Joe Ray

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

SOMETHING BIG AND ROUND THAT I HAVEN’T TRIED BEFORE

It’s a shame I ate my way through this neighborhood for two years and never once stopped at Melac.

Walk in the door of this 1938 bistrot à vins and underneath the sign that reads “water is for the plants” you’ll find the monstrously mustachioed owner greeting those who he wants with a big smile and a handshake. Sylvie, my cheesemonger friend and longtime regular, gets bisous. Behind him, giant wheels of beautiful cheese take up a counter and the walls in the shade are filled with shelves and shelves of wine.

We move from the first dining room to the second - a movie-like sequence that takes us through tables of jovial long-time customers, a corner of the kitchen complete with sizzling pans and the rack of cloth napkins and customized napkin rings given to preferred customers. The second dining room is every bit as nice as the first.

For wine, Sylvie - who has a napkin ring - has only to ask the waiter for something “big, round and that I haven’t tried before” and he nods and comes back with a bottle of Marcillac which we drink à la ficelle - you pay for as much as you drink. Get in as much trouble as you want.

The chef is new as of this summer and I’d guess he’ll be around for a bit. There will be no reinventing of the wheel and we’ll be very happy that way.  A chicken liver appetizer comes bathing in a beautiful sauce, rich in wine and onions and crowned with two broiled eggs. A bread-dipper’s delight.

Lunch is simple and solid bistro fare: good sausage on a bed of aligot - mashed potatoes with Cantal curd and garlic that nod to the restaurant’s roots in the Auvergne, and a flank steak that’s a little tough but full of flavor. Dessert is riz au lait that would send Mom over the moon.

This is very much a place that’s the sum of the parts - a troika made up of food, wine and ambience that makes you want to eat with friends. I’ll take visitors here. I’ll take friends here. It’s a bit of the real thing.

Count on about 20€ per person, plus wine.

Melac - MAP
42 rue Leon Frot
75011 Paris
+33 1 43 70 59 27 (reserve ahead for dinner)
Closed Sunday & Monday

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Sunday, September 05, 2010

NEWS FLASH - SECRET SPRING

Get there while you can.

We got a walk-in seat for dinner at Spring last night.

As in Spring, where you usually have to wait months for a table. We just sat at the downstairs bar and ordered à la carte.

We had walked by after being shut out at Chez Denise, which, we learned, is either closed on Saturdays or still enjoying summer vacation. Wandering aimlessly, I went in to say hello to chef Daniel Rose who opened Spring in its new location a few months back.

“Come check out the bar!” he said.

And while, at 9:30 at night, there were still people upstairs still kicking around from the lobster roll lunch he does every Saturday (no Saturday dinner), downstairs, the beautiful ‘cave’ is essentially functioning as a little restaurant with a bar.

“Spring Buvette!” he declared.

“When did you open?”

“Last night.”

As Rose tells it, he just didn’t tell anyone about it. At this point, he really doesn’t need to.

No reservations, tiny, very reasonably-priced menu, order à la carte (as opposed to the prix fixe upstairs) beautiful space, killer wines.

Last night, we had little canned sardines with perfect bread and butter, wonderful Spanish charcuterie (including a chorizo, which, on that bread with a thin layer of that butter may have been my favorite bite of the meal), a veal and foie gras ‘tourte’ topped with little, ruby-colored radish sprouts and a lamb and cèpe stew with white beans.

Our meal was destined for a bunch of catch-up with an old friend, but we kept getting interrupted by the food that would make my friend moan.

“Some of this is better than bad sex,” I joke.

“Some of this is better than good sex,” she replies.

You’ve got about three days to get there before the word’s out and the line’s out the door.

Count on about 30 euros per person. Without wine. Most bottles start at 30 euros and go up from there.

Spring Buvette - MAP
6 Rue Bailleul
75001 Paris
+33.1.45.96.05.72

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Thursday, September 02, 2010

GOD BLESS CHEESE. ESPECIALLY FREE CHEESE.

I’m late for my plane.

I’ve been simultaneously packing to leave for summer in the USA, packing up to move apartments and file my taxes for the last few days and, shutting the door behind me, realize I probably won’t be able take the metro and make it on time.

