robert brown

Steve, what a loving post. It brings back the meal so vividly to me. I have always gazed enviously at the beef on the grill the five or six times I have been to Loulou's. The cote de boeuf is a major addition to my dining resources on the Cote. I think we both love the personal, intimate feel of the place, something you just don't see or get in New York. (Doe's in Greenville, Mississippi may be he closest, but even there!!) It may be the extra persuasive ingredient that makes the beef there on a par to anything I have had in New York. Also the beef is hand-cut, not uniformly measured and cut by machine. Those were fines de claires I had. I recall reading years ago that the French butchers or dressers remove some or all of the fibers from the beef. I have never delved into this, however.

Cabrales, I just got into the thread and read it very quickly (only because I have a case of jet lag). Reading about the Shabu-Shabu restaurant made me wonder if eating with chopsticks made it harder to finish in an hour than eating with silverware. Also, I wonder if there is as wide a distribution of eating speed among those using chopsticks as those using spoons, forks and knives. I get chopstick fatigue and often switch to Western utensils in the middle of a dish. That definitely speeds things up.

Frieda and Steve, against my tendency to see the bright side of everything, I beg to differ about the Guide Gantier. (Worst of all,I hate to disagree right off the bat with a marvelous new poster). Of course its wide range of addresses has led me to such people as Claude Chartron who opens her house to small private dinners and has since become my caterer for meals at home, as well as to Restaurant Castellaras in Fayence which is the most deceitful restaurant I knew of in the region. I have studied enough guide books to be able to tell when the writer is paying his way and when he is eating for free. Jacques Gantier is an example of the latter. He seldom has a bad word to say in a territory where there are lots of bad restaurants. His awarding one, two, or three sprigs or whatever they are seems meaningless. In other words, the guide doesn't do a good job of discriminating. I will say in its favor that it is the only guide that is comprehensive and is very handy for food and wine shopping. Anyone who spends more than a couple of weeks in the South of France needs to buy it, all things considered.

In sports page lingo, there’s an expression “From first to worst”, invoked when a team falls completely apart between one year and the next. This is the way I now consider Restaurant Jacques Maximin after my meal last weekend with my wife, Cabrales, and Steve Plotnicki, with the reason we decided to dine there being that I felt it to be the best of the several two-star restaurants on the Cote d’Azur. No doubt some eGullet readers, younger ones most likely, are unaware that Jacques Maximin was one of the most revered chefs in France during the 1970s and 1980s when he was the chef of Restaurant Chanteclair in Nice’s Hotel Negresco. Since he left there, his career has been plagued by failed ventures and personal demons. In fact, I recently compared him on this site to David Bouley, though their exact circumstances are not really comparable. By opening his own restaurant (filled with some good works of Nicois artists and decorated in good Provencal taste) on his residential property in Vence in the mid-1990s, he again was trying to strike out on his own. It was clear from the beginning that this was not an attempt to become a three-star chef or even to regain the 19/20 Gault-Millau rating he used to have in Nice. The prices he charged were not high (at first) and the dishes he made were often well-conceived, but almost never virtuoso-like or luxurious. In fact, he has always relied on the “menu” format, offering three or four at every meal and just a handful of a la carte dishes such as the ones the four of us had during our visit. I sensed trouble before we arrived. Madame Maximin first refused my wish to bring my own wine, not unusual in and of itself, but it was the offensive “how dare you ask” tone in which she said I could not. Then on the morning of our dinner, a woman from the restaurant woke us up at 09:11 to ask if we would be a party of three or four. Upon arrival at the restaurant, the parking attendant was “hors combat”, nowhere to be seen. Then en route to our table, I saw Maximin standing on the steps to the kitchen watching us walk by. When I asked him how he was, he gave me a cold stare and said nothing. Once at our table, we met consistently with the “politess” and flexibility of a military mess hall. Madame Maximin almost seemed to delight in frustrating us at every turn as we tried to compose an interesting meal by seeing if we could take dishes from one menu and combine them with those on another menu, or order an a la carte dish along with menu ones. When we wanted to order one duck that was meant for two for the four of us so that we could try another dish, she made us order two ducks without giving us the chance to say that we would not mind if we were served only two legs. The sommelier, a young and obviously green one, even though he was working from a list barely appropriate for a local bistro, didn’t seem to know the wines very well, and when I told him clearly that our bottle of red Burgundy had become “chambre” (room temperature) and to make it cooler, he decanted and poured it instead. Our food was all over the lot in terms of quality. (See Cabrale’s post above for the exact names and composition) The “amuse-bouche” was a small portion of a duck terrine en gelee served in a tiny ”ramequin” which as Steve aptly said was a use of the “amuse-bouche” to rid the larder of leftovers as opposed to give a sense of anticipation as to what is to follow. The eggs with asparagus was excellent, (but extremely overpriced at about $90 for our four half-portions), each aspect of it, such as the tiny pieces of tomato, having an individual taste of its own. Yet, the scallops in the salad of St. Jacques a la Catalan were clearly a day or two old. Finally, our duck service of the aiguillettes was seriously marred by slices that were a good distance beyond the “rose” that we asked for. Had I not seen Maximin in the flesh, I would have thought he took the night off and that some “stagier” had cooked the ducks. As I left, Madame Maximin and two waitresses were seated in the reception area waiting patiently for me, the last to leave. I suddenly recalled that Maximin had named his outdoor dining area “Terrasse Alain Chapel”. The potent remark to Madame Maximin would have been that the legendary chef would never have allowed an experience like ours to have ever taken place in his restaurant. As the four of us reassembled at Steve’s car, I told the other three that all I did was say a quick “bonne nuit” without stopping. Cabrales said that all of our perfunctory farewells were an adequate showing of disapproval, and Steve felt that the staff knew English well enough to have certainly heard some our negative comments during the meal. My wife did give a slight benefit of the doubt saying that Maximin may try harder during the high season. Unfortunately our bill of 650 Euros would be the same regardless.

