John Talbott's Paris

Omertà among food writers, never diss a place.

A recent exchange on Chowhound France reminded me of a gripe I have with many food/restaurant reviewers or commentators. They never, or hardly ever, write a negative review/report.  Ok I realize if you’re being paid by a glossy magazine, they don’t want negative reviews.

I and a popular French food reviewer had the silly idea of writing an article on what Alec Lobrano subsequently called “zombie restaurants,” much beloved by Yankee tourists, like L’Ami Louis but pitching it to publishers turned out rather badly.

And I’m told by those who follow sites like Trip Advisor and Yelp, that only folks with a gripe or who have never tasted a real sauce, complain or go nuts over a restaurant they tumble onto in France.  

But I know others, who boldly confess they suck up a bad meal and never report on it because otherwise they wouldn’t be comp’t to the next one.  

I also know 2 people who won’t post anymore on Chowhound France because of the attacks they’ve suffered because of their negative comments, one by me unfortunately, and have chosen to blog rather than contribute to websites like Chowhound.

I’m a pathetic follower/reader of French food news/critiques, and to my memory, failing as it is, only the old G/M and Emmanuel Rubin, ever publish(ed) a negative review.

Don’t our readers want our opinions - good, bad or indifferent?

Omertà is bad. Bad!

Paris restaurants that are good for adults and children who wish to roam

 A dear friend going to Paris with 16 of her family (the youngest two years old) asked me where to go, so here goes (all are on John Talbott’s Paris or Google so I won’t give coordinates, etc.)

Pirouette in the 1st, near les Halles, not only has outstanding food, in good weather it has tables outside in a traffic-free piazza where kids can run around freely without parents worrying.

The Baltard au Louvre, also in the 1st, not far away, between the American visitors favorite knife and cooking ware shop, Dehillerin, and Francois Pinault's new museum, which also has plenty of tables outside with no traffic and good food.

The soufflé-focused Recamier in the 7th, not far from Bon Marche, is on a blind alley, the rue Recamier, that ends in a lovely little garden, and has lots of tables outside from which kids can escape and run around between savory and sweet soufflés.

Tokyo Eat in the 16th or its downstairs more upscale neighbor Monsieur Bleu faces the Eiffel Tower and while the view is better from Tokyo Eat, the food is better 3 flights down.

Les Climats in the 6th, near the Orsay, has a garden with tables and superb list of Burgundies.  It’s in the former telephone exchange, a photo of which hangs inside.  Superb food, elevated prices.

The Grand Cour in the 4th, is owned/run by the chef Mauro Colagreco from Mirazur in Menton, where I had the best fish of my life.  It’s in a grand court, duh, with tables under umbrellas and is surrounded by a music and ballet school, which can be either soothing or annoying, when the drum class is in session.

Thinking park wise - in the Buttes Chaumont in the 19th, the Pavillon Puebla is good not great.

Also in the Parc Montsouris in the 14th, there is a restaurant called the Pavillion, where outside, kids will have a ball and the food is not half bad.

Kitchen (Ter)re on the Blvd St Germain, has seating on the terrace, eg the sidewalk, which our grandkids found perfect for rope skipping.  The place is run by William Ledeuil, of Ze Kitchen Galerie, our favorite restaurant in Paris.

Speaking of which, Coretta in the 17th, has tables outside and borders the MLK Park and offers some of the best food in Paris at reasonable prices.

Near the Louvre, if you’re thinking of visiting it, in the Tuileries is the Saut de Loup, which has quite pleasant but not mind-blowing food in a bucolic setting with lots of room to roam.  Note: My last meal there was a disaster service-wise.

The Bois de Boulogne has two of our great old favorites, the Pre Catalan and the Grande Cascade, but unless you’re into hedge funds I’m not sure the meals for a family of 16 are affordable.

My periodic statement of my ethics and values on writing restaurant reviews/food critiques on John Talbott's Paris (2016 update).

Periodically (usually because someone breaches what I think are obvious rules of civility and gentility and honesty about restaurant reviewing) I publish mine which include:

That fact that I do or try to:
- Publish reviews of all meals I have had since 2006, in France, Europe and from time to time in America (with whose food and portions I'm still struggling)
- Give them ratings from minus 0 to 10
- Provide the cost of each meal, usually for a couple with a bottle of reasonably-priced wine, no bottled water but 2 coffees
- Photograph every bottle of wine so those so preoccupied with such will be able to better assess them

I do not:
- Suppress reporting bad ratings or bad meals because my readership depends on my honesty and I'm not writing for advertisers
- Accept comps (on my first meal) although on subsequent meals, if offered an extra coffee, dessert of digestif, I do (while noting it in my blog) cuz my rating has already been published.
- Accept any advertising or outside support excepting the University of Maryland (my academic base), Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott/Williams & Wilkins,  Stratton and the APPI Press (my publishers) and TIAA-CREF and Childs (my pension-providers).

Innovative, inventive food - all coming from "strangers" at Dix-Sept, Yard, AT, BAT, Kigawa, Le Servan, Le Pario, Au Passage (Bones), La Table de Cybele.

