Paris restaurants

[andrew_j_craig]

Stephanie Alexander, Australian food writer, chef and long time francophile, has written an interesting article describing a certain lack of variety in the cooking she found on a recent trip to Paris.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/...7144960552.html

She is not without some credentials to speak on the matter

http://www.stephaniealexander.com.au/index.htm

[guajolote]

I saw she wrote a book about Tuscan Food. Here goes the French/Italian, simple/complex, ingredients/technique, objective/subjective debate.

[Bux]

An interesting article, but in all fairness to the French she notes that what the French eat in restaurants is not what they eat at home.

When I asked a Frenchman about the absence of salad, he shrugged and  said, "That is what we eat at home. We don't come out for that."

There's also a line of thinking in that article that I don't follow.

It seems to me that once a small bistro has been written about  in an English or American journal, the clientele becomes noticeably  English-speaking. I am intrigued by this phenomenon as it must have implications  for menu design. At what point does the proprietor start removing traditional  dishes that do not appeal to the Anglo-Saxons? No restaurateur likes waste and  dishes that are not ordered become waste. How many English or American or  Australian visitors will enjoy les tripoux that I had at the minuscule La  Lozere?

For one thing, she follows this with a quote from a French chef.

"The French don't  care for quality any more. They all want to eat at McDos [McDonalds]".

This would weem to indicate that the French no longer appreciate good food. I'm reminded once again of the time Mrs. B went from being "the American" at a wedding party in France to "the American who ate two good sized helpings of pig's feet in jelly." Someone at our table noted it was traditional food, but that few people actually have a taste for it these days.

None of my comments are meant to deny her point that good restaurant cooking these days need not be so rich, heavy and devoid of fresh vegetables as so much restaurant food is. These days, French cooks can learn a lot from us and from, I assume, Australian chefs.

[Miss J]

I thought it was interesting that her general comments were reflected so perfectly in our anecdotal meal at Luna (beautiful fish, lots of butter and cream, one lonely little pot of pommes puree), as well as a few others we had over the weekend. I ended up coming home and buying almost nothing but veggies for the coming week.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Sometimes writers are too silly for words. She basically goes to all of the same type of restaurant and then asks where the balance is? If every meal is at a bistro, famous for stewing and braising things in their fat and/or then pairing them with rich sauces, of course it's all going to be the same. And it isn't that her ultimate point isn't a good one. France does not do a good job with casual meals. But there are still wine bars and cafes where you can take a light meal. Or brasseries where you can sit with some oysters or crevettes mayo with a pichet of junky muscadet while watching the world go buy. But if at every meal you order an unsusual cut of animal that is notiously fatty, and which has been stewed in even more fat where wine and butter have been added, then of course it is all going to be the same.

[robert brown]

The article comes across to me as what we have seen many times before, which is the provincial-minded "homer" food writer dumping on the French and the Paris dining situation. Steve caught the essence of the article's and its author's shortcomings to which I can only add that if her paper didn't want to cough up the dough to eat in the better places, she shouldn't have wasted its money to write such a self-serving, egocentric, unrigorous piece to begin with.

[Miss J]

I agree there's a whiff of what I call "small country" syndrome in the article, and the last line underscores it. However, I'm still think there's a valid point buried under the "hey, we Aussies can teach those Frenchies a thing or two about how to eat!" overtones, and that's the lack of veg in a certain type of French dining experience. While the article is less than honest in it's description of this experience as being THE Parisian dining experience, it's still a style of dining that I suspect is becoming less and less common. Usually these days if you order something fatty or richly braised in a restaurant it will either be paired with some sort of veg-type accompaniment, or there will be an option to order vegetables separately. For an Australian thinking about travelling to Paris, understanding that it's not considered strange to do for a meal in a good restaurant and not have a host of veg offered could be useful.

And okay, I'll admit it. I was just a little weirded out by the pommes puree-only policy at Luna. Perhaps I ought to have started with the lobster salad just to work a few leaves into the meal.

Edited March 11, 2003 by Miss J (log)

[fresh_a]

Next time in Paris, she should stick with "Wooloomooloo" and "The Outback", two highly reccommended gastronomic establishments!

[Bux]

I give her credit for understanding that brasseries are good places for oysters, but I don't understand why she didn't understand their strengths and weaknesses in general. She's correct in noting that little restaurants are not as universally excellent as they were in the sixties when she and I first discovered Paris, but I'm suprised she missed the increase in places where one can just get a salad. I note from her description of the bare trees that it's winter in Paris and suspect she will find more seasonal vegetables used when they are in season. I also suspect that in 1962, the food in Australia was dreadful and today it's probably pretty good. I've seen that change in NY and much of the US. That may also explain her recent disappointment.

[grahamtigg]

If she picked an area such as Provence or the Languedoc, where there isn't a cow in sight, the article would have been somewhat different. Northern France in winter equals hearty food.

It's positive that she pointed out that selecting restaurants in France at random is a seriously risky business and highlighted the French requirement for eating out (luxury proteins).

She seems to have stopped short of saying the problem with places popular with the "journals" is that they're dominated by tourists. The only plus point I can think of for this is that it leaves less room for the French smokers.

[Louisa Chu]

The McDo's comment. They all say it. French chefs that is. Self pitying bunch.

And this is just a slice of Parisian fall/winter restaurant life. Come back in summer when the foie gras and truffles are gone and you'll find tomatoes with your mains and mirabelles on your tartes. Even on your fattier cafe/bistro plates.

[Jonathan Day]

I agree with Steve and Robert. Stephanie Alexander has obviously failed to understand all sorts of things about living and eating in France, in particular the ideas that culinary balance may be achieved over a period longer than a single meal, and that climates and seasons have something to do with the selection of foods offered in restaurants.

But as Andrew Craig has pointed out, it is not as if Stephanie Alexander is an inexperienced tourist, on paper at least. She has been "in the business" for many years, seems to have travelled widely, and has even published a book, Cooking and Travelling in South-West France. So it isn't as if she hasn't tried, yet at least on this dimension she has failed to understand what the cuisine and culture are about.

To me this illustrates the difficulty of getting "inside" a national cuisine and therefore the folly of making sweeping statements about the character of national cuisines when one is ill-informed about what those cuisines actually are. Examples from this site would include the gruesome misdescriptions of Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese cuisines -- "nothing but pasta", "mostly something poured over rice", "shredded ingredients", "minimalist", "overspiced", etc.

Which is not to say that cross-cuisine comparisons are impossible or immoral, just very very difficult. My sense is that Elizabeth David managed to get "inside" three national cuisines (British, French, Italian), but this seems to have taken a lifetime of study, years of living abroad, at least reading ability in the languages concerned. How many of those who pronounce on world cuisines, in print and on the web, have achieved similar levels of knowledge and experience?

Most of all, "getting it right" requries a degree of humility and a willingness to learn before making pronouncements. I think Simon has put it well,

Understanding comes more from a desire to understand than from an accident of birth.

Edited March 17, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[mrsqft]

I think that it is quite right that when at home the French eat very lightly for dinner. Just a salad and a small bowl of soup or eggs. Most women also just have a salad for lunch.

You can also ask for a small salad but they do serve it after the main course. That being said , they do eat a lot when they go to a good restaurant for dinner,especially in cities like Lyon.

Food is also very seasonal in France. We are so used to eating everything all year long really that we don't appreciate this way. Asparagus is for Spring and only for those months. Everything has a season and winter is root veggies, basically. No string beans.