John Talbott

Because food at Taillevent has nothing special. The charm of the place lies in... well, the place, and also the wine list and the very professional very civilised service. It's basically everything an American imagines French fine dining is, without the great food -- It's Gusteau's! That's why it's been rated best in Paris by Zagat for so long and is still so popular with Chowhounders. I love and respect the place, but any foodie knows that it has no interest food wise, even if it can produce a good chicken and a decent puff pastry. It's totally a place I would pick for a sophisticated business meeting or a negotiation, which I never do for Savoy, l'Arpège, l'Ambroisie, Rostang, etc. ← Julot; that's brilliant, but I'm not sure everyone knows the Gusteau reference: cf Ratatouille.I think a lot of younger folk; those who have clocked fewer than 100 years, for instance, may not know that once Taillevent was more than a monstrous wine list and Jean-Claude Vrinat's welcome - it was truly a destination and a fine, affordable resto.

The Week of May 26th, 2008 Tuesday, Philippe Toinard in A Nous Paris reviewed and gave 4/5 blocks to La Gaigne, coordinates given before, commending the morue, lieu and exotic fruits. Wednesday, in Figaroscope, Emmanuel Rubin awarded two hearts to Le Veranda, coordinates given before in Versailles (Gordon Ramsay’s #2), mentioning the stuffed calamari, pea soup, cocotte of lamb and chocolate dessert. Then he rated four places with one heart: La Cuizine (sic), 73, rue Amelot in the 11th, 01.43.14.27.00, closed Sundays and Mondays, costing 35-40 € for asparagus, fresh goat cheese and saddle of lamb, Oscar, 11-13, bvd Beaumarchais in the 4th, 01.42.78.42.55, with 13.9 and 17.9 formulas at lunch and 35 € for a la carte for anchovy salad, blanquette of veal and a half-chicken, the B A Bar, in the Hotel Bel Ami, 7-11, rue St Benoit in the 6th, 01.42.61.53.53, open 7/7, costing one about 30 € for a dish and cocktail and La Montagne sans Genevieve, 13, rue du Pot au Feu in the 5th, 01.43.36.61.52, open 7/7, costing one 20-35 € according to your thirst and appetite for charcuterie, nutella cream and small wines. In this week Figaroscope’s Dossier, Colette Monsat et al described places with terraces: For breakfast Cafe Fauchon Le Square Trousseau Cafe Central Lunch Les Princes Ante Prima L’Eclaireur Bagatelle Tea Le Salon Café des Lettres Apero Au 25º Est Mini-Palais For dinner Nabulione Chez Julien And as always, Francois Simon goes to a biggie – the Deux Magots, for a cappucino (6 €) and salad (13 €). Go? Go! Wednesday, Richard Hesse in Paris Update reviewed l’Ourcine, calling it “a near-perfect little Paris bistro.” Wednesday’s New York Times had an article by Matt Gross mentioning; le Point Éphémère, Chez Prune + Au Pied de Fouet. Thursday in l’Express, Jégu Pierrick wrote about L'Arôme while François-Régis Gaudry, wrote about the best bio bakeries that included: in Paris Moisan,Eric Kayser, Olivier Gestin, François Pozzoli in Lyon,Pain Maître in Bordeaux,Jacques Mahou in Tours,L'Artisan du bio in Chabeuil and la Palin in Sisteron. In Saturday’s Figaro, in three articles, Francois Simon and Alexandra Michot discussed the current dustup among Spanish chefs already mentioned as well as Thierry Marx’s “laboratory” in Paris. Saturday/Sunday, in Bonjour Paris, Margaret Kemp discussed Citrus Etoile + Pur Grille and John Talbott wrote a piece entitled “Memorable and Unmemorable Meals.” In the weekend FT, Rebecca Rose wrote up Le Duc in the 14th. Please post comments here and not in the Digest thread.

I think that's a rare situation; it's more likely in a brasserie than a place like Besson. Ah but you cannot get Alain Passard's vegetables for $6. You're translating the carte correctly.

I think it's more often that they're closed Sat and Sun or Sun and Mon than all three. One could once fear fish on Mondays or Tuesdays but I thinnk that's no longer the case. I find the days about equal.

