July 07 Spring, Au Gourmand, Karl & Erick

[John Talbott]

July 07 Spring, Au Gourmand, Karl & Erick, Cristal de Sel and some Golden Oldies.

Lunch; getting better all the time

8.75 Spring, 28, rue de la Tour d’Auvergne in the 9th, 01.45.96.05.72, open for dinner Tuesday-Friday nights; lunch if there’s a demand. This is a place I reported on in November 2006 but I went back this month, since (1) Daniel Rose now has a sous-chef and (2) is open for lunch; and I wanted to see if the food was any different; it is; it’s better. Reporting what we had won’t help you because he changes the menu according to the market, whim and desire, but I’ll give you what we had anyway. We started with a small warm cauliflower soup with crispy duck skin, a dash of flavored oil and pureed squash; then moved on to fried sardines atop green and red heirloom tomatoes, chorizo slices and minced mint accompanied by a small wedge of lime; then an incredible and generous portion of roasted veal with potatoes and a large slice of roasted eggplant; and finally an apricot delight and cherries on top of what I thought was a dollop of crème fraiche. With a Languedoc and coffee, the bill for two was 84 €.

Should One Go? If you haven’t, you’re missing the treat of the year.

Successful wherever they are.

7.0 Au Gourmand, 17, rue Moliere in the 1st, 01.42.96.22.19, closed Sundays and Mondays, menu-carte 2 dishes = 28, 3 dishes 32, all veggies = 30 € is the successfully transplanted resto of the same name from across town and across from the Luxembourg Gardens. The maitre d’ (Herve de Libouton) welcomed us warmly, later saying he recalled us from the old place, which is a safe bet since there are probably not a lot of foursomes of gangly, demi-ghastly dressed, tall American geezers stumbling around town; in any case Christophe Courgeau’s cooking has improved with the move and we had a great meal. The products are all good, fresh and traceable – vegetables by Thiebault, butter by Bordier, bread by Poujauran, etc. We started with two firsts; a “thick” pair of lamb kidneys on 10 strips of chard with a great sauce and a strange “tartare” of langoustines with seaweed and potatoes - strange because searching for the bits of langoustines was futile. Then two of us had the bar while the other two had a pigeon and confited lamb; all four served atop a mélange of al dente seasonal vegetables. At that point we broke for cheese (perfectly affinated Reblochon and Camembert); terminating with a carrot and nut cake with ginger ice cream, effusively praised by Colette. With coffee and wine the bill for four was 203.50 € but we had three supplemental charges totaling 21 €.

Should you go? Wow!, three hearts hardly does it justice.

Another mixed experience

4.5 Karl & Erick, 20, rue de Tocqueville in the 17th, 01.42.27.03.71, closed Saturday lunch and Sundays, 2 dish lunch menu = 22 €, is the not totally successful transplantation of the Jumeaux team from the 11th to the 17th. The new décor is stunning and pleasant; bright red upholstery, dark wood chairs and tables, lovely wall mirrors. The amuse gueule was a chilled tomato soup that was made from the real thing; the melon soup with Bayonne ham was superb – cold soups are clearly one of Karl’s strengths. Colette had a very good artichoke heart with eggplant caviar and Paga had chunky salmon – both were delicious. Then, however, things turned downhill; while Paga’s magret of duck was delightfully undercooked inside and crisp on the outside, my seiche with chrorizo was bland and the Noirmoutier potatoes (one of my favorite things in the world) unremarkable. The ladies had a split opinion on the cod with tapenade; one opining that it was OK, the other unhhh not so great - me, I thought the tapenade made it edible. The dessert (four miniatures: a cherry/pistachio/crème fraiche glass, a dense chocolate mousse, pain d’epice with a raspberry sorbet and a cup of crème brulee) was very good. The bill = a wonderful 74 € for two.

Should one go, should we return? If you were two of us, yes, two of us, no.

Five years under the mast of Eric Frechon? Not enough.

2.0 Cristal de Sel, 13, rue de Mademoiselle in the 15th, 01.42.50.35.29, closed Sundays and Mondays. I really wanted to like this place, modestly favorably written up by Emmanuel Rubin and Francois Regis Gaudry, more enthusiastically by Richard Hesse, chef’d by Eric Frechon’s second for five years at the Bristol, featuring good products from Camdeborde frere, Bordier, etc., and described by Gaudry as a Maserati mounted on the Twingo. It has brand new zinc tables and a nice airy atmosphere, but incredibly bad acoustics. We were seven, three from the neighborhood and we four from far away, and we disagreed about the quality of our meals; our local friends loving it, we more ambivalent. The amuse bouche were fine rillettes and the Fitou was good. We shared one first; a boite of Ramon Pena sardines that cost 10 € that came with algae-infused butter; shared, in that two of us had one each (eg 5 € each) constituting the biggest canned sardine ripoff since Minchelli peddled them for over a $100 a tin. Then we had a host of dishes that we more or less shared. The duck filet was nicely cooked but judged too tough by one of us, although the accompanying caramelized turnips were fabulous; the cabillaud with petit pois and mousserans was OK; the tuna quite tasty and properly crisp on the outside, raw on the inside; but the poitrine of pork with mustard seed coating was more super-salé than demi-salé although the girolles were quite good. Desserts included crepes with apples, a mi-cuit of chocolate, a peach tarte, and a sable with rhubarb and roasted apricots; only the latter of which was mind-blowing. Taking away the jokey sardines and pasta that the youngest of our guests had (together costing 22 €) the bill would have been 242 € for six adults or 80 € a couple.

