Ptipois

Legourmet: you confirm what I had figured. So you don't like omelette baveuse, which is the French way of making omelette. It has nothing to do with la mère Poulard's recipe and unless the kitchen was having a meltdown, there is nothing wrong with this omelette in se. In the same way, I always have to "overcook" my omelettes when preparing breakfast for American friends. PhilD: thanks a lot, I already knew the principle of that omelette but Mme Poulard wrote that letter in a typical chef manner, making sure she was not including any essential information. Omelette made in the way she describes is just like any omelette. The truth has to be sought elsewhere. And it will be delivered elsewhere too, since we're on the Brittany thread and Le Mont is in Normandy. Therefore we'll resume this conversation in the Normandy thread.

If that may be of any help, my recent experience at Market was dreadful.

I could not agree more. This is exactly how I feel. Some people have trouble understanding my equal worship of ancestral, regional, earthy cooking and of "experimental" cooks like Ferran or Heston. To me it makes a lot of sense, the keyword is sincerity; in both cases they are playing with real food, not with hype, competition or economical priorities. I am perfectly happy when a chef delights my senses in a genuine, modest, down-to-earth way, and I am no less happy when some crazy/wise man blows my mind, using my sense of taste to reveal connections in my brain that I did not know existed before, if he does it with a true sense of research and sincerity, not to impress the bourgeois. To me, these are two perfectly respectable ways of dealing with food. The trouble, when it arises, lies in between.

I admired your meal at La Cabro d'Or when you posted it. Everything looks utterly delicious by my standards. But it is not particularly representative of what I mean by "new and exciting" restaurant. The plating is not even show-offy, it only conveys that the main concern of the chef was to please his guests. In my book, this isn't the repetitive, globalized cuisine I'm complaining about.

No worry about that, I only meant that my position about those questions is rather an isolated one among the "food commentators" professions. Innovation and creativity are considered supreme values without ever being analysed and questioned seriously as to why and how. Apparently no one is willing to acknowledge the obvious emperor's-new-clothes phenomenon that we see now in most "new and exciting" restaurants: the more originality is sought, the more uniformity is produced. Originality has to be applied to such a narrow conceptual frame, which is the same all over the world, that everybody ends up doing the same thing. And originality that can only be produced along certain lines is the contrary of originality. Originality should be at least a little surprising; when was the last time you were actually surprised in a good way by anything served in a contemporary restaurant or néo-bistrot? During my meal at Sa.qua.na last month, there were about 10 or 12 services and only the 3 first services did trigger a reaction in me. Other services seemed dull because the first thing I sensed was how much brain juice went into them. The only dessert worth mentioning was a mignardise, a strawberry on a toothpick, lightly covered in meringue. So, say, only 4 items out of 12. And nobody around me finds that particularly inacceptable, everybody's used to that. I think something went wrong with the notion of creativity somewhere along the way. When "creative cooking" goes that way, I think it is time for someone to pull the alarm sign. (Not to mention the fact that we were in the heart of Normandy and the butter they served was Breton.) A young chef who would study the recipes I am reading in that cheap old Norman book, or even a good book of 1930's économie domestique and propose an updated, personal version of them without looking at what others do would, in my mind, be truly innovative. Forget the style. Forget how chic it should be. Forget the social acceptability, the so-called universality which is nothing more than the globalized levelling to the demands of a certain class. Just think of the taste.

Well, at least in my professional life, I can tell you they're close to devastating my reputation.

