Joe Ray

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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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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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

WORLD’S BEST? THAT’S UP TO YOU.

I love the hype surrounding the announcement of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants* – it somehow points out how goofy and subjective it is to rank them (where are Pinotxo and the Agawam Diner?!?!) while reminding us how wonderful they are.

For anyone interested in a trip down memory lane to the places on the list where I’ve been lucky enough to eat, here we go…

noma – Rene Redzepi (see photo)

El Bulli – Ferran Adria

El Celler de Can Roca – Joan Roca

WD-50 & Daniel

Le Chateaubriand

Pierre Gagnaire & Plaza Athenée - Pierre Gagnaire & Alain Ducasse

St. John

Finally, two conspicuously absent personal faves:
Restaurat Jean-Marie Amat
and
Les Cols

*Congrats to my pal Lexy Topping for breaking the 50 Best story for the Guardian – woop woop!

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner and on Facebook.

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Wednesday, April 07, 2010

SAVED BY THE CUBANS

Walking out of the flat with two visiting friends, I point out the Celler del Nou Priorat - a local favorite in the Sants neighborhood run by a trio of Cubans that’s exactly the kind of place you pray to find when you’re wandering around looking for a place for dinner.

Instead, my idea is to get out of the neighborhood and do a Poble Sec tapas crawl. I drag my pals around to find that the three places I want to go - Quimet & Quimet, the new bar at Xemei and inopia are, respectively, closed, full and full.

I put in a desperate call to the Cubans and we hop in the metro and head toward home.

Once I sit, it takes only a glass of Cava, some sweet potato chips and a plate of pimientos de padrón for me to go from feeling like I’ve lost my touch back into the Food Leprechaun.

Olives help, too. And maybe some mushrooms sautéed with little bits of jamon. And there’s an octopus dish that has a friend from Lisbon take a mental return trip home with one bite.

There’s a famous brownie for dessert, but we get perfect, sweet and minty mojitos instead.

Cuban? Catalan? Spanish? Not really. More like fresh-from-the-Catalan-market inspired Cuban/Catalan/Spanish goodness. More like yes, yes and more please.

Count on 15-30 euros, redemption included.

Celler del Nou Priorat - MAP
Vallespir 19

Barcelona
+34 934 905 952

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Monday, March 29, 2010

LUCK IN THE BASEMENT

El Bulli interview finished, I head to Cadaqués to Can Rafa, a sojurn I’ve been trying to make for months…except every time I go, it’s closed and this time is no exception.

I’m alone and looking for a place where I won’t feel like too much of a chump sitting by myself and can still eat well. On this night, that doesn’t exist in Cadaqués. In desperation, I leave town and call my friend Twin Stomach for somewhere to try in the nearby El Port de la Selva but the phone rings and rings…

In town, I knock on the door where a set of stout-bellied accordion players are practicing and they point me toward El Celler, a family-run seafront place set apart from the town’s more kitschy offerings.

There are fantastic anchovies with gobs of good olive oil and a bit of tomato which are fantastic together on top of their warm, homemade bread. I have a great duck breast in fig sauce and the front of house owner does a perfect job of alternately chatting and leaving me to enjoy my meal.

Count on about 25 euros.

El Celler - MAP
C/ Llancà 8-10
El Port de la Selva
+34 972 126 435

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Monday, January 25, 2010

SUN ON A PLATE

PARIS - My tolerance for number of days cooped up in the kitchen in an effort to avoid bad weather ended today. I should have come out sooner.

Acting on a tip from a friend…who recently acted on a tip from Francois...I cross town on my bike, popping up to meet friends in the lower reaches of the 14th arrondissement at Le Jeu de Quilles.

I’m a bit early and watch a table of six guys who were clearly on an afternoon out at one of their favorite spots, downing good wine and asking the chef about where to get a whole lamb to roast.

Ann has barely sat down when she says,  “The sun’s out!” with a smile like she was recognizing a long-lost friend who’d grown a beard since the last time they met.

The prix fixe lunch plan is simple: choose from three appetizers, two mains and a handful of desserts for 25 euros. There’s an à la carte menu that makes me want to come back for dinner. In form and function, it quite resembles the original version of Spring and Le 122.

Along with a generous, high-end charcuterie plate, highlights included an oeuf cocotte, swimming in a wonderful shallot-y red wine sauce and resting on a hidden strip of pork fat.  There’s also a braised pork main with a hot, pudding-like side of polenta laced with Emmental and tasting of real corn bread.

“This tastes like America!” I blurt.

Dessert was a still-bubbling pear and apple crumble, arriving with a ‘watch your fingers’ warning from the waitress. Imagine hot, crushed Pecan Sandies above hot, buttery fruit and all the dairy farmers you’re supporting with this one dish!

Sun on a plate.

Lunch prix fixe menu: 25 euros (21 if you skip dessert, but why would you want to do that?). There is no prix fixe at dinner where appetizers run between 12 and 20 euros and mains are in the mid-20s.

Le Jeu de Quilles MAP
45 rue Boulard
75014 Paris
+33 1 53 90 76 22

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Friday, November 06, 2009

Egging for More

Now that I’m back home and typing up a bushel of NYC blogs, the one place I really want to go back to is Brooklyn’s Fort Defiance. Not only are the drinks top notch, chef Sam Filloramo wowed me while, thanks to some sort of new restaurant timing/shipping glitches, he was still working from a half-empty* kitchen.

His deviled eggs were so good, I went home and told my mom about them and if that wasn’t enough to get me to want to go back, the ever-changing menu they now post on their Web site does: rabbit and chorizo hash, oysters Rockefeller, pan-fried catfish … my word.

Apparently, they even do breakfast and all I can do is imagine the possibilities.

I’m interested to see how the combination of a serious drinks bar combined with chef who’s making his mark pans out. It can only be good.

Fort Defiance - MAP
365 Van Brunt St
Brooklyn, NY
+1 347-453-6672
www.fortdefiancebrooklyn.com

*Apparently, in mid-September, after the equipment arrived, a health inspector stopped in to check the kitchen and found gas equipment without gas service - like a car with an empty gas tank - and decided the restaurant would be better off closed for the week until they got the pipes hooked up… go figure.

Click here to see my Boston Globe Travel story, “Small Wonders” - featuring an interview with Fort Defiance owner and drinks expert St. John Frizell.

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