Ptipois

What you're writing is so, so true. I feel like clipping it out and putting a frame around it. This is a sad situation. I've noticed it as well as you have. I see reasons for it, of course they are complex but I can describe two: 1) Food has become fashionable but it's no longer "a fact", to borrow some words that Marlene Dietrich once said about something different (i.e. sex). It's no longer spontaneous. It used to be that, in France, one produced and consumed good food just because that was the way it was — one hardly even thought about it. French cuisine used to be a popular affair, everybody's affair, the very air we breathed, shared by all at different levels. Now it has become an elite item, just like all the good things in life are about to become, as marketing items. I suppose (and I fear) that the same thing will happen, gradually, to other places in the world with a culinary tradition, like some Asian countries. And 2) French food has been confiscated by the chefs. This may sound blunt but I'm standing up for it. I'm not thinking of real persons, of a conscious action at all — I'm thinking of a symbolic figure: the Chef figure, the authority, playing Indian chief with his chef's hat on, the only one who is supposed to know about food nowadays. Chefs have been around for a long time. They have always embodied culinary excellence, but until recently they were not the only ones. There were "mères", there were household cooks, there were simple inn and auberge cooks, bistrot owners, family housewives ; good cooking used to be better distributed amongst the population, and good cooking used to be cheap and available to nearly everybody. Now it seems that the only authorities about cooking are chefs, professional-trained male chefs in 99,99 per cent of the cases. You're mentioning the Sixties as the terminus post quem: isn't that significant? What happened to French cuisine in the early 70's? Nouvelle Cuisine, while it had some interesting and positive effects (no phenomenon is neutral, and none is one-sided), was the starting point of a large movement that, by and by, removed good food from the home, from women and from simple, popular eating places, restricting it to the secret savoir-faire of those in the know. More than thirty years later, you can see the result in a country that used to be famous for its simple, delicious, cheap food all over the territory: except for a few remaining exceptions, good food is available only if you have the knowledge and the money. And simplicity, cheap pricing, unaffectedness is gradually disappearing; so is personality and individuality, which is paradoxical when cooking is now centered on the personality of chefs. In spite of this stress on personality, "innovation" and "creativity", originality (the thing that made some country inn's cooking inimitable or some lady cuisinière's dishes unmistakable) has become a very rare thing indeed.

Er, I got it right in the meantime and corrected my mistake. (But this has given us the opportunity to learn something )

But going back to the article, it strikes me that the French women given as examples are mostly young, affluent and elegant Parisians picked in the milieux of haute couture, headhunting, advertising, etc. Those women, with rare exceptions, are all slim. But, I think, so are their equivalents in London, Barcelona, Milano, Berlin, NYC... Whose lifestyles are pretty similar. This represents in no way the French female population of suburbs, provincial and small towns, rural areas, i.e. most of the population in fact. Where women are not particularly thin and not particularly fat (though obesity is gaining ground in the suburbs, especiallly with children). And no mention is made of the food paranoia that, in France too, plagues many young women and teenage girls, through the propaganda of women's magazines and their anorexic models. Young girls - as slim as one would dream to be - irrationally thinking they are too fat and developing food psychosis (each bit of food becomes evil, an enemy, eventually food becomes some sort of poison). And young and middle-aged women always thinking they should lose weight when they're perfectly allright. And the look of fear in their eyes when they meet a woman even slightly overweight (fear to become the same). Indeed, the social pressure on women's weight is very strong in France, though it is very rarely expressed. Not being slim means having done something wrong, gaining pounds brings silent disapproval. Not that the situation is only French, but it does exist in France, and to a large extent. Only it tends to be more acute in the higher classes. That makes me skeptical about the existence of a so-called "French paradox" in this context, for the slimness of the women described in the article probably has nothing to do with their being French. Or, rather, there may be such a thing as a French paradox but I'm not sure this is the right way to identify and study it. I think it does have to do with our cuisine and wines, our eating habits, the development of our senses and therefore of our sense of proportion, our produce, some aspects of provincial lifestlye, and even with some cooking techniques. However we see no point in calling it a paradox, because to us it only means "eating normally".

Hehe, just try and buy one in a lingerie shop in Paris! And then tell me about it. Honest, I can tell you this is an archeological item. ← Whoops... my mistake. And my apologies. I got it all wrong. I mistook "garter belt" for "girdle belt". It's girdle belts that are archeology. Garter belts are everywhere of course. In the context of "keeping slim", the idea of girdle belts jumped immediately to my mind and I thought that was what the article was referring to. Hence the confusion.

Hehe, just try and buy one in a lingerie shop in Paris! And then tell me about it. Honest, I can tell you this is an archeological item.