"La Grande Bouffe" is hard to beat in terms of sheer excess. Don't use "Bouffe" as a verb in polite company, however. It means to eat something very particular.

Frieda, thanks for sharing your enthusiasm and wisdom. Where are you posting from. if I may ask? In trying to pick a bouillabaisse restaurant for an excursion we never made two weeks ago to Marseilles, we noticed the Restaurant Miramar which called itself the cradle of bouilliabaisee or whatever. The Gault-Millau guide then mentioned that it has a website called "bouillabaisee.com". I will look at it soon, but for now I throw it out to the readers to have a look.

And a special meal for the Browns for having met Cabrales. As we found out later at dinner, she can make a bad meal fun. (Sorry Steve, but we already met you weeks ago. But you make a bad meal fun as well!)

Welcome back to you as well, Bux. Hurry up with your post about your stay in the countryside. I can't wait. I should have known you had been to L'Auberge Bretonne already, given your ties to Brittany. Maybe the chef is G-M's answer to Jean-Georges Klein. It's interesting that the Auberge is not firmly in the consciousness of the French haute-cuisine world. Maybe it really is as you found it to be. Cabrales, I'm sorry you had to scrub your trip to Cancale. But it's always good to leave something on the table. Thanks so much for the translation. That was thoughtful, to say the least.

Cabrales, well-documented as are all of your meals in France. The two restaurants also deserve posts describing how they did their jobs, something that will undoubtedly appear later today. I forgot to mention that Steve, my wife, and I dined the night before at a restaurant we all adore: Loulou (La Reserve) in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Steve was greeted and treated like returning royalty as he is, after all, a Prince. More about that meal later, no doubt.

When perusing my copy of the 2002 Guide Gault-Millau, listed among the exhalted establishments receiving the maximum 19 points, I see a name I never saw before; that of L'Auberge Bretonne in La Roche Bernard, a town 30 km. or so west of Nantes. The chef-owner is Jacques Thorel. Apparently the Guide has moved him from 17 two years ago to 18 last year and now 19 this year. I believe that he has gone unmentioned on eGullet. Cabrales, you maybe want to think about this for the weekend.

Well that answers that!!

Because of its last-minute nature, we couldn't make it a rump e-Gullet event. Yet in the spirit of e-Gullet bringing like-minded people together around the restaurant table, I, my Misses, Cabrales, and Steve Plotnicki gathered together on April 13 in the Alpes-Maritimes (06) to enjoy, analyze, review, and criticize in the same day two famous establishments of the Cote d'Azur: Restaurant Bacon (or Bacon The Restaurant) in Cap d'Antibes and Restaurant Jacques Maximin in Vence. Having just returned today, as has Steve, and with Cabrales keeping up a busy schedule, I hope we will each have the time and the strength to chime in on our two meals, given the prominence of the restaurants. While we all were in agreement as to what we experienced in terms of quality, each of us brings a little something different to the table. Anyone else who has something to add, please chime in as well.

Jaybee, I ate there one time. It was so long ago that I doubt I can add very much. It must have been circa 1975. The food was wonderful, classic Burgundy cooking, of course. I do remember that I had veal kidneys in, I believe, a red wine sauce. The service was fine, but kind of straight-forward and not real cordial to us two Americans. I would love to know if it's still as good now as it was then.

sot-l'y-laisse=pippic, I do believe. Nope, Larousse says it isn't so. Anyone know the French culinary equivalent?

