Joe Ray

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

HAIL THAT CAB!

PARIS - I’d been back in town for 48 hours, my mental Rolodex a little rusty and trying to think of a good place to meet a friend for lunch. My brain falls on a well-worn card.

Taxi Jaune is a perfect ‘welcome back’ - serving, on this day, radishes with good, sweet, creamy butter and salt flakes - the dish might as well have a little French flag on the top.

Later, Ari and I share mains. A bavette (flank steak) is crunchy on the outside, juicy within - a bite full of flavor, good technique and strong sourcing.

The trout, skin crisp and peeled back like the page of a good book reveals something sensual, a kind of ‘pages turned slowly’ read. There’s a fettucine next to it that’s so good, it causes me to go home and try to make my own pasta.

Outside, the sun is bright. The city shines like a diamond.

Count on about 20€ with a drink at lunch.

Le Taxi Jaune - MAP
13, rue Chapon
Paris
+33 1 42 76 00 40

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Monday, July 12, 2010

SUGAR FRENZY

PARIS

“Mmm… Almonds, fleur d’oranger, vanilla…” says Ari dissecting the Pain du Sucre confection I’m sharing.

“What else is in it?” asks her friend.

My only reply is a frenzied chewing sound, similar to the dining animals in “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

Both friends have each ordered exactly one mint macaroon with chocolate (girls!) and they taste exactly like the mint that grew in our side yard when I was five.

Yesterday in the patisserie where we got them – Pain de Sucre, run by ex-Pierre Gagnaire partner/dynamic do Didier Mathray and Nathalie Robert – a woman, perhaps intoxicated by the beautiful fumes practically stampedes our threesome.

Today, on our return visit (Ari needed some more for her return to Barcelona), another woman snatches one of her macaroons from the box before the salesman can close the top, pretends to offer it to her infant and acts surprised when, ostensibly, the baby says ‘no.’

The mom wolfs it down in one bite.

I can’t blame her.

Pain de Sucre – MAP
14 rue Rambuteau
75003 Paris
http://www.patisseriepaindesucre.com/
Closed Tuesday & Wednesday

Click here to see my 2007 story on Pain du Sucre and other, emm, mold-breaking patisseries

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Thursday, July 08, 2010

LUNCH IN THE BLACK HOLE

PARIS

Unless you’re willing to plunk down the cash, eating around the Champs Elysées is an expensive and often unsatisfying proposition.

“There’s a great Chinese, good sushi…” my dining partner said, citing his local favorites but after years of working in the neighborhood, but he still hadn’t found a favorite French place that’s a good value.

Luckily, he was prepared to plunk down the cash.

In front of Citrus Etoile, Audis and Porsches fight for the space in the crosswalk by the valet and inside, it’s businessmen and a bit of Botox. A little too showbiz for me. The waiter will take your order using an oversized Palm Pilot. That tap, tap, tap noise is about as pleasant a sound as fingers on a chalkboard.

The Web site describes the “adorable” owners Gilles and Elizabeth Epié as “a dynamic and sexy couple.” Someone needs to turn the PR down a notch. Some eat this stuff up and love what the couple does, but this is not my cup of tea.

Having spent a big hunk of time cooking in California, Monsieur Epié makes a laudable effort to offer a menu that’s good for you, but I don’t want to come to a place like this and have a dish that looks like it was pulled from the ‘heart-healthy’ section of a menu.

I will also mention that at a wine tasting yesterday, I had a very similar main dish - fish with spring vegetables - at the wine bistrot Vin Chez Moi (18 rue Duphot 75001) and it was about twice as good (and good looking) as this. Everything we eat at Citrus Etoile is good, but there’s no point during the meal where we say ‘Mmmmm!’ I hate to say it, but I felt like I could do some of this at home.

It also feels like you need to know what to get - there’s a businessman a few tables away whose tie is thrown back over his shoulder like it was in his way. I want what he had, but at 70 euros a head for lunch without wine or dessert, I should be able to point at dishes with my eyes closed and come up with winners every time.

