julot-les-pinceaux

That's an excellent list. If you're looking for something intimate, then forget indeed about l'Ami Jean or La Régalade or l'Os à Moelle -- even Chez Denise's charm has a lot to do with sharing food with your neighbours. I'd say there are two types of restaurant in your list -- the traditional ones and the bistronomiques. My favourite in the first category would be Joséphine with its excellent generous food, nice service and exceptional Bordeaux wines; and Au Bon Accueil in the second category, where I just had yet another excellent meal just today (even in fine dining establishments, really fine, precise cooking with good juices has become very rare - Au Bon Accueil does it).

On my way!

Well, I guess you have to read what it says and make up your mind. I'm assuming that, except for broken plates, it's also like the Michelin and most other guides that the mere fact of being in the book is a recommendation.

(About Chen) I remembered your so-so experience. But the meal I had was just great, and the duck my neighbours had looked like no other. In fact, the way that the breed of the duck itself is a cross Peking-Challans is very emblematic of the restaurant, itself very crossover. The skin was incredibly crispy (I could hear it when the captain was carving it) and the meat was still pink (which is why they cook it further, in the wok). The lunch menu was 40€. The regular menu is 70€. Some dishes are indeed priced, not like Parisian three star restaurants (considering the ingredients), but like fancy French restaurants. The langoustine dish in particular is scary, and this sure is a place where you have to be careful. Of course you can measure it against Likafo and prices are ridiculous. But measure it against, say, l'Agapé, and I think prices make sense and the experience is more enjoyable to me. Wanna try it again? I'm game. (To Lucky girl) The fancy Parisian Chinese are very different from one another, and I really like them all. Like all fancy restaurants, they respond to different envies and expectations. My favourite is Chen, because I am a fan of nouvelle cuisine well made. It feels very blade-runner like, lost that it is at the street level of that strange Beaugrenelle complexe. Tong Yen is like a Chinese, right-bank Lipp, very Champs-Elysées, people watching, unchallenging but very good food at local prices. Diep rue de Ponthieu (not the one rue Pierre Charron) has subtle cooking and an intimate ambiance. When I was younger, this was my "score" place and it never failed me, if I may share that much. Vong is an incredible journey, a 70s fancy Chinese in a very old stone Parisian building, and has the most authentic Peking Duck in town. For an enhanced family-style Chinese, Passy-Mandarin is the way to go. Tsé-Yang is another incredible setting, right out of (Chinese-style) Cotton Club, a very dark and shiny and clean room that feels absolutely huge. I heard they have another restaurant... on 58th street in NYC. My personal top two would be Passy-Mandarin and Chen. But I like them all.

I had a wonderful meal at Chen last week, and it was the lunch menu. Chen may actually be one of my favourite restaurants in Paris, despite (maybe because) all its strangeness. The thing I like best is that this restaurant just does not care about so called authenticity. While there are dragons and chopsticks and all the usual decorum, this is in many way more of a nouvelle cuisine restaurant than a "Chinese" as such. In fact, it tends to revisit Chinese classics the same way that the Troisgros, Guérard and Senderens revisited French classic: emphasis on the ingredient, service à l'assiette, clear, well balanced flavours. Since Mr. Chen's death, the place sure had some ups and downs, but judging from recent meals, it's as good as ever. It even felt better, actually. While I'm at it, I'd like to add that Parisian Chinese restaurants, especially the fancy ones like Chen (or Vong, Tsé Yang, Tong Yen, Diep, Tang, Passy Mandarin) are a very uniquely Parisian experience and that food lovers in Paris should not overlook them. As is the case with more casual Chinese, they're also where the value lies in dining. I'd also like to mention the two excellent cheap restaurants with Shuandong cuisine: Yong, rue de la Colonie, and Délices du Shuandong, bd de l'Hopital.

It's a copy of the Michelin, where the plates replace the stars. So one plat is a very good restaurant, two is worth a détour, three is worth a journey. Indeed a broken plat means don't go. And the forks and knives, just like in the Michelin, indicate the level of luxury, usually correlated with price to some extent. So one fork will be like paper table cloth, and whatever the max is will be gold and marble everywhere and five penguins per patron. I should add that Pudlo is significantly unreliable, and in the worst possible way, as some ratings are actually pretty acurate and some are pure fantasy/fashion/commercial interest. I never use Pudlo.

I had the 135€ "middle" menu with the 70€ wine pairing. The wine pairing was not as interesting as the food, and a teetotaler like me will skip the wine next time, eventhough they have some nice bottles at decent prices. I know Robert enough to be sure that nothing he does is subpar, so I am pretty confident that the menu du marché will be as awesome as the rest. And here are the pictures from that meal: http://picasaweb.google.fr/ZeJulot/LaGrandeCascade# Marc -- you can judge by yourself how similar his cooking is to the Lucas Carton. Some techniques are pretty much the same, like the vermicelli wrapping the tuna or the codfish fritter. Basically, the technical mastering is the same. Recipes are different, and, I'm not going to lie, Robert is no Senderens (especially when it comes to wine pairing). But this is very, very good. (PS -- I'm back). Pictures, alas, better on La cascade's website.

