Bux

Il Cortile doesn't attract my attention simply because it's Italian and my preference in NY and In Paris would be for French food most of the time. I live in NY, and good Italian food will find its place in my diet and at home and in restaurants, but as I spend too little time in Paris, I'm not very likely to be drawn to Italian food there. I will not say that I'd never eat in an Italian restaurant, just that Italian restaurants don't draw my attention in Paris. Drouant is fairly expensive and luxurious. While at a certain level of food, my budget may be abandonned, I'm much too likely to pay attention to how much of my tab goes for ambience and service in a one star restaurant. At one star, I'm also inclined to look for younger chefs on their way up, rather than classic restaurants. I prefer chef driven restaurants at all levels and find the absence of a chef's name in the GaultMillau blurb a turn off. I think these are fairly subjective reasons not to consider those restaurants and what I post here is not to suggest these restaurants are a poor choice, but rather why I, with my limited finances and time in Paris, have nothing useful to say about them. On the one star level, I've liked l'Astrance very much, but I understand this is a hard place to reserve. Maxence is a place in which I haven't eaten, but to which I'm attracted after sampling his rillettes of wild hare with chocolate last year. Carre des Feuillants, although a bit more expensive than Drouant, is a restaurant to which I'd like to return again, although I find not everyone likes it as much as we did. I am curious as to why members resort to private messages in asnwer to public posts. The beauty of this site is in its ability to share information. I, for one, am always interested in reading about restaurants in France. It matters only a little if they are my style or not. Cap Vernet, I believe, is a Guy Savoy bistrot. It's disappointing to hear of it having an off night.

I've never had it in the UK and never eaten with shepherds, but I've never had anything resembling sheherd's pie that was vinegary. I wouldn't use vinegar. I might use wine, and too much cheap wine can, I suppose, also make it a bit acidic--especially too much acidic white wine. I tend to believe chopped or minced carrots, onions and celery add a lot of flavor complexity and enjoy chopped mushrooms as well. I spring of thyme and a small bay leaf in the pot while the meat is braising add flavor as well. We also use leftover roasts that are minced and mixed with minced vegetables and mushrooms and sauce from the roast. On the other hand, we had a fine boudin parmentier that was little more than blood sausage out of its skin covered with mashed potatoes and baked or put under the salamander until a bit brown on top.

But that price point exists for certain restaurateurs all over, not just in Paris. There are lower points as well in many places. The local gentry have long had traditional tastes in Paris. They do now and they did when I first got there and when you first got there. The difference is that you and I aren't satisfied with the same food that pleased us then. My duaghter wouldn't be and maybe your kids won't be, but I've got plenty of younger relatives who have the potential to have the same Paris experience I had. You think that's a boring lunch at l'Afriole? I still vividly remember my first dish in Paris. It was cucumber salad. Nothing on my plate but thinly sliced cucumber with dressing and parsley and it was a revelation to me. Why shouldn't that sort of simple food not be available today. If well done with care, it beats the hell out of a lot of pseudo haute cuisine preparations I've seen on menus that do nothing but confuse your palate at the start of a lunch. I'd consider the loss of that sort of option, a loss. What I see as improvement is the elimination of a need to order a three course lunch in Paris and the appearance of saladiers and places like Cuisine de Bar a few door from Poilane where one can get an open sandwich of some style and a salad for lunch. I know the old European lunch was a romantic idea we all clung to while noting how much more the French enjoy life than Americans, but the quick lunch is here to stay and it might as well be delicious as well as fast. Paris is changing, but it needn't throw out the baby with the bath water. Wilfird, While I may share your fantasy, I'm not always sure it's safe to go back.

Maybe I just need to understand why L'Affriolle proves the decline after your Chez Georges post.

Cabrales posted this information recently in another thread. You can check the link she provided for a bit more information or, at least, commentary.

