Ptipois

With Piège leaving the Crillon from failing to get the third star, which is precisely why he was hired in the first place, Le Meurice is not likely to hire him.

Now I remember I very probably tried the Beillevaire butter at Le Divellec's restaurant. When I asked the chef where the butter came from, he said "from someone in Vendée". There are not many Nantais/Vendée butters in Paris starred restaurants, so that must have been the one. I found it very good indeed, very fresh-tasting with the density of flavors of Norman butters, as you describe.

Hi, Margaret, I do not know of this one, at least not through its author's name. Where is it made and where do you find it?

It is precisely for that reason that I did not mention Bordier butter. I am a bit sick of seeing so much publicity about it while there are quite a few butters in the Northwestern regions that are far better than Bordier's, and besides Bordier has a style of its own and IMO is not representative of what Norman or Breton butter can really be. The fact that a trendy restaurant like Sa.qua.na in Honfleur (in the heart of Normandy) serves Breton butter and nobody seems to find that surprising shows that the expertise on French butters is in a very early stage of its development, to be optimistic.

Celles-sur-Belle is pretty hard to find even here, except locally. It is an Echiré-type butter of very good quality.

Échiré is very nice but not representative of French butter. It is a semi-industrial brand made from pasteurized milk in a region that never had a tradition of butter-making before the phylloxera plague of the 1870s. Large surfaces of former vineyards were then converted into meadows and butter-making was adopted as a replacement activity. Like all other butters from the Charentes region, the butter is of good quality (especially for baking, I'll come to that later), but by no means has the distinctive taste and flavor of the real country butters from the traditional butter-making regions of Normandy and France, and to some extent Auvergne, Bresse, and Lorraine. However, since it is very dry from being drained through an industrial process, it is perfect butter for baking and particularly for puff pastry. Pierre Hermé uses only La Viette butter, which is another Charentes butter with a very dry and dense texture. Among other Charentes butters, Maillezais, Surgères and especially Pamplie are also good. If you can come acrosse Vendée and Nantais butter this is excellent too, but hard to come by. As for Norman butters, unfortunately the industrially-packaged Isigny butters, though of good quality, have none of the character of farm butter from the same region and are not very different from their Charentes counterparts. Breton brands like Le Gall do a better job of respecting the original butter typicity. The very best butter in France, again, has to be found at markets, crèmeries and fromageries.

Where in France are you located? The answers may be very different depending on where you are. In Paris, go to any of the great fromagers (Dubois, Cantin, Alleosse) and ask for "beurre à la motte" from Normandy or Brittany. You can also get some Bordier butter, packaged, in the gourmet food stores like La Grande Epicerie. But the best stuff is to be sought locally in Normandy or Brittany, on small market stalls, wrapped in parchment paper. In the départements of Finistère, Morbihan and Côtes-d'Armor, the farm butter from Laiterie de Saint-Coal is one of the best butters I know of. You'll find it in any supermarket. Last week I found a marvellous farm-made Norman butter on the Clos Saint-Marc market in Rouen, but any bi- or three-weekly street market in Normandy (Seine-Maritime, Eure, Calvados, Orne, etc.) will equally yield great quality butter. That is for traditional-style butter, the smelly type. If you want the modern-type butter — dry, white and clean, smelling faintly of cream (the Echiré type), that is much easier to find.

You're right - the game season in Paris restaurants goes between November and late February, which is the official closing time of the hunting season.

The Christmas holiday season starts about a couple of days before Christmas (school vacation -usually beginning on Dec. 21st ) and ends around the 3 or 4th of January. But in my experience very few Paris restaurants close for the holidays. On the contrary, unless the chef has been doing great business and has gone skiing (a very unlikely occurrence IMO), they rather try to stay open and benefit from the festive mood. If there is any mention of closing at Christmas, think December 25th (a holiday for most commerces anyway) and January 1st (jour de l'An) and that's that. There is no such thing in Paris as a restaurant whose quality varies according to the season. Either they are consistent on an all-the-year-round basis or they're not. Season has nothing to do with it. Of course the same rule applies to mediocre restaurants. Edited to add: the Christmas holiday is rarely the coldest period in the Parisian Winter. January and sometimes February can be really cold at times, but expect moderately cold, grey, sometimes rainy weather, though of course anything can happen.

