Joe Ray

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Holding Candles To Cabbage

Paris – I want Stéphane Chevassus to cook all of my vegetables.

This is my first impression when I taste his braised cabbage with butter that held my fish aloft at Au Vieux Chêne. If a chef can knock your socks of with plat du jour cabbage, he’s got my vote. Plus, I Tried It At Home and though it was tasty, I couldn’t hold a candle to Chevassus’ cabbage.

I checked in again recently with mom and everything was up to snuff – a light but creamy pumpkin velouté, fish dishes done just right, little chocolate pastilles (white, milk and dark) served with coffee. Prix fixe lunch for 14€ and cabbage from heaven.

Au Vieux Chêne - MAP
7, rue Dahomey
75011 Paris
+33.1.43.71.67.69
Closed Saturday & Sunday

| More

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Aux Goodness

PARIS – There are places I go to again and again because there are friends in town or they are a great value or because they are good.

Aux Lyonnais fits all of these bills. Mom is in town and we get the 30€ prix fixe, each trying one of the two offerings. Our mains are pike quenelles and blood sausage, neither one being the first thing Mom (still an adventurous eater, along with being a prize-winning gardener) would choose.

I’m a little nervous until she bites the quenelle – a fish dumpling that’s decorated on either side with a pair pink-orange of crayfish tails. It’s is light enough to be a soufflé cousin happily wading in a sauce of creamy brown butter and fish stock. Mom’s face slackens as the dish does its good work.

My boudin is unadorned; the magic is inside. Our waitress explains that their recipe – they make their own – uses shredded meat from pigs’ feet and cheeks. It’s less common than the apples, onions or tasty bits of fat commonly found in boudin noir from the butcher, but this historic recipe creates a tenderness and depth of flavor reminiscent of beef bourguignon. Yow, yow, yow!
…
When we arrived for lunch, I told Mom about the value of their prix fixe menu – a particularly good deal for dinner – but aided by good food and wine that bring up stories of family and friends I haven’t heard before, I leave with a new appreciation and another reason to come back.

Aux Lyonnais - MAP
32, rue St-Marc
75002 Paris
www.auxlyonnais.com
+33 1 42 96 65 04

| More

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Saving Grace

I may be a knight, but nobody bothered to tell me that the king’s garden closes in November.

I will remember this the next time I want to bring my mother, an award-winning gardener, to Versailles.

The Potager du Roi – a garden designed for Louis XIV so the Sun King would have fresh vegetables – closes for the winter on November 1. Oops.

Hungry – which, in this case rhymes particularly well with angry – and needing to win back a few points, I couldn’t take bringing Mom to one of those restaurants that ring the chateau’s entrance advertising ten kinds of pizza on a Plexiglas sign.

I ask the gardener who’s very gently told us we won’t be getting in (and even if we did, our feet would get muddy), who sends us across town to l’aparthé, a restaurant and tea room tucked away next to the Notre Dame church.

Pulling aside the big velour curtain that kept the cold, wet day outside we were greeted with the buzz of French locals.

We split a tasty ‘five vegetable’ soup, a beet and mozzarella salad and a big salad with lardons, potatoes, Roquefort, apples and sun-dried tomatoes put to surprisingly good use.

There’s a solid wine selection, twenty teas (Mariage Frères, bien sûr) and coffee comes with a Carambar candy.

“C’est une bonne adresse,” confirmed a local woman who later sat next to us with her family, probably wondering how we lucked into finding the place.

They’re not reinventing the wheel, but finding a place you’d like to have around the corner from your apartment when your primary concern is just getting something good is a real treat.

Lunch for two and peace of mind for 37 euros.

L’aparthé - MAP
1bis rue Ste Genevieve
Versailles 78000
France
+33.1.30.21.26.57

| More