This weekend I had the opportunity to eat at several places between Toulon and Le Lavandou, the best outside Le L itself. For lunch, I decided to treat myself to the one-star Michelin place in Aiguebelle, 5 km past Le Lavandou where I had to be later for a wedding. I’d read about the chef (Mathias Dandine) and his eponymous resto in the JDD a while back in one of those profiles where he picks his faves in Paris under 35 €. It was a true one star meal with great local, seasonal ingredients; this guy really knows how to cook. The 4 amuse gueules were a tempura’d shrimp, a rolled cuke strip around fresh cheese, cured ham with a toast over it and tapenade over that, a tiny cup of gazpacho, but different from the others I’d had this week. Then a veloute of parsley with a big dollop of another creamy substance, topped with fresh herbs and greens. The heart of the meal came next; rouget fillets with fennel cut like spaghetti and two dollops of tomato paste and tapenade-like anchovies as well as a different Iberian ham. The final fish course was lotte with artichoke hearts in a sauce described as made with pepper and ginger but a lot of crustaceans sacrificed themselves too. The sauce alone was the entire trip. Dessert was/were poached cherries in a sauce and with a sorbet of verveine. Finally came 8 mignardises, all classics and good. The bill, 90 € with a fine ½ bottle of Var white, was justified by my celebratory mood and will be laid off to sources as yet to be identified. An altogether wonderful lunch! I’d rate it an 8.0 and I’ll go back when the dollar goes back to par and someone else is paying. For dinner, a few hours before, I had cruised the restaurants along the port at Hyeres, where I was staying in a Ryanair-type place (3 € to park, 7 € to get a towel, 5 € for a TV clicker, 10 € for air, etc), not wanting to schlep into Hyeres center, and found them fungible – except one that stood out called viceversa, only the versa was upside down and backwards, cool. In any case I had a plate of excellent cebo, Spanish ham from pigs that are entirely grain-fed, and a glass of fine local wine and that was that for 20 €. Go back? In a flash. In Toulon, I had two very mixed experiences: For complicated reasons, I headed down to Le Mourillon to eat at a place, which the Miche listed as closed at lunch only in July and August, which didn’t quite make sense being in a beach resort but hey they’ve got fact-checkers, don’t they. But it was closed up tighter‘n a tick. So I went to the nearby Bistro de la Reserve. The local (Var) wine was 11 € a bottle, made from grapes and eminently drinkable, especially with the amuse gueule of olives (natch) and tapenade on pretty good toast. The menu had two types of fish soups but also one wild fish grilled with olive oil. The nice lady came by: the dorade is really good she said, and only 22 € for 300 grams (can that be?). OK, fish soup out the door; dorade in. A first she suggested, nah, a little salad – ah, but they’re all big and expensive, think I. She suggests a few scallops with salad; OK. And indeed 5 of the 6, sautéed with the coral, were excellent product, the 6th was unspeakable; not a bad average tho – 83.333333% - and the salad had no spoiled ends and the tomato slices were actually fresh local stuff. Then the grande daurade arrived. Perfectly burnt on its skin, undercooked inside, it looked great, but there was this strange smell. Oh oh. The huge pile of beans reeked of rosemary, there were sprigs of it everywhere, the rice had some strange pistou-like topping, but that’s all OK; out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy trying to shake salt, pour salt, dump salt on his fish. He was onto something; the fish was bland; the olive oil, not tart like it was in Astoria or as it now is in Greece, did nothing, the lemon helped a bit, but my nephrologue/cardiologue would not have approved of my pouring the entire salt shaker over it. So I did what my friend Elan does, I picked, pushed and dumped. With a coffee serré, bien fait, served with a touch of old rum, offered, the bill was 48.10 €. Would I do it again? Well, that’s a bit complicated, because of (1) the suddenly beautiful, sunny warm weather, (2) the divine setting, and (3) the street theater, or should I say, the sea theater, which was fantastic and unexpected. Midway thru the meal I saw this big frigate (now you’re going to have to trust me on this, I know it wasn’t an aircraft carrier, they have only one and it’s always en panne, but it was a warship) off in the harbor/bay and a helicopter and two small boats (I know, anyone from Annapolis knows what’s a ship and a boat) doing something. At first I thought it was real, then a TV shoot, then I realized they were practicing lowering a man down, having him “control” the situation and then lifting him up – again and again. It was kind of great - for a boy (sorry feminists.) My other was a forced run: My rental car had a possibly costly problem, it was Sunday and I know from experience, the Avis staffs are minimal. So I did what any food expert would do, I asked the nearest person which of the five restos (including Maitre Kanter) near the station was best and served at this early hour (11 AM), before my TGV. My local food consultant, the Avis lady, said Le Terminus, which looked the most crummy and I went. The menus are 11 at 14.50 on Sundays, wow, can I afford it? I had an enormous salad nicoise, the first and last of which I think I had 30 years ago in one of those fungible pedestrian street restos in, of course, Nice. The tuna, eggs and dressing were really good, but the tomatoes were cold and hothouse, the salad greens tired and wilted and the potatoes too many. I then had the moules frites; the best thing I can say about them is there were a lot, of both, and the tomato sauce was superb. But where did they get those mussels? And the fries, oh my. But incredibly, they pulled it out with a super crème caramel. The bill = 27 € with coffee, no bottled water, nothing else. Go back? Who knows?