The nice part of the article is about savouring the food. Indeed, using your sense of taste to its full extent (which amounts to developing it) does wonders. Not considering good food a sin does even more wonders. That's not quite enough to actually stay slim but that's a lot. The silly part of the article (or rather the book) is about garter belts. Nobody wears them anymore.

If you have the opportunity to go back to the Bon Marché area, here's a precious tip: go to the Sip café (at boulevard Raspail and rue de Babylone, you can't miss it), the place doesn't look like much and the food isn't terrific, but by all means order their special hot chocolate with hazelnut paste.

One last word about châteaubriand : Chateaubriant is the name of a town not far from Brittany. Châteaubriand is both the name of the writer and the name of the steak. It is believed that he liked filet steak a lot and had it sandwiched between two slices of less valuable beef before grilling it slowly. When the outer slices were totally burnt through, they were removed and thrown away, and he feasted on the middle slice, which had undergone a primitive and refined version of low-temperature cooking. This is, supposedly, the origin of the tenderloin dish called châteaubriand (no final t for this one). Nowadays, obviously, it is not prepared as it used to be. It is customary to serve it with a béarnaise sauce and fairly large-sized frites.

Just for your information: the word "de" has no apostrophe before a consonant, so you should write "bifteck de flanchet" and "bifteck de hampe" but "bifteck d'onglet"...

Yes, there is such a thing as "bifteck de hampe" in French. Most of the time, when you ask your butcher for steak (without specifying the cut, i.e. entrecôte, filet, faux-filet, rumsteak...), you say: "un bifteck bien tendre s'il vous plaît" and the butcher cuts a slice off some piece of beef he keeps under the label "bifteck". That may be bavette, hampe, tranche, etc., but you may not necessarily be informed of the particular cut unless you ask.

Hello Naf! The first restaurant you're mentioning is the Chinatown Olympiades. I find it okay too. The sautéed mussels are good. The second restaurant is Asia Palace. I haven't been there yet. Last night I took a friend to Li Ka Fo, on avenue de Choisy, and as usual we were delighted by their gutsy (sometimes very gutsy) Cantonese cooking. I was introduced to the place by a friend who is a native of Fujian, and he claims that some of the food he finds there does remind him of his childhood memories. The menu is interesting, but a large number of red paper strips felt-tipped in Chinese adorn the walls all around, so the most interesting items may only be ordered if you can read them. Alone, I can only read the prices in euros, so I do like going with my Fujianese friend... His absence didn't keep us from being brave last night at dinner, so, shunning the albeit delicious specialty of steamed free-range chicken with ginger and scallions (everybody seems to order it), we dove head down into the tofu sautéed with ground pork in a rich oyster sauce (comfort food), crispy chicken (brown, luscious, fragrant with marine flavours) and what was described as "steamed ground pork and salt cod", actually a layer of aromatic ground pork tenderized with cornflour and steamed under a thick layer of - shiver! - salted fermented mackerel. I don't know if you've ever had this ingredient before but it's like vieux-lille, nuoc-mâm, old socks and natto put together. Now that was a notch higher than gutsy. When we realized that the fish was actually not to be eaten but was there only to flavour the pork (which it did deliciously), things looked up a bit. Other specialties include crisp-fried duck skin (a delicacy, not available last night), jellyfish salad surrounded by fluorescent-red-dyed baby octopus (my Fujianese friend's favorite, I don't really go for this myself) and remarkable clay pot dishes, including scallops and mushrooms and chicken and chestnuts.

Just a short note to say that I'm not losing interest in the conversation, folks; I'm only gaping in admiration at your beef culture. Nothing else to add. I think I reached my incompetence level in terms of biftecks.

Paris IS a dining area. And it's not huge. Maybe the rue de Bassano (how did you manage to find an inexpensive rental there? Wow, hold on to it and be thankful) is not the most exciting part of it dinnerwise, but this is not a problem since you'll never have to go far to dine well. So if you want my advice don't switch, get a guidebook of the Paris bistrots and brasseries, get a carte orange (public transportation pass) if you're going to stay for a while (it's free, you only pay for the weekly or monthly coupons), take some time memorizing the métro and bus routes, and do read the threads devoted to Paris restaurants in this forum! Hope you'll enjoy your stay and be warm and cozy in rue de Bassano.

Interesting lists. But they don't tell us much, indeed, about the quality of taste in those professions, for each category includes good, average and bad places. The lists just don't take into account, for instance, that some people in publishing care about good food and that some others just don't (or they wouldn't be caught dead at La Closerie or Le Café de Flore, which is not really an eating place anyway). There used to be a "professional" gourmet crowd in Paris, before the 80's, when the printing and typographic trade was still within the city limits. The moving of the newspaper offices and printing workshops to the suburbs, and the moving of the Halles away to Rungis, have proven fatal to high-quality but unpretentious lunch culture in Paris. Nowadays you cannot guess that a place is good because fashion people, publishers or politicians go there. But you used to be able to trust a bistrot because it was full of typographers at lunchtime...

