Bux

I'm glad Lou said it. It's France and it's a restaurant kitchen. I've heard all sorts of stories, even about French restaurants in NY. Personally, I don't approve, but if you want the experience, you'll put up with it. If you want to be treated with respect from the start, try the army.

I do not believe the Monet gardens are open in January and if they are, there will not be much to see. Í have been caught in a snow fall in Burgundy in January, but I believe that was a rare occurrance. The Loire is certain a close destination requiring little driving and offering great sightseeing as well as excellent food. I am still savoring the great wild hare last October at Lion d'Or in Romorantin and a meal at that Relais Chateau in Onzain was almost equally as good. I might even consider a trip to Brittany, if only to eat at Roellinger's in Cancale. It's not going to be warm in January, but it won't be as cold as in Burgundy. Brittany has a short summer, but a temperate winter. I think the Loire wins on distance.

The icing on the cake (see above). I have to admit to feeling I missed something by not eating at Chef Constant's new bistro. We were impressed by his hospitality and can't imagine it not carrying over to the way he treats his diners. It certainly was a rare moment and a privilege standing on the dark street corner sharing beers and hospitatlity with the chef as he was closing up the bistro. It was really great meeting everyone.

I just had the calf's liver at Aux Lyonnais and it may have been the best piece of liver I've ever had. The potatoes were almost as good. This is the place that Ducasse bought with the owner of L'Ami Louis. There's short list of choices and they taste a lot better than you might imagine. I'd go back in a flash.

Le Pre Verre has been described to me as "very simple new-style" and as "a sweet place for lunch." We didn't, and won't get there before we leave. In fact we won't get to to do much of what we intended to do, but that's life. As we've been eating mostly bistro style food at rather affordable and even low end prices, let me recommend both Fish and Aux Lyonnais, although neither of these could exactly be said to be flying under the radar. They both deserved the praise they've been getting. Reservations are higly recommended at both, although we were able to get them the afternoon of our dinner at Fish. Aux Lyonnais was planned from New York and reserved a few weeks in advance. Aux Lyonnais has an unbelievable 28 euro menu, although I can't report on the value as we ordered a la carte. A typical a la carte bill might be 40-42 euros more or less depending on exactly what you ordered. Beverages not included, of course.

I just remembered that I think my daughter found her first apartment in Paris via a bulletin board at the American Church on the quai d'Orsay. Or maybe it was her second apartment, or maybe neither, but she mentioned the bulletin board as a good place to look when was looking. If I'm not mistaken, and you have no reason to believe my memory on this is anything but very fuzzy, this was a room in the apartment of a young woman from Taiwan, so it came complete with a small circle of international friends. Then again, my daughter was not staging at the time and thus had time for a social life.

a, I know how you feel every weekend in SoHo (NY). From our part, we saw just one event between dinner and our hotel. Actually we didn't see it, we saw a lot of people standing around, but couldn't see what they were expecting to see. We assumed the "event" was only illuminated from time to time. The next day we discovered some buildings painted with lines. The lines were disjointed, but if one stood in the correct position, they all lined up to form triangles. There were a few things I might have liked to see, but we were too jet lagged. As it was Saturday night and we had dinner in a very lively area, it was hard to tell if the activity was unusual. The spot with the crowd however, was at a square that's been dead after dark the rest of the time, so that crowd was for that event.

LLuis, welcome to eGullet. I hope we'll see more posts from you. I agree that Adria is unique, although we will be seeing a lot of his influences, not only in Catalunya, but all over the world. I should also note that a lot has been written here about Barcelona and Catalunya outside of this thread. The cooking in Catalunya has lots of fans on eGullet these days.

I notice that almost all the time. I never notice it after I've stopped and loaded up on cheese, and treats from the charcuterie or epicerie, though. When I'm prepared to picnic, I find the spots about 800 kilomers apart. Call it Buxbaum's law. When you shop for food, they take away the picnic tables. And yeah, every once in a while there's a killer roundpoint that's indecipherable. We make about seven passes before we take a gamble on one of the exits. Travel should always have some element of excitement.

We're not far from the Sorbonne and I don't know if that makes much of a difference, but I see them all over, and I didn't last year. It would really be nice to have the access in our room, but for some reason I can't pick up the signal there. Fortunately the hotel has a nice lobby and the signal is strong where I'm currently sitting on a nice comfortable sofa. The connection is also free, although I might have saved some money had I chosen a hotel that didn't promise free wireless internet access in every room. The keyboard comment reminds me that it's nice to be able to use my own keyboard and computer should I want to down load anything. I can also compose messages and e-mails and then upload them when I make the connection.