Frédéric Robert at La Grande Cascade.

It could have been much, much more tender. It was pretty chewy, mostly. The fat was good. I had an excellent filet de boeuf the night before at last at l'Auberge Bressanne. Really superb, tender and tasty, with their usual, addictive, frites.

I am not forgetting Christophe. While I can agree that his beef was better than the average one served in France, I still do not see the point of eating that. You got me wrong about lamb and chicken: what I said is that it's very hard to find some good one in the US; just like it's very hard to get some good beef in France, in restaurants or boucheries. What I do concede is that good French beef, properly aged and aptly cooked, is a delight. But again, it does not happen often, especially in restaurants.

brescd01, French beef is generally grass-fed. It tends to be not so marbled. And I already responded your question about getting some in August. Pti -- It's true that properly aged French beef can be wonderful, and totally worth a try. But where, oh where, does that ever happen in Paris? There's le Sévero on good days. There's that one cut at Le Gourmet des Ternes. There's the Tournedos at Le Pétrelle but we agreed not to tell anyone. And as far as butchers are concerned, there's Desnoyer and les Boucheries Nivernaises, and even there, you have to insist that you want to beef well aged. So yes, there is good beef in France. There is good chicken and lamb in the US too. They're just uncommon.

I know you're opposed to fine dining, but I should mention that l'Arpège, le Cinq, La Table de JR (and its 55e all included prixifixe lunch on weekdays) are open in August.

I'm not sure there's even one address matching your initial request: 1- At any time of the year, it will be difficult to find regional food, product driven by the hotel Raphaël 2- But the real issue here is of course being in the middle of August. Honestly, I think you should start with looking at the Michelin Paris and its "open in July and August" page. The places I see in there that could match your request include: Au Petit Riche, l'Avant Goût, Bistrot d'Hubert, Bistrot Niel, Café Constant (and les Fables and les Cocottes), Chez Casimir, Drouant, La Fontaine de Mars, Joséphine, Le Mesturet, l'Ourcine, Pasco, le Petit Marguery, le Petit Pontoise, La Rotonde, la Villa Corse. None of those is close to le Rafaël (Le Bistrot Niel is not too far). In particular, I'm pretty sure nothing will be open in the rue Lauriston in August. You'll have to head to the Champs-Elysées, and there, I don't see how non touristy can happen. Non touristy in Paris in Auhust is a contradiction in terms. Non touristy in Paris in August is somewhere in the country side, maybe. Or in much less fancy neighbourhoods where people can't afford vacations -- say La Villette, where the boeuf couronnée is, or Chinatown. and even there, France closes in August. About the steak house -- the relais de l'entrecôte in rue de Marignan and la Maison de l'Aubrac are close enough to your hotel. They have decent steaks. But it still puzzles me why anyone would come to France for beef -- and why the French eat so much of theirs. That said, you'll get good steaks at Joséphine, La Rotonde, l'Ourcine, La Fonatine (closest to your hotel in that list) and, yes, le Boeuf couronné.

Well, when I was there last week, it still clearly was a Rostang place, with business cards of the other restaurants, Rostang-signed wine list, and a lot of signatures like the grilled rice. But I have no idea about the equity situation.

Julot: given you wrote this in July 08 and only recently (2 weeks ago) folks like Rubin reviewed it, has anything changed between July and February?Still think it merits a visit? Thanks. ← I'm always up for a Rostang experience (save l'Absinthe), and BAC has been excellent for over 20 y. The difficulty is to keep up with whether Rostang's still in. He's not in the one on av. de Villiers anymore but the original one on rue Flaubert still works very well, methinks. btw, a recent visit at Jarrassse was awesome -- see my pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/ZeJulot/Jarrasse#

Honestly, those days, only few places need reservations a long time ahead. Of course friday and saturday night still tend to be full more often than the other days, but in my recent experience, only places like le Chateaubriand or l'Astrance are still really hard to get. This is not to say that you should not reserve in advance -- just that you also have a lot of last minutes options, and it's always smarter because then you can match your meals with your actual envies rather than what you planned months ahead. Nothing worse, in my opinion, than going to a restaurant when you're not in the mood.

here's the bottom of it: the one in Tokyo opened first. It was scheduled to open after Paris but of course (this is obvious to any local), construction in Paris was significantly late. The Tokyo atelier was open with Yosuke Suga as chef, a brilliant young Japanese who, like Bouchenoire, was assistant to Robuchon after he retired (meaning among other things he slices the perfect cubes of butter you can see in his TV show Bon Appétit Bien Sûr!). As Suga ended up being the pilot experiment for the Atelier, he's the one who imposed to have menus, which wasn't in the initial plan. Suga is now the chef at the New York atelier, where I think he does an exceptional job.

