestingly, the entire wine list here is devoted uniquely to wines that are made by women, in France, of course, but also in Australia, Italy,  Spain, and the U.S.

Among the main courses here, most are for two people, and since they were out of the beef short rib with a ‘ranchero’ condiment, we went with the poulet jaune from the Landes, which was roasted with a stuffing of brioche and foie gras tucked under its skin and served with several heads of baked Lautrec garlic as a garnish. With sides of ewe’s milk cheese enriched polenta and crunchy roasted potatoes, this was a Pantagruelian feast that left us both elated and deeply sated.

Dessert seemed highly unlikely under the circumstances, but the Italian waiter insisted we’d be making grave mistake if we we didn’t try the millefeuille of crepes with Matcha and yuzu cream, and since I’d been eye-balling it from afar all night, he didn’t have to work very hard to persuade me. It was hefty but wonderfully delicate at the same time.

The next time I dine here, I’ll try the herb-filled ravioli, or maybe the roast hake with chimichurri sauce, the stuffed lamb’s neck, or the rouget stuffed with squid and mushrooms in a jus de bouillabaisse. But I know I’ll be back, because this is a very happy restaurant created by someone who not only knows and loves good food but who’s biggest pleasure in life is in sharing it.

Jòia 39 rue des Jeuneurs, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-40-20-06-06. Metro: Grands Boulevards or Bourse. Average 60 Euros. Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner, closed Sunday.

The post Jòia, Paris | Hélène Darroze’s Terrific Comfort-Food Bistro, B+ appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

Coming through the door for the first time on a warm Sunday night, Au Petit Panisse delighted me, since it was such a perfect sketch of everything I miss about Paris when I spend a long period of time away from the city. This is because Paris is now where I feel more at home than anywhere else in the world.

Oh to be sure, when I step out of a New Haven railroad train onto the platform in Westport, Connecticut at the end of a summer day and am roused by the tidal saline stink of the nearby Saugatuck river and then slightly stunned by the almost shocking greenery of the town I where I spent my childhood, I’ll always be the boy who grew up here all over again. But then that boy yearned to get on the very same train and take it in the other direction, first west to New York City, and after that, to hopefully light out for parts even further afield, ceaselessly driven by the unslakable wanderlust that is the wick of my curiosity.

Now that I’ve lived in Paris for more than thirty years, though, the exotic and the unknown has to some degree become the country where I was born. And this is why I was possibly even more fascinated by what I heard, saw, ate and learned on a five-day road trip from Sarasota, Florida north to Savannah, Charleston and finally Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida and back again than Bruno was. This is probably because he expected to be discombobulated, whereas I, well, I honestly didn’t know what to expect, since I hadn’t been to those two very beautiful cities on the Eastern Seaboard since I was 22, and I knew nothing of Florida between Tampa and Jacksonville.

“It actually looks sort of like Normandy, doesn’t it#8221; Bruno said when we broke out of the suburban sprawl north of Tampa and found ourselves in some stunningly beautiful countryside with cows grazing in the lush pastures of well-tended farms with split-rail fences. “It does sort of, but I doubt you’ll find anyone making Pont L’Eveque out there,” I replied. And when we stopped for lunch–big juicy greasy cheeseburgers, thank you–the waitress in the Five Guys that was the only viable option we’d seen for two hundred miles, was as charming, warm, friendly and witty as anyone I’ve met in years. “Americans are very polite,” Bruno said, and though I hesitated for a minute, I finally agreed, because yes, we are just so much better than those who occupy our air waves and television screens most often these days.

The best meal we had during our trip was at The Grey in Savannah, and I loved absolutely everything about this restaurant. The setting in the city’s old Greyhound Bus station has an irresistible tongue-in-cheek charm that’s more pointed than arch–to wit, the free black-and-white postcards they give away here show that this facility was “Whites” and “Colored” segregated in the past, so its history is put forward rather than white-washed; the staff are professional, spontaneous, informed, good-natured and enthusiastic; and most of all chef Mashama Bailey’s food was as full of flavor as it was full of heart, which means it was some of the best eating I’ve done in the United States for a longtime.

And the unpretentious goodness of Mashama’s cooking brings me back to Paris, and specifically to Au Petit Panisse, because chef owner Jeff Schilde may never have met Mashama, but the pair share the same love of really excellent seasonal produce; gastronomic specificity, i.e., the glory of eating food that could only have the same taste if it came from one single place on the planet; and a great big need and desire to make people happy by feeding them well. And in this roiled and roughed-up world, this makes me happier than ever before, because I really believe good food and cooking can create bonds and understanding in even the most improbable of situations.

