Bux

Michelin shows a 45€ menu at lunch only and menus at 80-125€ with à la carte meals running from 100-155€. This would make the reopened Chiberta less expensive than the pre-Savoy Chiberta. Possibly these are first season prices that may prove to be a bargain by next year. I can't imagine Savoy is down grading the food and 60€ for a dinner tasting menu at a one star in Paris is inexpensive these days.

I hope you've started to read through John Talbott's excellent media digests to look for new bistros. I'd suggest working backwards if you haven't already researched that source. My next comment here is going to similar to one I've made recently to another poster, in fact your question so well parallels gidon's thread that I will merge the two threads, although answers to your questions might just as well fit into the thread on Least expensive Michelin starred restaurants. A discussion of those chefs and of their chef, Christian Constant who left the Crillon to open his own restaurant, le Violon d'Ingres, has woven it's path through several threads that have been active recently as well as many that may be found further down the table of contents. Many of the contributors have talked themselves out recently and it's going to take some provocative questions to get more out of us, but there's no doubt it was a movement and one that's still fluid and continuing. Steingarten wasn't the only journalist to refer to it as that. It's been well documented in both English and French. Robert Brown has posted about La Cuisine de la Demi-Pension. He's not a great fan, although he recognizes some of it's positive effects on dining inexpensively. I see the Paris equivilent in places such as Au C'Amelot. In some ways, this has been portrayed as the next wave of very good, but very inexpensive eating. Camdeborde's own announced plan is to open a pension in Paris. We're all eager to know what exactly that is.

I'm often surprised at the range of opinion among reasonable men regarding any particular restaurant. Of course at eGullet, we may expect an even wider range of opinions without surprise. What's even more surprising is how quick people are to take a single opinion from an unknown source. This does raise an issue. How do you react to widely ranging reports about one restaurant? Do you average them? Are you more or less likely to steer yourself to a place that neither offends nor excites others?

Eric Frechon was indeed worth the trip and the opposite of what John posts about Cave Gourmande. That's a real blow for fans of neighborhood restaurants and it would be rubbing salt into the wounds for me to describe his cooking as well as the service we had from a very able waiter. At least the main waiter was so incredibly compentent that he handled 85% of the tables, including the most difficult four top I have seen in modern times in any restaurant. Alas, they were Americans. The waiter was a joy to watch and only disappointed me in his performance by not smacking at least one of the Americans with a wet towel. I was tempted to do the deed, but Mrs. B persuaded me that it was none of my business. My guess was that she expected to the waiter to snap and didn't want me to rob him of the pleasure. Let's hope John's dinner was an abberation. It's strange as I am usually prepared to have my duck breast more rare than most French chefs care to serve it.

Is it unusual for a chef to buy a restaurant that already has a star and then renovate it? Has Savoy restaffed Chiberta? I would assume not on the whole. A 60 euro tasting menu seems very gentle and lower than the old prices posted on the Michelin site. Is that for lunch, or is it the dinner menu price? We ate in a place designed by Wilmotte is the Aveyron a few years ago. It was a slick, but comfortable space. The food was excellent too. It seems as if the young chef and his wife who had the place, no longer have control. I don't think they owned the place, I wasn't sure if they rented the hotel/restaurant or were hired to run it. It's a great pity they are no longer there. I was looking forward to returning. Of course a nice interior design is not enough for me, but it very much makes good food all that much more enjoyable.

Yes, I'm waiting for your posts on the food in the Chiberta thread.

My fondest hope is that this site caters to personal tastes by inclusion and not exclusion. Members are free to read or ignore all threads and posts, but I hope that those of us involved in a continuum of life greater than our own, feel free to talk about the skills involved in not only feeding their kids, but in developing their palates. "They" do not necessarily eat at Micky D's and it's particularly discouraging to read that anyone here thinks they do, or should. I am reminded of the time my daughter was on a home stay program in France and she and a few local kids were dropped off at a Micky D's in Avignon for lunch. She sat staring longingly out the window across the street to the starred restaurant she already knew and would have preferred. Fortunately she drew a better gastronomic hand the next year and found herself in family where the father's favorite wine was Guigal's La Mouline. Otherwise she might have well grown up thinking that feeding the French is an unskilled process and that the French universally have a juvenile palate.

I can't imagine a better reason to choose a place to live than accessibility to good food shopping. Restaurants would probably be there someplace among other facilities of some importance.