I make no argument about the fact there has been a decline. The decline started well before Yves Camdeborde opened la Regalade. My point was that la Regalade was part of the upturn. You may not see a no star bistro as important enough to be part of an upturn, but in my view the starred places were mostly in good shape, it was the bottom, and more importantly, the middle that had fallen out. Here is where we absolutely part company. Add fifteen dollars for an acceptable (to me, if not you) half bottle of wine and you have lunch for under $45 with tax and service. In NYC you will eat better but only if you spend twice that. You don't have to come back to that sort of place, but as long as it exists, the average Parisian can still understand what I basic meal means. Here in NYC, it means steam table take out back to the office for lunch. This is one example of where Paris has NYC beat by a mile--the three course 30 euro lunch. I might prefer Barcelona, however. I think you're looking at this from the point of view of Paris as a gastronomic destination, but it's important to have that lower level in my mind, because it's at that level that I first came to enjoy French food. If it's not there, there will be fewer introductions and future generations lost. I think this is very much part of Tony's earlier post.

Sometimes it's hard for me to decide to defend or attack France. It may depend on my mood, but that mood is often influenced for months after my last trip. I'm not sure France is still on their downward cycle, and I have seen many attempts to push the ball up the hill. These range from the modest restaurants and neo bistros of the 90's of which la Regalade, whose chef is competent enough to run a multi starred restaurant to the growth of fine wine production in the Languedoc to the start up artisanal producers in many areas. To be sure there are and will be areas where food is still deteriorating, but it hasn't been all positive in NYC for the past twenty years. By the way, I'm always opitimistic before leaving for France and of a mixed mind upon my return. I'm off for France in a month. Let me know about Parisian bistros. I think we will take a three star meal and four or five less lofty ones. I want to return to l'Astrance as well.

Tony, I think Michelin is merely a symptom and not the problem. Any society that the dominates a field so well and for so long is going to develop a conservative mentality and establishment, of which Michelin is only a part. I also question whether Nico Ladenis and Marco Pierre White handed in their stars quite for the reason they stated or for the good publicty of the stunt as well as getting Michelin off their backs while they were at the top so they could rest on their laurels.

But on what basis do you, or Nick Lander on the other thread,assume that it wasn't ever thus? Was there really a time when everyone would have got the juicy slab of foie and no-one would have been palmed off with off cuts? I can't answer for sure but I seriously doubt it. Maybe people are now much more aware of what they can and should expect for the megabucks they're paying and less willing to be fooled by smoke and mirrors. Tony, you're right. I don't know that someone wasn't always getting palmed off with odd or off cuts either in France, or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, I winder if at one time in my life I may even have considered that a price to pay for being a clueless foreigner. What's happening here is classic. Even though I've disputed the author, I'm left with a nagging feeling that gastro touring in France is not as rewarding as it used to be and thus I'm open to accept these criticisms. As you pointed out earlier, much of my diminished enthusiasm is due to the fact that I am not so easily impressed for several reasons. I start each tour from a better place. First my home port offers a lot more in terms of good food than it did when I first went to France as a student. Second, I have developed a fair amount of sophistication and knowledge about food in the forty odd years since my first visit to Paris. Finally, I'm paying a hell of a lot more at the places I frequent now than I did in my youth. It's probably understandable if I have become a bit more demanding and critical. On the whole, I have found the French to be wonderful hosts. Over the years I've been well treated and more often than not with exceptional grace. There are always exceptions and there are always other people's stories. Of the latter, one is most likely to hear and remember the bad.

Traditionally, "British Cuisine" has been a phrase most often used by those with a good sense of humor.

I had two dinners and a lunch in the UK recently. The restaurants were upscale and well lit which is more than I can say for New York restaurant which always look to me as if they are skimping on electricity and encouraging diners to dress down as they can't be seen anyway. This is a serious issue. In a restaurant where the tab is going to run some two hundred euros without wine, you'd think every piece of meat, fish and vegetable would be of the top quality and that scraps would go into the forcemeats. Of necessity the bistros may need to economize and the regulars might understandingly get the first cuts, but in a luxury restaurant with three stars there's no excuse for this. I'm often a defender of French cuisine, restaurants and chefs, but this is the sort of complaint that might have made a good point in a recent Financial Times article about a decline in dining in France. Here's the thread Robert Brown started on the article.

