John Talbott's Paris

Les Saisons in the 9th: A neighborhood joint that should be a destination resto.

Les Saisons in the 9th has been a reliable place for us for two years and it came through again this New Year's Eve lunch, when a lot of places have reduced cartes, are closed or are gearing up to charge 10x the going rate.  As always, Keiko and Jonathan Lutz welcomed us warmly and we sat facing the roses and alongside the swells of the nabe (no pesky fellow Yankees here).  "Do you want some champagne, both implore us?"  (Actually no), but "Of course, it's New Year's Eve, why not?"

Colette took a quick glance at the offerings and said "the pintade with a purée champenoise, please, only that, the plat du jour, thanks" and I ordered the sauteed mushrooms - eh voila, out comes a marvellous mushroom soup for her and plateful of mushrooms of all sorts with a lovely fried egg for me.  We're off and running.

Then out came Colette's pintade with a squash and she thinks a squash/potato puree and I had the lieve a la royale with red cabbage and a different puree.  - All delicious.

To end, she had the rice pudding with nut crumble bits and a caramel sauce and I had a Calva.  Our bill, with the coupes, Calva, wine and 2 coffees, came to 116.60 E - Hey it's New Years' Eve!

Before exiting I visited the loo which has a beautiful brass sink and on leaving saw Serge Malik's testimonial saying that Chef Lutz was a "perfectionniste et rebelle" and his objective was to make you happy.  And he certainly did.  What a way to end 2014 (that is, before our home-schlepped dinner of caviar, salmon, oysters, herring, foie gras, brioche, cheese, eclairs and ice cream. - "We're gonna eat all that?"  "No way."

Happy New Year loyal readers.

Clover in the 7th: Jean-Francois and Elodie Piege end our Year 2014 on a High Note!

7.5 Clover (aka trèfle en Francais), 5, rue Perronet in the 7th, 01.75.50.00.05, closed Sundays and Mondays (Metros: between Rue du Bac, Mabillion & St-Germain des Pres) has been open exactly 19 days and is already fully booked.  At first you see the cliches (in the American sense of the word) - the gun-metal fascade with no name, the open kitchen and the largely Asian staff, but then there's the startling frigo full of great-looking green veggies.  Whoa!

There are two "menus" at lunch (28 & 42 E) and dinner (58 & 73 E) but the difference between them is hardly noticeable; at least at our table, with our two famous writer-friends, the dishes seemed to roll out equally-portioned for everyone, starting with a most unusual dish of quinoa "chips" with black sesame, sate and eggplant dipping-type-sauce.

Then we all picked at what was supposed to be a dish for three - with "non-fatty foie gras" (I swear), strips of poitrine and toasty toast on pine boughs; followed by scallops on a bed of vadouvan (I had to look it up: it's a French-"Indian curry blend with added aromatics such as shallots and garlic") and beets on Parisian paving stones (I swear); followed by pickled herring, pickled broccoli and pickled onions (I swear), with an incredibly interesting sauce.

 

 

 

 

 

Then out came lieu jaune with endives, nuts and shaved green apples and Armoise chicken with a Chateau d'Arlay juice, what I thought was a cromesqui chicken organ meats and a strip of Piege's own rice cake/comte concoction made after a recipe of his grand-mother's.

Dessert consisted of butternut squash halves (that the staff presented before serving as if they were prize slabs of beef or lobsters) with a rum-vanilla ice cream with flouve (buffalo grass) - and somewhere along here the chef came over to talk and brought with him an enormous jar of wheat-like-looking flouve stalks.  With our coffees came two larger than life chocolate chip cookies.

Our bill, with 2 bottles and a glass of wine, no bottled water and said coffees, was 230 or 115 E a couple.  dB level 79.4 dB.

Go?  If you are adventuresome and enjoy lots of ingredients on edgy food such as Pascal Barbot, David Toutain, William Ledeuil and Claude Colliot throw at you, certainly; if you want steak and potatoes - stay away.

