7.8 Shan Gout, 22, rue Hector Malot in the 12th, 01.43.40.62.14, closed Mondays, a la carte about 30 €, is one terrific place.
April 2009
April 26, 2009
April 25, 2009
Passage 53: Another next great thing?
6.8 Passage 53, 53 Passage des Panoramas in the 2nd, 01 42 33 04 35, closed Sundays, a la carte 38-44 €, serves what Alexandre Cammas of Le Fooding called “half-terroir, half-Japanesy food.” Well, 50% of the staff is Asian and the raw fish is certainly sushi-grade but it could pass for French too.
I went today with my closest food pal who has an unerring eye for the good stuff and she loved it (I did too). The menu on weekdays at lunch consisted (at least yesterday) of many of the things we were offered today for firsts and desserts but the one main was a breast of Bresse chicken (at 19 € I’d certainly go for it).
Off the carte, she ordered two starters; the first, a pea soup that I found less interesting than that at Frenchie but her “signature” veal tartare on a bed of chopped chilled oysters and chives was nickel.
Meanwhile I had the best carpaccio of daurade ever, with a touch of oil, baby tomatoes, teeny halved artichokes and chives, followed by pigeon, very undercooked and also of the highest quality.
We split the cheese/dessert course; the comte and goat with mango confiture were as was/were superb and the pannacotta with litchi and bay (yes bay) as well.
With a bottle of Cahors, 2 Illy coffees and no bottled water our bill was 103.60 €.
Go? Most assuredly, except for the goofy chairs (hey, they call it a restaurant/lounge) it was flawless.
April 24, 2009
Frenchie [sic]: This year’s Ze, Spring, Afaria, Bigarrade?; Maybe.
We chose the pea soup (with a zing) and heirloom tomatoes which were – isn’t there a synonym for terrific? Then we both had the deconstructed paleron of beef on a bed of fab carrots. I ordered the pannacotta with strawberries and rhubarb and ? candied ginger crisps; simply the best dessert in years. With three coffees and a bottle of their cheapest, no bottled water, the bill was 62.40 €, I jest not. Go? Am I speaking Urdu or what?
7.0 Frenchie, 5, rue du Nil in the 2nd, 01 40 39 96 19, closed Sundays, Mondays and Tuesday lunch, is chef’d by an ex-Jamie Oliver, ex-New York but very French guy and serves only “menus,” which are product-driven, market-available, at lunch it’s 16 for 2 dishes and 19 € for three - dinner menus for 27 or 33 €.
April 23, 2009
-1 Ouch for the Young Taiwanese artists at the Beaux-arts de Paris.
-1 Ouch for the Young Taiwanese artists at the Beaux-arts de Paris.
I have an excuse for seeing this show Officer, really. I was actually headed for the exhibition of Florentine drawings by folk like Michelangelo, Vasari, Pontormo and del Sarto but it was bait and switch time or low ball/high ball (I’ve never quite been sure which is which) – that is, the guard shooing folks away said the Florentine show doesn’t open til the 27th but you’ll be delighted by the Taiwanese one. Sure!
Most of you are not old enough to recall the chimpanzee that Dave Garroway had on the Today Show; one J. Fred Muggs – who painted stuff among other talents. Well after seeing this show I’ve decided Darwin had it all wrong; we’re not descended from apes, it’s vice-versa. J. Fred has it all over these mugs doing video, neon and 100 dime-store buddhas on the stairs.
Go? It was free but if they paid me I wouldn’t.
Bonus pix: You may have to take this on trust, I know Bernie Madoff used up your rachmones level for the year, but today was Amarcord day in Paris with little white fluffy things coming down all over the Seine banks; dreamy.
Are these police folk cool or what?
1 Wow and 1 erectile tissue star for David La Chapelle at La Monnaie de Paris.
Normally I just give 1-3 Wows, but for shows with some skin I’ve decided to add an erotic scale, the erectile tissue gauge, also 1-3. This exhibition had nice publicity although Figaroscope did describe it as “Hollywoodian bling bling of the 80’s + 90’s,” and they got that right.
It’s nudes, cars and dollar bills; all things American the French love to hate. As I saw the staged photos mocking Mary Magdalene and the Last Supper, I thought, what are our grand-children, who have no classical/Biblical training, going to think of this in 20 years?
Go? For Hollywood gone mad and nude, I suppose.
Le Reminet in the 5th: Well, well, well: what a surprise!
6.0 Le Reminet, 3, rue des Grands-Degres in the 5th, 01.44.07.04.24, now open 7/7, lunch menu 14 € except weekends, a la carte 40-50 €, is a place “our gang” used to love, then fell on hard times, changed owners/etc., was revived and given a back-of-the-hand review by E. Rubin in March ’07 saying it had gone from bistronomic to touristy.
But an article in ANP April 13th about good value local places (tables solides) put it in the same category as Le Gaigne, Passage 53 + Firmin and that was good enough to get my juices running. Plus Berger/Toinard noted that the chef had been through Polynesia, Madagascar, the Antilles and St Martin so I expected an exotic twist.
The exterior and business card are unchanged but inside it’s totally different and has a different “feel” to it.
First, the host knows almost all the diners; second, the menus and cartes are very limited but look good; third, it has a real neighborhood feel to it (anti-tourist M. Rubin, at least at lunch); and they have a big kitchen staff for this size resto.
