The recent loss of so many great old-fashioned Paris bistros probably explains why I suddenly had a desire to try and find a couple of other old-fashioned Paris bistros that are still producing good, reasonably priced French food, and I so I met two friends for lunch today at Pharamond, a real old-timer in Les Halles. I hadn’t been there in ages, and coming in on a sunny afternoon, I was cheered by the intact beauty of its art-nouveau faience tiles and the tables of businessmen wearing ties that matched their socks. Maybe, I briefly hoped, we’d eat well. Maybe this place was still solidly good and had just gotten under my bistro-loving radar.

Alas, aside from the very pleasant service, our meal went asunder the moment our first courses arrived–horribly overcooked ravioles de Royans (wonderful little ravioli from the Dauphine region stuffed with tangy cheese) in a completely unseasoned cream sauce and a sad looking bowl of vegetable soup with no garnish whatsoever.

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To anyone who envies me the fact that I live in Paris, it may sound boorish to admit that one of the reasons I love visiting New York City is the chance to eat a really good pizza. Yes, I know, I know, they’re people who insist you can find a good one in Paris, but I’ve never landed one in Paris that was any better than average. Why? Most Parisians just don’t have the bulging vein passion for pizza that New Yorkers do, and many consider it as a drole street food not worthy of any serious gastronomic consideration. Dommage!

At the risk of a little sacrilege, I’d say that a really well-made pizza can offer a punch of pleasure that’s every bit as potent as a slab of foie gras or any other Gallic delicacy, and anyone who doubts me, should make a beeline to Keste on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. On an absolutely arctic afternoon before Bruno and I found the courage to try and jam everything we’d bought or been given during our visits to New York and the Bahamas into two suitcase that seemed to shrink by the hour, we dashed out the door for a last-minute pizza fix before the numbing misery of JFK.

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Even after almost 25 years in Paris, they’re few things that gladden my heart more than a perfect cheese burger, something I’ve never been able to find anywhere outside of the United States. So everytime I return to America, I can’t wait to sink my fangs into a really good one.

For years, my fail-safe burger has been the one served at noon at the Union Square Cafe in New York City, but after a real wipe-out of a dinner there the other night, I decided it was time to shop around, and so I quizzed a group of the most exigent food-lovers in Manhattan at a Christmas party and three out of seven recommended BLT Burger in Greenwich Village.

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On the heels of the first disappointing meal I’ve ever had at the Union Square Cafe in New York City last night–the service was frantic and the food quite ordinary, I was musing on all of the wonderful food I’ve eaten in 2009, so here’s a motley list of the year’s most delicious moments.

PARIS

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Atrium lounge at Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona

For many years I lived in the rue du Bac in the old stables at the head of the courtyard of the building next door to the Chapelle de la Medaille Miraculeuse (Chapelle of the Miraculous Medallion, so named because a nun named Catherine Labouré who once lived in the convent here claimed to have been given a miracle-working gold medallion by the Virgin in 1830). On summer mornings, I often woke to the other worldly sound of the nuns singing, but the only real miracle that befell me while in the vicinity was when chef Claude Colliot opened his charming little restaurant La Bamboche around the corner from me in the rue de Babylone in 1998. At the time, there was almost no where really good to eat within an easy leg of my front door, so these two terra-cotta washed dining rooms came as a god send. Colliot’s charming wife ran the dining room, and he sent out excellent and very imaginative contemporary French dishes.

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I love Chinese cooking, which is why I often despair at the confused, dumbed down versions of China’s food served in Paris. The main problems that explain the wilting mediocrity of Chinese cooking in Paris are an instinctive French aversion to spicy food and also the fact that few Parisians know enough about the country’s diverse regional kitchens to demand anything more authentic than the safe and confused menus that prevail in neighborhood restaurants all over the city. Many of them are run by Chinese owners who immigrated to France from the former countries of Indochina–Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and so they offer the curious mix of southeast Asian and Chinese dishes that has come to be the prevailing “Asian” cookery found in Paris. What this means is a mix of Nems (Vietnamese deep-fried Spring rolls), dim sum, timid soups and miscellaneous sautees with sauce–beef with oyster sauce, etc.

This unfortunate state of affairs is why I was very curious when a friend from Hong Kong recently recommended the Bistrot de Pekin in the 8th as serving some of the most authentic Chinese food in town. The location just steps off the Champs Elysees in a neighborhood of offices and hotels wasn’t encouraging, but we decided to give in a try on a rainy Sunday night in the hopes of discovering a Chinese place we could really love. Though it’s one of the hoariest cliches in the book, it was immediately encouraging to arrive at this friendly, attractive place with tall-backed Chinese chairs at tables lined with bamboo matting and peach walls and find that it was mostly full of Chinese patrons.

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