At our table, though, we didn’t need any help to be happy, since we were five people who adore each other and who were all eager to rabbit on about their different summer holidays now that we were so happily back in Paris. Where had we been Corsica, the south of France, Greece, Le Pyla, Savannah, Charleston, Sarasota, New York City, and lots of weekends away as well, which is why the first gastronomic subject that came up at the table of five people who love good food and wine was, well, natural wine.

“I hate it, I hate the whole thing, it’s so damned pretentious, it rarely tastes good, and it’s too expensive,” said one of my tablemates, and three of the five agreed. “Natural wine (unsulfured), biodynamic wine, organic wine, it’s all become a big pain in the ass,” paried another pal. “Okay, wait–I always prefer organic wines, and biodynamic wine is usually excellent, but the fact that vins nature have become a bristly a priori in so many young Paris bistros is a drag, especially since these wines offer an occasion to charge eye-watering mark-ups,”  said another friend, and I tend to agree with her analysis of the situation. And the Azzoni white from the Ardeche, a vin nature, that we ordered was very good.

One way or another, it was a relief to have escaped from the surrealistic mark-ups on wine that have become the rule in New York City restaurants–it still stings to have paid a thumping $12 for a water glass of very ordinary rose at a West Village bistro, and $60 a bottle for an undistinguished Albarino at a trendy Spanish restaurant on First Avenue was highway robbery, too.  All of which is to say that today Paris is a much more affordable place to eat well at mid-level everyday prices than New York or London, or almost any other major American city.

Since we were five, we basically ate the entire menu at Au Petit Panisse, and enjoyed this witty modern French comfort food made with well-sourced produce. Since I’ve developed a samphire ( a delicious crunchy seaweed) fetish, I ordered that as my starter with a nice milky ball of mozzarella, while the terrine du chef was excellent, too, and a deconstructed oeuf mayonnaise with radishes, crabmeat and powdered almonds was a dish all of us immediately decided to copy at home.

Paris is going through a decidedly tentacular phase at the moment, since octopus seems to show up on almost every menu. Happily, I like it a lot, and it was prepared two ways at Au Petit Panisse, as a starter with heirloom tomatoes and Scamorza, and grilled as a main course with a wonderfully ruddy stew of fresh white Paimpol beans, tomato, fennel and bacon.

Steak tartare was excellent–coarsely chopped to order, seasoned with fresh herbs and piment d’Espelette and topped with a grating of ewe’s milk cheese, a clever idea, while a thick slice of gigot d’agneau (leg of lamb) was grilled and accompanied by lentils with roasted hazelnuts.

Desserts were a perfect hinge between the seasons, too, with Fontainebleau cheese garnished with stewed Mirabelle plums and shortbread and an airy flan scattered with blueberries, raspberries and cookie crumbs.

The dining room here was a charming setting for this meal, too, since an old cafe du quartier had been so lovingly restored, with its original wooden doors being scrapped of paint, the bar buffed up, and the winding metal staircase to the first floor left in place. Service was friendly and efficient, and everyone agreed that it had been worth traveling across town to have dinner here, because the food is as appealing as the atmosphere.

And for my part, I loved the meal, because it made me so happy to be home again.

Au Petit Panisse, 35 rue de Montreuil, 11th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-43-71-37-90. Metro:
Faidherbe – Chaligny or Rue des Boulets. Open daily for lunch and dinner.

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Though the TripAdvisor reviews may not yet reflect it, Le Vaudeville, one of the most legendary brasseries in Paris, is back. Following a sensitive renovation by new owners the Groupe Bertrand, it’s much better than it’s been for a longtime. To be sure, it’s not a place one heads to in search of gastronomic revelation, but rather for a good simple French meal when everything else is closed, it’s late, or you just want a meal in a pretty lively room without making a lot of fuss about the food. That’s what brasseries have always been about in Paris, a straightforward and expeditious feed with a good dose of Metropolitan glamour to boot.

I have a long history with this restaurant, since it was the site of my first-ever meal with newly made friends when I moved to Paris over thirty years ago. I still remember the Friday afternoon in the rue Cambon offices of Fairchild Publications where I was working as an editor when I sidled over to the one person who’d been friendly to me during my first month in town and asked if she’d like to have dinner that weekend. “Sure,” she said–a vast relief to me, “And I’ll bring my husband, Peter.”

So we met there on a rainy Saturday night, and ate a mountain of oysters, followed by steaks for the gents and the  grilled cod with mashed potatoes that’s still on the menu for Anne. Aided by a flood of white wine, it was a hilarious evening during which we discovered we had a lot in common in terms of everything from food likes to our politics and senses of humour. And so an enduring friendship was born.

As a newcomer to Paris, I also loved the louche buzz in the room, and its beautiful art-deco decor, which dates to its rebuilding by Solvet Père et Fils, the same architects who designed another famous Parisian brasserie, La Coupole, after the original cafe on this site across the street from La Bourse, the old French stockmarket, had been destroyed by a German air-raid during World War I.