Not since M. and Mme Moissonnier left the place, so: not recently at all! Have you tried the quenelle-and-soup place (on rue Princesse) I forgot the name of?

Oui, mais. In France, nobody ever uses bavette for stews. It's all grilling stuff. As for "bavette d'aloyau", the term does make sense and doesn't sound pleonastic to me, because bavette is part of the sirloin (aloyau) so "d'" is understood as a partitive (bavette d'aloyau being part of a larger cut). (Phew, butchery is SO subtle!) Aha, thank you very much! I reckon brisket (poitrine) is a much underused cut in French butchery. I fondly remember some brisket breakfasts from New York City, long ago. Yes, I do live in Paris, supposedly the home of the steak-frites (there used to be postcards of this local specialty, with the recipe printed on them and the Eiffel Tower in the background. Maybe I can still find one.) I didn't know there was anything in the US actually called "steak frites". Anyway it does make sense that the American version should be prepared with the most convenient cuts of beef, i.e. the NY strip (faux-filet-frites is quite delicious here too). I like steak-frites but I believe the best combination with frites is not steak but roast chicken (yum!). Do not get confused with the French term "filet". It only means "tenderloin". In a T-bone, the "filet" part is the tenderloin part (i.e. the smaller one) whereas the "contrefilet" part is the same as the "faux-filet" part, i.e. the larger part,, i.e. the porterhouse. Does this sound correct to you? OK, I think I can visualize this. "Surlonge" sounds like a plausible origin for the word "sirloin" too. Faux-filet is indeed a squarish cut, that's a good way to describe it. I don't know exactly what a "filet mignon" is in a beef context. In France, the term is used to describe a very small and tender cut, and is more frequently heard concerning pork tenderloin (sold whole). I think I vaguely remember that filet mignon de bœuf is another name for filet (tenderloin), but I'm not cure. If it is so, then in a T-bone you have filet (mignon) on one side and faux-filet (NY strip) on the other side. Oh, so do I! But I wish I knew more about butchery. That's one fascinating subject!

I have both nuoc-mam and nam pla sauces at home. For nuoc-mam I use Hung Thanh which is siêu hang (superior quality), based on ca com. It is dark, strong and salty. For nam pla I just use Tiparos. I think Thai fish sauces in general are more delicate, less salty and more fragrant than nuoc-mam, however I use the latter in Vietnamese dishes and the former in Thai dishes. I never cross them.

Well, not liking corail is one thing, not contributing to its total disappearance from restaurants is another. Personally I fight the empoverishment of scallops, even if it means pushing the roe on the side of the plate for those who don't like it. I think corail provides an interesting contrast of textures. Not so much when the scallop is plainly broiled or pan-fried as is usually the case in our modern times. But in scallops gratinées à la normande (especially according to my grandmother's recipe ), or in any dish including a cream sauce, there has to be scallop roe, or the scallop is naked.

When you order scallops in a French restaurant, do ask in advance: "Est-ce qu'elles ont le corail s'il vous plaît ?" You've got to be careful, for there is a new trend concerning roeless scallops. I don't understand why. But I was appalled, recently, to read in Gault-Millau Magazine a list of things they wished would disappear from restaurants, and amongst them was "scallops with roe". What's the idea? Quelle mouche les pique ? But there you are. Be vigilant. Since the late 80's when they made overchilled red wines trendy, personally, I've been vigilant.