Again, maybe it’s just me. Everything about this place is what the French would call ‘more than correct’ but I’m not interested in paying for a seat in a semi-exclusive place that doesn’t make me want to eat with my tie slung over my shoulder.

Lunchtime prix-fixe options at 49 and 69€. It goes up from there.

Citrus Etoile – MAP
6 rue Arsène Houssaye
75008 Paris
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.citrusetoile.fr
+33 1 42 89 15 51

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Friday, July 02, 2010

BLEU BUT WARM

PARIS

The 11th keeps getting better.

I went to dinner with my favorite cheesemongers from Fromagerie Charonne (a.k.a. Autour du Fromage) the other night - they had a new place to show me in my old neighborhood. Who am I to say no?

po.za.da is visible from Boulevard Voltaire but tucked away on the tiny rue Guénot - you either know it’s there or it’s a lucky find. It’s not a cross-town-trek kind of place, but it’s a great addition to the offerings in the 11th and they’re making the right gestures to please the local crowd. The young chef in the tiny kitchen has the leeway to cook what he wants (the menu only exists on the chalkboard) and there’s an extensive list of good-value wines, available at a marked-down price to take home.

Sylvie, who’s ordered her steak “bleu but warm” gets exactly that and goes quiet for several minutes when it arrives. Daniel gets a burger and though I could care less about the Paris Burger Wars, I want to reach across the table for a bite - it’s wrapped in cured ham, topped with wide shavings of Parmesan and cooked like Sylvie’s steak. Pork chops ‘à la moutarde à l’ancienne’ means the mustard is whipped to a frenzy - a creamy puff as good on the chops as it is on my spuds and the salad. Chef also had the wisdom to let a sautéed girolle mushroom appetizer be just that.

Count on around 30€ with wine for dinner - lunch appears to be a good deal with 12€ appetizer/main or main/dessert options.

po.za.da - MAP
2 rue Guénot
75011 Paris
+33.1.43.70.63.24

Autour du Fromage - MAP

120 rue de Charonne

75011 Paris

+33.1.43.71.58.48

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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

HOT ZONES AND A SLOW DANCE

PARIS

Dinner is with a pair of war correspondents. Talk ranges from world hot zones to falsifying papers.

Nothing quite like that to make a food and travel writer feel like a wimp.

I try to flex my muscles by coming up with somewhere new to eat in the neighborhood (without returning to the wonderful L’Escargot) and come up with La Lanterne, a spot I’ve spied on a side road along my jogging route near the Buttes Chaumont park.

Downstairs at La Lanterne is candlelit bric-a-brac, remnants of some bygone era that’s hard to put a finger on, but must look better on a cold winter’s night than the misty early summer’s eve we’re here on. We make a beeline for the covered roof deck, currently occupied by ten friends in their 50s celebrating a birthday.

Entrées arrive - a tartare de legumes, escargot with roquefort sauce and a salad with pork cheeks. Everything sounds more interesting that it is. Bof! say the French. Though the business card says “old Paris atmosphere” it’s really like eating at a so-so countryside restaurant.

But the table next to us has a good mood floating in the air above them and at our table, the guys are smiling, talking about dodging bullets. Mains arrive and one of the correspondents cuts his andouillette open longwise like he’s gutting it. Truthfully, they’re a bit disappointing - better, but not worth a trip, until I look around the deck - wonderful views in a quiet city spot. The woman at the table next door pulls out an iPhone to play a tinny slow song, holding it up like a candle at a concert.

The birthday girl and her sweetie - clearly still a sweetie after a long time together - get up and dance together. It’s the kind of charming you don’t always see in Paris. Which makes the whole dinner worth it.

Count on about 25-30 € for dinner. Rooftop dancing optional.

