Bistros With Buzz
January 15, 2006 - The Boston Globe - Travel Section
PARIS—The concept is so simple, it’s a wonder nobody thought of it sooner: Michelin Red Guide star-worthy food, a jovial atmosphere, and prices one can actually afford.
Enter the gastro bistro. Originally seen as a group of culinary outcasts on the edge of town, this movement seems more than a fad when one considers two recent events in the heart of Paris.
After selling La Régalade, the restaurant where gastro bistro was born in the early 1990s, Yves Camdeborde, the movement’s godfather, opened Le Comptoir du Relais Saint-Germain (known as just Le Comptoir) in the bustling Left Bank neighborhood. The line has been out the door since the restaurant opened last May. Then, after 28 years of three-star status, chef Alain Senderens closed Lucas Carton earlier this year only to reopen it in September as Senderens, an upscale gastro bistro.
‘‘What’s the most important at a restaurant?” asks Camdeborde rhetorically. ‘‘Joyous clients.”
Though the clients like the cozy atmosphere at Le Comptoir and other pioneer restaurants in Paris, much of their joy comes from the food.
‘’[Our food is] a bit spontaneous, with classic roots,” says Thierry Blanqui of Le Beurre Noisette, a tiny restaurant on the southern edge of Paris. ‘‘We’re trying to get to the essentials of cooking.” The idea behind gastro bistro is not to serve flashy, rare, or expensive ingredients—truffles are not standard fare here—but to realize the highest potential of seasonal products in their prime.
‘‘The clients are responding to what we’re doing. It’s something that’s simple and real,” says Camdeborde.
Gastro bistro is sandwiched between two rigid French dining classics: the three-star, go-for-broke dining experience and the everyday warmth of a traditional bistro. A three-star restaurant is almost a guarantee of the meal of a lifetime, but it can also set you back $350 per person before the first drop of wine is ordered. A traditional bistro, on the other hand, is the meat and potatoes of daily dining in France. The casual atmosphere lends itself to talking food, wine, and life with your neighbors. The menus rarely change, but a three-course dinner, with wine, costs only about $35.
Gastro bistros combine the best of both worlds, serving up their fare in a sort of foodie paradise where you don’t have to take out a loan to taste some of the best food in the country: Fixed-price menus range from about $25 to $60 per person.
‘‘We’re not going to charge 200 euros (about $240) for a plate because someone thought to put a slice of kiwi on a scallop,” says Camdeborde. ‘‘The client is going to get tired of that.”
Other gastro bistro chefs agree.
‘‘I’m convinced we eat better with Camdeborde than we do with many starred chefs,” says Blanqui.
This is possible for interesting reasons. First, many gastro bistro chefs trained in two- and three-star kitchens and bring that expertise with them. Second, many have done away with traditional menus in favor of small (and continually changing) fixed-price menus written on a blackboard. Third, freed from the costs and expectations of traditional bistro fare, the chefs can devote their days to coming up with new dishes.
‘‘Rules? We don’t have rules,” says Blanqui before reconsidering. ‘‘Our rules are that we want to do something simple that reveals the true character of the food. I want to put something special in the client’s mouth.”
Sure enough, gastro bistro chefs are fanatics about taking advantage of seasonal foods. They look forward with serious excitement to each season’s new arrivals, whether it’s asparagus, mushrooms, wild game, or fresh cherries. If the fish doesn’t look good at the market that morning, they cook up something else.
On this day, ‘‘something special” chez Blanqui includes a pan-seared tête de veau (calf’s head) appetizer and sure enough, a snout pokes out of a kettle in the micro-sized kitchen he shares with his sous-chef, Pierre Petit. It’s the kind of dish that sends people for the exits when it’s anything short of perfect, but at Beurre Noisette, it has a devoted following.
Does he know what he’s cooking tomorrow? Blanqui cracks a big, relaxed grin and says, ‘‘No.”
When asked about the all-powerful food guides, it’s clear that Camdeborde and company have chosen another course. ‘‘If [the guides] recognized me, I would have been proud,” says Camdeborde. ‘‘Now I don’t care. It’s in the past, and no longer in my zone.”
While waves of people come to discover gastro bistro innovation, many of the three-star chefs in Paris and the Michelin Guide so essential to their success are having trouble figuring out how to react.
Camdeborde even claims that the tide has turned, to the point where clients can call in the afternoon for reservations that night at many of Michelin’s three-star spots in Paris, a near-impossibility at gastro bistros.
The few gastro bistros that made it into the 2005 version of the Michelin guide have Michelin’s symbols for a convivial atmosphere (their mascot Bibendum) or a less-expensive menu (a pile of coins) next to them. Compared with what you get at these establishments, the icons don’t do them justice.
Though Michelin got away with glossing over ‘‘nouvelle cuisine,” a movement that, in retrospect, had ‘‘fad” written all over it, gastro bistros are looking to refine the heart and soul of French cuisine, the guide’s area of expertise.
Some gastro bistro chefs seem to think the Michelin guide may simply be a bad fit with what they’re trying to do.
‘‘I want three-star quality but with the service and simplicity of a bistro,” says Thierry Breton of Chez Michel, a tiny gastro bistro tucked behind a church in the gastronomic no-man’s land near the Gare du Nord. ‘‘I wanted quality and if that’s all you need for stars, sure, but stars aren’t only food and drink—they’re a sign of luxury.
‘‘I know what I would have to do for a star. I’d have to take out a table and add a couple of servers,” Breton says, with the unspoken notion that his prices also would go up. ‘‘I’d rather develop my qualities doing this where I’m more at ease,” he says, gesturing toward the kitchen. ‘‘I’d rather do what I like than force myself” to compromise ideals in order to win a star.
The whole gastro bistro gang seems content to do their thing while the rest of the world adjusts to them, but then again, they also look at the movement as something of a team effort, a concept not usually embraced by chefs.
‘‘We took our own little boat to get here,” says Thierry Faucher of L’Os à Moëlle, a stone’s throw from Le Beurre Noisette. ‘‘We love what we do and we do it with our hearts and we believe.
‘‘We used to call each other all the time,” he says with a smile. ‘‘We still do.”
The chefs have even been a source of financial help to one another. Camdeborde helped Faucher get off the ground, and it worked so well that Faucher later opened La Cave de L’Os à Moëlle across the street from the original, offering amazing dinners for about $25. Faucher now has plans to open a French-style tapas bar around the corner, and just began offering a bicycle/picnic package for people who want to take advantage of Paris’s many parks.
‘‘Yves said ‘Try this,’ so I did,” Faucher says. ‘‘I didn’t really know where I was going. We took a lot from the bigger [two- and three-star] places we worked, and we all dove in.”
Contact Joe Ray, a freelance writer in Paris, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