Maybe because "bavette" is not a term used in Canada. Please take a look at this other document, it is interesting because the French cuts of beef are clearly named and pointed at. Thus you can see there are two "bavettes", both in a zone located on the animal's side. The top bavette (plain "bavette") may be what I've heard described as "bavette d'aloyau", the bottom one is "bavette à bifteck". The muscles from this lateral zone of the animal are characterized by their long fibres, hence a similarity between the cuts. Hampe, aiguillette baronne, onglet, bavette, etc. However bavette is bavette, hampe is hampe and onglet is onglet. None should be confused with the other. Furthermore bavette could not be the French word for onglet, both being French words. I wouldn't trust the expertise of anyone getting confused between those cuts. Anyway, a professional butcher would help you on this topic more than I could. I believe flank steak is flanchet, however I've never been able to find out what French cut was equivalent to the brisket. Steak-frites in France is a generic term. But traditionally, to deserve this name, the steak should be chosen amongst the not-too-costly cuts, the long-fibred ones, like bavette, aiguillette, the more mysterious - and quite delicious - poire or araignée (I don't know where these are cut) or, in the worst case, tranche à bifteck. Onglet has become, rather recently, quite fancy and somewhat hard to find. It used to be almost impossible to find in butcher shops because all the available onglet went to restaurants. Also, butchers used not to carry onglet, but tripiers (organ meat vendors) did, as they sold veal onglet too. Now that most tripiers have disappeared, a reliable butcher is the only place where you can hope to find onglet, even if you have to order it in advance. Anyway, at a restaurant, when you order a piece of steak with frites, most of the time the cut of beef will be mentioned: onglet-frites, entrecôte-frites, faux-filet-frites, pavé de rumsteak-frites. As for fajitas and skirt steak, I believe that skirt steak is a much sought-after cut in Latin America in general, for it is large and flat and may be rolled up and stuffed. That is the basis for the Argentinian matambre for instance. Also, Venezuela and, I think, Brazil have some skirt steak specialties. I don't know about this but I think faux-filet is very likely to be the larger part of the t-bone. It is a flattish, regular-shaped, very tender muscle lined with a layer of fat. The muscle on the other side of the t-bone is, I believe, tenderloin (filet). Faux-filet is considered "faux" (false) because it sort of resembles tenderloin, being very tender and tasty, but is not actually tenderloin. I think the ribeye is the "noix d'entrecôte. If what you call "top loin" is the front part of it, there it is. Yes, the faux-filet seems to be opposite the filet, and given the shape of a slice of faux-filet, it does deserve the name "strip", so that must be it. That's why I do believe that it's the noix d'entrecôte. Well, you know, things are even more complicated than this. If most cuts of beef are the object of a relative consensus amongst French butchers from North to South and from East to West, you have to take into account the innumerable vernacular and provincial terms describing some of them. Including some that are not mentioned on the maps and diagrams but that butchers seem to keep lovingly to themselves and their beloved clients... For instance how easily can you get a piece of poire or araignée if you're not in excellent terms with your neighborhood butcher? Not easily. You probably won't even hear of it. And if I go to a Parisian butcher and ask for a couple of galinettes (a very gelatinous part of the shin, oblong-shaped with a sinew at each end), he may not understand what I'm talking about if he's not from the region of Auvergne or Limousin. If he doesn't understand I may use the term "carotte" and that will do. But some cuts of beef bear different names in some regions and the whole thing is pretty confusing.

I was at L'Ami Jean for dinner a couple of weeks ago and it was great. We had pétoncles (bay scallops) on the half-shell roasted with garlic and parsley as an appetizer, and then a perfect roast squab. I have never had a bad experience there.

You may find a Canadian PDF document on cuts of meat here, though it doesn't necessarily reflect the equivalence between French and USAn cuts of beef. However, maybe you'd be interested to read it. Please note, anyway, that "bavette" and "onglet" are different cuts.

OK, here's a few of my favorite Lao, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants. There are many more around, I wish I could try them all. Thai: Chieng Mai, rue Frédéric-Sauton (5e), is quite nice and has been there for a long time. Same owner but even tastier food, spiced just as it should be (i.e.: too much), my very favorite, Lao Thai, rue de Tolbiac (13e). Krung Thep has been mentioned already. Lao: Rouam Mit on avenue d'Ivry and its larger neighbor-I-forgot-the-name-of (same management) are good. Lao Viet is out in the sticks (boulevard Massena, near the rue de Patay) but the food is tasty and fresh, very well prepared, albeit lacking in chilli for my taste. A good laap neua (half-cooked beef salad) has to have some tang. Be warned that the yogurt jar of fried garlic and chilli sauce on the table is alarmingly hot (to be used in pinhead quantity, and don't let it get into your eyes). Vietnamese: plenty of choice, but my favorite has long been a restaurant you can't find by chance (at the end of an alley in a shopping mall between avenue d'Ivry and rue Nationale), they serve one of the best pho soups I've ever had and a great bun cha ha noi. It's called Bi Da Saigon.

If you're mentioning the upstairs shopping mall between avenue d'Ivry and rue Nationale, next to Paristore and Tang, is the "other big one" the Chinatown Olympiades (above the avenue d'Ivry) or the other big one in the back, next to the "dalle des Olympiades", i.e. the large inner courtyard with shops and cafés ?

It seems that the place I'm mentioning has no apparent name. I'll look closer. But it's quite good. If the topic weren't "Chinese restaurants", I'd have given away some of my Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian addresses already (which are, I believe, more interesting than Chinese places in Paris). We may slip to Southeast Asia if you wish. Could you tell more about those snails? I don't think I've seen them before. Not really food-oriented but quite Chinese: there is an excellent tea place on avenue d'Ivry called "L'Empire des thés", run by the Kawa import company (which has an amazing shop on avenue de Choisy). This is the place to go for rare Chinese teas.