John Whiting
-
Posts
2,748 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by John Whiting
-
-
I -- and Marlena, if I understood her correctly -- were saying that, dining at Mon Vieil Ami, we were reminded of certain aspects of contemporary California/US cuisine. That does not imply any sort of causal relationship, it only registers a personal response.
-
one thing i was very impressed with was that even under a blanket of hot humidity, frenchwomen were wrapped here and there with scarves . . .
Last week in Paris, when the temperature was moderate and the rain almost constant, Mary commented on the same thing. French scarves are like the careful use of punctuation marks in a sentence -- they give form and proportion to a boringly conventional structure.
-
Un oiseau dans la bouche vaut la peine deux dans la main, I always say.
-
Pre-whitings-writings website posting...
“ … a better standard of ordinariness”Le Duc de Richelieu
The new Paris bistros that get the most attention tend to be comets launched by Michelin stars as they threaten to disintegrate, deprived of the vital heat of endless world travel and unlimited expense accounts. These offshoots could be compared, perhaps unjustly, to the local shops opened or bought up by supermarkets in order to monopolize the casual trade as well as the expensive weekly shopping.
And so it was intriguing to read of a new bistro near the Gare de Lyon which was described as “a throwback to the 50s and before”. No celebrity chef was touted, no steel-and-marble décor lauded, no month-in-advance booking advised. Nevertheless Le Duc de Richelieu got a week’s top billing in both Figaroscope and Pariscope. John Talbott reported this in his eGullet Paris restaurant digest, suggesting that “once the New York Times writes it up pre-summer, it will be too late.” That clinched it. And so we dropped by for lunch, wondering whether we would find an authentic period piece or a pop art extravaganza.
We needn’t have worried. At opening time there were lots of free places and there was nothing extraordinary in the décor except that it looked a bit new and shiny. A small piece of formica broken off the edge of a panel revealed that it was chipboard rather than the solid wood which would have prevailed in such an establishment half a century ago.
On the wall near our table was a clue as to why Le Duc had been set up with such a retro image. It was a newspaper clipping, yellowed with age, which announced the closure of a bistro with the same name on the rue de Richelieu. It had been the hangout of the Paris-Press journalists – “consorting with Miss Gigondas” was the secretarial euphemism when they were out slopping up the wine – but it closed down when Paris’s equivalent of Fleet Street dispersed to the outer city. A short blackboard list of proprietary wines suggests that the link between the old and new bistros might be a surviving wine merchant.
There was a blackboard with a dozen entrées and thirteen plats, but we chose to order from the 14.50€ menu on a separate board. We started with Cocombre à la crème and Maquereau au vin blanc, both of which were unremarkable but acceptable. My main course however, Estouffade de boeuf aux petits legumes, was utterly sensational, a melt-in-the-mouth beef stew which must have been braised in the requisite red wine for the full eight hours. I accompanied it with a half bottle of the house Morgan, excellent value at 13 €.
Two days later at Les Ormes I would have their highly regarded jarret de veau braisé à la cuiller, a similarly rich, densely flavored stew which was equally as good as the estouffade but no better – either could easily have been eaten à la cuiller, “with a spoon”. (Les Ormes’ dish was of course almost twice the price – we were helping to pay for a posh location near Invalides and lots of starched linen.)
Mary’s main course from the set menu was, remarkably for such a traditional bistro, vegetarian: Julienne rôtie sauce vierge, a bed of thin-cut roasted vegetables, with other conventionally boiled vegetables on the side, which she found delicious. I had a taste, but my attention was centered on my incredible estouffade. Wanting to be certain that we could face a full dinner that evening, we decided to forego dessert. The bill for this modest but excellent feast: an equally modest 44 €.
As we left, Mary suggested that we return for lunch the following day, a thought that had already crossed my mind and with which I readily concurred. Arriving shortly after opening, we were greeted by the same waiter as though we were regulars. He showed us to the same table and when I suggested that our names should be inscribed there on a plaque, he agreed with a chuckle.