La Lanterne MAP
9 Rue du Tunnel
75019 Paris
+33 1 42 39 15 98

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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

TURBOT’S DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

I’d wanted to come back here for years. I’d also been wondering where to have my last meal of the summer in Barcelona.

Appropriately, I went with my old lunch partner/landlord Fede who introduced me to Restaurant Montalban when I rented my Poble Sec apartment from him years ago.

All I wanted for this meal was to repeat the one I remembered, as it seemed the owner had made some sort of deal with the devil to make good seafood.

There is no disappointment.

We start with percebes - gooseneck barnacles - sugar sweet, wildly expensive, and looking like dinosaur toes, Montalban’s are made with a pinch of cinnamon in the court bouillon. To eat them, pinch the neck, pull out the sweet center, pop it in your mouth and wash it down with a Galician white and you, too, will be saying, “Money? What money???”

We follow with a plate of galician octopus that’s plump, tender, almost sweet and paprika smoky. Every time I eat this dish I like it more.

Barnacles and octopi, however, are sideshows compared with the real reason I want to return; I want the rodaballo. The turbot comes out crispy-chewy on the outside firm and flavorful on the inside. There’s a lemon, but there’s no reason to bother with it; this fish is worth a deal with the devil. My word - one taste and you wonder why anyone would bother with any other preparation.

You’ll pay for the pleasure, but Montalban is still a great value. As Fede says, “this place and Quimet & Quimet are the only places you’ll find people wearing suits in Poble Sec.”

Count on about 35 euros for lunch with wine. Sky’s the limit if you order percebes, but they’ll be worth it.

Bar-Restaurant Montalban “Casa Jose” - MAP
Margarit 31
+34 93 442 31 43

Closed Sunday night and Monday.

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Friday, June 04, 2010

UPHILL FROM ANCHOVIES

We roll out of “the place with the amazing anchovies” and head next door to the new Cal Marino - which, with walls lined with bottles, barrels and a bar full of tasty vittles, looks like Quimet & Quimet’s little cousin.

Toni brought me here for a quick snack a month ago and I wanted to check in again and see what’s cooking.

They don’t cook much, actually, they source. There are gourmet snacks a gogo - lots of good things to skewer with a toothpick and a few combinations à la Quimet. There are plates with excellent olives, tasty shrimp, or little bites of octopus; you’d have to make a concerted effort to make a meal out of it, but paired with, say, a good cider, they get the appetite racing, the conversation moving.

They’re still working out a few kinks; I tried flagging the waiter for some tomato bread and he made a long-distance stiff-arm gesture that said, “Can’t you see I’m overwhelmed?” Come in at a quieter time, however, and the barman/owner will be happy to teach you about the products he stocks.

They’ll work it out. Can Marino is a great launching point, a future neighborhood reference as a watering hole and part of a great one-two punch after you have some of those anchovies.

Count on 5-15€ depending on how much of a meal you want to make of it.

Can Marino - MAP
C/ Margarit 54
Barcelona
+34 93 329 45 92

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Sunday, May 30, 2010

THE FOOD’S BETTER HERE

ASTURIAS, Spain—Three steps before I get to the restaurant that’s been recommended to me, I walk in front of the place where I’ll end up. I do my ‘hesitate, peek inside at a place that has really good potential, look at them menu and salivate’ thing.

Without prompting, a customer in front of La Botella looks me over, sees what’s up and says “the food’s better here.”

Does anyone need more prodding than that?

Inside, there are all the right signs: a bunch of ruddy-faced white-bonneted women in the kitchen, a table of five grandmothers on a Sunday out, sawdust on the floor that a 10 year old uses to spell out the name of her crush with the tip of her shoe and the staff you want to adopt as your host family.

Cider - in this case sidra Peñon (currently celebrating their 100th birthday) - is poured by guys who look like they’ve been doing it for 100 years - eyes fixed not on the glass four feet below where they’re pouring, but on some fixed point on the horizon…until they fix your gaze as they hand you your glass.