Well, good question. Why indeed? There are plenty of options between "basic food" (which cheeseburgers are perhaps, but I wouldn't be so sure about galettes, given the skill it takes to make them right) and overpriced, hit-and-miss restaurant food of nowadays. Why indeed? That question I have asked myself countless times going out of restaurants, particularly in Paris these days (because it is where I live). Taking several factors in account: 1. The general poor quality/price ratio of restaurant meals in Paris, especially in a dangerous layer of pricing that would be, say, between 40 and 100 € — apart from exceptions like L'Ami Jean (I'll go back to that), it has become very rare to find a really yummy meal under that pricing; 2. The near-total disappearance of the low-priced/honestly cooked restaurant meal in Paris, i.e. of the cheap bistrot, to the benefit of the quaint, hyped and overpriced; 3. The near-total disappearance of traditional service to the benefit of fancy platings and therefore "assembly line"-type food (come on guys, nouvelle cuisine was 40 years ago... If you can't think of something new, why not find your inspiration in earlier periods after all?). 4. The hype maintained around some "sacred" addresses long after they have stopped being of any interest, Camdeborde's Comptoir being the cas d'école but Mon Vieil Ami being another good example; 5. The fact that when you go to a 1-2-3-starred restaurant you are not guaranteed to get a truly satisfying meal; it could be stellar and make you happy, or boring and heavy and make you furious, and there's nothing to differentiate that in advance (unless you have the experience), and in both cases it costs the same; and the related fact that even going to a 1-starred restaurant (like Auguste in Paris for instance) you may be served a stale steak of charolais that stinks because someone out there has decided that lean, unmarbled meat could be aged. Or worse, because someone out there just served you stale meat. Okay, not such a big deal, but seriously — 1 star? And other reasons that I don't have in mind right now, lead me gradually, out of precaution, to stick to good places serving non-French cooking (Chinese, Maghrebi, Japanese, Southeast Asian, African) and avoid French food at Parisian restaurants. Why is that? Because those places, even when they have a style of their own and a chef with a personality, are content with interpreting their classics and stay within the repertoire of their traditional cooking styles. And I don't give a damn whether it's innovative, creative or not; I only want it to be good. I wish many French restaurants would go back to these principles, but do they still have access to them? Why are places like L'Ami Jean or Racines so precious? Because, while certainly not being stuck in the past, they have retained the link with the cooking styles of former generations and the very French, family style of cooking which is directly linked to good cuisine bourgeoise, authentic bistrot cooking and the essence of true traditional haute cuisine. They have "it". And notwithstanding the chefs' skills and expertise, a large portion of their dishes could be done at home in the best conditions, by an able traditional cook as the "cuisinières de maison" used to be. The keywords are simplicity, honesty and taste. It is a sad fact that among so-called "medium-priced" Parisian restaurants those that offer that kind of quality can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I am now studying a cheapie book I picked up at the abbaye de Saint-Wandrille monastic shop the other day (books, jams, honeys, wood polish, etc.). The book is on traditional Norman cooking and the contents are obtained from many sources, apparently verbatim, and seem to date back to the first half of the 20th century. It cost me 9 euros. Printed on cheap paper, no pictures, the cover photo stinks, plenty of typos in the text with the odd ingredient missing from the recipes, but what a treasure! Simple, straightforward, superior home cooking based on excellent products. Now that was predictable. What was not predictable is the art of taste that shines through those recipes: the way certain jus and fonds are made, sometimes through very quick reductions, little details that make all the difference. In one word, age-old wisdom, tours de main, secret tricks. This is "popular food", country food, and in some ways what you would call "basic food"; and reading those recipes made me remember exactly why they have always been unequalled: because of details you can taste and smell but do not show when the dish is finished. In most restaurants nowadays, this is completely absent. In early 21st century France, who still does that? A few starred chefs still do, a few chefs in country auberges and bistrots all over France still do, and some people in their home kitchens still do (I do), which is my point when I write that most medium-priced (and some higher-priced) restaurant food is no longer worth the premium.

Would you care to explain more precisely why you didn't like it and why, in your opinion, the dish was not good? This is a real question, I have never been there.