This being a Saturday, there was no set menu, so we happily consulted the carte. My immediate first choice was the intriguing Andouille d’escargot, which proved to be a dozen snails, not in their shells but roasted on a bed of chopped sausage in a rich tomato sauce – not something I had encountered before, and quite delicious. Mary’s Asperges vinaigrette was cold and of the continental white variety, which those who are used to hot English green asparagus often find disappointing.
For a main course we both chose that old cliché, Confit de canard avec pommes à l’ail. Warhorse it may have been, but it was an inspired performance. The confit was crispy-skinned, the meat within of a tenderness and succulence that could have been consumed by a toothless grandsire. A half-bottle of Moulin a vent at 13 € lubricated it nicely.
And the garlic potatoes! – perfectly cut to the “thickness of a half-crown”, as a chef from London’s Connaught Hotel instructed Mary they should be. They were golden brown, crisp around the edges but soft within the thin outer shell. Like the heavenly pommes salardaise we once ate in the Dordogne, we would happily have sat down to a meal consisting of nothing more.
As we were congratulating ourselves for having preceded the barbarian hordes, a voice across the room enquired of the waiter, “Do you speak English?” “Do you speak English indeed!” I exclaimed to Mary. “It’s the beginning of the end!” A Frenchman at an adjoining table laughed aloud. Fortunately the newcomer turned out to be only a Middle-European searching for a common language.
This time we had no compunctions about staying on for dessert. Mary’s Tarte aux fraises was a perfectly good example and my own generous helping of cantal cheese, ripe and rindy, was a bargain at 5.4€. It required another glass of Moulin a vent to do it justice.
Waverly Root tells of a French critic whose test of a new restaurant was to order a salade de tomates, just to see how much effort they would put into its preparation. Mary’s equivalent is to ask at the end of the meal for a hot chocolate. The more elevated establishments don’t often have it, but much may be learned from the manner in which they respond. On this occasion, not only were they able to oblige, but the generous cupful was excellent – rich and chocolatey.
My own espresso was no doubt flawless, but I was in such a state of euphoria that I would probably have tossed back a Nescafe in perfect contentment. To round out the feeling of well-being, I accompanied it with an Armagnac. Our collective enjoyment must have registered with our waiter, for he poured me another Armagnac which I felt obliged to consume in order not to appear ungrateful. The bill for all this self-indulgence came to a hundred euros.
Perhaps I should not be sharing the secret of this time warp with my readers, but I think it will probably survive unscathed. The Gare de Lyon is not an area teeming with tourists – those who make the effort will likely be those who deserve it. There is nothing remarkable about Le Duc de Richelieu. In fact, it is perfectly ordinary. But in the astute words of English food historian Jane Grigson, “We have more than enough masterpieces; what we need is a better standard of ordinariness.”
Le Duc de Richelieu, 3 rue Parott, 12th Arr, Tel 01 43 43 05 64, Mº Gare de Lyon
©2004 John Whiting
-
It's a lot easier to look at the influences by being inclusive rather than exclusive.
This is crucial, and it's central to the history of "fusion" throughout the ages.
-
It's reassuring when one's impressions are reenforced by a fine bouche.
-
I am specifically referring to the abundance of fresh vegetables, especially in the starters ...
From my own review:
If further proof were needed, it came in Mary’s first dish, Légumes printaniers en salade tiède, máche et petites girolles poêlées. This contained so many lightly poached, perfectly blended vegetables that she set out to list them. They included yellow carrots, courgettes, yellow squash, green beans, green onions, peas, cauliflower, mange toute, asparagus, celery, fennel, bibb lettuce, alfalfa and two kinds of mushrooms, served in their own vegetable jus. Like a well-made ratatouille, each was cooked to the proper degree, suggesting that they had been added successively, each at the crucial moment. -
There are at least two levels going here. One is the commercial; i.e. what can one claim to have invented in order to promote one's restaurant to the press. The other is the level at which chefs -- or at the deeper level, cooks as a whole -- take advantage of the same world-wide communication that prevails in every discipline. It was at this elemental level, if I understood correctly, that Marlena was observing a simple but also profound correspondence.