I really wanted to go to the Ile de Porquerolles to eat and hike, and indeed I did make it there to hike but... my residence concierge said I could in no way hike, eat there at lunch and make it back to Le Levandou for a 3 PM wedding an hour away. So instead, for lunch, I decided to treat myself to the one-star Michelin place in Aiguebelle, 5 km past Le Lavandou run by chef Mathias Dandine described on the Le Lavandou topic. But the night before, for dinner, I had cruised the restaurants along the port at Hyeres, where I was staying in a Ryanair-type place (3 € to park, 7 € to get a towel, 5 € for a TV clicker, 10 € for air, etc), not wanting to schlep into Hyeres center, and found them fungible – except one that stood out called viceversa, only the versa was upside down and backwards, cool. In any case I had a plate of excellent cebo, Spanish ham from pigs that are entirely grain-fed, and a glass of fine local wine and that was that for 20 €. Go back, You bet! To both.

I'm delighted that this topic has generated as much interest as it has, in part because moules are one of the dishes I think of as the most reliable and that Colette does to perfection and Pti has described so well (what would we do without you Pti?) and are usually safe fallbacks in a situation where one has to order defensively. But, like Fresh_a and others, I think they can be distastrous, vide my meal today, which I will soon be posting. Great tomato sauce, moules - awful product, potatoes pathetic.

Thanks Julot; I should have cross-referenced your prior contribution to the Nancy thread for those wanting info on that city specifically.

Not that it will or should hinder anyone from visiting, but Camdeborde's whole Relais is covered with Christo-like stuff and after 14h30, there's quite a racket as what looks like a huge renovation goes on. Himself, however, was cheery and friendly so it doesn't seem to have upset his equilibrium.

Update on J'Go; their ktchen/ovens/etc are up and running and they're serving hot food like they do in their Right Bank location.

Hi; Colette has it in her head to go to the Chateau de Cirey, home to Voltaire and Emilie de Chatelet after reading "Passionate Minds: Emilie du Chatelet, Voltaire, and the Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment: David Bodanis: Books." We'll start in Nancy, where there's good info here, and wind up in Troyes but in between the guidebooks are pretty unrevealing. Anybody got any ideas? Thanks.

Ah, I'm afraid that was I/me and I must most respectfully disagree, my friend, I was most disappointed with this old favorite. I always considered their coq au vin the classic for Paris but the day I went, maybe an off day, the sauce was pathetically watery and the rilettes so what. But it was the service/delivery of plates/etc that probably tilted my judgment.In any case, from my last week's eating, my confidence in Parisian/Parisien cuisine is restored.

In Le Monde today, Jean Claude Ribaut reported on a meeting of the chefs of the Relais & Châteaux places in Seville, where the unanimously voted to make French cuisine a UNESCO thing. They included: Patrick O'Connell, Gary Danko, Juan Mari Arzak, Kiyomi Mikuni, Français Michel Guérard, Anne-Sophie Pic, Jean-Michel Lorain and Alain Dutournier. Putting a bit of rain on the parade was the charge by chef Santi Santamaria that Ferran Adria was {my trans} "poisoning his customers with lab products such as metilcellulose." The latter was reported in the IHT as well.

Don't hold your breath; both are still in renovation according to the folks I called; mid-June maybe.

You sort of put yourself in their hands dependoing on which menu you choose; one friend had them "surprise" him by pouring the wines and letting him guess.

Robyn: Have the near the Geo V rules changed? Because that opens a whole world of opportunities for great carry-out/snacking food. Guidance please.

One of the many roles I play here at the Forum is as alta/alter kocker/vieux schnock/historian of times long gone. When I first came to Paris before you were all born, around the Quartier Latin/Pantheon/Sorbonne, there were genuine Viet Namese (two words please) restaurants run by real Viet Namese people who didn't serve up some melange of Thai-Chinese-Viet Namese food but genuine fare such as pho.Since then and since my government gave me the opportunity to have pho at the source, I have searched for true pho here and in the US. I don't understand what happened - every few years, some friend says, I work with this real Viet Namese person and she says this place is genuine. I go and, nope. My conclusion - I am returning to Viet Nam with my children to show them what real South East Asian food is.

