Laetitia and chef Romain Brechignac @Lisa Klein Michel

A really excellent recent meal at Le Flaubert, which was originally called Le Bistrot d’a Cote when two-star Michelin chef Michel Rostang first opened it thirty years ago, got me to thinking about the impact of the internet on restaurant writing. To wit, the only reason I had this fine feed at a restaurant I’d once loved but hadn’t been to in over ten years is that some visiting friends from South Africa had been advised to eat there by a good hotel concierge. Otherwise, I am usually so caught up in the cycle of the new, new, new–Hello, SEO (search engine optimisation) that I very rarely find the time to go back to places I’ve enjoyed to see how they might be evolving, holding up, changing.

What this does, in effect, is penalize the careers of established chefs and well-run restaurants, since after the initial blaze of publicity when they open, how do they remain sought-after, talked about, and most of all profitable when the whole dining-out gig is so gamed towards the new? To be sure, a great chef can win a solid following of regulars who fill his or her dining room day in and day out, but the ferocity of the new remains hard to overcome, since it’s become a given that novelty is the best driver of cyber clicks, because–it is hoped–they will translate into on-line advertising, assumed to be the last bandage of ever more seriously ailing print publishing.

It’s not that the New hasn’t always driven media, but rather how fierce this has become as we read more and more online, with the websites’ infinite need for fresh content, than we do in print.

As someone who ardently loves good food, my goal here isn’t to open the back of the cyber business models that drive the internet, but to simply observe that they are changing the way we eat in ways which often reward good public relations more than they do good cooking. When it comes to Le Flaubert, I still remember the flutter this place caused when it first opened, because it was so surprising in 1987 that a Michelin two-star chef would turn his hand to affordable everyday dining. But insofar as this idiom is concerned, Michel Rostang is every bit as much a father of “La Bistronomie,” or modern French bistro cooking, as chef Christian Constant and the band of young chefs he trained, notably Yves Camdeborde, Eric Frechon and Thierry Breton.

After the meal I had here the other night, I can also say that this table is not only better than ever but has become one of the finest bistros in Paris. So what lucky happenstance it was that delivered me to its door, and my thanks to my Capetonian friends for getting me back here. As soon as we stepped through the door, the atmosphere was terrific–the dining room had that wonderful winter fug generated by people who are eating and drinking well, and the hostess here, Laetitia, was delightful from the moment she brought us our menus with that sort of saucy, bemusedly wry social posturing that’s bistro service at its best. We ordered glasses of Condrieu, because who wouldn’t, and after they came to the table Laetitia followed with a slice of excellent homemade jambon persille (a Burgundian terrine of chunks of ham in parsley-brightened aspic).

The South Africans were as excited as baby seals to be in Paris again after a very longtime, and since neither of them speak French, I sherpa-ed them through the menu, which left them squirming in their seats with anticipation. And since even after many years as a Parisian, I could never become blasé about the city myself, we were an eager audience when our starters arrived.

Caroline’s mackerel poached in white wine was beautifully plated with pickled vegetables and poached spring onions with an iodine rich seaweed vinaigrette, while Hunter slipped into sort of a monastic meditative bliss as he ate his duck and foie gras pate en croute, which was encased first in buttery pastry and then in a shimmering garter of dark amber aspic–I forked in here, and it was in a mouthful everything that has always defined this restaurant, or a sort of exalted rusticity produced by applying steely haute-cuisine technique to bistro dishes. Much as I adore these friends, it was a struggle against a surge of animal avarice to allow my friends to taste my airy gnocchi a la Parisienne with roasted ceps and sweetbreads, since this was not only one of the best dishes I’ve eaten all year, it was ecstatically consoling on a cold, damp winter night. That said, I hate to think of how I might of reacted if either of them had asked for a second taste.

Our food was so soothing that it allowed us to unload our respective burdens–them, the corruption of the Zuma government, me–well, just guess, without denting our pleasure and move on to happier subjects of conversation, like the beach house that Hunter had designed for them on a pristine stretch of the Indian ocean in Mozambique, one of the most beautiful countries I’ve ever visited, or the intriguing way that Cape Town is slowly but surely recovering its essential DNA as a city once known as “The Tavern of the Seas.” To wit, they said that there’s more racial comity than ever there, and that it’s less and less self-conscious. Caroline asked me about “the handsome Macron” and all of us confessed that we didn’t have a clue as to what Bitcoin might be and couldn’t care less one way or another. We also chatted about the impact of the internet on our lives, the ways we love it, the ways we don’t, with Hunter expressing exasperation that anyone could become famous just for knowing how to grab our increasingly shattered attention spans in cyber space, as opposed to having some real talent.