Many European chefs have now spent time at Chez Panisse, for example, and have taken what they experienced home with them. They haven't stolen or even borrowed secrets, they have only added to their knowlege in ways which are subsequently incorporated into what they do in the kitchen.
EDIT This was written without having read Marlena's previous posting. The fact that we're saying much the same thing without communicating may have some small significance.
-
Marlena and I wrote up Mon Vieil Ami in much the same way without having compared notes, which we haven't for several months. It is the same recognition of creative communication between France and America which inspired Raymond Bland to devote an entire week to exploring its ramifications in "The American Food Revolution", which has been examined in some detail here on eGullet.
We're well past the point of establishing precedence. We have always lived in a world of "fusion", and it now takes place with such rapidity that we can't even write as fast as it happens.
-
Marlena's point, if I understand it, is that there is now such close communication among international chefs that one is free to trace lines of mutual "influence" without searching for a pointless precedence as to who was first. Forget the verbiage -- I can only say that half-a-dozen years ago at Beurehiesel and a week ago at Mon Vieil Ami the food "talked to me" the way it did at Chez Panisse. Marlena's husband Alan's instinctive response is, for me, a reenforcement.
-
Vitamin E indeed. Adelle Davis was recommending that half a century ago. For a painful but not serous burn (a threat of blistering) we take a couple of Vitamin E capsules, immerse the burn in cold water for a few minutes and then, if it's still painful, prick a vitamin E capsule with a pin and squeeze the liquid onto the burn, leaving it open to the air. It works. It also helps in the healing of cuts.
-
Pre-website posting
Friends old and newMon Vieil Ami
Where should I look for reliable information on the ever-changing restaurant scene in Paris, which I visit at most a few times a year? Once upon a time, the Blue Guides, which were used until they fell apart, included restaurants and hotels. To patronize them today you’d have to travel back in time in a tardis with Doctor Who.
There are the standard guidebooks such as Michelin, but the restaurant world is now so volatile that by the time the latest edition has reached the shops it’s already out of date. (And recently an ex-employee revealed that even the great stars in its culinary firmament are not necessarily visited every year.)
The Time Out Eating and Drinking Guide has been as useful as any at the bistro end of the market, which I’m most interested in, but new editions only come out every few years. Then there’s the all-inclusive Pudlo Paris, but its very catholicity makes it scarcely more useful for short visits than Les Pages Jaunes.
What of the Paris newspapers and magazines, available via their websites? There’s a constant demand for fresh copy that makes it necessary for journalists to keep coming up with a new Greatest Restaurant of the Year. Back in 1973 John Hess reluctantly agreed to review restaurants for the New York Times; he packed it in after nine months because he found so few new places that were even acceptable.
So what I need is a judicious authority with no commercial interest in what he writes, who could survive indefinitely without discovering a single new chef worth patronizing. Enter John Talbott.
Dr. John Talbott is a professor of psychiatry for the University of Maryland in Baltimore and in Paris who seems to spend much of his time editing a running wrap-up of the Paris restaurant scene for the food website eGullet, together with quotes from the Paris press and brief personal reactions to those places he has visited. His reports suggest that although he is keeping up with the latest developments, he is at heart a classicist who measures his discoveries, not against the ephemeral magnets of fickle celebrity, but against those survivors that form and maintain loyalties born of long familiarity.
And so Mary and I set off on our latest Paris pig-out with a short list of five bistros which John had recommended but which had not yet found their way into the guide books. Risky? Less so, it turned out, than all those authoritative and expensively bound volumes. Not only did all five prove to be slam-dunk certs (in the elegant phraseology of George W’s former CIA director), but we returned to a couple of them with equal satisfaction.
One of these was Mon Vieil Ami, a Paris spin-off from a favorite Strasbourg restaurant, Antoine Westermann’s Buerehiesel. His former sous chef, Antony Clémot, has been put in charge.