I'm a great fan of driving in the French countryside, although admittedly, there's getting to be less country and all too many suburbs all over France. When renting a car in a foreign country, it's generally a good idea to learn the national laws and rules of the road, although this is something I'm more likley to advise than always do myself. In France there's a national speed limit that's enforced where no speed limit is posted. I believe it's 120 kph on the autoroute and 110 kph on all other roads. There are highway police and I've seen people get stopped for speeding. You will be fined on the spot and be required to pay the fine right then and there. Some tourists have understood they've paid a bribe, but that's not the case. We do keep an eye out for patrol cars when we drive. I've only been stopped in Martinique, which is a part of France and the gendarmes are likely to be sent there from metropolitain France so you can't count on their having a Caribbean attitude. On the other hand, they recognize the value of tourism, so I was only given a lecture. I was sure Mrs. B's lip was going to get me a summons, but I think the gendarme took pity on me. Where one doesn't want a car is in any large city. Parking is just impossible, not just in Paris, but in most cities. I'm happiest driving between cities and getting rid of the car when I arrive at a city. For those trips where we stop in a city between segments of country driving, I usually bit the bullet and pay for parking while in the city.

Just to comment on Roellinger, we ate there some time ago and with the exception of a few service faults, it was one or our favorite meals in France. I've never been sure why it didn't get three stars then. Either others have experienced greater faults in the service or the food just doesn't appeal to the Michelin inspectors, but this was a cook who we thought had perfected his own style. Oddly enough, at the time, he used a greater range of spices than most chefs in France and we thought he did it quite successfully. I'm also not a fan of what's called "fusion" cuisine, but Roellinger pulled off his use of spices and flavors as I'd never seen done in the US, with the exception of Kunz, at the time. Since then, we'e been to a number of two star restaurants in Brittany and each has left us disappointed and wondering how anyone could put them in Roellinger's class.

Over the years we've learned to look for the towns along the route as we navigate and it becomes easy to pick the right exit. Usually we can tell which one we want from the signs as we enter the circle. If my wife has the map, she will give me the name of the town as well as whether it's the first, second or third exit off the circle.

Don't get me started on this one. I don't think Mrs. B mentioned it directly last night when she was discussing why she would generally avoid a restaurant with lots of Americans dining there. I recall chiming in with my two cents about a particularly nasty situation years ago, but Americans eat up a lot of a server's time. I consider myself an easy diner, but last night I asked about one sauce, mostly because of the wine I was ordering. Not infrequently I ask about a dish or two because there are still menu terms that I don't understand. I have heard American's ask to have every dish on the menu explained and they really expect it to be done in English. I'm willing to settle for a French term I understand like "c'est un poisson" or sauce avec vin rouge." The other night I heard an American ask to change her order after she saw another dish served to another table. That's an imposition on both the server and the kitchen.

It's been too long since I've been back at la Regalade to offer the latest opinion, but I loved it way back when I was there. It may have changed. At that price range, expect to be seated closer to your neighbor than you would be seated to your table companion at any two or three star restaurant. As often as not, tables touch and the table has to be pulled out for anyone sitting against a wall or on a banquette. We've had three meals in Paris so far and at each at I had to be careful not to bump elbows with someone at the adjoining table. Only one of my meals came near matching la Regalade in quality. Why was I not back at la Regalade? For one thing it's the weekend and many restaurants including la Regalade are closed and for another, there's curiosity. As for surlyness, many Americans confuse a certain brusqueness they perceive in service from someone who's handling more tables than seems humanly possible. The only way a restaurant can serve this kind of food at these prices is to save on labor and to turn tables. Thus you have too few waiters being very busy. I haven't been to la Regalade lately, but I find the staff overworked and the service suffers at many small well priced bistros. It's a fair enough trade off as long as you understand it's not unfriendly.

We're meeting/eating on Wednesday, but we had a chance to get together with Louisa yesterday for coffee. My connection here is not as reliable as I had hoped it would be. It's not likely I'll be posting as much as I wanted to, but I'll be, but I'm reading as often as possible.

I associate Denmark with open faced sandwiches--lunch on a slice of buttered bread. See you tomorrow.