For mains, Caroline ordered the roasted octopus with artichoke and onions, because, as she later admitted, she’d never eaten octopus before (“it’s odd, but delicious,” was here take on this tentacled treat), and I couldn’t resist the olive-oil poached cod on a bed of Paimpol beans and ceps. Both dishes were made with superb produce, impeccably cooked and deeply satisfying, which put them at a notable difference from a lot of the wearisomely chef ‘bistronomique’ I’ve been eating too often lately.

Hunter went with the daily special, seared scallops with parsnip puree and pickled cauliflower. “It’s rare to find fresh scallops in South Africa, and if you do, they’re no where near as good as these–so firm and such a nice gentle sweet taste,” he said in praise of these succulent marine morsels from Normandy.

As part of a losing, but hopefully not futile, battle not to become a client of a chain of stores called the Big & Tall Men’s Store, a plus-sized place  where I once worked as a college student for a few weeks one summer–my father insisted I get a job before I went away to my ‘real’ summer job as a waiter on Nantucket, because he didn’t want me “loafing around,” I don’t normally eat dessert. Still the South Africans insisted, so I told them about the first day on the job at the Big & Tall Men’s Store, the only store in a suburban Connecticut strip mall without a front door–the clients parked in back and came in through the back door, presumably because they were too embarrassed to be seen going into such a place, and I was astonished to discover box shorts the size of small circus tents and suits that would fit a redwood.

During the dull hours when there were no customers, I’d sit on a stool by the cash register reading, and then when the door bell rang, signaling the arrival of a client, I never knew what shape of misery I’d find when I looked up, often way up, or wide, often very wide. These men were hurried, furtive shoppers, because they were miserable being in the store and just wanted to get it over with in a hurry. I’d mostly leave them alone, since I knew they wanted as little interaction as possible, but occasionally I’d try to help, especially during the summer, when I’d ask them if they needed a bathing suit, too. Nine out of ten of them were hugely relieved by the suggestion. “Do you sell them?” “Yes” “In my size?” “Of course,” I’d say, and steer them away from the tropical prints and stripes to the solid colors.

My memory shared as a protest got me no where, though. “Well, you have thickened up a bit since we last saw you (note to self: never be coy about your weight), but that’s no reason not to have dessert with two dear friends,” said Caroline. So I ordered some honey ice cream with roasted prunes and raisins, because it sounded more healthy than anything else. Hunter went with the petits pots de creme au chocolat a l’ancienne (the world’s best chocolate custard) and Caroline, the poached pear with whipped cream and walnuts. And so there was a sweet ending for all of us to a wonderful reunion and an excellent meal.

Le Flaubert – Bistrot d’a Cote, 10 rue Gustave Flaubert, 17th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01- 42-67-05-81, Metro: Pereire, Wagram or Ternes. Open Tuesday to Friday for lunch and dinner. Saturday dinner only. Closed Sunday and Monday. Prix-fixe menus 45 Euros, 36 Euros, 32 Euros, Average a la carte 50 Euros. www.bistrotflaubert.com

@Yann Deret

Tinkering with a neighborhood institution is always risky, but the new version of Vins des Pyrénées is a solid success. Why? Truth be told, this wonderful old hole-in-the-wall that’s been open in one guise another since 1906 is actually more appealing now than it’s ever been, with much better food than it served in the past, a great-looking new decor that respects its past rather than overwhelming it, friendly service, and a terrific cocktail menu. Best of all, it’s still one of those rare places–for the time being, where you can decide to go at the last minute without having made a reservation (reservations are preferable, bien sur, but sometimes a date just happens, and this place privileges such spontaneity rather than imposing the tyrannical straight-jacket of a reservation on a spur-of-the-moment good time).

  This is a rare good news story, too, at a time when income-inequality driven gentrification continues to ravage the sociological ecosystems of the world’s most desirable cities. Even though Paris is subject to the same forces have sadly dulled and pasteurised so many of the most wonderful parts of New York and London, and the French capital has been less disrupted than those latter two, the Marais continues to go relentlessly upmarket. But at Vins des Pyrénées, owner actor Florian Cadiou has shrewdly respected the enduringly democratic DNA of the quartier enough to draw up a menu that lets you pop in for a single course–maybe their excellent Croque Monsieur made with truffled Gouda, and a glass of wine for twenty euros, which is what goes a bargain these days in Paris.