The pricing is weird. The 3-course lunch menu is 14 € but the two entrees are also 14 €, so there’s no use going farther. It’s a 2/2/2 deal; and I chose the tuna salad, perch and choc mousse.
The tuna “salad” was unlike any I’d had before: a mélange of tuna and potatoes and dressing on top fennel and carrots rapeed; quite good.
I ordered the perch because my buddy Paga says he can never find it and alone it would have been blah, but with the veggies and fluffy sauce, it was terrific.
The chocolate mousse was also quite fine with drizzled chocolate sauce and the bread warm and inviting.
The wines run from 4.50 € a glass to a Ch. Latour for 2,690 €. Thus, depending on what you choose in food and wine, one person can spend 23 € for the menu and two glasses of wine (my route) or 77 €+ for a la carte and say, one of their “coup de coeur” wines.
Go? I’d say so, though on weekends it could get pricey.
April 22, 2009
Titalina in the 18th: For this neighborhood, a real find.
3.0 Titalina, 73, rue Duhesme in the 18th, is a place I’ve passed time out of mind since it opened in January but today on the way to lunch, for some reason it caught my eye; I went over; scoped the ardoise and developed an appetite over the next 9 hours.
The sign says Cap Vert – Portuguese; so after lunch I ran back and Googled Cape Verde food and got fish and Brazilian type stuff. OK.
[Backstory: while not a sensible neighborhood, we have our fair share of Antilles/African/etc. places and my buddy Paga and I have been known to indulge ourselves at a place that thankfully closed, in N’Dole and spicy chicken wings, a variety of wings that the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, a block from where my father and I practiced sorcery, never knew.]
In any case, I drifted down there and took my obligatory pix and installed myself (all alone for the night). They had no fish, no fish?, isn’t this what your country is known for?, but only one chicken and one lamb dish. I asked what was typical Cape Verde food; the lamb! Hum!
Expecting nothing better than what I had in the frigo - cold chicken and beans in garlic, I commenced.
The cook-type guy ambled up; like some hot sauce?; you know, I almost brought over some harissa or Tabasco in case, but didn’t. Sure.
Well, it was delicious, better than any lamb stew I could make and I’m ashamed to admit it: but (1) it was gutsier than my lunch at yam’Tcha which left me with a trou, (2) the rice and potatoes (halved) – albeit super carbos - Dr Sears, sorry – were terrific, and (3) the “sauce,” which thinking I had a French palate, they warned me off, was perfect.
My bill (wine no bottled water or coffee) was 18 €; take that Tim Geithner!
Go? For the world, nah! But tomorrow they insist they’ll have fish.
Photo Controversies and Henri Riviere at the Bibliotheque Nationale.
2 WOWS! Photo Controversies and Henri Riviere at the Bibliotheque Nationale.
I went expecting nothing, which is the best way to go, and was wowed.
The show called Controverses has as its poster child the faux-priest kissing the faux-nun and was so packed that the line took 20 minutes to enter. In addition, there are pictures of Nazi-collaborators being hanged, Angelina Jolie being pleasured mamillary-wise by a horse and a legion of nude folk standing on a glacier. Despite my description, it’s fabulous. Go! ‘til May 24th (new South entrance while they work on the North-Eastern one).
On the flip-side was the empty upstairs show on Henri Riviere’s work, Henri being a French cat who got into Japanese type painting and thus his stuff showing the Eiffel Tower and Seine scene looks all the world like classical Hokusai’s. Worth the trip. Until July 5th.
A bonus for my loyal readers:
yam'Tcha in the 1st - Flawless, almost to a fault.
8.0 yam'Tcha [sic], 4, rue Sauval in the 1st, 01 40 26 08 07, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, has a lunch menu at 30 €, tasting menu 65 and dinner 45 €. There are no choices but you are asked if you have any food issues.
They asked if we wanted to start with the house aperitif, which is 9 €, but I only learned that on scoping the wine list; instead I chose a Bordeaux at 25 € and my charming partner shared one glass and then did the tea pairings pleading jet-lag – 12 € for 3, which are delivered with a mini-lecture by Chiwah Chan, the husband of the chef – one Adeline Grattard who worked at the Aleno-era Scribe + l’Astrance under Barbot.
I’d asked several friends/critics/etc if this was Asian or fusion or world food and been told it was Asian-inspired and it is. They brought a “welcome” tea – oolong – most welcome.
The amuse bouche was/were microtomed Japanese radishes much like one is served in ryokans before dinner. Delicious, light and almost ethereal.
The first course was cold asparagus (that had been cooked and marinated, I suspect, in a very dilute rice wine), again delicious, light and almost ethereal, with a small but most adequate piece of sauteed foie gras, you’ve got it – d…, l… and e…. How foie gras can be so light I have no idea.
The main was a large piece of mackerel, most unfishy, atop cabbage and an emulsion of capsaicin, of the very light type: d, l and e.
Afterwards, I chose the cheese, a mixture of mixed gorgonzola and mascarpone with olive oil and she had strawberries and ginger ice cream with a ginger tuile. The coffee produced another sticker shock – 4 €.
However, with two menus, 1 bottle of wine, 4 teas and no coffee or bottled water, our bill was still only 97 €.
Can’t you find fault here? Yes, it’s very polished and perhaps too flawless and given the fixed menu(s), it would probably better to do what Spring does, insist that everyone come at a set time and serve dishes promptly, instead of clearly causing customers to wait between courses until the laggards catch up.
John Talbott
I was surely born in France of a chef father and food critic mother.
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