And so through the years I ended up here rather often. For a big tray of oysters with a new lover, for a small tray of oysters when a lover left me, with friends after a movie, with my mother when I hoped that the animated room might arm me against her exasperating remarks, and with almost every Parisian friend I’ve ever had when we decided to have dinner at the last minute and hadn’t made a reservation anywhere else. The food was, as the French would say, “correcte,” or reliably adequate, until this restaurant followed all of the other ones that were once part of the now defunct Brasserie Flo chain, and became mediocre at best and expensive for what it was.

The charm of a meal here well and truly dented, I stopped going, except for the occasional oyster feast with Bruno, but even then, we preferred to take our oysters home with us from the shellfish stand out front rather than be seated in the dining room.

Now, happily, this place has had a corporate reset. Respecting the restaurant’s DNA, the Groupe Bertrand has given it a needed freshening up, which has included a terrific new terrace and an excellent new bar program that features light eats with a glass of wine or a cocktail.

You may be wondering how I ended up here again. Well, suffice to say that I try very hard not to be a food tyrant, which means being a bully when it comes to where we eat. Yes, as a Paris food writer I often have a list of new places I want to try that’s as long as my arm, but I find it keeps the peace in my couple, and is also actually rather useful, when I let someone else decide where we’ll have dinner.

So when I returned home from a recent trip to Spain on a Sunday night, Bruno mentioned that he’d walked by Le Vaudeville and that it was looking wonderful after a freshening up. “Maybe it’s good again,” he said, hopefully. Stealthily, I did a little research on the internet, which is how I learned it had new owners. “Sure, let’s give it a try,” I told him, and off we went.

A charming young maitre d’ greeted us when we arrived, but I still recognised several of the hard-working long-serving waiters from days of yore and hoped they were being well-treated by the new management. Hungry, we settled in on the terrace and shared a flight of excellent hors d’oeuvres, including charcuterie, onion rings, and accras (salt-cod fritters), with a flute of Champagne, because, well, because.

Next, we tucked into a tower of impeccably fresh langoustines–when they’re fresh, their tails remain in a rigid curl rather than being flacid, and, because I am a child of suburban American steakhouses and was surprised to see it on the menu, an avocado-and-prawn cocktail in a sauce Marie Rose (mayonnaise with ketchup or tomato paste). Though it hardly rivalled my favorite version of this dish, which is served at chef Michael Lomonaco’s Porter House in New York City, it was perfectly pleasant. Other possible starters included onion soups, escargots, sea bream tartare, and fried smelt with tartare sauce.

Though tempted by the butter-roasted lobster at a reasonable 29.50 Euros, I had a filet of beef with Béarnaise sauce for my main–a nice piece of meat, perfectly cooked and with a very respectable Béarnaise that was also good for dipping frites into, and Bruno chose grilled sole with haricots vert. Among other options, it was nice to see a choucroute garni on the menu here, and salmon tartare as a main course would be a good choice for summer dining or light eating.

In the past, I never ordered dessert at Le Vaudeville, because they were eminently forgettable and never very good. But the ‘Angelina’ pedigree of the millefeuille tempted me, while the sagely more calorie-conservative Bruno went with a dainty, airy toasted-almond topped ile flottante napped in light caramel and a sauce Anglaise. Both were good, and walking home after dinner, I was happy that a restaurant which is such a repository of happy memories is once again a place where I might be happy going for an off-the-cuff meal with no hesitation.

I was also glad that the beautiful etched glass art-deco door to the men’s room downstairs had survived the renovation.

Le Vaudeville, 29 rue Vivienne, 2nd Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-40-20-04-62. Metro: Bourse. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Average 40 Euros. http://www.vaudevilleparis.com/en/

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Chef Tomy Gousett @Pierre Lucet Penato

Savoury pancake with guanciale, Peconio, arugula @ Alexander Lobrano

Chef Tomy Gousset’s friendly new restaurant Hugo & Co is exactly the the type of place the Latin Quarter in Paris has been wanting for a longtime, because it’s such a delicious reflection of the neighborhood itself. To wit, this lively little place serves up a cosmopolitan menu of affordably priced small-plates comfort food that are made for sharing, service is young and good-natured, and there’s a great wine list. So it was no surprise then that it was packed with a mixture of academics, creative professionals, students and travelers when I went for dinner the other night. “We already have lots of clients who come several times a week,” our smart and outgoing waiter told us once we’d settled in at one of the tables that faces the caramel-colored leather banquette which lines one wall of the room and ordered a glass of wine.