Yes, indeed, and this is one of the things that can be said against the Michelin star system. Although I do not think Michelin is the only culprit, it has more to do with the new aspect of globalized, "developed" societies, and Michelin follows, confirms, solidifies, petrifies the process, being both a cause and a consequence. "High end" and shall I say "medium-end" dining has become, in most cases, stereotyped international cuisine and you rarely experience meals that could have been prepared only in the region they are served in. There no longer are any local ties or roots for any dishes, whether on a regional or even a national scale. When you get local preparations, they are made acceptable, sanitized for an international audience, therefore they are fake. You eat foie gras and girolles, pata negra, infuriating black venere risotto (will they please stop with that glop once and for all?), unnecessary caviar and Breton lobster all over the world. Now products may be local and proudly advertised as such. But locality in style and preparation has become ringard, i.e. shamefully obsolete, which IMO is a real problem. And plating looks the same all over the world. How come that no one (in my experience) stands up and says how boring this all ends up to be?

There are plenty of reasons to be in revolt against Michelin and also some reasons to praise them. But I don't think your isolated 1-star example is enough to accuse the whole system. There are loads of unstarred restaurants which are excellent and some starred places which serve bad food. But the older I grow, the less meaning I see in all of that. You might want to read my latest blog post as an extension of our michelinesque meditations on this thread.

Yes, the yellow-livered coyote (in every sense of the term). To quote the Le Monde article: Les critères permettant de classer les trois-étoiles au sein de notre galaxie sont donc très contestables. Qu'en sera-t-il demain pour Michelin avec les cuisines d'un autre champ gravitationnel, lorsqu'il faudra juger des cinq saveurs de la cuisine chinoise selon les principes du taoïsme et du confucianisme, ou bien arbitrer, en Inde, entre les six saveurs (rasa) de la pharmacopée ayurvédique ? You know, not such a bad idea at all, the more I think about it. Briefly Ribaut says "what will happen for Michelin in the near future, when they need to evaluate foods of another culture and will have to adopt the Taoist* Five Tastes system or the Ayurvedic Six Tastes (Rasa) system?" IMO I'm positive that it would not be a worse evaluation system than the one they've been using, whatever that is. At least it would make sense. That is the most sensible thing I have read from a French food critic in years. (*) Leaving out Confucianism which has nothing to do with the taste theory.

You are right, cider apples are not usually used in cooking while the very sweet apples of modern agro production are not suitable for Norman dishes. While most Norman people who have a piece of land grow a certain quantity of cider apples trees, some traditional "eating apple" trees were always thrown in and relied upon for everyday consumption, cooking and baking. Traditional types are fragrant, slightly acidic and firm-fleshed. My favorite in Haute Normandy is the bailleul apple, very dense and heavy with a bright green skin, speckled with red. When I was a child my grandmother also used reinettes apples (pippins), Cox's orange pippin and Boskoop apples, or reinette Clochard which is a primitive and much tastier version of Golden Delicious. These are still part of mainstream consumption in France. I do now know what types of apples are available in Australia, but I have found that traditional North American apples like the Macintosh or the Idared were excellent substitutes for traditional Norman apples. Actually I have never found better substitutes, back home in France when I have to rely on golden delicious, royal gala and the like, it's not as good as it used to be in NYC — when I cannot find Norman apples. I do not know much about British cooking apples. For instance, Bramley would be too soft. Braeburn is fine.