This isn’t expensive stuff - 2,30€ for a 75 cl bottle - but it’s the kind of stuff where you take a sip and truly wonder how we can bother spending so much time drinking second-rate drinks.

I watch dishes go out - plump bits of octopus, tiny scallops in their shells and have a bit of buyer’s remorse. Galician-style hake? What was I thinking?

Good things, apparently.

I will note the size of my cut of fish: every bit as large as my fist. My word, a Parisian chef would cut this in three pieces and sell it for more!

I will also note that my worries about having a fish with a sauce are unfounded. The hake would be a marvel on its own - bite-sized discs breaking off with just the right amount of fork pressure. The sauce - laden with paprika (but not too much) - is there if you want it, smoky and even slightly sweet goodness.

I’m sure it’s fantastic, but did I miss the place next door? Not one bit.

Count on about 20€ per person.

Restaurante La Botella - MAP
C/ Emilie Robin 15
Aviles, Spain
+34 98 556 48 08

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

THREE-STAR BEER IN BARCELONA

BARCELONA - It happens to every host. Your and your guest are well fed*, you don’t need more caffeine, you’ve been walking for a couple hours and going home now would torpedo the afternoon.

There we were, sore of foot and in front of La Cerveteca - the beer place. Not the toss ‘em back and drunk by five style, though. In Barcelona, like in Paris, coffee and beer are always good, but seldom better. La Cerveteca is one of the few wonders that falls into the ‘better’ category - the kind where you walk in and stare in wonder, saying ‘Holy cow - what’s this doing here?’

Case in point, I spy Nøgne Ø beers from Norway - something I recognize from Anders Kissmeyer’s wonderful Norrebro Bryghus brewery in Copenhagen - along with American IPAs, treats from Belgium and Germany and even Anchor Steam from San Francisco!

(Seeing the latter, I instantly pine for my San Francisco days, roaming Potrero Hill when the smell of the hops streaming out of the brewery takes over the neighborhood, with a scent that, inexplicably, will always remind me of Spaghetti-O’s.)

Guillaume and I order an IPA and a Liberty Ale, grab a few papers, find a back table and take a load off for an hour.

Perfect.

La Cerveteca MAP
Gignàs 25
Barcelona
+34 93 315 04 07

*Pinotxo, of course. A Joe Ray three-star
.

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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

BACALAO’S AHA! MOMENT

Bacalao - salt cod - has never been my favorite. Catalans do backflips for it, but to me, there are so few aha! moments, I never quite understand the bother or the price.

To set me straight, my ever-helpful Barcelona tipster, food writer Carme Gasull, took pity on me and sent me to the Masclans kiosk in the Galvany market on the far side of Avinguida Diagonal. The only tourists up this way are lost.

First, the negotiations: three of us would like to try Esteve Masclans’ bacalao and there are no tables at his kiosk. The man behind the counter works out a deal where we’ll eat the fish at the tables of a nearby bar/food stall whose beer we will happily drink.

Our meal begins with a dive in the deep end.

“Start with this,” the waiter says. “It’s chick peas and bacalao spine.”

Technically, it’s the tissue inside the spine and my friends look at each other like they’re wondering what they’re in for, but it disappears in a flash. It’s possible I ate the whole thing. I don’t remember.

Masclans are masters of sous-vide, slow-cooking much of their bacalao in a vac-pac bag and we try a few variations - one with tomatoes, one with truffle another with a type of mirepoix. Sweet and silky, the tomato preparation is the landslide winner.

The best dish, however, is carpaccio-style translucent bacalao rounds, each disc with a pea-sized dot of olive paste, the whole drizzled in healthy quantities olive oil, accompanied by a scattering of sofregit-esque fresh tomato sauce. The fish is the star, of course, but it gracefully shares the stage with its friends.

Aha!!!

Count on 15€ for lunch, including beer from the neighbors.

Masclans - MAP
Mercat de Galvany
Santaló, 65
+34 93 200 99 27

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