I assumed as much when you spoke about rolling them thinner.

I suspect Chef is better received here on this side of the pond. Perhaps it's for reasons similar to those that enable the French to view Jerry Lewis as an intellectual comedian. On the whole I don't go out of my way to watch Chef, but when it's on, it's often not the worst thing on TV. I think I've seem more episodes while flying across the Atlantic than at home. My conclusion is that it's better than the meal I'm served.

I notice a difference of opinion on using wonton skins for pasta. I've used a few wonton skins for dumplings and noticed that they're not all the same anyway. My recollection is that wonton skins are often mostly flour and water dough whereas I might prefer egg and flour pasta for my ravioli. Is this why others prefer not to use wonton skins? I had assumed Wilfrid's lasagna truc was for using dried lasagna sheets, but since you can buy sheets of fresh pasta in some markets, it may not have been obvious to all readers.

What Klc, Shaw, Finch, Plotniki, Brown, Barnum, Menken and Marx said, and I mean Groucho. If I find the food conservative, I'm going to complain that it's changing. If I like change, I'm going to complain that it's not keeping up with the times. Klc seems to echo my earlier point that the glory that is, or was, French food is not all two star restaurants. Are the eclairs of provincial patisseries no longer delightful. If not, do they pale in comparison to what you can get in London or just in comparison to Herme in Paris? We skipped lunch on a day with dreary weather, this past spring. For a moment I wished I was home atching TV rather than driving in the intermittent rain wondering if the next sight was worth getting soaked to see. In a one horse, two patisserie (competition is good) town, I hopped out of the car and picked up a bag of goodies including an eclair au cafe. It's been years since I've bought, or wanted, that sort of comfort food, but it worked wonders on my mood. Trust me, the carb hit was good, but two teaspoons of sugar would not have had the same effect. Taking pastry as an example, the good old stuff can still be found if you look, but it may also be overshadowed by the work of some of the new creative pastry chefs. The question that remains is whether there's also more banal pastry around or have we become jaded and only able to appreciate the better stuff. Pastry is a good example in another way too. I would join in decrying the homogenization of food in France, as I have done on this board, but if you travel slowly and select your shops carefully, the regional changes in pastry alone can make a tour in France a rich gastronomic experience. What may be most true is that we have to do a bit of homework and be smart as well as careful traveling in France. We've changed, France has changed and we can no longer take it for granted that we can fall out of our cars and be stunned by what we eat. Now let's compare patisseries in Ohio, the north of England and the Aveyron.

Mike, just remember that not wall you see is true, or at least not as obvious as it may appear. What you read, should always be suspect. I've seen too much erroneous information cited as fact in the NY Times by a someone without the experience to know the history behind his/her subject. I'm not saying this is the case here, but take everything you read with a grain of salt. That includes my posts. When they "display the selected wine for testing," you're to check that it's actually the bottle you ordered. You should check the year, and any other information on the wine list against what's on the label. That might include, the appellation, the vineyard, the grower or winemaker, etc. In some areas it might include the name of the grape and other bits of information. The more you know about wine, and the one you ordered, the quicker it is to see that it's the correct one. When it comes time to taste the wine, you should be checking to see that it's a sound wine. No one is particularly interested in knowing if you personally like the wine or not, unless the sommelier has urged you to select a strange wine. I could not begin to describe how you tell if the wine is sound and truthfully, there are a hell of a lot of times I may not be absolutely sure based on a first taste as it comes out of the bottle. The single most common fault is what's known as a "corked" wine. You can smell the cork, but I think few experts do, as it's not a reliable indication. In my opinion a customer should never get a corked wine to taste and a really fine restaurant will have a wine waiter taste the wine to make sure it's sound. Few restaurants do that, although I've seen it done and respect the restaurant for that. More often it's down only when a diner orders older and more expensive wines.