This thoroughly up-to-date bistro has taken over an old stone space on the central street of Ile Saint Louis and modernized it without violating its nature or its neighbors. In fact, it is so discreetly signposted as to be easily passed by, as we did on our second visit.
Inside, the massive wall of old stone together with an adjoining gray wall with accentuating dark wood beams give the room a solidity and quiet dignity – nothing extreme, either of ambiance or of décor. The American accents we heard at adjoining tables, together with the alternative English cartes, told us that the very favorable review from Patricia Wells in the International Herald Tribune at the end of January had done its work.
As for the carte, the fact that the vegetable content of every dish was itemized before the meat or fish gave a strong indication that the former were receiving a lot more attention than in traditional French cuisine. It promised an approach to dish building rather like that of California’s distinctive restaurants such as Chez Panisse. I had already noted the same approach at Westermann’s home base in Strasbourg half-a-dozen years before, although back then the meats were as usual listed first.
If further proof were needed, it came in Mary’s first dish, Légumes printaniers en salade tiède, máche et petites girolles poêlées. This contained so many lightly poached, perfectly blended vegetables that she set out to list them. They included yellow carrots, courgettes, yellow squash, green beans, green onions, peas, cauliflower, mange toute, asparagus, celery, fennel, bibb lettuce, alfalfa and two kinds of mushrooms, served in their own vegetable jus. Like a well-made ratatouille, each was cooked to the proper degree, suggesting that they had been added successively, each at the crucial moment.
My own entrée was an ordinary-sounding Pâté en croûte de Mon Vielle Ami, salade à l’huile de noix which proved to be anything but ordinary. The crust retained a rare crispness, even underneath; the solid meaty bits actually tasted of duck rather than “some form of animal protein”, the bouillon was intensively flavored and springily jelled, and there was an eye of fresh foie-gras in the middle that I felt obliged to share with Mary, to our mutual delight.
For a main course, I ordered the much-praised Carottes et navets étouvés aux épices, canard de barbarie braisé et caramélisé. I could tell immediately why the meat was mentioned last. In itself it was of modest flavor, but it had distributed its essence into the carrots and the turnips with an unaccustomed generosity. These had maintained their own distinctive identity; classic French cuisine would typically have utilized them as a mere flavoring agent. Modern French cuisine involves, in a very real sense, a shift in perspective.
In Mary’s Légumes cuits façon Bouillabaisse, lotte rôtie, the monkfish was similarly incorporated into the vegetable totality, the name indicating that the method of bouillabaisse was employed, but equal billing had been given to the vegetables.
For desert, my Tarte aux chocolate was very satisfyingly warm, rich and creamy. Not the most sensational I’ve ever had, but no complaints. Mary’s Salade de fruits frais et exotiques aux épices was again a winner: like her warm salad at the beginning of the meal, an extravagant mix of ingredients. In the fresh syrup she noted strawberries, cherries, peaches, pineapple, kiwi, raspberries and fig.
Both the food and the ambience had been so satisfactory that we decided to return for Sunday lunch, at the expense of some other bistro which would have given me subject matter for another review. As the room filled up, we were delighted to hear that this time the clientele were mostly French-speaking. Sunday lunch is the archetypal French family meal – it’s normal to see three generations together at the table. Mon Vieil Ami had demonstrated that its friends were not exclusively from across the ocean.
For a starter, Mary returned to her warm salad. This time the vegetables were not quite so prolific, but the dish stood up well on its own without demanding comparison. My own choice, Confit de légumes et l’oignon, sardines marinées et tartines grillées, proved to be a generous serving dish of cold vegetables and fish, a sort of concentrated, slightly caramelized ratatouille – an ample serving for two which I nevertheless had no trouble in finishing off with only a little assistance.