To be sure, some of the old timers, like the vociferously cranky middle-aged British music critic in a vintage black leather Perfecto jacket and his equally grumpy companion who sat next to us at dinner the other night, won’t be pleased. But hey, the days when Jim Morrison liked to hang out here aren’t coming back. That said, this place still manages to be cool without calling a tedious amount of attention to its hipster cred, and that’s something to be grateful for in an age of wiltingly over-hyped and over-conceptualised restaurants. After all, who doesn’t love an address where you could actually become a regular without having to spend a small fortune or reserve in advance?

@Yann Deret

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Chef Ollie Clarke

Smoked lamb carpaccio at Origins 14 – La Regalade

British chef Ollie Clarke has bought the legendary La Régalade in the 14^th Arrondissement and is transitioning it towards a new name, Origins 14 – La Régalade. In all likelihood, this will be shortened to Origins 14 once Clarke has settled in, but for the time being, the moniker La Régalade is being retained as a sort of placeholder, because so many people know where this restaurant is located and also that it was the birthplace of la bistronomie, or modern French bistro movement, when chef Yves Camdeborde first opened it in 1992.

Since modern French bistro cooking has become the dominant culinary idiom among ambitious young chefs going out on their own, it’s almost hard to imagine that this cooking style barely existed twenty-five years ago. That was when a band of young chefs who’d worked with chef Christian Constant when he was head chef at the sadly now vanished Les Ambassadeurs at the Hotel de Crillon began going out on their own and applying the haute-cusiine lessons they’d learned from Constant to bistro cooking.

This included the idea of using luxury foods liked foie gras and truffles as garnishes on bistro dishes, shorter cooking times, a lavish use of fresh herbs, and a preference for jus (deeply reduced meat or seafood stock) and vinaigrettes in place of traditional French sauces made by deglazing cooking juices with wine and then elaborating them with rich dairy products like butter and cream. Vegetables suddenly achieved a new importance in the context of this cooking style, too, and homelier cuts of meat, including a lot of organ meats, and less expensive fishes (mackerel, herring, red mullet, etc.) took pride of place on the menus at this new breed of bistro, which also dismissed the canon of traditional bistro cooking, including such grand Gallic dishes as blanquette de veau and boeuf bourguignon, as too rich and too heavy.

French food writer Sebastien Desmorand coined a name for the new movement, La Bistronomie, and a raft of new guides and publications, including Nova (no longer publishing) and Le Fooding (now partially owned by Michelin and so part of the establishment it once took such iconoclastic delight in ridiculing and rejecting) championed it. So it thrived, and to such a degree, in fact, that it’s now much easier to find a bistronomie style meal in Paris than it is a traditional bistro feed.

On my way to the restaurant on a cool autumn night, I remember the spectacular first meal I had at the original La Régalade. First we gorged ourselves on the superb loaf of terrine de campagne that arrived at the table with excellent bread compliments of the house, and then I had ravioli stuffed with foie gras under a thatch of truffle shavings and a sublime dish of grilled rougets with cep mushrooms and roasted chestnuts. This meal was so good that thinking about still makes me ravenous many years later. So I was very curious about how Clarke would reset the pendulum of this very famous place en route to meet Bruno there for dinner.

Arriving, the look of the dining room hadn’t changed in any perceptible way, which allowed me the pleasure of some umami-rich gnawing on old bones nostalgia for all of the excellent meals I’d eaten here through the years, with different people and on different occasions, over a glass of excellent Cotes du Roussillon Domaine Modat while I waited for Bruno. The crowd seemed little different from the last time I’d been here, perhaps five years, ago, as well, since it remained a mixture of locals, guidebook-following foreigners, French out-of-towners staying in inexpensive hotels around the Porte d’Orleans and solidly fed Parisian regulars of different stripes who’d probably arrived by Uber. There was, however, a sprinkling of younger types, who probably knew Clarke’s cooking from the days he was chef at Fish La Boissonnerie, a popular expat table in Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

So I found myself musing like some kind of an uncle on the idea of having known this restaurant for its entire lifetime and also wondering why I hadn’t been here in such a longtime. In the end, the reasons this address fell off my list had to do with the fact that bistronomie became so ubiquitous it no longer required a journey to an out-of-the-way corner of the 14th Arrondissement to enjoy or not enjoy it and also because as good as the cooking of chef Bruno Doucet may be–Doucet took this place over when Camdeborde moved to Saint-Germain-des-Pres to profitably play to his international reputation in a front-row setting where he could command higher prices, it lacked the sinewy originality and occasional thrillingly primal bluntness of Camdeborde’s style. All of this probably explains why Doucet decided to sell the restaurant to Clarke and concentrate on the two other Paris restaurants that bear the La Regalade name, La Régalade Saint-Honoré and La Regalade Conservatoire at the Hotel de Nell. Odds are good that he probably wants to make some money off of a good globally known brand name on his own count, too–and who can blame him, without having to worry about maintaining the allure of the original location.