I do have a copy of that book and I must say I love it. I explained in an earlier post that I ordered it again from Amazon some time ago because my first copy was no longer accessible. I bought it back in the '80s when it was first published in the US, I was living in NYC at the time and of course because of my Norman origins I literally pounced on it. However there was not as much nostalgia associated to it as I expected, because Guermont is from a different part of Normandy than I am from; I am from the Northern pays de Caux (Maupassant country, precisely, and the cities of Rouen and Fécamp) and he is from the Orne, a Southwestern part of the region. It is a very large and diversified region, probably owing to the fact that it is a mosaic of former "pays", with different native populations, while other regions like Berry or Burgundy are more culturally unified. To give you an example accents are totally different from one part of Normandy to another. A Domfrontais speaking the native dialect would have trouble understanding a Cauchois speaking his own. Going back to Guermont, I find all the recipes to be wonderful. There are few cookbooks that I cherish like treasures but this is one. It was written in a time when chefs were not necessarily expected to "innovate" and so they could concentrate on deep, fresh, wholesome tastes, and following a living tradition was not considered slightly laughable as it is now. The recipe for stuffed chicken called "farc normand" is a true gem among others and a good example of how luminous and rich this cuisine is, though based on utter simplicity. First of course you should have a good chicken, but the stuffing is a collection of small tricks that make it unique: first you have to oven-roast whole onions in their skins, and add them to the stuffing when they're quite brown. Add bread soaked in milk, chopped chives, plenty of butter, and a few coarsely chopped chicken livers, and stuff the chicken with that. Truss it, rub it with butter, salt and pepper, and roast it adding a little chicken stock to the pan. Throughout the cooking, the chicken will be basted with the mixture of chicken stock, butter from the stufing and its own juices. A better roasted chicken you'll never have. My son asks for it regularly, though in Paris I can't find the chickens that are available on the Rouen markets. So it is a wonderful chef book as well as a good document on the cooking of a certain part of Normandy (probably the least well-known part, too), but bear in mind that it does not really reflect the cooking of the whole region. To be fair, I think each "pays" would deserve a book of its own. And I also think that one small region that is supposed to be part of Brittany — the area around Mont Saint-Michel and Cancale — is culturally more Norman than Breton (the accent is clearly Norman) and should not be overlooked when one decides to study Norman cooking.

Sharon, do try making chowder with cockles. You won't regret it. They are the tastiest little shellfish though so inexpensive, and a favorite of seafood chefs like Le Divellec for fumets and broths. The clams you buy in France are not so good as American clams anyway. And palourdes are too expensive, should be eaten on the half-shell or just opened in a marinière. Coques should be soaked for a few hours in cold salted water to get them rid of any remaining sand but they're well worth trying. I make New England chowder with mussels too (when I can lay my hand on good mussels) and it's really good.

Well when coconut trees grow naturally in Fécamp I may reconsider the normanity of her recipes, but there is nothing Norman about salmon, dill (aneth), courgettes, and coconut milk. The fact that she bought a house in Normandy does not mean she is going to cook Norman cooking. This rather sounds like affluent Parisian housewife cooking. Going back to typical Norman products, what are they exactly? The list could go on and on, Normandy being one of the most product-rich regions of France. Maupassant used to write about that generous land that it "sweated cider and flesh". As fresh products go, Normandy is famous for: CHEESES and dairy products: Whole milk, thick cream (as seen above), raw milk butter (sweet rather than salted). North of the Seine, the neuchâtel (cœur, carré de Bray or bondard), creamy, salty with a definite fresh mushroom taste, the excelsior and the la bouille, made near Rouen. South of the Seine, from the pays d'Auge and some parts of the Orne and Cotentin: camembert, pont-l'évêque, livarot, pavé d'Auge. FRUIT: apples and pears for the most part, also cherries and plums from Jumièges, West of Rouen. VEGETABLES: the leek is very popular as a vegetable and as an aromatic. Carrots (Créances, Cotentin) are famous too. MEATS AND POULTRY: Norman veal and beef are of renowned quality. Pré-salé lamb not so successful as it used to be and not very reliable as a product. Ducks and ducklings from Rouen. PORK AND CHARCUTERIE: in a category of their own since Normandy is particularly good at them. Outstanding boudin (black and white) in Rouen, andouille (chitterling sausage) from Vire and Domfront, cooked garlic sausage, grilled pig's feet, various pâtés, terrines and galantines (pâté de foie piqué, a hard-to-find traditional galantine of fine pork mince, liver and fat bacon arranged in a mosaic). SEAFOOD: the most appreciated fish species are the Dover sole from Dieppe, mussels from Fécamp (caïeux), moruette (codling or scrod) or cabillaud (fresh cod), lieu jaune (pollack), colin or merlu (hake), shark liver (foie de hâ), maquereau (macaillâ), small shrimp from Honfleur, skate (raie), mulet du large (grey mullet), tourteau or dormeur (crab), congre (conger eel), carrelet (plaice), limande and limande sole (dab and lemon sole). Anything that can be cooked in cream is supposed to be good. Oh and I almost forgot the smoked fish from Fécamp, particularly the herring, which used to be brought in, prepared and smoked in town. Still available are the harengs saurs doux, bouffis (bloaters) and safattes, lightly smoked herring that are supposed to be eaten with your hands right after buying them in the street. Very seasonal (early September).