I thought it a strange article. After bringing up the fast food and slow food business and then criticising the foreign food in France, his main point seems to be that he ate well in France and found the food good value, but hated the service. He lost me a bit in the beginning when he said his initial enthusiasm dates back 25 years and then complained about the ubiquity of non French fast food, naming couscous. My enthusiasm for French food predates his, but couscous seemed almost typically French by the early sixties, at least in Paris and the south. In June we ate at some local places without stars and mostly in the company of friends and regulars at the restaurants in question, but in April we ate in some restaurants that ranged from no stars to three stars and noticed a few service errors at the multistarred places, but not enough for me to damn the genre. The wine service at one place will not likely be forgotten, although it's the lack of an apology that lessened my appreciation for the restaurant more than the service error. Still the food may get me back. He may be correct, but he needs to make a better case. I have long deplored the practice of listing prices only on the host's menu and find the assumption that the man is the host to be offensive, but this is a traditional practice and can't be used to show where France is going wrong. Not infrequently, I have had waiters in France, ask who will be tasting the wine when I dine with my wife, in spite of the fact that I always order the wine. I've wondered if they are bending over backwards to be modern, or if they've just noticed that we've consulted and discussed the wine together. There's no question that I don't see the service I saw in the late sixties, when a team might arrive at our table with the youngest members doing nothing but observing. I suspect the unpaid apprenticeships for servers are all but a thing of the past and the 35 hour week and minimum wage will see to it that servers are paid a living wage and that service will be streamlined. I don't know, I think there may a case to be made about the decline of dining pleasures in France, but France has never been only multistarred restaurants and that may be where the decline is greatest and where the revival is being felt the most. So there are dichotomies on all levels. Much of my philosophy of life is based on advice I read in a book or article about Sterling Moss. Always keep one eye on the escape route in tight situations. I'm prepared to spend more time in Spain. I should reread the article in the morning. I'm actually surprised I found such fault with it. Maybe I'll change my mind in the morning.

To be sure that I understand you, I gather you mean Michelin doesn't offer a ranking for 85% of the restaurants it lists--or more accurately it has four categories with the major portion of the restaurants in the lowest category and a distinction between the top 15%. I'll accept your percentage as the actual number is unimportant. GaultMillau ranks all of its lisitings on a 1-10 basis (actually 10-19). GM also uses the toque rating again as a star rating, with one, two, three and four toques. If you count the two three and four toque classifications as the equivalent of Michelin's stars, I wonder if we'd find GM and more or less consistent than Michelin. I know there are those who disagree, but in spite of the fact that Michelin gets the heaviest respect as the ultimate judge, I think there are lot of subjective decisions that have to be made along the way.

The Ferme du Letty story is very curious. It's one of those restaurants I sort of keep track of, and that's some indication of my interest in someday returning. I was surprised to see it disappear from GM and then equally surprised to see it still in Michelin. I had assumed they closed and that the young chef went off to fancier quarters somewhere. As for the definition of fusion and the classification of restaurants by that term, I also doubt it matters much to most of us. Those labels are handy, but only when they mean the same thing to everyone. These days, half the cooks in Paris are using some Asian ingredient and almost all are using some European ingredient they wouldn't have twenty years ago--Italian olive oil, white truffles, Spanish ham, etc. What I found was that Roellinger's food seemed seamless. I suspect that at some point a chef and his restaurant attract enough attention and positive reviews from some quarters that our interest in piqued and we just have to check it out for ourselves.

I have just noticed this Bux, and cannot believe you asked. What sort of a dessert is a Supreme pray tell? Well if I knew, I wouldn't have had to ask that question. I'm afraid that since the incorporation of clever nouvelle cuisine terminology, one can no longer take classic terms for granted. Surely, it's not really an "unbelievable" question.