Le Lulli in the 1st: "You're beautiful"......."Thank you, and you deserve a star."

Le Lulli in the Grand Hotel du Palais Royal in the 1st is a place Colette and I have much affection for and apparently our love is mutual because as I entered and smoothed my hair up in the mirror after shaking what's left of it out of my black 2 E watch cap, the wait-lady said "You're beautiful" in English.  No one has said that to me in over 75 years.  Why is this not a one star I think? The menus arrived; I can't understand much of mine; "what language is this, think I, snob that I am?" although it is in idiomatic not Google-translated English; "A French one please." I plead. "Certainly."  39 for 2 courses, 46 E for three = "beautiful."  But tough choices.  Why is this not a one star?

As we are perusing the carte, I order up a Bordelais - "le Bordelais Monsieur" I say in my impecable French.  "Oui Monsieur, le Beaujolais." "No, le Bordelais"  Like a Marx Brothers film, this goes on back and forth for a while and then we do get the Bordeaux (and plot spoiler, they run out after 3 bottles, and we finally are "forced" to have the Moulin a Vent which was damn good).  Bordelais, Beaujolais, who cares?  Oh, there is/are the amuses, 4 lovely bits of salmon, mackerel, a tiny cromesqui of beef and a foie gras ball - and wait - a mussel, cream and other thing concoction Jean-Yves Bournot dreamed up.  Why is this not a one star?

For firsts some of us had the beets in three colors with oranges and ginger, boring-sounding, ehhhh (that's the Canuck in me), unh-unh (that's the Brooklyn in me), they were terrific; the rest of us had a rock-fish soup that I won't pretend to sound or be boring, just to say it was slightly North of spectacular. Why is this not a one star?

So for mains, several of us ordered what was called cod (yah, I know - over-fished and over-boring) but wait; several of us had chicken, chicken mind you, cooked with foie gras - ah there you go - and one of us ordered off the carte some scallops - and incredibly the cod came wrapped in thin noodles and had several scallops aside - WHOA! - and the chicken was about the best of the decade.  Why is this not a one star?

The desserts were nothing short of spectacular:
- an "exotic" Mont Blanc with a marron pate
- a deconstructed Saint Honore (just imagine such and eat your heart out)
- a Granny Smith/Calvados/confited pear with caramel

Why is this not a one star?

Mignardises - what can I say?  Coffee - ditto.  Bread - double ditto.  Why is this not a one star?

Our bill with 4 bottles of wine and their water, came out to 146 E a couple.

Why is this not a one star?

Reviews of reviews: The week of December 22nd, 2014

Monday-Tuesday, in A Nous Paris, there were no restaurant reviews but rather one page featuring Petrossian, Gien Faince and La Cave a cocktails in the 2nd.

This week in Le Fooding, Yves Nespoulous wrote up the Restaurant Les Pinces, 29, rue du Bourg Tibourg in the 4th, 09.83.56.47.93, open 7/7, serving seafood such as lobster as well as beef abnd cheesecake, for 16-35 E.

Last week there were two more articles in le Figaro, the first by Alice Bosio and Colette Monsat, on 5 bars and restaurants with chimneys:
Le Flamboire
Les Chouettes
Jules & Jim
La Cave de l’Insolite
Le Hibou
And a second by Alice Bosio on buches chocolates pour Noel at:
La Mere de Famille
Hugo & Victor
Gateaux Thoumeux
La Maison du Chocolat
Jean-Paul Hevin
Arnaud Lahrer
Henri Le Roux
Hotel Fouquet’s Barriere
Le Notre
Café Pouchkine.

Thursday, in L’Express, François-Régis Gaudry and staff presented the best 11 restaurants of the year:
L’Auberge des Glazicks (Plomodiern)
MandooBar
Gare au Gorille
Peco Peco
Le Canon (Nice)
Comptoir Canailles
Plaza Athenee
Le Tracteur (Gard)
Le Café Sillon (Lyon)
Nha Que
Des gateaux et du pain

Saturday, Figaro ran an article about Marc Veyrat’s newest venture, a hotel & restaurant La Maison des Bois in Manigod with menus at 265 and 365 E and rooms starting at 520 E.