John, I'm not sure if this remark is meant to apply to the discusison about "narcissistic" (in which case I would strongly disagree). "Narcissistic" always had a pejorative usage in literature but grew as a clinical description during the 20th century. Let me put it this way: for the longest time, cooking has been about techniques and recipes. You can see the memory of that with chefs such as Rostang, Bocuse or Besson: it is their skills that make their quality, it's about what is done with the ingredients. Of course good ingredients are required but as a condition, not as a star of the show. Then, possibly with nouvelle cuisine, emerged an ingredient-center cooking: it's not that techniques are not important, but they aim at putting exceptional ingredients forward. Senderens, Loiseau, Chapel, are prime examples of that. Some chefs, like Robuchon, clearly have one foot in each category. Now what I call narcissistic cooking is a kind of cuisine where what we admire, what sets it apart, is not the technique or the ingredients, although both can be pretty good. But the star of the show is the story that is told, about the chef, sometimes about the diners. Gagnaire I think is a case in point. Neither the ingredients nor the techniques are what sets his cuisine apart. What does is the way it expresses Gagnaire's personality. The narcissistic schoole of cokoing is fundamentally different from the first two schools in that it does not point to the food as such. Those three qualifications are in no way a comprehensive partition of chefs. Savoy fits in none. Robuchon is both ingredients and techniques. Passard is clearly ingredients and narcisse (it's not that his techniques are not exceptional, but that they aim at putting forward the ingredient and the chef). And, despite the historical description I gave, it is in no way a historical evolution. I don't think that Adria, since John mentions it, is in no way narcissistic. Veyrat also not, despite his big mouth. And Piège, whose cooking is fundamentally old school, is narcissistic big time.

I'm fine with being pejorative about narcissistic food. To name but a few and in no particular order, Bourdas, Bras, Passard, Grébaut, Erfort, Alléno, Piège make food that I find frustrating and insincere, led by the will to be fancy, in, different. What I'm saying is that this approach has a difference of nature with more substantial and traditional fine dining because it relies on indirect, socially recognized pleasure as opposed to being enjoyable by and for itself because it has "something to say". Julian, you raised the issue of subjectivity. Let me say at first that I think that subjectivity is vastly overrated, in particular the so-called different tastes. Yes, people have minor differences in appreciations, and also different backgrounds and addictions or allergies, but in essence, a well made dish is a well made dish and I don't think it is a matter of personal preference. There is a technical objectivity, a universalism to what good food is, which does not rule out dissent or novelty. Now, I am not in favour of raising a new tax on narcisissistic cuisine and their clients. If people enjoy it, that is fine by me, and good for Bras that he is praised and his restaurant is full. What I am saying however, is that as ostentatious spending and attitudes retreat, as people focus on, if you'd like, "values", the most vain of these cooks and restaurants might be in trouble. Another misunderstanding I would like to clarify is that the mere fact that a cooking requires some sort of culture to be appreciated doesn't make it narcissistic or vain. It's actually the case with all food. So when I talk about a cooking that is objectively appreciable, that stands by itself, it is not in reference to anybody's random immediate experience. Which bring me back to my earlier about subjectivity being mostly crap. (Hey, I'm not the one who brought metaphysics in this discussion!) Maybe we should make a spin-off topic about that newly introduced notion of "narcissictic" cooking. At the same time, I'm against a separate topic as I was hoping to launch that debate with a full blog post that isn't ready yet. now I have to hurry and finish it. For that, I blame Pti!

I would add that in self conscious, narcissistic cooking, Narcisse is not only the cook or the restaurant team, it may as well be the client who value the restaurant as a reflection of himself rather than a direct source of pleasure (reflection being an indirect one).

If only there was someone in Paris you could have a meal with.

I am so ready for that. In fact, I have been waiting for that for too long. By the way, about the Dow -- it has predicted successfully nine of the last two recoveries. And about l'Ambroisie: one thing that Pacaud's cooking is is humble. In fact, that's probably the single best way to describe it. That might not, however, describe his customers best.

Since this has turned into a very economic discussion, I would like to point out that it wrong to assume that the restaurant business in France is representative of the general trend in the economy. When Robyn rightly points out the ridiculous prices (and the ridiculous prices are in bistrots and mid-range much more than in fine dining), she's reminding us that restaurants in France, at all levels, are not for everyone, but only for some higher-revenue class. The mass of French people don't go to restaurants or bistrots. Bistrots are for very well-off people. And most of the fine dining establishments, especially the ones in palaces but not only, are only addressing jetsetters (see l'Ambroisie, Le Meurice, etc). So what is at stake in the problems of fancy restaurants is not the economic crisis, it is the financial turmoil, because those restaurants rely prioritarily on bonuses, dividends, expense accounts and anticipated profits. And for the bistrots that are most talked about around here, clientele is the same people, plus higher middle class.

Well, I haven't been in yars, but I do recall that the chicken was very good and the potato galette superb. That said, my own local rotisseur's chicken is only a peg below and 1/10th the price and I don't have to hear Americans bragging about just discovering the place. As for the galette, M. Constant does a pretty mean one at his Cafe. L'Ami was fun in 1968, now, like Maxim's, it's a museum. ← We can bring bragging Americans to your place -- you've but to ask.

If the food is indeed stuff you can do at home, then it is indeed exuberant. But if the chicken is as they say, the best in town, then it is not stuff most people I know can do at home. Even Food Snob's description of how it is cooked shows clearly that it is not stuff most people can do at home.