Ari, thank you for that report. I feel guilty that you weren't here in time to get more help for your interview. I hope we get a chance to make up for that next time. In the meantime, we owe you for your post. I know only too well how difficult it is to find the time to do a proper report on a significant meal. Leaving value judgments aside, I should say I'm impressed by your father-in-law. Thinking of your perception of chocolate in sauce, it's interesting to note how complex some flavors can be and of the crossover elements. "Chocolate" is a flavor we find in many things--coffee and wine are two that come to mind. I recall reading a post about the use of chocolate in meat dishes in the southwest of France and how the chocolate was introduced to mimic the flavor of blood. My recollection was that the post was made by an eminent authority on food in the region, but as I'm not sure, I won't mention her name. I had chocolate used in a scallop dish, but found the use overwhelming and disruptive. I could imagine a more suble dish working however. I'm not a fan of fish or seafood with fruit either, but a number of chefs have convinced me that it works in the right hands.

Spanish for Sherry. Thanks for the report! Actually, "Xeres" is French for "Jerez." "Sherry" is English for "Jerez." Jerez de la Frontera is a town in Andalucia famous for its wines.

I have a few more thoughts on this subject and one is that Ocean_island's method has worked well for me in the past and will again in the future. Even when I have my meals all reserved, I can't pass a restaurant without looking at the menu displayed on the street and should it be dinner time, I will also slow my pace to take a good look inside. It's a method that works well enough for many visitors to Paris. Of course the more familiarity one has with dining in Paris, the better one is able to gauge a restaurant from it's looks. Still, Paris is one of the world's great gastronomic destinations and so much has been written about its restaurants that it's almost hard not to fall over professional opinions and guides. I would not turn a blind eye to them in favor of the comments of those who may just happen to tune in to this thread. I've already emphasized a reason why some knowledgeable members may not chime in here. Another reason may be that the question is so vague that it doesn't stir members who are unlikely to recommend a favorite to someone whose tastes are still a mystery. There's always the problem of recommending the right restaurant to the wrong person. I've seen unhappy tourists in restaurants I was enjoying and I've seen service disrupted by tourists so ill matched to the restaurant. Often enough these are not restaurants one would find off the street. They're on unattractive streets far from the destination zones of the city. I also wouldn't expect a visitor to enter a restaurant where 90% of the menu is unintelligible to him, yet there they are having been given the address by a "friend" or copied off a message board. I'd urge those making recommendations of a particular restaurant to add a bit about the food and the pricing.

That reminds me to suggest that those interested in stretching a budget by seeking out a bargain prix fixe lunch at one of the more expensive restaurants in Paris may find themselves facing a wine list with a fairly high lower end and not much selection there.

Bear in mind the restaurant world in Paris is very fluid. Restaurants change quickly. Some of the chefs to which John refers, have been very successful with their chosen direction, some have gone back to cook in luxury haute cuisine restaurants and some have sold their original restaurants and moved on to various paths. There have been other, somewhat parallel, movements among which there is Guy Savoy's esxtablilshment of bistros and small restaurants with kitchens in the hands of some of his young chefs.

I don't see the efficiency unless one places greater importance on avoiding the terrible rather than enjoying the excellent. Talking about excellent restaurants, or at least those that offer a degree of excellence at a reasonable price (value is always of significance to me at every point on the price spectrum) will lead us to the best restaurants. Talking about the really bad ones, will not help us distinguish between the average ones and the great ones (or the great ones for the price). What we talk about depends on our goals.

"For a chain restaurant" implies a certain lower standard allowed for chain restaurants. There should be one standard for food one is willing to accept relative to price and perhaps to what is available at neighboring restaurants. Both "gourmet food" and "food snob" are terms that are dangerously loaded to me. Both are very subjective in many ways. The latter is often used as a pejorative for those whose standards are higher than one's own. "Gourmet foods" is more often used with hypocrisy or sarcasm as well. If one cares enough about food--which although it's not a prerequisite for participation here, is a pre-occupation shared by a good number of members--there's no reason not to get the best food you can for the money all the time. Why settle for second best if a little effort will get you better or more interesting food?

There are three ways to avoid having a bad meal in Paris. You can do extensive research and preferably spend a lot of money, you can get very lucky or you can have low standards. A lot is going to depend on one's point of view, but I think it's extremely easy to find bad food in Paris. The days when it was hard to find a bad meal in Paris at any price are over.