Steven, I hope you get as much mileage from the van as the thread got from your dog's name.

Steven and Cabrales have emboldened me (and all of us?) to fire away. I hope we start seeing more postings of pictures of dishes.

Are you sure it's not a typo? I would ask my Dutch gourmands if there were such a thing. (But I'll ask anyway.)

JPB, I am sorry for the mix-up. How did you get to look after the little boy? At first, I thought Claude was the son of Jean who left home; but articles in the Times and elsewhere about CT always said he was Pierre's son. Did he return to Roanne or is he back in Brazil?

The difference between me and you cats above is that I would not as a matter of principle agreed to change my first choice. I would have carried on in order to carry through the situation to an ultimate conclusion. In the end I may well have caved in, but not before testing the resolve of the chef and the captain. Let's start a discussion or a thread on restaurant rage!!!

Jennifer, aren't you lucky. Lizziee mentioned a restaurant in Barcelona she likes. I'll leave the honors to her. She had a good meal at El Racon con Fabes. Can you also fill us in if you have been there? I expect to go there between early April and the summer.

Ajay, you're a veteran!! Your story about Jean Troisgros makes me almost teary-eyed. What a situation to be in. What is the step-son doing now? Did you ever hear about the older son who jumped ship? How do you compare the cuisine now to the way it was in the old days? Was Jean truly the innovator of the house? Was the father there when you were-Jean-Baptiste. This is quite a group we are getting together. Bux will be very happy when he returns. He is in Lyon now. Thanks so much, Lizziee, for your great post. We surely look forward to more. I remember the New York Times front-page obituary. Jean Troisgros was playing tennis in Alsace-Lorraine. Chapel's obituary was inside the paper. I remember that I was reading the paper in a coffee shop-July 4, 1990-and lucky for me I didn't get to the obituary page. Instead, my fiancee called me at our gallery and said "Chapel died". I burst into tears as if he were a blood relative. It's a risky profession. I suspect these chefs were too busy to go to a doctor, though the care back then surely wasn't as good as it is now. I wasn't a big fan of Jacques Pic, but he sure was a nice fellow who left too soon.

Steven, for this trip you should change the pooch's name to Mo' Mo'. Have a great one. How long are you going for?