I also can’t find a taxi and have to stop in to pick up my sister’s request of fresh, salty butter. That’s all she ever wants me to bring from France and I can’t blame her. It’s sublime.

But I’m late.

En route for the taxi stand where there are always taxis but never any drivers, I run past Belleville’s Fromagerie Beaufils.

It’s early and Beaufils is one of the only shops on rue de Belleville that’s open, Monsieur Beaufils (?) still arranging cheeses.

“Hi, I’d like some butter for my sister,” I say, leaning my suitcase up against the display case.

He smiles, pulls down some fresh butter from the Ile de Ré and asks where I’m heading.

I explain the Oregon/Seattle/New Hampshire itinerary, noting the family connections along the way. Ready to leap out the door if a taxi rolls by.

“Does your family like cheese?” he asks.

“Bien sur!” I reply, wondering how the hell the guy knows I have “god bless cheese” written on my business card.

He turns around, picks up a two-pound hunk of Comté laced with those good-news crystals of amino acids, holds it up for me to see and says, “for your family.”

I’ve never met the man before and, as far as he knows, I’m never to be seen again, and he sticks what I’d guess to be a 20-euro ($26) hunk of cheese in my hands, charging me three bucks for the butter and waiving the fee to put everything in a vac-pac bag.

We eat it on a vineyard in Oregon. They like the cheese.

Fromagerie Beaufils - MAP
118 rue de Belleville
75020 Paris
+33 (0)1 46 36 61 71

Follow me on Twitter: @joe_diner.

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Friday, July 30, 2010

THE GIGONDAS CHALLENGE

PARIS – The waitress at Willi’s Wine Bar poured a bit in my glass to taste and waited next to me for a verdict.

Nothing good happened in my mouth. Nothing bad either. “Nothing to signal” to borrow a local phrase.

“Should it be like this?” I venture, trying to play it semi-diplomatically.

As the words leave my mouth, the wine - a Gigondas - begins to unwind. It’s good, but a bit too late now.

The waitress takes it in stride as I begin to backpedal. Later, the wine steward drops by to offer to exchange the bottle anyway. Perhaps he smiled when he noticed it was almost gone.

…

“Willi’s?” a friend would later ask. “That place still full of Americans?”

“Smart ones,” I reply.
…

Count on 30-40 euros for a good, seasonal lunch, tasty wine and classy service.

Willi’s Wine Bar - MAP
13 rue des Petits Champs
75001 Paris
+33 (0)1 42 61 05 09
www.williswinebar.com

Closed Sunday.

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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Thursday, March 04, 2010

A HOLE IN MY KNIFE

I’d searched for almost 10 years ever for someone to sharpen my knives in Paris. Never found a thing.

Closest I got was the boys at E. Dehillerin who had some sort of outsourcing deal, but I didn’t like the idea. Once burnt…

A decade ago, I took my Wüsthof chef’s knife to a sharpening shack just north of the Golden Gate. I had the vaguest whiff of apprehension when I dropped off my knife and should have listened to my instincts: the guy put a hole in my knife.

At the end of the cutting edge, just before it meets the heel, the guy pushed a little too hard; put it on a flat surface and you could see light coming through the other side. Made me want to cry. Who knows? Maybe he was using the lawnmower blade stone.

The blade cut beautifully through 99 percent of the vegetable, then stopped, leaving me with celery that looked like a slinky heading south if I didn’t exaggerate the rocking motion of the cut.

Then I found the guys at Gaignard-Millon Outillage et Machines on a back street near my old flat in the 11th - one of those places that leaves a guy with any sort of wood shop experience slack jawed and drooling in the front window.

There are Japanese saws, chisels, hammers and beautiful knives from around the world…and the shop is quite good at sharpening.

It took a couple tries, but they fixed my knife as well as they could.

Not long ago, after years of staring longingly into shop windows at santoku knives, I walked into Gaignard-Millon and bought one, along with a sharpening stone.

The transaction was a lesson in knife care and sharpening not unlike I was taking Mr. Millon’s (Mr. Gaignard’s?) brand-new Peugeot - a car whose every feature he’d memorized the day he bought it - for a for a spin.

“You may not use this knife on one of those glass cutting boards,” was my favorite instruction/commandment. I cringed at the idea like he’d run his fingers down a chalkboard and he smiled approvingly.