The Week of May 19th, 2008 Tuesday, Philippe Toinard in A Nous Paris reviewed and gave 4/5 blocks to ETC…, coordinates given before, commenting on the liquid persillade, entrecote and strawberries and Jerome Berger reviewed and awarded 3/5 blocks to Itineraires, coordinates also given before, commenting on the potato and strawberries and rhubarb. Wednesday, in Figaroscope, Emmanuel Rubin awarded two hearts to two places: Le Gaigne, 12, rue Pecquay in the 4th, 0144.59.86.72, closed Tuesday with lunch menus at 16 and 22, a la carte 40-50 € for a bio egg, farm-raised chicken and strawberries and Le Telegraphe, 41, rue de Lille in the 7th, 01.58.62.10.08, open everyday for lunch only, with menus at 24.5 and 29.5, a la carte about 50-60 € for green bean salad, duck filet and homemade sorbet. He gave three other restaurants one heart: the nouvelle Thai place Lo’riginal in the 5th, the neo-brasserie Le Bis Repetita, 167, rue St-Honore in the 1st, 01.42.60.40.11, open 7/7 and running one 30-40 € for oeufs mayo, herring, pigs’ feet and crème brulee and the Italian Orisotto in the 17th. This week, in Figaroscope’s Dossier, Colette Monsat et al described places to get Caesar salads: 8.5 Les Cocottes 7.5 Sens 7 Hotel Amour Saint-M 6.5 Colette 6 Quai-quai 5.5 Bound 4 Coffee Parisien And going along with the theme, Francois Simon went to the Ritz, where for 105 € he and a companion had a “Salad Ritzy and Cesar” chicken, water and two coffees. His verdict - go because it’s a living Titanic. Wednesday, Richard Hesse in Paris Update reviewed ETC…, coordinates given before, where the dishes were good but the waiting and rushing not so. Wednesday-Thursday, Jean Claude Ribaut was the latest to remember the riots of ’68 and their relationship with cooking, in particular, nouvelle cuisine. He recalls {as do I} the restaurants and innovators of that era: Le Pactole, Le Pot-au-Feu (Michel Guérard), L'Archestrate (Alain Senderens), Jean Troisgros, Alain Chapel, Paul Haeberlin, Jean Bardet, Roger Vergé, Gérard Cagna (then at Lucas Carton), André Guillot (Le Vieux Marly), Le Camélia (Jean Delaveyne), Jean Trémolières, Gérard Allemandou (La Cagouille), Marc Veyrat, Michel Trama, Jacques Megean, Jean-Jacques Jouteux, Olympe (Paul Minchelli) and of course their promoters and chroniclers , Henri Gault et Christian Millau, then journalists at Paris-Presse L'Intransigeant. In Saturday’s Figaro Francois Simon wrote about Itineraires in article entitled “The Tyranny of the Exquisite” after a meal he termed his coup de coeur of this week. Saturday/Sunday, in Bonjour Paris, Margaret Kemp wrote up the “Grand Hotel Loreamar Basque” and John Talbott wrote a piece entitled “Food Great Service Sucked.” Sunday in JDD, Alain Soliveres of Taillevent identified his two favorite places where one can eat for less than 35 €: Alain Ducasse’s boulangerie Be Boulangepicier, 73, bvd de Courcelles in the 8th and the Japanese place Benkay. This month’s Where had Alexander Lobrano‘s traditional monthly picks: Le Ciel de Paris, Le Villaret + le Bistro Poulbot. Please post comments here and not in the Digest thread.

Tobi: I'll fix, thanks.I have a longstanding note to myself that says on the Fete Nationale, restos that are usually open that day (that is, Monday this year) are and vice versa. (The exception being Mom and Pop places where the family with young kids may take the 14th weekend off). Now, as I've noted elsewhere, one of our members, brought to my attention that Mondays are the new Saturdays, more and more places close on Saturdays and Sundays, so finding one is harder holiday or no holiday. In addition, I always recommend calling to make sure. Host's addendum: We really don't have any information of July 14th, so I encourage members to add to this topic which will become the principal Bastille day/July 14/Fete Nationale one.

What can you share in public? that is here.Thanks.

Thanks Laidback, I'm deluged.Who knows the story on Les Ormes/Bellecoeur?

Absolutely, I love it; I gave my ex-boss my advice; we'll see what happens.

I loved les Ormes but am fairly sure it has closed. ← The ex-Bellecoeur location? My oh my.Lots of great ideas here, thanks. Margaret, I agree about l'Arome, Eric Martin sure remembers faces. Julot, unfortunately we had a bad meal at L'Acajou. Fresh_A: an OK but not memorable one at L'Angle du Faubourg for the cost and for some reason Dominique Bouchet no longer excites my gang. But thanks to everyone. John

Ah Pierre, bless you. I think Drouant would do quite well. Les Magnolias, as we know, no one will venture out to, but thanks. Great!

I was thinking nearby the G 5 but the Cafe Constant and Les Cocottes de.... are great suggestions and Mr. C. in addition to running a spectacular 3-5 course place up the street often drops in to both for a bite to eat.