I've been in hypermarches that can compete with the best cheese shops in NYC on the basis of quality, although not on range. They may not compete with the best cheese shops in France, but they can have excellent examples of raw milk artisanal local cheeses. As for the Parking. They'd park that way no matter what. This is France.

The more tapas I've had and the more I've had tapas in different regions of Spain, the less able I am to give a clear description other than snacks or things to eat with drinks. They may well be traditional foods, or they may be an open sandwich of brie and smoked salmon. They may be an elegant little plate with squiggles of sauce looking like a cross between nouvelle cuisine and Japanese kai-seki food or they may be some homely scoop of chickpeas and stewed spinach or a mass of sangre. The may be cold or they may be hot. If the latter they may be freshly made, or nuked in the microwave. If there's one universally available tapa, it must be the tortilla, which resembles an Italian fritatta and not a Mexican tortilla. If a dish is offered on a menu in more than one size, the tapa will be the smallest portion. Frequntly one has the option of ordering a portion, a half portion, or a tapa.

So much for truth in labeling.

In a way, it's a perfect amalgam of French, American (or at least NY) and Danish attitudes toward food. The one thing that struck me as "wrong" was a decidedly sweet dressing on the salad the last time we were there, which was at least a couple of years ago. Then again almost everything out of cocina nueva, Adria, Blumenthal et al seems sweet to me, so my tastebuds are falling behind the times. Come ot think of it, I never really got canard à l'orange when it was current and preferred duck braised with peas or olives. Poujauran has some incredible bread and stuff, but the salesclerk really rubbed me the wrong way once when I tried to take a photograph in the shop. It wasn't as if she could stop me from photographing everything I bought, but she reacted as if I was an industrial spy.

"The buidling that used to be call the AOL Time-Warner Building" but the eGullet font doesn't have the proper symbol for that. Just another comment to show my age. I remember the days when buidling names were carved in stone.

I didn't mean to say it wasn't a good example of bistrot cuisine. When I said I'd take "quality and value over choice," that was in support of Au C'Amelot where I had minimal choice but excellent value. In fact, I felt the price of the meal would have been justified had they just offered soup, fish or meat, and desert and not all four. The value was in the quality of the preparation not just the quantity. If I had to eat lièvre à la royale for the second night in a row, I would not have been too unhappy. In fact I did, a bit. With soup, fish, meat and dessert coming, I got to taste Esilda's lièvre.

From Alexandra Jacobs' article in the Observer: I find it hard to assume he's spreading himself too thin. My guess is that half the reporting we'll hear will be from the same perspective that tore into Ducasse when AD/NY first opened and the other half from fans who won't be able to find fault no matter what. At this stage I wonder if we shouldn't just be encouraging and taking a look for ourselves at the result. He's one of our most respected chefs. To a great extent, he's also a chef's chef. I don't think he intends to become poorer as a result of this challenge, but I don't think it's all about the money. It's about challenge as much as anything else. And if he is spreading himself thin, so what of it? What's the goal or importance of a chef in our society, to create the one perfect meal each night for the smallest number of people or to improve the choices we have of good food. It's possible there's no right answer and he's already created what many consider the best restaurant in the US, why not do more or at least experiment with the idea of determining what is more?

It's an affliction, but I'm not sure there's any good to come of being cured of it. Populaire, familial, le vrai cassoulet (pas l'horreur que l'on vend en boîte !) est confectionné uniquement avec des produits originaires du Lauragais, et cuit dans une poterie locale, la "cassole" qui lui a donné son nom. Pour être tout à fait authentique, cette cassole de terre cuite doit même provenir d'un village du Lauragais nommé Issel. Alas, the page doesn't give a mail order address for a pottery shop although it offers a recipe, a list of three restaurants and three conserveries. I trust the latter list is not of places that sell it "en boite." An Issel site offers all sorts of gastronomy and business addresses, but it appears as if there's not a potter in town. I'm not sure I've heard the term "cassole" before. It seems to come from the Langue d'Oc "cassòla" and obviously gives its name to the dish the way terrine does to a "terrine." If you're really set on authenticity, I've read that in Castelnaudry, you'd bring your cassole to the bread bakery where it would cook in the baker's oven. That's not an untraditional way of making long cooked dishes in France, hence the name à la boulangère for long braised dishes. Photographs of cassoles. Click, click, click, click click for detail. As relief for those of you who have found all those French links intimidating I offer This is from On Southern Cooking.