Ferme de Letty was a favorite of ours as well, when we were there five years ago. It had a star and a rating of 17 from GaultMillau. In the past two years at least, it seems to have been dropped altogether from the GM listings. I think that's rather odd as it's kept its Michelin star. We had an excellent dinner there that included a superbly well prepared lobster. I'm really puzzled that GM dropped it entirely. I've had other good reports about it in the past and it was here that a NY sommelier born in Brittany, discovered a cider which he was later responsible for bringing into the states. I see it as a restaurant worth going out of your way for, but not as a destination the way I see Roellinger. Click for our comments on dinner at la Ferme de Letty and les Maisons de Bricourt in 1997. That's interesting as I wouldn't describe the cuisine as "fusion." I generally dislike the food that goes by the name of fusion, but I loved Roellinger. Knowing my lack of "appreciation" for fusion cooking, my daughter warned me that Roellinger used lots of "foreign" spices. Roellinger notes that neighboring St. Malo has been a port through which ships from the Indies, carrying cargoes of spices, have passed for hundreds of years. I felt he handled those spices as if they were a part of his tradition and not as something to which he adapted to French cuisine. My worst experiences with "fusion" food were probably in San Francisco. Kunz, when he was at Lespinasse and Roellinger are the two who would give fusion a good name if they were seen as fusion cooks.

A good point. I'm loathe to suggest Michelin, GaultMillau, or any of the guides are as valuable as the imput from members, but any single report, especially when based on just one visit, should be taken with a grain of salt. If we won't accept the fact that a three star restaurant can have a bad day, sometimes the diner can have a bad day. I've had disappointing meals at well regarded restaurants and I've suspected the fault may well have mine more than theirs. Not every dish at any restaurant is of the same caliber. Good advice is often to stick with the house specialties.

There's hardly any reason not to order champagne, except that Nantes is the center of the muscadet region and a popular wine with oysters. However, as I noted, some people never drink muscadet and I suspect others will drink champagne at any time. Actually if one likes beer why not order it either. That really wasn't my point. Perhaps I could have more accurately stated that muscadet, the local wine of Nantes, would generally be my first choice with oysters even when I'm not in the region, but that the interior of this brasserie seemed to call for champagne. It's an interesting looking place and thanks for bringing it to our attention.

My single meal at Roellinger's Maison de Bricourt was a few years ago. It was excellent and I have great respect for him. I deeply regret that my curiosity about other two star restaurants in Brittany has led me to try them before returning to Roellinger. None have compared. For the most part, they haven't come close to being in the same class. I haven't been to Jeffroy's restaurant, but it's the one in Brittany I have the most curiosity about and which would hold the greatest draw after Roellinger. Go to Roellinger with great expectations and my advice would be to have the tasting menu. A lunch at Trama years ago was odd in that we were the only ones in the dining room on an offseason weekday. The meal was excellent, but it was a bit unnerving to be there alone and I found the decor a bit affected, though that's not so unusual in France. I have no experience at the other two, but I think there have been threads here on each. I assume this is a long tour and that you're not going from one of these places to the next. What's your route and where else are you going? There are places in between that I would choose and perhaps some I would go out of my way to visit.

As I recall, the new Robuchon place is not going to take reservations. Apparently it's not open although by next spring it could be in operation. From my reading of the article, it won't aim to be a multistarred restaurant. With it's policy of all counter/bar seating and open kitchen I don't see how it could offer the comforts required of a two star restaurant let alone a three star establishment. It should nevertheless hold great interest for serious gastronome as should many places in Paris, including many that fall off the radar. Most of us have a limited amount of time and it's as often as not, the time limit that interferes with our goal of doing everything, seeing everything and eating everywhere, more than any budgetary restriction. In response to the opening paragraph of this thread, I'd have to say that I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way to travel or eat. The way I traveled at your age might not be the way you travel, but for what it's worth, my daughter doesn't travel the way I did at her age, nor would I expect her to do so. Of course eating at three star restaurants is not the opposite of eating around the country. France is not like the US. Many of the very top restaurants are in the provinces in France. So you can eat at all levels both in Paris and outside. Furthermore there's much to be found at all levels. Several years ago, I had such wonderful meals at inexpensive restaurants and bistros that I wondered if I'd ever return to a multistarred restaurant again, but in fact, since then, I've had some very mediocre meals in recommended bistros and some meals in neighborhood restaurants that were not lessons in the history of what makes french cuisine what it used to be. Today I find a need for food at all levels and will cram in what I can in a small trip. Admittedly, I will split a two week trip between Paris the countryside.