Well — you just defined the French bistrot. To the smallest detail. I envy your ability to see things in such a clear-cut way. In decades of studying French food, its history and the restaurant scene at various periods, I have never met anybody who was able to define things so precisely, with so much certainty. Ahh all that wasted time! So if I understand well, the difference between 'bistrot' and 'bistronomique' is that, in a similar setting, the bistrot serves just bistrot food and not 'gastronomique' food, and the bistronomique serves 'gastronomique' food and not 'bistrot' food? Is that right? You understand that if either category happened to serve a combination of the two, there goes your theory.

I meant that the accent was now primarily on food, not on words. However, I do not think 'being all about the food' and what follows in your definition is accurate for 'bistronomique'. The word is simply a contraction of bistrot and gastronomique, and thus refers to a place where a combination of bistrot food with some elements of high end cuisine (plating, culinary research, 'innovation') are served in bistrot surroundings, which are not necessarily simple. Defining it as "being all about the food" would imply that the other categories of restaurants are not based on the same principle, which may be true for individual cases in any category but not for categories as a whole.

Absolutely. It has lived its rightful (short) time by the standards of Paris trends. Besides, it was not depicting anything sufficiently original, substantial or new to be a long-lived concept. Everything that may be gathered under the "bistronomique" trend existed before and will exist - hopefully - long after the word is gone. Also, if you allow me, the fact that the word "bistronomique" has escaped the initial geographical context is a surefire sign of RIP in the birthplace. Adding to Phil's words, it is not only mainstream now, it was mainstream before. It's just that a likable word was thought up by someone at some point and it was the right word at the right moment. The word was much newer than what it described, and much more short-lived, too.

I would not put that much stress on categorizing when it comes to the bistrots-restaurants of today. More than ten years after the supposed beginnings of the bistronomique trend ("bistronomique" is above and before all a word created by Sébastien Demorand, and it soon came to encompass quite a few different things), the category has lost much in way of clear edges, as have categories in general. "Bistronomique" as a word is hardly ever heard in Paris anymore. For one thing, despite its many flaws, Bittman's article does not fall into that trap. It seems that the desire to serve good food at reasonable prices, regardless of the genre, has become stronger than the urge to categorize, and what I hear is now more often "restaurant" than "bistrot", and I believe that has to do with the general rising of the prices. L'Ami Jean is no longer cheap. When Guy Savoy, followed by many others, started the "chef bistrot" trend back in the 80s, what was served was pretty close to what was described later as "bistronomique". What Camdeborde did was more imposing a style of his own - which he (and Stéphane Jégo) always did better than anyone else - than setting a trend. Le Châteaubriand would have been put in the category a few years ago, but today that would seem beside the point. And would a restaurant like Caïus be described as "bistronomique"? Certainly not. But the elements are there. IMO the trend is gone, the restaurants are still going. Maybe because, with the help of economic realism, the accent is now primarily on food.

Right, stumbling on an old motorbike in the doorway and hearing ping-pong being played nearby is well worth paying 120 € for blaah food.

I can see his relief that the Paris bistrot has been de-bistroized, or so he thinks, giving a bit too much credit to the outer look of things. Although he's quite thankful that the local plumber is out of the way (no news really), there is still more than little condescension in his article.

Doesn't your oven have a grill position? You could start the flammekueche in the conventional oven for a couple of minutes and then brown it under the grill. Most recipes I've come across called for a slightly yeasty dough. About 10-15 g fresh yeast for 300 g flour. It should be spread very very thin so it does not rise much when baked.