You might also want to skip the pré-salé lamb, the quality is not very reliable and I haven't had a good experience with that kind of lamb for whole ages. Since the days pré-salé was famous, other lambs have attracted attention (allaiton de l'Aveyron, agneau de Lozère, du Limousin, de Sisteron, des Alpilles) and they are more interesting IMO. What is definitely a must in the Cancale region is the seafood, butter and vegetables (pré-salé vegetables are more reliable than lamb, so it seems). And in the same vicinity, I do recommend the crêperie du Télégraphe in Saint-Marcan.

is Norman... which is in Normandy.

I no longer shop at the poissonnerie on rue Mouffetard. As a matter of fact I rarely buy fish in Paris anymore. Sad.

Quiberon is one of the chic destinations. Many places and resorts in Brittany cater to more modest incomes.

My experience of those guides is that they may not be entirely updated, even if the editors send writers abroad to travel around and update the guidebooks every year, the job is seldom done thoroughly. People travelling with the latest edition of the Guide du Routard in their hands have often noticed that some restaurant or hotel information had not been updated for four or five years. And a wise one. Especially since the Euro has caused most prices to rise insanely, tips are even less expected than they used to. For instance, cab drivers in Paris no longer expect it. A quick conversion of Euros into former Francs in your mind and you understand why.

There seems to be a confusion between displayed service charge and undisplayed service charge, and the guidebooks seem a bit confused about that too. So far the 15% included service charge has been mandatory throughout the French territory, no exceptions. Not including the service charge is illegal. Perhaps, in some remote places, prices may sometimes be displayed without the service charge (I haven't seen that since the 80s), but the service charge should then be added to your check by the management. You are never supposed to add the service charge yourself in France, that would not be legal. And in the unlikely case that the owner of the restaurant should not follow the law, there would be no reason for you to compensate.

That Leclerc was purely rhetorical. I could have written Auchan. Abra, Brittany is homey and good. It is also very friendly, especially in South Finistère and the inner country (Monts d'Arrée). I have no precise spots to recommend because I tend to be happy everywhere in that region. A lot of activity revolves around the crêperies and (an institution quite unique to Brittany) the "cafés alternatifs" — there seems to be at least one in every small town — where you can sit and drink but also meet people, listen to music, view artwork, read and borrow books, and sometimes eat. The most spectacular example I have found so far is in Saint-Herbot, near the church (which should by all means be seen). Keeping it homey and good, there is generally at least one good hotel-restaurant on every harbor or beach. Follow the natives on Saturdays and Sundays. The moules-frites are also very good, Brittany has developed a style of its own for that dish.

You should not miss a meal at Jean-Paul Abadie in Lorient. You'll have to find it in the suburban zone between a Décathlon and a Leclerc, but it's well worth the visit.

Though I agree that things in general do not necessarily taste as good as they look, I can confirm heartily that those small Tunisian pastries are utterly delicious: small and delicate, subtly flavored and relatively low in sugar as compared to their other Maghrebi counterparts. Here in Paris we're very lucky to have a Masmoudi shop at the Porte Maillot shopping center, and I have sampled some of their pastries: they are all wonderful.

Great review, Sacha. You are mentioning that the restaurant was almost empty, which is a shame. But what was the date of your lunch there? If it was in high Summer, well there you have it. Versaillais are all likely to be on the Atlantic beaches at this time. Last week I had lunch at Lapérouse and the two of us were alone on the 2nd floor. It felt like being in a Balzac-type novel after the hero has gone bankrupt and all his friends have deserted him. The food, unfortunately, was far from being as interesting as that of Le Trianon. And the waiters got the menus all messed up so we couldn't even get what we were reading.