Ptipois

If it's a fad, it's a fad that's been going on for a few years now, and doing pretty well. Hope it won't be too hot at the Batofar on Sunday...

Never heard any rumors about Mulot closing. I'll take a look next time I'm around Saint-Germain.

I do not know about the law regarding this, your mention rings a bell though. My point was that nobody going to Camdeborde's - and knowing a little about the place - ever thinks of checking for a menu posted outside. It is one of those places. Besides, I find it difficult to say how many restaurants do obey this law. In Paris I hardly ever look for a menu outside because a) I know the place or b) My hunches about a new place, when I am facing it for the first time, don't involve looking at a menu. However I seem to remember there are quite a few small restaurants without menus posted outside. The precaution becomes useful when I am outside of Paris and I really need to know what type of fare they serve inside.

Who needs a menu on display outside Camdeborde's? You just get in, and if you're lucky enough to get a table, you just eat what you're given. (Kidding really, there's a fascinating carte, but... you see what I mean.)

Oh, you can have that in France too. That's what they brew in offices in the morning.

You can always find better or worse than anything. I don't know about many other places but I know two things: - As a general rule, coffee in Parisian cafés sucks. The robusta problem is a reality that cannot be overlooked. - The best coffees I had in my life were in Italy and Singapore.

"Foodie" is, really, a compliment.

Well, insisting that animals are "just food" particularly in France is one to me. I cannot think of one place in the world where this is different. I don't understand this focusing on France. Is there a place in the world where lullabies are sung to meat cows before bedtime? (Please don't say "Kobe beef", we all know it's for marbling ) Also, but this is going a little further, there are degrees of consideration for animals that are going to be eaten, it's not "Bugs Bunny" and "just food" with nothing in-between: a choice poulet de Bresse is not "thingified" the way a poulet de batterie or a hormone-laden veal will be, for instance. There is something left, in rural places and not only in France, of the old "religious sacrifice" state of mind (one of the only ways to get meat in the old days), and I believe, with the revival of high quality meat after the Mad Cow crisis, it is even more alive than before. What's left of the traditional rural mind in the Old World (though in Europe there's not much of it left indeed) is still the reason why a carefullly-raised charolais will never be "just food". Eating animals does not mean you don't respect them, and I believe this is the hard-to-understand point for anthropomorphists.

And why in the world should anyone give a name to an animal who will be used as food? This is not just France. It is everywhere in the world where farm animals are raised. In a US farm, does one give a name to every chicken? Do meat cows usually get a name? I don't think there's any national particularity there, the limit lies between urban/pets and country/farm stock. In traditional France, when cattle farms used to be small or medium-sized, every milk cow and plough ox used to have its own name. Each horse still has, so did every animal raised as a pet or even as "utility pet" (hunting dog, truffle dog, plough horse). It could also be hens (dwarf hens and roosters, silkies, etc.). My grandparents in Normandy, who were raised at the country, had a pet hen and rooster that they liked very much. Nearly any old French farm has stories about some old goose who came to steal pieces of bread at the family table and never was turned into food, or about one favorite duck, etc. I just wish there were no hasty generalization leading to believe that some nations are more hard-hearted than some others just because some won't eat bunny rabbits due to a strong cartoon industry. I have seen Auvergnat farmers cry at the slaughter of one of their old milk cows. So, please.

Atelier Maître Albert, rue Maître Albert, a Guy Savoy bistrot. Le Pré Verre, rue Thénard, a bit further towards the Panthéon, but I guess it would be too late to book for both places right now. I don't know of any decent place around Notre-Dame but that doesn't mean there isn't any. The Lebanese place on rue Frédéric-Sauton (Al Dar) is not bad.

Hehe, this tarte is the only thing in the menu that really knocked me off my chair. I also tried the risotto in my son's plate and it was perfect, perfect risotto. I had a taste of the ravioli and they were outstanding. But still I think that 73 euros for 2 is a bit overpriced for a few vegetables, even surrounded by hazelnut sticks and yellow plastic. But that's my own boeotian opinion and I may not be a natural Passard fan after all.

You're right, Suzy. At the same time, America remains the land of "meat and potatoes". It is an extremely carnivorous country with a portion of its citizens rejecting this national tendency. How and why this is so, I do not know and will leave the matter to better analysts than I am.

Wow, Lucy! Beautiful! (I can resist many things but resisting a nicely sliced saucisson is above my power). If you ever find "saucisson au beaufort" from Savoie, by all means grab it. It is scrumptious.

I think it is an American idea (and a brilliant one too) easily named "pastèque à la Provençale" because it's tavel wine and Provence sounds good. I've seen creative uses of watermelon in many places but never in France.

With Paris one of the most pet-laden cities I've ever seen in my life, I would say this is inexact. The French love their animals like anyone else and more than some. In normal situations, butchery stock is not disrespected. In all rural life, all over the world, if you want meat, you have to kill animals. That's all. This has nothing to do with the affection they may feel for them, individually or collectively, though nobody kills pets for food, of course. I shoud add that the attitude of French cuisine implies some mysterious respect to the animal (or plant! plants are murdered too) that was sacrified for the purpose. Indeed this is at the root of great cuisine, wherever from, and I believe the French and Italians have inherited a very ancient tradition. I once did hear a gastronome say that bad cooking meant total disrespect for the lives that had to be suppressed. I like that idea a lot.

