emsny

Thank you, John - I think Cagouille was always a bit up and down, but on our two or three visits there in its first years we always had fun, notably eating the moules brule-doigts. Rech was not on my radar screen; I've looked at its web site and it seems to offer just what we were looking for. Should one assume nowadays that a turbotin served in a Paris restaurant is from a fish farm? They would say "sauvage" if it weren't, I suppose. Does its Ducassification mean that one has to book ages ahead of time?

Looking through posts for the past couple of years, I don't see any threads dedicated to Paris restaurants that specialize in fish / seafood. Any favorites, plain or fancy, new or old? We were thinking of a return to La Cagouille, where we haven't been in years (this is for a very brief late-November visit), but wouldn't mind someplace a bit more central.

But you may want unsmoked bacon - like pancetta or D'Artagnan's ventreche - also available in slabs for home cutting.

You can also simmer it, then crisp it up when you serve it. That gives you broth as well.

I have no views on the appliance, but note that the link is to a non-US site, and when they say "chips" they mean french fries.

We haven't been to Guy Savoy for a few years, but they always used to offer - unasked - to serve half portions of apps and desserts so that everybody could taste extra dishes. And yes, the price was half too.

Thanks - that's a new one on me. Off topic, but there's a similar operation attached to the Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Tokyo, and the bread and pastries are stunningly good, especially the traditional stuff.

Thanks - there were some there I didn't know at all. And the Bristol had never occurred to me, though I've eaten extraordinarily well in its restaurant. I'm editing this a bit later to ask for a more specific reference on BE, blvd de Courcelles. Thanks.

I was looking at the web site of a not-terribly-expensive restaurant in France the other day and noted that its on-line menu was available both with and without prices, presumably so that the hosts could print out a price-less copy for their guests. No, I don't remember what the restaurant was.

No - I hadn't seen the "Tea in Paris" thread. Sloppy/lazy of me. Many thanks. ... But now that I've looked at it, I see that it actually deals mainly with tea, per se, a beverage of which I am not especially fond. It's pastry I'm fond of. What we're after, I suppose, are first-class pâtisseries containing tables, chairs and an espresso machine, where visitors to Paris can eat pastry of an afternoon without toting it back to the hotel and picnicking on the bedspread. For a brief while, members may recall, a selection of Hermé's pastries was served in a white-painted place somewhere in the VIIIe. Do any of the other prominent/up-and-coming pâtissiers offer table/bar service? And remember Christian Constant's place on the rue du Bac? Am I right in thinking that it is no more?

In the past couple of years, have any new and terrific salons de thé appeared in Paris, where a pair of tuckered-out travelers can sit down and have coffee and pastry that is imaginative, delicious and well executed? Or classic, delicious and well executed. Indeed, are there any old favorites we should know about? The obvious ones are already in our address book (Dalloyau, Ladurée, Hévin if we feel like something from their limited range).

Keeping wooden boards on their edges - especially when they're damp - will help prevent warping too.

Thank you, 42390; it seems like the kind of place the friend we're taking out would enjoy - fairly traditional but interesting enough and skillful cooking.

Has anyone an opinion of Relais Louis XIII?

What about Yakitori Totto? I haven't been there in a long while, but I thought it was very good at the time.

I think Ed Brown is the exec chef for Patina in NYC. No one has mentioned Jean Georges, or rather Nougatine. Or Cafe Luxembourg.

At Marx's restaurant in Bages/Paulliac, some of the crockery, if it can be called that, is great fun - several dishes were served on what might best be called hollow pillows blown of thin glass. That makes them sound more free-form than they were, but it conveys the sense that the food seemed to hover a couple of inches above the table.

Come November, there'll be the Daniel Boulud wine bar / bistrot / charcuterie right near Lincoln Center, and apparently it will be open late enough that we opera goers can actually get something to eat after the show. I do hope it's good.

On Boxwood, my impression is that that part of the building is going to be extensively renovated, so it isn't just a question of the restaurant's lease expiring.

Is it not fair to say that, as regards dress and general atmosphere, there's a difference between Paris restaurants and country restaurants? We recently spent a (wonderful) four days at Michel Guérards Les Prés d'Eugénie, and there was barely a tie to be seen in the dining room - except on staff members. On the first night, even I (someone who wears ties to pizza parlors) yanked mine off and stuffed it into my pocket - which still left me in one of the few suits in the place (the maitre d'hotel himself was in a sports jacket). On cheese (in country restaurants), I'd get even more specific than the "regional" rightly recommended by Nibor - ask for *local* cheeses. Whether they're predominantly cow, goat, sheep or a mixture will depend on where you are. Their name will often be just "cheese", which I think is rather wonderful nowadays. A similar approach can yield excellent and interesting results with wine, by the way; the restaurant will almost certainly do business with local winemakers, as they will with local dairymen. Ask for something from the neighborhood that you're unlikely to have heard of, much less drunk, back in the US. This will probably also save you money: in my experience, given that kind of request, wine waiters in *** restaurants are more likely to down-sell than up-sell. The general thrust of this thread is spot on: you will be made to feel at your ease. There may be exceptions to this, of course, but even when my wife and I were in our twenties, taking the bus from Lyon to Mionnay and very obviously out of our financial depth, we were always treated with a warmth and kindness that we remember to this day.

I'm resurrecting this thread to ask whether other members have had problems with FreshDirect, specifically incorrect items shipped and broken cryovac/vacuum pack seals. I use them only two or three times a year, but such problems seem to arise too often and I wonder whether frequent shoppers experience these things regularly. I should say that they are very responsive to complaints and clear them up quickly, but sometimes this throws cooking plans off track.

Do you have any citations/links for such studies? I'm not doubtful, just interested.

I agree about freezing, but, should freezer space be an issue, another possibility could be to let them dry, then put into a container and refrigerate.

Over on the Restaurant Life forum the topic "Some thoughts on restaurant bread rituals" briefly touched on the question of why freshly baked bread gives you a belly ache if you eat it when it is still hot. Does anybody here in the Baking forum have an answer?

Unless the bread were integrated into the dish, I think I'd find "bread pairings" annoying, though not having experienced them I can't say for sure. But then I'm the one at the table who almost always opts for plain bread when offered a choice. On why freshly baked hot bread gives you a pain in the belly, I'm going to post the question on the baking forum.