It had been a while since I’d come to this part of town, the 5th Arrondissement, for a meal, too, since as the neighborhood has gentrified, it’s become too expensive for most students. Today, the 11th and 10th Arrondissements have become the youngest and liveliest districts of the city. The reason for this is their more affordable rents, both for apartments and commercial spaces, which explains why these arrondissements are also now where most young chefs going out on their own set up shop.

My first apartment in Paris was on the rue de la Sorbonne in the 5th Arrondissement, and back in those days several decades ago, the neighborhood brimmed with great inexpensive foreign tables like Au Coin des Gourmets, a reliable Vietnamese place in the rue Dante; a couple of good bistros– the late lamented Moissonier and Au Moulin a Vent, for example; and, for meals with visiting friends from out of town, the Brasserie Balzar, which had decent food, great people watching and a charming atmosphere created by its natty tweedy professorial clientele, long-serving waiters, cantilevered mirrors that encouraged flirting, and the wonderfully ugly art-nouveau vase of flowers on the bar (N.B. I stopped going to the Balzar ages ago, since the food has declined and the atmosphere had been dented during a period of corporate, penny-pinching ownership; now, though, it has a new owner, so I’m hoping for a renaissance at this long-running Left Bank address, a place for which I once had so much affection).

Crostini with avocado, red radish and Parmesan @ Pierre Lucet Penato

With the exception of the Balzar, though, which inexplicably became popular with fashion people in the eighties and early nineties, the 5th Arrondissement was, with the exception of La Tour d’Argent, never a destination arrondissement for seriously gastronomic eating.

Looking at the menu at Hugo & Co, however, my first thought was that this might change, since what’s on offer is so alluring while avoiding the dulling cliches of la bistronomie, or modern French cooking. We decided to share three starters–a savoury pancake with guanciale, Pecorino and arugula; marinated salmon with passionfruit sauce, hashed beets and toasted rice; and some strachiatella with ramps, gomasio, and black olives. If all of them were excellent, the pancake was the real stand out, since it was exactly the kind of dish you known you’ll end up permanently craving, a nicely crusted pancake topped with crispy curls of guanciale, grated Pecorino and a scattering of arugula leaves. The strachiatella was delicious scooped up with the good bread served here, and though quieter and less original, the salmon was pleasant, too. What we really liked in all three of these dishes was the way they skated across a variety of different cultures and palates to create something original that had a flawlessly appetising logic.

Over dinner, I told Bruno about my first apartment, a one-bedroom that had padded coral-fabric covered walls, a ratty little kitchen with a double hot plate, and a bathroom with bubble-gum pink fixtures. Suffice it to say that it was the best I could come up with during a one-day hunt with a lupine real-estate agent. I rented it furnished, and it only became just slightly habitable after I’d put all of the lady dermatologist owner’s china figurines and dusty plastic flowers in a coat closet and hung a couple of paper globe lamps that I bought for a few francs from a Chinese notions store nearby. But it was right across the street from La Sorbonne, and it used to fascinate me to peer into the class rooms across the street and see the professors lecturing to orderly rows of students sitting upright at their desks. And even in a bower afflicted by such dubious taste, it was thrilling to slowly but surely hatch a new life for myself in Paris. Little did I know at the time that the roots of this fledgling attachment to my new city would grow so deep that I would end up living here for over half of my life. I’m very lucky.

Next, I tucked into a Tonkatsu style breaded pork cutlet topped with a fried egg in a pool of hoisin sauce with a garnish of pickled red cabbage and black rice, and Bruno enjoyed braised beef cheeks with grilled asparagus and panisses (fried chickpea-flour bars). While we were eating, chef Tomy Gousset did a round in the dining room, stopping to chat amiably at almost every table.

I’ve known the Cambodian born Gousset’s superb cooking every since he returned to France after a stint cooking at Daniel Boulud’s restaurant Restaurant Daniel in New York City and took over the kitchen at Pirouette in Les Halles. I’ve also admired his food at his eponymous table Tomy, which he opened in the 7th Arrondissement when he left Pirouette, but I didn’t know that he’d gone to the Ecole Ferrandi and then cooked with Alain Solivérès at Taillevent and Yannick Alleno at the Hotel Meurice.

“New York was so important for me. I really loved it, the kitchens of so many different countries intersecting, the whole idea of the laid-back no-limits urban bistro. I learned so much there,” Gousset told us, adding, “Hugo & Co is all about having a good time.” That’s a pretty perfect way of summing this place up, too.

We finished off our excellent bottle of white Dao while sharing an order of warm madeleines with lemon zest and a light lemon custard dipping sauce, a charming dessert, and stepped out into a rainy Spring night knowing we’d come back here again soon, too.

48 Rue Monge, 5th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 09-53-92-62-77, Metro: Cardinal Le Moine or Place Monge. Open Monday-Friday for lunch and dinner. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Average 35 Euros. www.tomygousset.com

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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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