Ah, I understand this 'inner tube thing'. I hadn't gotten it right. The recipe on the blog is from a Pierre Hermé book. So the 'inner tube' is only a 'store-bought pastry' gizmo meant to raise the height of the Paris-Brest and make it appear plumper. Besides it acts as a frame that increases the stability and the durability of the pastry on a shelf. It makes little sense for home-made pastry as it wouldn't either for restaurant pastry (unless you're making a very large Paris-Brest). Paris-Brest does not contain that thing as a rule. It should be very light, without a bone in the middle There is always this thing with French pastry shop (and particularly Hermé) recipes, you have to bear in mind that they are designed for shelf life.

These look pretty good to me. I have never seen the inner tube, a Paris-Brest does have to be hollow in the middle.

Rapeseed oil = canola oil! ← Not in this case, canola is obtained from "new" rapeseed, a modified variety. The rapeseed oil I refer to is the traditional one, raw and very fragrant. In French it would be called "huile de colza crue" or "huile de navette". It still is rapeseed oil but unrefined. Nickrey's recipe is good except that it lacks the true Alsatian touch, the final sprinkling of "huile de navette".

That sounds very much like a flammekueche minus the bacon. Quiche lorraine, as the name hints, is not Alsatian but Lorraine... Different region. For a flammekueche you need 500 g bread dough (white bread, French-style); 2 large onions, finely sliced; 2 cups crème fraîche (not heavy cream); 60 g lardons (bacon cut into matchsticks — omit that); salt, pepper, grated nutmeg. And the mandatory final touch: a dash of raw rapeseed oil. Have a very, very hot oven. Work quickly. Spread the bread dough as thinly as you can. Spread the onions and cream on top. Add bacon (if). Sprinkle with plenty of salt, pepper, grated nutmeg. Sprinkle all over with the raw rapeseed oil. Bake in very hot oven until crust is crispy and top goldel (a few minutes). Eat very hot.

What exactly is "tarte d'Alsace"? I never heard of it. There are hundreds of tarte recipes, sweet and savory, in Alsatian cooking, but none of them is named "tarte d'Alsace". Could you be more specific? If you mean flammekueche, it should have bacon, or it won't be a flammekueche. If you mean Alsatian onion tart, it won't have bacon.

Domaine Viret, in the lower vallée du Rhône, is not to be missed. Domaine Viret

You should consider yourself lucky to have asked to share a couscous at La Boule Rouge and come out of the restaurant alive Waiters there are notoriously snappy with the newcomers. And kind to the regulars. That sort of thing. Kemia (the small salads served as appetizers) is a regular feature and supposed to be free, but of course its cost is ventilated into the dishes à la carte. Claiming that they serve it at no charge is naturally part of the local mise en scène.

North Africa is one third of a continent, which cuisine interests you most? Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian? Ethiopian if we wish to stretch it a bit to the Southeast? (I do not know of any Lybian restaurants so far, and our Egyptian cafés are mostly focused on chicha-smoking.) Wally le Saharien (Algerian) has only one dish, couscous méchoui, but it is perfectly made. L'Atlas (Moroccan, fassi cooking) on boulevard Saint-Germain serves what is IMO the very best hand-rolled couscous in Paris. If you don't mind holes-in-the-wall, Chez Hamadi (rue Boutebrie) is also the best, in a different style (Tunisian). Neighborhood couscous joints (there is one in every couple of streets or so, depending on the area) can be pretty good and should be tried. For Jewish-Tunisian couscous (a distinct genre, very rich, with slow-cooked garnishes like tfina loubia, tfina bkaila, tfina arissa, etc., or "complet poisson"), two quartiers: the top part of rue du Faubourg-Montmartre around rue Richer, and boulevard de la Villette. Try La Boule Rouge and Chez Chalomé.

One-starred La Galinette in Perpignan is really good (and generous). Just in case, on the way down to the Catalan coast, you should be aware that La Compagnie des Comptoirs (Montpellier, across the road from Le Jardin des Sens on avenue Saint-Lazare) has an excellent Aussie chef at the moment, and serves delicious food.