My new knife corners like it’s on rails and Gaignard-Millon’s got a client whenever I’m in town.

Gaignard-Millon Outillage et Machines - MAP
24 rue Jules Vallès
75011 Paris
+33 1 43 71 28 96

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

GIVE ME MORE YORE!

PARIS

Locals hate when a place like this gets on the map.

Despite being lost in the far reaches of the 15th arrondissement, there should be a Sparkler marking Jadis’ spot on the map instead of a thumbtack. On the night we’re there, it’s 50% out of towners, easy.

They’re no dummies. There’s a great, clean, modern menu with a prix-fixe dinner at a fantastic 32 euros and a quality that makes me want to savor each dish.

Everything goes the way it should: a cauliflower mousseline and smoked herring ‘mimosa’ entree is a layer of creamy cauliflower under a layer of shiny black gel (This is where the herring is and I’d love to know how they transform a fish from the Atlantic into something black as ink and terribly tasty) under florets, bits of egg yolk, black fish eggs and chervil. The dish plays with color, contrast, texture and even definitions.

Later, there’s a house version of a blanquette de veau, this one forsaking cream,  and allowing the diner to spoon their own melting-soft hunks of veal from a silver serving pot onto a dish of winter vegetables. I try a pheasant ‘chartreuse’ - a like a dreamy disc hot pâté, wrapped in a pinwheel of root vegetables - pungent within, beautiful without.

Dessert includes a pistachio riz au lait with a grapefruit and honey ‘salad.’ I think the idea is to combine the two, but they’re beautiful on their own.

There are tasting menus for more money, but I’d rather come back and spend more time with each dish than try smaller portions in one sitting.

There are two seatings with a grey area between them at turnover time when service gets a little harried, but it always remains friendly. Reserve ahead - that Sparkler’s burning bright.

Count on just shy of 50 euros.

Jadis
208, r. de la Croix-Nivert - MAP
75015 PARIS
+331 45 57 73 20
m° Convention / Porte de Versailles

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Saturday, February 13, 2010

BEEF HEARTS AND HOME RUNS

I was a bit sad when Chateaubriand changed hands a few years back - I loved the feel of the place, the beautiful anglophone woman who owned and ran it, her polka dot dresses and 50s-era swoopy hair. Most of all, I loved that the house specialty was beef cheeks - it takes guts to stake your reputation on a dish like that - but they were right in doing so; it was fantastic.

That said, chef Iñaki Aizpitarte, became a media darling when he took over and it was well-deserved.

It still is. I was here almost a year ago and have no trouble remembering what I had for lunch: blood sausage on a bed of squash puree with little bits of almond and pear to add flavor and texture. Recently, we visited again again - my first Aizpitarte dinner - and it was even more memorable.

Aizpitarte does a 45 euro, four-course tasting meal that changes frequently and places him squarely in front of the modern edge of the gastro-bistro movement, trying bold and inventive pairings that will keeps the meal at the center of conversation.

The star of the meal was a smoked herring broth with fall vegetables and cubes of foie gras. Inside, slightly-cooked chestnuts, charred button mushrooms and black radish shared space with triangles of pickled onion that lent elements of surprise and fun to the dish. The foie gras - something I rarely rave about - melted slightly, giving depth and texture to the broth and made everyone at the table wide-eyed and happy; every dish afterward was watched very closely.

A big, luscious block of cod followed, served on a sauce with sweet onions and flanked by king oyster mushrooms. The fish held form until it reached my mouth; I could have stopped there and gone home happy.

A meat course - veal covered with a black radish ‘paper’ served with a cod-liver sauce, and a little dollop of onions macerated in fish sauce - didn’t quite work; mixing fish and meat is the chef’s equivalent of big game hunting (I once sat in on late-night telephone lessons between an aspiring chef and a three-star chef on how to cook beef heart and cuttlefish in a Dutch oven), but it signals Aizpitarte’s larger intentions - where his heart is.

After one bite, I spent ten minutes trying to explain my thought - a double on a home run swing - to the French diners at our table.

Besides, he followed up with a crowd-pleasing triple, mixing beets and pears at dessert.

Dinner is 45 euros, plus wine. Smiles are free and plentiful.

Le Chateaubriand - MAP
129 Avenue Parmentier
Paris
+33 1 43 57 45 95

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