John Talbott's Paris

Les Grandes Verres in the 16th: my goodness gracious, we haven't seen such great cooking from an American in Paris since Daniel Rose.

 

 

 8.1 Les Grandes Verres, 13 avenue President Wilson (Le Palais de Tokyo) in the 16th, (Metro: Iena), 01.85.53.03.61, open 7/7 has been open for 3 weeks, a soft opening we were told - soft hell - if this is soft I can't wait for the hard one - everything ran like a smoothly oiled machine, from welcome to goodbye, from Japanese designed tables and serviettes to American style service, from terrific pickled veggie amuses to fruit filled desserts.

The carte is not huge but the portions are.  We started with the a aforementioned pickled vegetables and purée and wafers; then my fellow blogger had a mussel dish with lettuce and toast, his husband had a vegetable assortment and I had the world's largest artichoke, cooked then halved, then burnt on a plancha I guess, with a divine dipping sauce.  Oh boy!

For mains, my blog-pal had confited pork and I had tender as can be undercooked pork with cabbage, and the mechanic in chief so called because he toiled for hours to assemble my new stationery bike from Decathlon, had a lovely piece of tuna.

We were truly so well fed that we could barely struggle through one dessert, a semifreddo of halva (offered).

Our bill for three, with Chateau Hidalgo, two bottles of wine, which were listed by grower, one on each page, which was very cool, and a coffee was 157€, thus 104.66€ a couple - wait is my math correct?  105€ for the best meal of the rentree.  Triple wows.  

DB's = 81.9, ok it was loud and between my deafness, the ambient sound and the not very interesting music, not the greatest environment.

Go?  Are you kidding?  New Hampshire raised Preston Miller is young but startlingly inventive and in the concert with the Candelaria/Mary Celeste gang is on a tear.

Millesmes 62 in the 14th: this place has the smell of one that changes the menu seasonally.

7.7 Millesmes 62 by Sandrine & Stephane Savorgnan, 13/15 place de Catalogne in the 14th, 01.43.35.34.35, closed Saturday lunch and Sundays, (Metro: Gare Montparnasse) wins the business cards of the decade hands-down and the setting inside is lovely as well, although the exterior on the place de Catalogne outside still reminds me of Mussolini Brut.  I was surprised not to see any homages to Barcelona where the massacre just happened, but there were no signs in the huge deserted circle.

The menu or should I say menus looked very interesting, with glutin free and many vegetarian dishes.  I chose to have terrific lentils with outstanding decorticated langoutines and cherry tomatoes that had been marinated and toasted giving them a sweet but vinegarish offsetting taste to the other ingredients.  Then I had a poitrine of duck cooked blue, I know, I know, but it was terrific product with roasted shallots and an unbelievable fig sauce, the only strange thing being the potato galette which I mistook for spaghetti squash or another shredded veggie - nothing like Christian Constant's version.

 

With a half bottle of Rhone, no bottled water and a coffee but no dessert, with The Fourchette-30% one persons can exit for just under 40€ and this is really fancy place, packed with locals.

Go back?  On my trusty steed ASAP.  Despite the woman talking on her cellphone prompting me to ask fir a change on seats it was not too loud - 70 dB

Les Oreilles et La Queue (St Honore); I went to the Eiffel Tower one with no expectations and was surprised, I went to the mothership and was disappointed.

 

6.5  Les Oreilles et La Queue (St Honore); 129, rue du Faubourg St Honore, 01.43.59.35.39, open 7/7, (Metro; St Philippe de Roule) was a place placed high hopes on, since I had eaten well at its offshoot thus summer.  The carte is exactly the same and knew what I was going to gave, the Surprise.

Two of us ordered the bavettes, and two of us the Surprises that came with glorious morilles sauce.  Only one of us had a bite of both and he declared the bavettes were vastly superior.  I was again not blown away with the frites.

For desserts three of us had the coffee gourmand and liked them while the hold out loved his panna cotta with fruits. 