This time Mary went for the Pommes de terre rissolées aux oignons et à l’ail, rognons de veau poêlé au Pinot Noir. It was a gargantuan helping of monumental proportions which featured a Stonehenge circle of five whole kidneys. I generously helped her to dispose of them. I returned to my fine barbarie duck dish of the previous visit; nothing new to add.
Part way through our meal, a lone American wearing a designer T-shirt occupied an adjoining table. Unsurprisingly he proved to be the owner of an avant-garde clothing shop in Santa Monica. Certain small-scale couturiers, he informed us, were now identified as “artisanal”, like rural Italian sausage-makers, and commanded correspondingly inflated prices. One worker in leather, he said, takes his raw materials to Afghanistan, where they are subjected to the elements; their much-abused remains are then made into remarkable garments whose origins one would never imagine.
As he spoke, I thought of what a cuisine might be like that was similarly born of battlefield extremity. (I didn’t share my thoughts with him and so we parted on friendly terms.) Fortunately, even the most trendy of gastronomically scientific chefs has not yet gone to the surrealistic lengths of haute couture. As for Mon Vieil Ami, it stays firmly within the boundaries of the rational and the pleasurable, and so we would gladly pay it another return visit.
Mon Vieil Ami, 69 St-Louis-en-l’Isle, 4th , Tel 01 40 46 01 35
©2004 John Whiting
-
Re Sophomore Jinx: For the perfect meal, everything has to be right; for the failed meal, only one thing need go horribly wrong.
-
-
... a kellog’s corn flake is no better than a generic one, whose grain is likely to come from the same mill.
I too will avoid political comment, though there's much here that I would agree with. But I will add a personal observation.
Growing up in the 1930s, my favorite breakfast cereal was puffed wheat. My father bought the cheap own-brand variety from the small local branch of A&P. From age six or seven I would plead with him to buy Quaker puffed wheat -- not because I thought it tasted better but because radio advertising during the kids' serials had convinced me that my contemporaries would think me a cheapskate. I never discussed it with them; it was entirely within my own head.
-
. . . the chain with the least bad buying policies are Waitrose.
Exactly. And it's true also of their paying policies -- the promptness with which they pay their bills. Food writers I know who have worked for them tell me that they are among the best employers in this area as well.
It's no accident that Waitrose/John Lewis are a partnership as opposed to a corporation. As one of their executives once said, "We are run by shopkeepers, not financiers." This means that they can balance the profit of one part of their operation against another, for instance using their hand-wrapped artisanal cheeses to support the makers and to contribute to the "tone" of the whole operation, without being forced by an eagle-eyed accountant to maximize profit in every single area.
We shop regularly at several Waitrose stores of varying size and location. For instance, we get supurb Sheepdrove organic chickens from their large new store in Mill Hill. If we can't turn the clock back to the long-gone local merchants, we can at least turn it forward to those modern institutions -- including ethical stores, farmers markets and direct internet sales -- that offer a realistic alternative.
-
John, I'm sorry your second visits to Le Duc de Richelieu and Les Ormes were anticlimactic. I'm about to write them both up in glowing terms for my website, crediting your Paris restaurant summaries as my vademecum. We visited the Duke for lunch on two successive days -- my wife's idea, with which I didn't argue -- and were equally happy on both occasions. We even toyed with the idea of taking a simple hotel room around the corner for a week and working our way through the ardoise.
Did you read the framed newspaper clipping on the wall which told something of Le Duc's genesis, or rather the demise of its predecessor? I snapped it to read later but my focus was so bad that it's illegible.
-
Allard was one of the very first restaurants I visited in Paris. My girlfriend (now my wife) and I had gone in the early 1980s.
There have been recent reports that the restaurant has improved and is now quite good, but I haven't been in many years.
For an unhappily negative response from a week ago, see my "Eating History" thread, immediately adjacent.