You are making me feel old, Ajay, but thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to reminisce. For better or worse, I cannot give you any recent experiences of mine at Troisgros. My last visit was in 1982. I always felt that Jean Troisgros was the intellect of the operation; at least he looked, acted, and spoke like he was, and when he died suddenly at age 51 soon after, I lost the overwhelming desire to go back. I never saw two brothers who looked less alike. Jean was of normal build, quite handsome with a gray beard and Pierre, as you probably know, was (and still is) rotund and with a kind of porcine visage, to put it in a relatively polite fashion. The first time I went, either 1974 or 1975, the hotel and restaurant were all in their original structure, the typical dark wood interior of two-star provincial hotels. I do not think the new kitchens were in then. (At the time, Gault-Millau was calling it the greatest restaurant in the world). Pierre was more the meeter and greeter; doing the table-hopping and signing the menus, first drawing on the cover a sad face and then a smiling face, using the two "o"s in "Troisgros" and writing under each, accordingly, and in English, "before" and "after"; then on a inside page the words "bu et approuve" (drunk and approved) which is a play on words of what people sign on a French legal document, "lu et approuve" ("read and approved".) Jean stuck more to the front desk, but was approachable and friendly. In fact he told me he had a son who wanted nothing to do with the family business (and I seem to recall he was a chef also) and had gone off somewhere; it may have been Brazil even, which is where his cousin Claude was to spend a major part of his professional life. I have no idea what became of him. Does anyone know? I have kept the menu of what may be my first visit. The maitre d’hotel wrote on the blank sheet opposite the printed part my meal on May 5, 1975. It is interesting to see how traditional-sounding most of it was: Foie Gras Frais en Terrine; Escargots de Bourgogne Poeles; Cassolette de Queues d’Ecrevisses; Escalope de Saumon a l’Oseille Troisgros (the most famous dish of the house, salmon in a sauce of sorrel, now a world classic that the restaurant has never stopped offering); Piece de Boeuf au Fleurie a la Moelle;and the cheese and dessert chariots which were both sights to behold in terms of variety or selection. Perhaps the food became more freewheeling after that. I remember most clearly the “Mosaique de Petits Legumes Frais Truffee” a terrine of baby vegetables and pieces of black truffle bound with an aspic and arranged to look like a small mosaic. Scrambled eggs with truffles were another big specialty; I think once I had them make the dish for my breakfast. So now Ajay, tell us about your visit so I can convince my wife to make the arduous drive from Lyon. On our very first drive in provincial France, at least for dipping our toes in gastronomic waters beyond Paris, we had our first three-star meal outside of Paris on May 20, 1974 at Restaurant Pic in Valence, drove the next day to Condrieu and stayed at Le Beau Rivage, a hotel-restaurant that has since seen its best days. We envisioned having a three-star meal at Paul Bocuse or even Restaurant de la Pyramide, but when looking through the Guide Michelin, I saw a three-star restaurant I had never heard off called “La Mere Charles (Alain Chapel)” Being a bit of a speculator and contrarian, I told my wife about it, and we both agreed to try it for lunch the next day, my birthday. We arrived to a nearly empty restaurant in farm country just north of Lyon that was on the main truck route between Lyon and Bourg-en-Bresse. Yet, it was a hidden oasis of restrained luxury and sober, good taste. In fact, as soon as we were seated at a table on the edge of a beautiful garden for an aperitif (a remarkable Champagne aux Framboises made with the juice extracted from fresh raspberries) and equally remarkable “friture du lac” (little fried fish) by a dashing, handsome Spanish maitre d’hotel who we came to know as Antoine (ex-Troisgros, Pere Bise, and after Chapel, Le Divellec in Paris) we knew we had gotten lucky. We also sensed we were in a restaurant that could not be more magical and could possibly have no competition in this regard. We lunched on three dishes, two of which had begun to become well-known to the advanced gastronomes of which we were hardly a part: the salad of lobster with slices of guinea hen, and black truffles; and the “Gateau de Foie Blond au Lucien Tendret”, a cylindrical shaped “cake” of delicate-tasting pureed chicken livers (the consistency of a flan) bathed in a sauce of crayfish tails and presented with a crayfish on top. As our main course we shared a Bresse chicken in a raspberry vinegar sauce with a puree of carrots the intensity of flavor of which we could not believe. Of course, there was a huge selection of cheese and a chariot of dozens of desserts including Chapel’s intense fruit sorbets and ice cream (at least twelve of them) served from small sterling silver milk cans, all followed by a large assortment of chocolates, little pastries, and petits fours. As we were about to leave, we told Antoine we would like to meet Monsieur Chapel. He went to the kitchen only to return to tell us that he had left for the afternoon. A year later for our second visit, in a way I never understood how it happened, as we walked across the highway from the parking lot opposite the restaurant, Chapel and his wife were standing in front waiting to greet us and accompany us through the main portico, along the pathway that passed the kitchen, and into the dining room. To answer the rest of your question, Chapel was always our favorite. His technique was massive, his cuisine both powerful and delicate and he could coax flavor out of food unlike anyone. We never abandoned his restaurant until he died. We have been back one time since, not quite two years ago. I will write my impressions for sure if asked, but maybe I will write about it unsolicited as well. We always had our best times and most of our best meals there, though one or two of the meals misfired, which is actually a low percentage given the number of lunches and dinners we had there over 16 years. Troisgros and Michel Guerard in those early days were right behind, however. Perhaps I should not have abandoned Roanne so quickly I hope you can get a small idea of how the place has changed because I certainly do not know. I loved the four or five meals I had. I wish Jean Troisgros were still around or at least had stayed with us for a lot longer.

Ajay, Pic and La Pyramide used to have three stars. If memory serves me, the Michelin kept awarding the latter three stars long after Fernand Point died in 1955; but once his widow gave up either the restaurant or the ghost, that was it for three-stardom. Pic lost its star when Jacques Pic died about ten years ago. He was a nice man, but I was not ecstatic about either of my meals there. In fact, it was generally considered to be a lesser three-star. I forgot about Troisgros. It almost makes my itinerary without going out of the way, but not quite.

Ajay, good points that I can elaborate on. The original post discussed provincial France; thus I starting thinking in that vein. But true, Paris is a must. If someone is making their first trip to France, I certainly wouldn't advise them to start out from Geneva. The trip I proposed does take in two three-star restaurants (Marc Veyrat and Michel Bras) to which one could also add Paul Bocuse in Lyon. I believe, however, that his restaurant is one that knowledgeable gastronomes eschew these days. Classic or long-established three-star dining has its home in Paris, but I think the food is better and the chefs more interesting in the Haute-Savoie/Rhone/Ardeche/Auvergne route I suggested.