Should one go? If you’re like my friends and it’s walking distance from home, sure.

As astute readers between the lines have divined, my computer normally goes silent five months a year; in January, March, July, August, and October. That’s because I’m either entertaining Colette and our two best lifelong food friends and visiting the old haunts in Paris or exploring Italy, Greece, Aspen, Maine, etc. In case of the latter, I post on those forums; in the case of the former, why repeat reviews of places folks have tired of my raving about?

However, the day this was written, the four of us were dining at Ze Kitchen Galerie and the three of them turned to and on me and said, you really should report this. It has to have been our dozenth or so meal there and my first impulse was to say – why? But I realized why. Because William Ledeuil really is innovating each day, tweaking his menu and moving. (Disclosure: Ledeuil knows who I am.) But let’s go back to today. The aforementioned amuse gueule was a small lump of shredded crab with al dente haricots verts, a microtomed slice of sweet green apple and teeny tiny edible flowers on top with three spicy sauces almost apart, one clearly lime oil – at that point I could have died and gone to heaven. This is why the “Le Fooding, Omnivore, Generation C” folks go nuts over him and his ilk; he and they are trying new exotic, Asian, African and native spices, flowers and herbs in new combos. And this is why folks, well-meaning, smart, informed, foreign and native folks are so critical of Ze; it’s not your French grandmother’s or your 1950 Experiment in International Living or even your Lyon bouchot or French bistro food. Detractors say; oh, I can get that in LA or Vancouver or New York. “Yah, sure,” say my Brooklyn Heights friends, who also eat frequently on the West Coast, “just try to.” In any case; onto our firsts. I had a Thai/Chinese spiced concoction of diced giant shrimp on top of so-called noodles; Colette had a deconstructed crab, beetroot and ginger “gazpacho,” inventively flavored with mango and turmeric with chunks of heirloom tomatoes and a dollop of two different purees (one of which was avocado) and a side dish with a large, deep-fried ball of mozzarella, all warm and creamy; Paga had a type of pasta with spring vegetables (petit pois, feves, carrot bits, etc.); then for mains - Èlan had a fricassee of mussels and frogs’ legs with coco beans and a green sauce with a small burst of wasabi; Paga had blue tuna (that I loved, and I usually do not like cooked tuna, even if sashimi-quality, seared on the surface) and spicy sauce; I had the sweetbreads with artichoke hearts, dried tomatoes and forcemeat; and Colette had zucchini flowers stuffed with a forcemeat of pork & shrimp in a gloriously flavored sauce. None of us had tasted these seven dishes before on our visits there and all had spicy, exotic sauces that were superb and pushed the envelope a bit - but not too far. I couldn’t resist the dessert description of a cappuccino of strawberries with four layers of goodness on top and a hint of wasabi lurking; all four of us plunged in and loved the mingling flavors. In sum, this is not a place for all who live under eGullet’s broad tent, but for some, it is just great and its never-the-same-twice approach suits us just dandy.

I’m going to take a second Mulligan here and discuss our meal at L’Opportun in the 13th. The last time I ate there was during the Mad Cow Scare, where we were warned to avoid beef, so since 99% of the menu is bovine, I felt I had hardly tested the house. This time, though, two of us went and we did. For starters we split the petis gris meurette which was spectacular and the endive salad with crisp duck skin and its underlying meat, equally good. Then my guest had the tartare of beef and I had the veal kidneys, both perfectly prepared and accompanied by frites, which I found so-so. We spied the Paris Brest go by, that was approximately the same size as the city of Brest, so we had no dessert. Our bill was 117.80 € and it certainly goes on my “authentic Paris places” list.

Just so I don’t slight anyone, our repeat meals at Grand Pan, Rech, Le Violin d’Ingres, l’Escarbille, Maree de Passy, l’Ecallier du Bistrot, Villaret, Fables de la Fontaine, except for tough shrimp in Colette’s gazpacho, blah sweetbreads at Villaret, and a failed deconstructed overaspic’d gazpacho at the Fables de la Fontaine, were all good and golden.

Scale (subject to fickleness and change):

10 – The best you’ve ever had, eg Girardet in the old days.

9 – The places you went/go to because they’re destinations, eg Pere Bise

8 – The places that did their best in their prime Robuchon, Ducasse, Loiseau

7 – The places today beating the competition Ze Kitchen Galerie, Spring, Constant x3

6- The old reliables Repaire de Cartouche, Thierry Burlot, Bistro du Dome

5 – Fun neighborhood places Le Winch

4 – Places to go on cook’s night out Terminus Nord

3 – Places if you’re really stuck 2 Pieces Cuisine, Le Truc

2 – A pick-up meal Sale + Pepe

1 – Really hitting bottom le Nord-Sud

0 – Never again Auguste, The Place

Ø- No kidding, you can’t drag me Iode

Edited July 13, 2007 by John Talbott (log)

[pirate]

I believe it's spelled Girardet if you're referring to the restaurant he had in Crissier.