As I exited Dix-Huit in the 17th today, where the young Philippine chef Aaron Isip (ex-Apicius, Drouant, Ze and Pan) is cooking up a storm with a 24 E 3-course menu that has intriguing combinations of seafood, meats, vegetables, herbs, nuts, seeds and sauces, I asked myself where the inventive, innovative cooking in Paris was coming from in terms of their chefs' origins (realizing that I've been blown away previously at the Japanese-cheffed places Sola, Kei, Les Enfants Rouges, Abri, Aki, le Concert de la Cuisine, etc.,)  and it looked like this:
Dix-Huit - the Philippines
Yard - Australia
AT - Japan
BAT - Israel
Kigawa - Japan again
Le Servan - the Philippines again
Le Pario - Brazil
Au Passage (now Bones) - Australia again.
La Table de Cybele - from the US of A
I'm not dismissing the interesting French folks at places like Sur le fil, the Bistrot du Maquis, Maison de l'Amerique Latine, Bon Georges, L'Envie du Jour, Will, La Faille, etc, but the infusion of new outside blood is a good sign I think.

PS I'm not talking about "fusion" or "ethnic" but French-French food.

A formula for avoiding sitting next to those pesky fellow Yankees who whoop it up and disturb your meal in Paris and finding good food in “secret places.

Based on two meals, the day this was written and the day before, in very different places (Le BAT on the Grands Boulevards sited amongst the Hard Rocks and McDo’s and the Cercle Rouge in the 17th isolated among boring residential buildings and utilitarian shops) I have hit upon a strategy for those Americans who long to find places their fellow New York Times’ readers have not, where English is not spoken (especially loudly and nasally), has good food and where they will walk out texting their 1,000 best “friends” that they found a place no one else knows about. What is it?:

1. Don’t just go back to the places you liked/loved last time, 10 or the Gods forbid, 50 years ago. I know, I know, “a bird in the hand is worth two you’ve never tried,” and I respect folks who use this method; it’s just that when I started considering Paris my home (much to one daughter’s amusement), I felt liberated, unshackled and free to try new, untried places.

2. Eat at lunch when the French not the Anglos eat.

3. Go outside the inner snail circle of Arrondissements 1-8.

So, “how John, how do you find these places?” I’m asked. You listen to the tom-toms – X is rumored to be moving to Y Street to open a place. You read the blogs – in French (come on, you took it 40 years ago, some words are obvious) and English, written by people who aren’t New York Times/Travel & Leisure/Food & Wine reporters or stringers.

You become a flaneur and listen to others who are flaneurs – “Hey, I saw this new place over near the VVV, check it out.” You enter places with fresh paint, look at the menu (posted by law) and setup, ask for a card and check it out with other nosy food-types. And, going against the grain of many folks, you eat with a diverse group of food-nuts, who let slip “secret information” known only to them (yah, sure.)

I guarantee this formula works, but only if you’re willing to take risks, encounter some odd lemons and be there when the wait-folks are having bad days or their first days.

FAQ: "We want adventuresome food. Where do we get it?"

Just today, a poster on Paris by Mouth wanted to know where to go in Paris for adventuresome food.

First off, I'd guess that the term "adventuresome food," is a very subjective one.  I'll bet mine and other bloggers' list of such would be quite different.

For instance, I would consider all places Inaki Aizpitarte has touched, from La Famille to MacVal to Chateaubriand and Le Dauphin, to be adventuresome.  But I think such adventures come with a risk, to wit, he often misses the mark and dishes are over the top or off the edge.

On the other hand guys like David Toutain at his eponymous restaurant, Daniel Rose at Spring, William Ledeuil at Ze Kitchen Galerie, Gilles Choukroun at MBC and Franck Enee (at Franck Enee) combine ingredients in clever ways that are often quite thrilling.

Then there are the places where it seems like the chefs are coming up with twists on familiar foods that make you snap back - some such as at Pirouette, Clandestino, Neva and Le Pario were born and began in other countries and although they don't impose their native cuisines on French dishes, clearly tweak them in those directions.

And then there are the French guys, who just have a knack for surprises - of which the primary example is MaSa (which means Manipulateur de Saveurs) but includes places like Les Saisons, Le Sergent Recruteur, Terroir Parisien Bourse, Pierre Sang Boyer of Oberkampf and Le 122.

And finally, we've got the cuisine cooked up by the wonderful recent influx of Japanese chefs cooking French food.  These guys just keep coming and surprising: at Les Enfants Rouges, Aki, Abri, H. Kitchen, Sot l'y laisse, Vivant and L'Office to name but a few most recent ones.

So if you're looking for adventure, you'll find it in Paris.

FAQ: Where should I eat in Paris if there for two weeks?