When Bruno showed up we ordered right away, since he was hungry at the end of a long day. After the waiter left our table, I found myself earnestly hoping about what would happen next, and then it did. The help-yourself terrine de campagne brought to the table as a complimentary hors d’oeuvre arrived with a thump, and then there was second thump an earthenware jug of cornichons was set down on the table, along with a basket of excellent bread. And we shamelessly savaged the terrine, which was superb. Oh, and by the way–don’t even think about scolding the fat edging this terrine, since it was as delicious, maybe even more delicious, as good butter. Just for the record, maybe it’s Instagram fatigue or something, but I’ve also gone completely off super-styled food photography and am now besotted with photographs that tell the truth.

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Gastronomic entrepreneur Alain Ducasse’s new version of his restaurant Spoon (the original  closed after a long run just off the Champs Elysees several years ago) is called  Spoon 2. It occupies the former premises of one of Yannick Alleno’s Terroir Parisien restaurants in the Palais Brogniart, the old Paris stock-market building in the heart of the city, which were redesigned in a curiously nondescript way by the otherwise tremendously elegant interior architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte .

I ate here a week ago, and I am still trying to make sense of the experience. Suffice it to say that Alain Ducasse could never do a bad restaurant–he’s much too talented and savvy for that. But I just can’t find the modus vivendi–gastronomic or economic, for this place. Supposedly, it’s about showcasing the remarkable foods and dishes Ducasse has recently discovered during his incessant travels. But the first dish that came to the table, “shrimp cake, katsuboshi,” identified as being from Taiwan on the menu, is a delicious Cantonese classic that was on the take-out menu of the excellent Cantonese Chinese restaurant in the town where I grew up in Connecticut as “Shrimp Toast.” The only thing that made it different at Spoon 2, were the bonito flakes, which were oddly lacking in flavor.

It’s still very good at Spoon 2, though, but hardly a revelation, and neither was the Thai salad of green papaya (fiery but otherwise more a study in texture than taste), the three variously garnished raw fish dishes, or the two in the menu category dubbed “Vapeurs,” because good quality shumai, or shrimp dumplings, and pork-and-cabbage wontons can be found all over Paris and also purchased at Picard, the popular local frozen food chain of respectable quality.

Just before we became completely bewildered by this place–I mean why would I come to Alain Ducasse for straight up Cantonese, Thai, Peruvian or other cuisines when I can go to the source elsewhere in Paris, a very clever dish arrived. Crunchy golden beignets filled with chilli sin carne (meat-free chilli, or chilli made just with beans) arrived at the table in a molded cast-iron baking dish with salsa verde and peppery tomato sauce, and they were an urbane and witty riff on a Mexican comfort-food classic.

With his knowledge, talent, and imagination, this sort of nimble, even occasionally wry, culinary reflection is what I came to Spoon 2 expecting from Ducasse, since he is one of the world’s most assiduous catalogers of tastes, produce and recipes. The first Spoon, Food and Wine, later shortened to just Spoon, spun on just such an axis of disruptive innovation, reflection and imagination, which is what made it so original when it opened in 1998 (the fact that the original wine list was almost exclusively American was a real brickbat to Gallic sensibilities, too).

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@ Jeanne Le Louam

Chef Adrien Ferrand

Named for his signature dish–a composition of smoked eel with reglisse  (liquorice root), apples and hazelnuts, Restaurants Eels is the best new table of La Rentree (the Fall season) in Paris. The solid allure of this place is foremost due to the superbly witty, inventive and assured cooking of chef Adrien Ferrand, but also to the beautiful renovation of an old couscous restaurant with a real attention to customer comfort in terms of lighting and noise by interior designer Pascale Perrier and the charming and professional service of the dining room staff.

Arriving for dinner with Bruno, we were immediately impressed by how well-run and professional this new restaurant is for a place that’s only three months old. Even before we’d looked at the menu, this aura of cheerful but steely confidence set table place apart from other young-chef-going-out-on-his-or-her openings. Here, every last detail has been thought through, what from the wood-panelled zinc-topped service bar where Ferrand composes his dishes before they’re served, to the clever black-steel glass racks strategically located around the dining room to save steps and the pretty vases of early autumn wild flowers that decorate the bar. Without coming off as a uniform, the staff wears one, and it’s almost invisible, since the ensemble has a sort of a graduate-student chic created by gray shirts, navy trousers and tobacco-colored leather Oxford shoes. Think sexy nerd.