 

 

Our bill, with a bottle of water, a bottle and glass of their "house" wine, a first for me forever in France, was 156€ or 78€ a couple.

Go back?  Nah, I'll go to their 2nd.

Portland Me: Sculpture, Hoffman, Modern Asian Cuisine at the Honey Paw and Yuge People.

The 12 of our nuckular family went for our traditional week in Maine (hey, we're only 1/4 French and thus only get one week of vacation) and in addition to eating lobsters every day, revisited a few places already mentioned on this site in prior years.

But afterwards Colette and I headed to Portland to eat our traditional "lunch before flight" at The Fat Duck.  Whoa, the wait was an hour - ridiculous- so we went to the Eventide, 20 people spilling out the door, Yikes, but hark, next door was a place we'd never seen, yclept the Honey Paw, advertising itself as featuring modern Asian cuisine.  Wow, was it!  Colette and I wanted two of the chalkboard specials but were told - "sorry, only at night." 

Rats!  Ok she then had the Vietnamese Masa Crepe with fried mussels, rhubarb, sambol, peanut and mople nuoc cham and I had the fried spare ribs with chili, lime, peanuts and herbs, wow x20, this is clever and good chow.  Snobs and purists will declare this as "fusion" or silly multi-ingredient food, but I think it does qualify as Modern Asian Cuisine and I will be back.

We then headed off to the Art Museum, which has been reconfigured and redone and unlike the messes the Frick and Morgan have created, the Portland has managed to improve on the old and expand the new, while retaining its over-charm.  In addition, they gave an impressive young man at the Membership Counter with a mustache straight out of Van Gogh's Postman.  The two special exhibitions are both splendid: Hans Hoffman's works on paper which are both reflective of his paintings and more daring and the works of four "American" sculptors, Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman and Zorach, wait a minute you say, they were European.  Ah ha, but they fled oppressive Europe during the Great War, not WWII, and they clearly influenced American art and sculpture enormously.

The one bummer was seeing really big people all over Portland.  After a week in Boothbay, where everyone from 20 to 85 looks like they just walked out of a yoga class, which they probably did, to see such fat on the hogs was distressing.  What right do I have to comment on them, me a liberal physician?  Because I am paying for the diabetes, metabolic syndromes, heart diseases and other conditions that their lifestyles result in.  Meanwhile, the rabid right, of which they surely are proud members, are concerned with bathrooms, gay marriage, adoptions and abortions, which cost us nothing.  There is something very wrong with this picture.

Reviews of reviews – The week of July 17, 2017 to the week of July 31, 2017

Tuesday, July 18th, Golven Le Polles in Le Fooding, wrote up William Ledeuil’s newest RG place, Kitchen Ter(re), 26, blvd St-Germain in the 5th, 01.42.39.47.48, closed Sundays and Mondays, running one from 36-50 E for items such as gazpacho, chicken with harissa and strawberry sorbet; the next week, Julie Gerbet reviewed the previously mentioned café-tapas-vegetable focused Café Ineko and O.B. covered the Italian Hôtel National des Arts et Métiers; then Goulven Le Pollès again reviewed the Mexican Chiringuito.

Wednesday, July 19th Heidi Ellison of Paris Update went to the previously mentioned Bonace and the following week went back to an old favorite in the 10th, La Marine; and July 26th reviewed Margo, 9, rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in the 11th, 01.43.38.52.19 open for dinner only, Tuesday-Sunday, which for 34 E serves small plates of lamb, roasted zucchini and duck.

Thursday, July 20th, in l’Express Styles, Charles Patin O'Coohoon reviewed the Poule Au Pot, 121, rue de l’Universite in the 7th, open 7/7, 01.47.05.16.36, costing about 40 E for items such as poached eggs, terrines and sweetbreads and Francois Regis Gaudry reviewed the previously mentioned Sourire in the 7th; the following week they went to the previously mentioned Kitchen Ter(re) and Savarin La Table.