-
Eating history
Chartier
Allard
Chartier and Allard are two famous Paris eating places which have survived for over a century serving much the same food throughout most of their history. Chartier is a no-frills ancestor of the fast food restaurant – fast in turnover though not necessarily in preparation or cooking time – whose splendid old panel-and-mirror interior seems remarkably grand for the working class clientele who were once its principal customers. Today it is a must-see Mecca for tourists which nevertheless continues to serve up culinary classics at rock-bottom prices to locals who lunch there every day because it’s about as cheap as a civilized sit-down establishment can be. Chartier keeps costs down by sticking to its long-established repertoire and refusing credit cards, which would skim the cream off its modest mark-ups.
For this Paris trip Mary and I made Chartier our first lunch stop. We were immediately struck by its pleasantly efficient bustle. Having been asked whether we preferred smoking or non-smoking – the first time ever in a French restaurant! – we were shown to an empty table for four, where our effort to sit together on one side was pleasantly but firmly corrected. The house procedure was that we should sit opposite each other on the seats next to the wall, so that a later-arriving couple could easily join us. They had probably established decades ago that this was the most efficient seating arrangement; who were we to question it?
The slate at the front door proved to be for show; we were given printed menus from which to make our selection. It would be pleasing to report that we ate well for little, but sadly we got approximately what we paid for. Mary’s vegetable soup for just over a euro was thin and watery, green from some unknown vegetable which imparted color but no flavor. My duck-and-orange pâté tasted of neither duck nor orange, a crude but bland product that would not do credit to a supermarket. Mary’s roast chicken had been cooked through but kept too long, so that it had dried out and begun to harden – freshly rotisseried chicken from almost any Paris stall would have been tastier and juicier. My rabbit came with a pleasant cream sauce but would have benefited from enough cooking to allow the meat to be removed from the bone without a struggle. The noodles tossed in butter which accompanied it were the most satisfying item on our collective plates.
No doubt those who eat regularly at Chartier will have discovered a selection of dishes that satisfy them, but casual customers may well find themselves dining unhappily on pig-in-a-poke. But go by all means, if only for the ambiance and for the waiters, who are traditionally dressed, highly skilled and decently polite. You will have experienced a slice of Paris history for little more than the cost of an instant cliché from a sidewalk vendor, and it’s less likely to poison you. In fact you may even strike it lucky – and the dirt-cheap wines by the pichet are better than they have any right to be.
-0-
Allard has a history of culinary excellence which takes it well beyond the merely picturesque. Its soberly panelled dining rooms will undoubtedly have witnessed the consumption of enough Bresse chickens to stock an infinity of high class butchers. The Guide Gastronomique de Paris 1953 described Chez Allard as Très grande cuisine dans un décor simple. The same year James Beard’s Paris Cuisine noted its “simplicity and quality” and identifies it as “a bistro of the rather expensive category.”
Allard settled into more or less its present culinary format around 1935 when a new owner gave it its eponymous name. Though it was sold again half a century later in 1985, the next owner changed nothing and so it retained its long-held reputation for generous portions of classic bourgeois recipes served up to rich foreigners who temporarily forsook their luxury hotels on the right bank to enjoy “slumming it” at a left bank bistro. Today it is neither so faux-naïf nor so astronomically expensive as l’Ami Louis, that fashionably Bohemian bistro which confronts its rich celebrity punters with portions so gargantuan that even Orson Welles or Marlon Brando might have left them unfinished. As a result, Allard is now likely to be the preferred choice of modestly well-off couples who want to eat their way through a whole Bresse chicken and a mountain of girolles without taking out a second mortgage.
Knowing its popularity, we made this the one restaurant we bothered to book well in advance. Upon arrival at opening time we could see that the management had conscientiously made every effort to accommodate the maximum of covers. The small square tables along the banquette had no gaps between them. (An old photo of the same wall shows a mix of round and square tables, rather more generously spaced.) The corner table reserved for us was so tightly jammed between its neighbors that it had to be pulled well out before we could be seated: woe betide the diner with a weak bladder.
Ignoring the formidable prices, I ordered what I had already chosen: escargots de Bourgogne and poulet de Bresse (2 pers) aux girolles sautées. For her starter, Mary opted for the terrine de canard. To accompany this Circean pig-out I opted for a Pouilly fumé 02, at 33€ one of the cheapest wines on the list.