On a Tuesday night, the dining room, which used to be couscous place and has since been renovated and given a great looking vaguely midcentury retro decor by interior designer Pascale Perrier, was full, with all 42 covers spoken for. In an old high-ceilinged corner shop front like this, this could mean punishing a punishing decibel level, but not here. The tables are widely spaced enough to dampen any din, and the charming maitre d’hotel with a full but neatly trimmed beard volunteered that they are still planning to install more noise-abatement insulation in the near future. The message was clear: This is a restaurant that care very much about its customers.

Smoked eel with apple and hazelnuts @ Pauline Gouablin

As he poured us each an excellent glass of Chardonnay from the Jura, he added that chef Adrien Ferrand’s signature dish is the smoked eel composition, and added that the fish of the day was hake. Without having given it a lot of thought, I had already sampled Ferrand’s cooking when he was cooking at KGB, chef William Ledeuil’s annex table to his excellent Ze Kitchen Galerie, in Saint-Germain-des-Pres. If the food I’d had at several meals there was excellent, Ferrand was still cooking within the gastronomic bookends of Ledeuil’s style.

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Juste, a stylish raw bar and seafood takeaway place just down the street from the exquisite neo-classical church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in the 9th Arrondissement, is an address we’ve been meaning to try for a longtime. This is because we both love oysters and liked the idea of a place that offered them outside the usual local context of mostly mediocre brasseries or the expensive fish restaurants.

So when a certain jet-lag induced inertia meant that our larder was still pretty much bare the second night after we’d returned from vacation last week, we called to make sure they were open, and then walked down the pleasantly quiet rue de Châteaudun–normally its a polluted, traffic-choked mess of street that begs the question of why the city of Paris, purportedly so green, doesn’t heal this artery by planting it with trees, to Juste.

Since I’ve told Bruno the story of how I ate my first oyster too many times for him to hear it again, I kept it to myself, but suffice it to say that some thirty years ago during a truant getaway to Cabourg in Normandy, an insistent Frenchman with eyes the same dark green color as the waters of the English Channel cornered me into giving the bivalves a chance.

We’d gone for a long walk on the beach on a beautiful Indian summer day, a pleasure enhanced by the fact we’d both taken sick days in the fullest flush of good health, when we rounded a bend and much to my horror, I saw a sea shack with folding chairs on a little bluff overlooking the dunes. “I bet they’ll have some oysters,” said Marc, and I feared they might, since ever since an unhappy encounter or two with same many years ago in New Orleans, I’d given them a wide berth. Why? I thought I didn’t like their slipperiness, strange texture and unappealing gray appearance.

Despite my protestations that I wasn’t even the least bit hungry–it was only 11am, Marc headed off to the sea shack and waved to me to follow. When I did, I arrived just in time to see him slurping a freshly shucked oyster from its shell. He held one out to me.

“I can’t eat oysters,” I said. ‘For religious reasons.”

“I thought you were a Protestant?”

“I am, but I’m a Congregationalist, and Congregationalists should never eat oysters.”

“Oh,” said Marc. “I think I can fix that.” He dipped an index finger in his glass of Muscadet, crossed himself, muttered something, made a moist mark on my forehead, and said, “I’ve made you a Catholic for as long as is necessary for you to eat some of these excellent Norman oysters.”

So I took a swig of wine, slurped an oyster and swallowed it whole. Truth be told, I loved the taste of the sea the little critter left in its wake. “Now, you’ll actually taste one,” Marc insisted, holding out another one. “Just bite it gently once or twice.” Reluctantly, I did, and in that bolt of iodine-richness, a head-spinning passion was born, one that’s never left me and never will. And this gift of oysters was one of the best anyone’s ever made me during my whole life.

Arriving on a warm night, Juste was a relaxed, friendly place, and all of the picnic tables outside were full, so we snagged a first-come, first-serve table by the door with a built-in metal bucket for the empty shells our meal would generate. We also inspected the short but appealing menu, which includes Thaëron oysters from Riec-sur-Belon (the spats are hatched in the waters off Arcachon in the southwest, then the baby oysters are raised near Morlaix in northern Brittany, and finally they’re finished in a bay on the same province’s southern coast).

There was also a lot of other fresh seafood on display, to be cooked and consumed on the premises or for takeaway, including clams, cockles, crab claws, mussels, and other sea treats, plus a big bubbling lobster tank by the counter where you place your order.

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