Alexander Lobrano
Blogger Buzz: Le Vaudeville & Les Enfants de Paris
Aug 20th
LE VAUDEVILLE, One of the Last Decent Brasseries in Paris, B; LES ENFANTS DE PARIS, Franco-Brazilian via New York City, C-
Obsessively interested in good food, I always have the makings of at least one or two good meals on hand at home so that as someone who travels often, I never end up being forced to call out for a mediocre pizza or Indian food of unknown quality at the last minute. Returning home to Paris after ten wonderful sunny days in Greece on a cool, rainy Monday night, however, I knew I needed something happier than a bowl of spaghetti carbonara, an all-time comfort-food favorite, to revive my wilting spirits. Waiting for our luggage to come up, Bruno and I had talked about going to Hokkaido, a favorite Japanese noodle and dumpling place in the rue Chabanais, but since it took forever for the bags to arrive–why is Charles de Gaulle sooo slow?, I knew we’d never make it. So we were hurtling into town in a cab when he turned to me and voiced the very same thoughts I was having: “How about going to Le Vaudeville for some oysters and a steak tartare?” Yes! Oysters and steak tartare were exactly what I wanted after a gastronomic sojourn dominated by grilled octopus and squid, Greek salad, white wine and ouzo.
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Blogger Buzz: Le Saotico & Le Comptoir du Relais – Open Seating Sunday Dinner
Aug 5th
LE SAOTICO, Good Modern French Cuisine du Marche, B ; LE COMPTOIR DU RELAIS, Open Seating Sunday Dinner, C+/B-
A long time ago in the Latin Quarter, there was a terrific little restaurant called Le Reminet. It still exists, and it’s still pretty good, but since founding chef Hugues Gournay and his delightful wife Anne Surcouf moved on, it’s fallen off of my regular go-to list. So I was delighted the other day to have a note from Surcouf telling me that she and her husband had opened a new place, the curiously named Le Saotico (according to Surcouf, the word is Norman slang for the little gray shrimp found in the waters off of their native Cotentin peninsula in Normandy).
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Blogger Buzz: Mystery Cuisine and Rossi & Co.
Jul 23rd
MYSTERY CUISINE, Good Food with an Amusing Side of Theater, B+; ROSSI & CO, A Nice Neapolitan, B
Cards on the table, I’ve always been pretty dubious about molecular cooking, often finding that I want a real chef in the kitchen instead of a gastronomic Salvador Dali. Instead, I whole-heartedly subscribe to the infallible dictum of Auguste Escoffier who said “Cooking becomes genius when things taste of what they are.” So science in the kitchen doesn’t really work for me.
On the other hand, I’m not adverse to food as entertainment, and so it was with great curiosity that I went to dinner the other night at the teasingly named Mystery Cuisine, a tiny restaurant next to the Palais Royal. Since my pal David and I had been enjoying the terrace at the nearby Cafe de Nemours, one of my favorites, I was a little apprehensive about stepping into a heat box when we arrived at the front door. Instead, we were greeted by a gust of nicely chilled air and amiable chef-owner Edouard Desrousseaux de Vandières and led to a table for two in a partially curtained niche of this low-lit and decidedly mysterious dining room.
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Blogger Buzz: A Secret Garden in Paris
Jul 17th
Anyone looking for a secret garden in which to spend a warm afternoon in Paris, might enjoy the beautiful gardens of the Musee Rodin in the 7th arrondissement, which are open to the public from Tuesday through Sunday, 10am-6pm, with an admission fee of one Euro.
Looking for a breathe of fresh air last week, I decided to hide away here for a couple of hours between appointments and was very pleasantly surprised by the charming summer-only cafe terrace that’s shaded by huge chestnut trees. The cafe menu is simple but pleasant, with light dishes like a smoked salmon sandwich with horseradish cream and cucumbers, a goat cheese, tomato and basil tartine (open sandwich) on Max Poilane bread, and a very good chef’s salad. It’s hard to spend more than ten euros for lunch, and this is a perfect place for a timeout during a day of shopping or sight-seeing.
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Blogger Buzz: Le Bistrot T, La Gauloise and an Excellent Lunch at SPRING
Jul 10th
Anyone who is missing Thoumieux in its former incarnation as an amiable vieille France brasserie (it’s now become a trendy contemporary French place run by talented chef Jean-Francois Piege, ex- Les Ambassadeurs at the Hotel de Crillon) might enjoy a casual meal at the new Le Bistrot T, which was recently opened by François Bassalert, the friendly and gastronomically earnest son of the family that ran this Left Bank address for many years. Serious about sourcing his menu from the best suppliers, generous and friendly, Bassalert incarnates all of the best qualities of the Auvergnat bistro owners who are responsible for many of the best bistros in Paris, including places like the Ambassade d’Auvergne and the wonderful Cafe Nemrod, both favorites of mine.