Yesterday this question was posed on Chowhound where the poster gave a list of over 20 places to be reduced to 14.  My approach was to provide a diverse list to “include” not exclude places from the original list:
Oysters Huitrerie Regis
Other fish Clamato (also open on weekends)
Meat Hugo Desnoyer
An old style bistro Le Cafe des Musees
A new style bistro Bistro Volnay & Pirouette
Bistronomique Les Bistronomes
An old style resto Le Florimond
A new style resto Goust & Les Tablettes
An elegant resto 110 Taillevent
A bar a vins plus Le Verre Vole
One by a Japanese chef Abri
One by a French chef with Asian Ingredients Ze Kitchen Galerie
One by a Brazilian chef Le Pario
One by a Yankee chef Spring
One by a Korean/French chef Pierre Sang Boyer in Oberkampf
(I confess I have not been to L'Ambroisie, Caius or Atelier Joel Robuchon in years nor Aux 2 Oliviers, Chatomat (I only eat at lunch) Bistrot Victoires, Lilane, Ouidino, or Suave ever)
(And there should be a place for L’Auberge Flora, L'Arome, Le Cornichon, Le Pantruche, Le 6 Paul Bert, Le Saotico, Les Papilles, & Regalade St. Honore somewhere on the schedule).
(And I dropped entirely - Le Petite Cour, Philou, Pramil, Toyo and the two Darroze's on another thread)

American(type)s in Paris.

November 27^th in the New York Times, Pamela Drukerman wrote about Americans in Paris and while the article was somewhat amusing, it didn’t/doesn’t match my encounters with my fellow Yankees over the past three decades.  She describes three groups: fantasists, denialists and anthropologists.  To grossly over-simplify, she says the fantasists are looking for the Hemingway/etc. experience, the denialists are largely the dragooned spouses of men assigned here and anthropologists are like her, those folks looking for a genuine experience.

I’ve heard about the second group from my wife, who after we’d actually bought a piece of Paris property, joined a couple of women’s groups that were replete with the wives of Masters of the Universe – and for them France could have been Chad or Bangladesh, they were dragged here and forced to live in dreadful Paris.

And yes, I’ve run into some visitors who want to eat where F. Scott did, drink where Hemingway did and smoke where Sartre did.  But none of them were here for long.

No, my ex-pat contacts, albeit skewed because I do a lot of restaurant reporting, tended to do well in French in school, had an obsessive interest in food (the preparation and devouring thereof) and often moved to Paris with no job but an intense desire to make enough money to eat well.  And they’ve done remarkably well; sure, those doing piece work sometimes struggle between assignments; sure, some have to have day jobs to have fun at night, and sure, some have changed jobs to get to the right balance.  And almost all have hooked up with a French-person of the same or opposite sex.

So, my point.  While Ms. Druckerman may be correct about the world of her contacts, I suspect the other 30,000 or so US ex-pats here would each describe their fellow ex-pats in quite different groupings according to their lives and interest.

Three Wonderful Granddaughter Tales for the holidays

#1 Wonderful Granddaughter (age 16) Story:
Hey Grandpa, you're in the US right?
I'm in London with my cousin; does the guardienne at the apartment in Paris have the keys? We thought we might bop over on the Eurostar for a few days.
Is that cool with you?
I love you.

#2 Wonderful Granddaughter (age 14) Story:
Grandpa, if I bring my best friend over to France for a week or more, we'll go and explore the city all day and not bother you; all you and Grandma have to do is feed us.
OK?
I love you.

#3 Wonderful Granddaughter (age 13) Story:
Grandpa, we love it here in Deauville, mind if we go out on the beaches after dinner and wander about a bit?
OK?
I love you.

Eating in France as a resident versus a visitor.

Recent threads on Chowhound prompted me to think about this issue.  Some suggest that visitors often plan on eating three meals a day, prompting residents to question the practice.

A bit of history.   I’ve been eating in France in three different modes:

- As a 1-4 times a year visitor

- As a 80% resident

- As a 365 day a year resident.

And there’s a big difference. 

When my wife and I came 1-4 times a year, we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, sometimes at starred restaurants for all three meals.   And just French food.  Food that comes highly recommended by friends or guidebooks. We also ran from town to town (in France), museum to museum, and sight to sight.

However, during our 365 day a year stays, the pace was the opposite, we ate out only at lunch (having breakfast and dinner at home) and, after a few months, got a hankering for other than French food – Thai, Chinese, Viet namese, Sushi, pizza.  We ate at both old favorites and new places.  And now we took middle-of-the-week trips out of town all over France as well as to surrounding countries.  And we rarely ran from thing to thing.

The 80% mode was, as one might expect, a compromise between the two.  When in France, eat French because next week or month it’ll be Italian in New York or Italy, Middle Eastern in DC or Spanish in Spain.   And eat almost all the time at new places, saving the golden oldies for my wife and special friends.   And the pace remains relaxed, if you don’t see the Braque show this month, it’s still going to be there in December.

So on reading titles of new threads that say – A weekend, 3 days, a week, a month in Paris, Bordeaux, Burgundy and so forth I temper my reaction to my historical experience and try to empathize with the need to cram everything in, go to only the best of the best or best price-quality and live it up.