But that's exactly what I mean. In proportion to the total population, there are less vegetarians in France than in the US and UK. It would have been nonsensical on my part to refer to an absolute number. You're right, but it is true that the French psyche is not, as a rule, very tolerant of vegetarianism, compared to the UK or US for instance. There is no tradition of vegetarian culture as there is in some parts of Southern Europe, Orthodox Greece for instance, which has developed a very interesting vegetarian cuisine repertoire related to fasting periods (at the same time Greece remains one of the European countries where the most meat is consumed). France is essentially omnivorous. Vegetarians are not disliked but seen as some sort of enigma.

That is ridiculous. Vegetarianism in France is alive and well, and, although it is very difficult to get a fix on a reasonable number, there are probably the same proportion of vegetarians to the overall population in France as in the United States!! ← That's not quite right. Vegetarianism does exist in France, of course, and there is a sizeable number of vegetarians, macrobioticians, even vegans, etc., but I disagree about the proportions. There are definitely less vegetarians in France than in the United States or England. The number of times that I have had to bother to find a restaurant meal suiting the tastes of some of my visiting American or English friends is quite important — amazingly so, to the omnivore that I am. With French people, this number amounts to zero (mainly because French vegetarians eat mostly at home — it is true that they haven't many restaurants to pick from).

A small report on my first meal at Yves' Comptoir. You'll find it by scrolling down, the first part is devoted to my first meal at Végétable (Passard's ephemereal restaurant at Le Printemps). All in French, sorry.

Quite true. And for some non-profitable three-stars, the addition of satellite brasseries is sometimes a financial lifesaver.

Never heard of such a thing in France. People here at barbecues get pissed on sangria.

This is so true. And, amazingly, they are very difficult to gather and tell. Not that it can't be done. But the Parisian history of food remains to be written. Parisians have been interested in a myriad subjects but they seem to shy away from this one. Very difficult to search and grasp indeed. While, a few hundred miles Southeast, Lyonnais could chat and write for ages about Lyonnaise cooking. The principle of Parisian food, if there is one, can only be its "a-regionality". The process I'll call "regionality" tends to aggregate concepts, facts, tastes, preparations, ingredients, dishes. It produces a coherent ensemble that could be called a family. Since "Parisian cooking" is, on the contrary, a-regional, i.e. non-aggregative, without any family feeling, it cannot have any cohesion, hence coherence. Once you understand that the Parisian culture is primarily the negation of "région", then it all becomes very clear. Paris considers itself a special entity, fed and inspired by all the regions but different in nature from them. To be fair (because Parisians are sometimes unjustly given a bad name), I have noticed that this difference in nature is sometimes shown even more strongly by regional France than by Paris itself. The concepts of cuisine de bistrot and cuisine bourgeoise may be channels leading to the definition of a Parisian cooking, but they are not enough. There is something even more important. I think there used to be a Parisian cooking but that it has now disappeared. It used to be prepared in aristocratic homes during the Ancien Régime, and later in newly-invented restaurants when cooks from aristocratic homes found themselves out of a job. There is very little left of this cuisine now, which flourished mostly in the 19th century and was then dismissed — rightly or not — as being overcomplicated, overheavy and elitist. Another sort of cuisine parisienne also used to be had around Les Halles, when innumerable troquets and bistrots poured soupe à l'oignon in large bowls to be gratinéed, steamed the petit salé aux lentilles, breaded the pieds de cochon, etc. That was the time when forts des halles (brawny butchers) would fill the cafés at 5 AM to have their morning breakfast: a big white china bowl filled with ox blood and chopped raw onions, a beverage they said was the secret of their vitalilty. This ended abruptly with the (regrettable) destruction of the central Halles in the early 70s. Now there are archeological remains of those places but honestly, most of them are just touristy (I'd rate Chez Denise as an exception) and the days of genuine soupe à l'oignon and bull's blood are over. Now that WAS cuisine parisienne too. Finally, who remembers that some specialties like gigot-flageolets, bœuf miroton, langue de bœuf sauce piquante, pieds de porc grillés, navarin d'agneau, which were probably born in Paris, are Parisian in origin ? They have become French, period. Now the absorption of those landmark dishes into the national répertoire, the relative absence of style that characterizes modern urban cooking (which sometimes gives way to personal styles), the complicated juxtaposition (without any fusion) of several influences and ethnic waves: all these factors make the identification of a Parisian cuisine quasi impossible.

This I can only agree with I think Justin Bridou makes the little saucissons, though I wouldn't buy them. Here, several brands are available. Being a saucisson fan (I've been raised on saucisson and baguette open sandwiches at tea-time), I like saucisse sèche d'Auvergne or d'Ardèche very much. Try a saucisson au vin rouge (generally saucisson au beaujolais or au bordeaux) if you come across it. Well dried, it is very good.

Thanks Lucy, I like a dry medium weight French red with good mineral quality to it. ← Morgon seems to have been custom-made for saucisson sec.

A special mention for the éclairs (chocolate and coffee) at La Maison du Chocolat. The best I've ever had and probably the best that can be had in Paris. The Pleyel is not to be missed either, as long as it is freshly-made.

Well this is a nice list, not much to add to it. I'm glad my very favorite chocolatier (Michel Chaudun) is there. Robert Linxe = La Maison du Chocolat, yes. In my preferences it follows Chaudun a close second. Although I like Chaudun for chocolate itself (dark, milk, pistoles, tiny truffle cubes, hilarious little moulded characters like cartoony babies, etc.) and I prize La Maison du Chocolat for its chocolate-based cakes and desserts. Chaudun has one of the nicest chocolate specialties I know of, thin milk-chocolate pistoles laced with crushed roasted cocoa beans. I notice one missing name, the chain "Cacao et Chocolat". Several shops in Paris, the one I know best is on rue de Buci. Delicious pastries and great choices of pure-origin chocolates to be bought by the chunk.