In the JDD there were no restaurants reviewed this week.

Clamato in the 11th: another innovative meal.

Clamato in the 11th continues to both innovate and serve "simple" food; sort of a cross between Ze Kitchen Galerie & the Bistrot du Dome.  Take a look at today's menu; what would you choose; then take a gander at that of the 26th of November (that my eperlans were set down on), almost totally differerent.  And the wine list, for a "modest" place, is quite ample.  Our Macon Villages was lovely and even though it looks Maderized in my photo d/t two glasses shot back-to-back, it was not.

I saw the 6 Utah Beach oysters and couldn't resist; Utah Beaches, 70 years+ after D-Day, Christmas-New Years week, spot-on satisfaction.  And Colette was mightily pleased by her crapaudine-prepared octopus with black Egyptian beets and chopped smoked bacon bits.  Both of us thought the bread was even better than on prior visits.

Then I had eperlans, not teeny ones fried in flower batter but big ones in tempura batter with zingy spicy Peruvian wankaina sauce and Colette had ray, fixed not in the usual spread out way - citronnée aux câpres - but with strips of "Italian cabbage", aka treviso raddichio, orange slices and pecan bits.  Again, both quite different & good.

Both of us finished with tarts of maple syrup - clamatartes - simply divine!

Our bill with another glass, this of Exilé (there's a story behind this) and two terrific coffees, was 113.50 E.

Paris Pix: Clawing the sky.

Reviews of reviews: The week of December 15th, 2014

Monday-Tuesday, in A Nous Paris, there were no restaurant reviews but rather three pages of drinks and food items for the holidays.

This week in Le Fooding, Yves Nespoulous wrote up the Restaurant Clover, 5, rue Perronet in the 7th, closed Sundays and Mondays, 01.47.20.74.94,  where Jean-François and Elodie Piège serve us such items as herring in a watercress soup, scallops and foie gras for 28 and 42 E at lunch and 58 and 73 E at dinner.

Wednesday in Figaro and Figaroscope, there was an end-of-the-Year blitz of information:  Emmanuel Rubin’s Hache Menu reviewed the new venture by Jean-Francois Piege, Clover, see above for coordinates, and Alice Bosio had a longish interview with him.  In addition, Bosio had an article on the initiatives of folks at the Quai d’Orsay and well-known chefs (Ducasse, Robuchon, Savoy) to promote French gastronomy.  With Colette Monsat, she also wrote about the team for Top Chef in 2015 – Piege, Etchebest, Darroze & Sarran (from Toulouse).  Also Bosio wrote about 5 Parisian “epiceries fines” where one should shop for the holidays:
papa sapiens 2
RAP
L’Epicerie Generale
Les Grands d’Espagne
Causses

But the highlight of the issue was Emmanuel Rubin’s top tables of 2014:
Le Cinq
Plaza Athenee
Sushi Okuda
Soma
Pan
L’Esquisse
A.Noste
Nakatani
Ledoyen
Caffe Stern
Comptoir Canailles
Porte 12
Le Clown Bar
Pierre Sang on Gambey
Lili au Peninsula Hotel
Chez Fred
Mandoobar
Servan

Wednesday, also, Heidi Ellison in Paris Update reviewed the aforementioned Le Timbre in the 6th positively.

Thursday, in L’Express, François-Régis Gaudry, Elvira Masson, Mina Soundiram and Charles Patin O'Coohoon presented their best 11 restaurants of the year:
L’Auberge des Glazicks (Plomodiern)
MandooBar
Gare au Gorille
Peco Peco
Le Canon (Nice)
Comptoir Canailles
Plaza Atheneee
Le Tracteur (Gard)
Le Café Sillon (Lyon)
Nha Que
Des gateaux et du pain

Paris Pix: Seen in my local Franprix.

Paris Pix: Fontaine du Fellah

Paris Pix: 104 between events.