As we waited for our entrées, the restaurant was already filling up with casually but expensively dressed Anglophones. The conversations, mostly in penetrating American accents, included basic culinary questions which suggested that many of the diners were unfamiliar, not only with Allard, but indeed with la cuisine Francaise. The waiters’ haughty disdain was perhaps a conditioned reflex born of long experience.
Our starters arrived. The escargots were excellent (at 18€ they certainly should have been) but they were no better than I’ve had all over France at less than half the price. It’s a simple dish which need only be removed from the oven before the snails get tough; with a decent supplier, a generous dollop of butter, a handful of herbs and abundant garlic, its improper preparation would require a positive effort. As for Mary’s pâté, it was fully as good as we routinely make at home following a straightforward Cordon Bleu recipe. The ingredients that fill our large terrine come to about £8, the cost of Mary’s single slice.
By now the chair just next to Mary’s – virtually as close as an adjoining seat in Eurostar’s Economy Class – was occupied by an expensively dressed women who immediately took out a packet of cigarettes. Mary very politely explained that she had a serious problem with cigarette smoke. The woman’s equally polite but firm suggestion was, take the matter up with the management; she would refrain from smoking while we were eating, she conceded, but no longer.
Our chicken arrived just under an hour after we had ordered it, as well it should at the very least. It was roughly cut up and swimming in its own juice, a sign that it would have benefited from a rest before carving to allow the precious fluid just under the skin to be partially reabsorbed. Its clear color assured us that the bird was cooked to the point of safety, but only just: my attempts to separate the leg meat from the bone were as strongly resisted as if the unhappy fowl were fighting for its life. The parson’s nose, one of my favorite delicacies, refused to come away from the spine; its firmness revealed that its fat was still so solid as to threaten an unpleasant mouthful.
On the platter next to the bird was a mountain of sautéed girolles. Mary found them so sandy as to make her grit her teeth, both figuratively and literally. I didn’t notice, possibly because I eat my peck of dirt with a certain fatalism.
The flavor of our Bresse chicken, France’s most famous, was as good as that of an anonymous organic bird from Waitrose – no better, no worse. (It was certainly not as complex as the fine specimens from Sheepdrove.) The rich crispy skin was delicious, but its flavor had not penetrated below the surface; even the breast had not been cooked to the point of succulence and the expelling of juices released by its premature carving had left it somewhat dry, resistant to both fork and tooth. Compared with any of our home-cooked birds – tightly enclosed in a chicken brick and slow-braised for several hours in their own juices, then allowed to rest for at least twenty minutes before carving – this excellent fowl had suffered a sadly wasted and unfulfilling death.
Nevertheless, at 66€ it merited a struggle. We gnawed our way through all but the back, whose meat I tried unsuccessfully to remove with the dull knife thoughtfully provided. (Tearing it away with our teeth seemed inappropropriately barbarous.) I was about to make another attempt when our waiter suddenly whisked the platter away together with the last few spoonfuls of precious gravy. That was it! The sooner we were out, the better. We could stop at a café for dessert and coffee, and the fag-deprived lady at the adjoining table could then puff away to her heart’s content. We signalled for l’addition, which our waiter brought with a sullen scowl. Our prematurely terminated dinner came to 119€, as large a bill as for any meal of our trip. We found our own coats on the way out, with no help offered by the staff and no smiling farewell at the door. My only pleasure has been to imagine their reaction when they read this review, which will appear close to the top of a Google search if a browser types “Allard Paris”. I shall send them my website’s URL printed on an elegant little card.
Chartier, 7 rue du Faubourg-Montmarte, 9th Arr, Tel 01 47 70 86 29, Mº Grands Boulevards
Open daily 11:30am – 3pm, 6pm – 10pm
Allard, 41 rue St-André-des-Arts, 6th Arr, Tel 01 43 26 48 23, Mº Odéon
Open Mon-Sat 12:30-2:30pm, 7:30-11pm. Closed 3 weeks in Aug.