That's almost a dare to try them both.

If they are real francophiles of a certain age, they will be delighted.

I think there are several current threads running with this exact information and there's a lot more in the list of recent threads. It's going to be hard for most members to work up the enthusiasm to repost what they just said elsewhere in the Forum. "Can't miss" is very personal, but most people's short list is too long to cover in a week let alone three days. I'd also suggest that any place in the "can't miss" category is likely to need a reservation well in advance. You're in some luck as some places may just be reopening after vacation and you might slip in a reservation.

I guess the recipe also traveled west. Escovitch, is a Jamaican dish usually made with fish. From jamaica.com "Escovitch is a style of cooking using vinegar, onions and spices brought to Jamaica by the Spanish Jews. In Jamaican grocery stores you can also find bottled escovitch sauce to make the preparation easier." From foodnouveau.com "Escovitch was originally Portuguese, but is now found in dozens of variations around the Caribbean islands." Perhaps all Europeans looked alike to the natives. I know of escabeche as fish dish from Puerto Rico. Escabeche was always fish and usually one particular kind. I've also found reference to escovitch, in a Latin American web site, so this spelling is also known in Latin American circles. The dish is scabetche in North Africa apparently. Does anyone else see a resemblance to ceviche? http://enciclopedia.us.es/index.php/Escabeche agrees that it came from the Arab sikbâ a meat stew with vinegar, although they offer another theory as well. They say the spelling escabeche first appeared in 1525.

Living in NYC tends to make access to chain restaurants difficult at times and not all that enticing at others. I've never been to a Macaroni Grill or Olive Garden. I do remember a funny story from a Usenet post years before eGullet and long before this sort of level of chain had established a food hold in Manhattan. I'm not sure it was about Macaroni Grill because of my unfamiliarity with the name, but it was about an "Italian theme" restaurant reputedly a cut above Olive Garden. One poster was defending the pasta and another replied to say that when he complained about it, the manager indignently told him the pasta was fresh. "We cook fresh pasta every day."

Apparently a table for two at a Wednesday lumch may be had not much more than two weeks in advance and maybe less.

I remember our conversation last October. Unfortunately Begarra was closed for vacation that week, but we found Aloña Berri near by and that bar would also justify the walk. La Cuchara de San Telmo was also a great recommendation. My recent post of tapas bars in San Sebastian/Donostia was in this thread along with other people's lists.

I always think of calissons as an almond paste confection, but there's more melon than almond and at least one recipe calls for 40% almonds to 60% fruit and syrup. The fruit being mostly melon confit. Here's a list of firms in Aix that make calissons. Roy René is probably the largest manufacturer and the one whose product you will most likely find in pastry shops all over France. Béchard, who has the only shop on the Cours Mirabeau, would have been the last place I bought them. As I recall it was quite a nice little shop with plenty of other distractions.

"Factory" sounds disparaging when applied to a restaurant kitchen. We think of McDonald's or at least of Howard Johnson's here, although Jacques Pepin worked for that chain in his earlier days and with some pride in what he accomplished. Robuchon's Atelier is not like Adrià's atelier, but I don't know quite what to make of the difference. Adrià uses his as laboratory for experimentation while Robuchon's seems to the flagship for a chain of counter restaurants. Haute cuisine kichens are all run on an assemply line. There's not going to be all that much difference between one that offers dozens of dishes and one that offers one set menu, except that there will be efficiencies and economies--smaller staff, smaller kitchen and less food waste. These should offer a lower overhead in terms of salary, rent and food cost. There may not be an economy that will support the kinds of restaurants that peppered the map of France in the last half of the 20th century, nor may there be a clientele interested or able to support them. I'll join Robert in lamenting their loss when and if they're gone, but it's always been the change is the constant. There will always be connoisseurs and places where they gather to eat. I'll join Pedro in eagerly anticipating some report of Robert's meals in Spain including the similarities and differences he's seen between current and past French restaurants and those in Catalunya today. I see Spain in an interesting position following France and yet being ahead of them. They follow France in the kind of interest and attention being shown to chefs and the kind of gastrotouring that's being developed, but they lead in terms of the actual product on the table in my opinion. Of course there are still great meals to be had on both sides of the Pyrenees.