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Blogger Buzz: La Tour d’Argent and Les Banquettes
Jul 2nd
LA TOUR D’ARGENT, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, B+; LES BANQUETTES, A Could-do-Better Bistro, C+
Walking to lunch at La Tour d’Argent from the Metro station at Maubert-Mutualite, I found myself so lost in thought that this post might never have seen the light of day if a strong-armed and quick-witted old lady hadn’t yanked me back up on the pavement from the path of an oncoming van delivering butter and eggs. It was a hot June day, and after waiting a half hour at Sevres-Babylone because of yet another pointless RATP strike, I was puzzling over a mysterious and unsettlingly sweet whiff of linden flowers when I completely lost track of where I was and what I was doing on the way to one of the most famous restaurants in Paris, La Tour d’Argent. Why?
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Blogger Buzz: Le Cristal de Sel & La Cour Jardin
Jun 26th
Le CRISTAL DE SEL, Sincerely Good, B+; La COUR JARDIN, La Vie en Rose, B-/C+
One of the conundrums of writing about food in Paris is that I rarely have the opportunity to return to a restaurant I’ve already reviewed as often as I’d like.* Why? The insistent churn of the new and the fact that I won’t do more than five dinners out during any given week–weekends I not only love to stay home and cook but also give my alarming girth a respite, mean that it’s hard to get back to places I’ve already been with much regularity, so I was delighted when a friend who lives in the 15th arrondissement suggested dinner at Le Cristal de Sel the other night. *(the recent exception has been La Regalade Saint Honore, where I’ve now been almost a dozen times and thoroughly enjoyed every meal).
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Blogger Buzz: Guy Savoy and Aux Deux Amis
Jun 20th
Guy Savoy, Haute Cuisine That’s Worth the Wound to Your Wallet, A-;
Aux Deux Amis, A Sweet Little Bisto, B
Quite understandably, given their vertiginous prices, one of the questions that I’m asked most often is which Michelin three-stars are worth the wound to the wallet. It’s a tough one to answer, too, since I don’t go to any of them as often as I’d like, and they do have their ups and downs. So I was delighted the other day when a pal who’s as food mad as I am invited me to lunch at Guy Savoy.
I hadn’t been to this exalted table for a longtime and was honestly curious as to what I’d find, too. As my memory served me, Guy Savoy has always offered superb service and reliably very fine food, but was rarely a place where any single dish stopped me in mid-sentence.
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Blogger Buzz: Prunier and le Comptoir du Petit Marguery
Jun 10th
Paella at PRUNIER, and LE COMPTOIR DU PETIT MARGUERY, A Good Bistro Annex, B-
I hadn’t been to Prunier, the elegant art-deco jewel of a restaurant on the Avenue Victor Hugo for a very longtime for the simple reasons that it’s very expensive and I rarely find myself drawn to the silk-stocking precincts of the 16th arrondissement.
A rather grand friend from Geneva invited me the other night, however, and as we studied the menu over flutes of Champagne, I noticed a copper casserole arrive from the kitchen brimming with shrimp, cockles, mussels, squid rings and fish filets on a bed of pale golden orzo, a clever idea that riffs on the Catalan recipe which uses short stubby vermicelli noodles in place of rice in a paella-like fideua.
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Blogger Buzz: Ralph’s, Paris – an American in Paris
Jun 6th
If I lunched there several times a few weeks ago, and generally found the food to be better than expected (with the exception of the worst frites I’ve ever eaten in France), it took a trip to New York to really put Ralph’s, the new restaurant in Ralph Lauren’s new Saint-Germain-des-Pres boutique, into perspective. To wit, I think it’s sort of too bad the powers that be didn’t decide to do a modern American bistro in the idiom of the very pleasant Cookshop in New York City’s Chelsea district instead of a pricey slice of up-market Betty Crocker vintage Americana.
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Blogger Buzz: The Only Kind of Spring Bouquet I’d Ever Want to Receive
Jun 1st
Padding down the street in a small Slovenian town a week ago, I was stopped cold by a curious display in a shop window.
For a minute, I couldn’t quite fathom what I was looking at, and then it sunk in–these were edible bouquets. Now as much as I love the peonies that are currently in season, I can’t think of a more delicious way of making someone happy than offering them a composition of white asparagus, new potatoes and radishes. Or if you’re with an asparagus lover in Paris at the moment, make a bee-line for Maceo, an exceptionally pretty restaurant near the Palais Royal that’s serving a superb all-asparagus menu for 52 Euros right now.
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Blogger Buzz: Les Ambassadeurs & La Régalade Saint-Honoré
May 16th
LES AMBASSADEURS – A Diplomatic Success; LA REGALADE SAINT HONORE – Delicious and Maybe the Best Buy in Paris This Spring
I think it’s partly attributable to a certain lingering distaste for conspicuous consumption that’s a symptom of the very deep and still slowly healing recession that afflicted most western industrial countries and also a sign of a certain strident generational cleavage among the major clans of French food writers, but recent local coverage of any Paris restaurant where a meal costs 100 Euros ($130, at current exchange rates) or more has been sour to overtly hostile during the last few months. As the recurring and recurrently scornful script would have it, you don’t really need to spend this much money to have a really good meal in Paris this days
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