©2004 John Whiting
-
Okay now I need to find one of these things. Is this eBay item what you're talking about?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW
That's it. A slightly different design, but exactly the same principle. It needn't fit the bird exactly; we often do a couple of little poussins side by side in ours.
The bird(s) ends up partially roasted, partially braised in its own juices.
And now -- off to Allard.
-
Steven's response is entirely correct in theory, but I suspect that the practicalities militate againsy very slow cooking except for those restaurants which specialize in it for a narrowly defined repertoire. As for color: whatever the reason, our very slow-cooked meat is never in fact pink.
For American readers: a chicken brick, once fashionable but now difficult to obtain, is an unglazed clay pot whose interior is exactly the shape and size of a 4 lb. chicken. Gas 1 in an oven is 275F.
-
Some of the finest chickens I have tasted in French restaurants (Ledoyen and the Grand Véfour both come to mind) have had breast meat that was just on the edge of pink. A recent chicken with tarragon at L'Auberge, in London, was done in this way. Chez Bruce, also in London, sometimes features a poached chicken; the waiters warn customers that the meat will be slightly pink.
Corby Kummer wrote a piece in The Atlantic -- unfortunately so long ago that it's not on their website -- called "Cook Pork Pink: It's Better That Way". Maybe something similar should be written about chicken.
The pinkness is, I believe, the result of a necessary compromise in restaurant cooking. An unavoidable fact is that it is impractical for a restaurant to offer very long slow-cooked meat, unless it is a joint that can be divided into a number of servings, such as mouton de sept heurs. For instance, on Sunday we had, at home, a fine organic chicken which had been cooked for half a day in a brick at gas 1 while we were out visiting gardens. If Allard's poulet de Bresse on Thursday is in this class, I'll be pleasantly astounded.
When Rowley Leigh wrote his first cookbook, his title of choice, which his publisher asked him to drop, was Better at Home.
EDIT Slow cooked in this fashion, the skin is pale and not crisp, but we consider this to be a small sacrifice. When cold, the meat can still virtually be eaten with a spoon. It is essential that the meat rest to luke-warm before cutting, so that the juices do not pour out.
-
Maybe puddings (The savoury kind) are the way forward . . .
The venison and kidney pudding for two at St John B&W was supurb. My wife, who grew up in north Lincs and cooks a mean pud herself, pronounced it by far the best she'd ever tasted.
-
Yup, Bux is right, I walked by last night and indeed it sits on the corner of the two streets.
And the photo in the Paris Yellow Pages has this caption:
Mystery solved.Ce bâtiment a plusieurs façades :1 rue de l'Eperon
41 rue Saint-Andre Des Arts
French city food or country food excels?
in France: Dining
Posted · Edited by John Whiting (log)
I feel about food much as I feel about music. If I were to go to a recital in Spain and the pianist played Mozart, my response would not be, "Why isn't he playing Falla?" It would be, "Is he playing Mozart so well that I'm glad I came?"
At MVA Mary and I only casually remarked on the "American" connection. What engrossed us was how very well the meal was conceived and prepared, how much we enjoyed it bite by bite, and how satisfied we felt when we left, without feeling bloated. It was all perfectly familiar -- not mind-blowing or archetypically Gaullic -- but it was a manifestation of my favorite benchmark, a better standard of ordinariness.
Of course, price enters into it as well. If our meal at MVA had cost the same as a menu degustation at l'Arpege, we would not have come away smiling.
EDIT: A general observation, addressed to no one in particular: A lot of the pretentious nonsense talked about food results from the fact that journalists must come up every week with some strikingly original observation about the pleasurable but mundane necessity of filling their stomachs. Their publications are city-based and city-led. In Britain, Ludlow is a community in which food is very important. There are excellent shops and world-famous restaurants. But could you imagine a food critic as a regular columnist in the local paper?