Aug-Sept 2006: Sensing, Cedric, P Lapin, Ourse

[John Talbott]

Aug-Sept 2006: Sensing, Cedric, P Lapin, Ourse, Comperes, Chene, Girondine, P Pamphlet, Ombres, Roger, Fondus

8.0 Sensing, 19, rue Brea in the 6th, 01.43.27.08.80. Guy Martin (three stars at the Grand Vefour,) has placed chef Rémi Van Petegen in the kitchen and kept front-room lady Sophie Jousseaum (from its predecessor Dominique,) in this hot spot near Vavin/Le Dome, etc. and my, oh my, it’s some combo in a dazzling remake of the space. Aside from ultramodern furniture, there is a wall of glass containing a “museum” of Baccarat crystal behind it. Two of us ate there its third day and while the service is not yet seamless, the cooking is. My partner started with a mixture of appetizers that looked like sushi meets mezzes (salmon, tuna, etc) and I had a halved lisette with an incredible sauce of confited fennel and some revised version of crème fraiche – both divine. Then we split (1) a pigeon (which we agreed was the best we both have ever had) with a sauce that had either coffee or chocolate and (2) veal with pasta “cigarettes” stuffed with mushrooms, simply beyond description. Then she finished with a panacotta topped with sliced apples and granny Smith ice cream and I had a baba-like cake au rhum. The bill = 135 €. Go back? You bet! But for how long will one be able to reserve easily?

7.0 Chez Cedric, 13, rue Denis Poisson in the 17th, 01.44.09.03.30, closed Sundays. Another great place, open since the beginning of March and reviewed by both Pudlo and Figaroscope, but featuring totally different food now than they had (the blackboard is correct when it says the chef got what was at Rungis today). For instance, I had the menu (23 € for 2 courses, 29 for 3) with the first petoncles of the fall season mixed with diced carrots and leeks, wrapped in a crepe and sauced with a nicely spiced coral sauce; a paupiette of fish (4 almost fish roll-looking rounds) on top of a zucchini “flan” with a sauce that also had a little kick to it; finishing with a “struzel” (never saw that before, but Google coughs up one made by Jean-Luc Rabanel in Tonneins) of peche de vigne, marinated, I assume, in red wine and sitting on top of a spice “cookie,” accompanied by a shot glass full of puréed peche de vigne. Superb product, superbly prepared. The host was elegant but friendly, the room elegant but friendly, the cooking ditto. The wines were terribly reasonably priced for the locale and clientele (all ties) – lots of 20 € ones that were also a la ficelle. My bill - 44 € for the second best meal of the rentrée. Any downside? Probably the only one is that on the “menu” they have only one starter, one fish or meat entrée and one dessert, a la carte is a bit pricier, but I think one can make do.

6. 0 Pere Lapin, 10, rue de Calvaire in Suresnes (Tram #2 to the Suresnes stop and climb the hill), 01.45.06.72.89, closed Mon & Tues, is sited on Mont Valerian just in front of the Park and while you’re technically outside Paris, it has that suburb yet city feel to it, much like nearby St Cloud/Boulogne-Billancourt, all of which were built in roughly the same styles and periods.. They have a 2-course lunch menu for 20€, 3 are 25€, which is forced choice but looked great, so I took it; it consisted of a magnificent veloute of lentils with tiny slivers of ham, croutons and mascarpone; two small paving stones of bland swordfish with a wonderfully-offsetting grapefruit and orange sauce that redeemed the bland fish, on top a pissaladiere; and three most excellent roast figs stuffed with minced almond accompanied by an ice of verveine. This, plus a pichet of St Chinian and a coffee went for 40.50€. I went on a brilliantly sunny 70-77 degree F. afternoon and sat on the huge terrace and had a great time. I’ll be back - oh, there was lots of fish on the carte as well, bespeaking confidence in his supplier(s). The crowd was a bit too nouveau riche and shirts for me, but hey, that’s the nabe. By the way, an alternate way to go is the #244 bus from the Porte Maillot which goes straight thru and almost non-stop to Suresnes and took less time going back to “town” than the #1 Metro to La Defense and Tram #2 did to Suresnes.

5.75 N* La Grande Ourse, 9, rue Georges Sache in the 14th, 01.40.44.67.85, closed Saturday lunch, Sundays and Mondays, is a find. My friend John Whiting, the “King of Paris Bistros” would love it and would rap my knuckles for rating it with a number. Why? Because it (an apple) shouldn’t be judged against other places (the oranges). It is what it is, a fantastically priced (2 course = 15 €, 3 = 18, a la carte 40 €,) neighborhood bistrot that cooks food to perfection but does relatively uncomplicated, reasonably priced fresh products quickly to order (I can only relate it to Roger Verge and Bernard Loiseau’s “cuisine a la minute” described so well in The Perfectionist. Thank you Felice.) I had a composed salad of lettuce, ecrevisses, mango strips and rounds (called “chips”) of sweet potatoes that tasted like fresh carrots, I swear, that was quite refreshing on a 30° afternoon; then maigre (fish, trans = meagre, as if that helps) cooked toasty on its skin side on a bed of fennel confited with saffron and topped with caramelized soy (that I thought was balsamic); followed by a Fontainebleau (fromage blanc with mashed cherries on top and whipped cream on top of that – verrrry good.) (When I was offered that or a rice pudding, which I detest, I asked “the Fontainebleau, is it interesting or banal?” and the young waitress burst out laughing and immediately brought it.) So why if I loved it so well, do I rate it mid-range? The schlep! It’s nowhere, except right next to Severo + Bis de Severo, so maybe the 14th, not the 11th, is the happening place. My bill, you’re not gunna believe this – 25.30 € - that’s with 25 cl of a terrific wine and a properly serréd coffee. But conductrice Martine Alexandre and chef Yves Moulin (ex hotel Montalembert + Fauchon have got a great little place on their hands.

5.25 Atelier des Comperes, 56, rue Galilee, 8th, 01.47.20.75.56, closed weekends, 2 courses at lunch 33€., 3 for 40€ is in an incredible location; like Les Don Juan + Les Chineurs in the 3rd, in this part of the Champs-Elysees, it has very little genuine competition, Gagnaire + Elysees Vernet excepted. It’s sited right next to that place you’ve always held in the back of your mind in case everything else is closed on Christmas or New Year’s or Valentine’s Eve – the Etoile Marocaine, but there, the resemblance ends. Jacques Boudin, who founded Q.V. Formation (a molder of sommeliers, I take it), converted a courtyard off the Champs into a very appealing resto that attracts CEO’s, Art Directors and occasional strays (myself included) but no tourists if you can believe it. It has a daily chalkboard and is not cheap and no where near perfect, but it’s trying. Reviewed by only four publications so far, Figaroscope, A Nous Paris + l’Express among them, it has not yet been “found.” The positives first: the welcome is incredibly warm, the service exact (excerpt for a first-day waiter’s mistake in a water charge and failure to deliver the bread), the cooking was precise - my farm-raised pintade was terrifically moist with a wonderful fluffy mushroomy sauce and while I detest polenta, their creamy version with olives was nickel as they say. The best was yet to come tho’, I skipped dessert, smart fellow, and went straight to a nice coffee with 3, count them 3, baked items: a financier made with moist fall nuts, a huge wonderfully moist flavorful madeleine and a cookie with genuine chunks of chocolate not Hershey’s chocolate chips. Problems: 1st day of the rentrée, staff rusty and/or new and the terrine of chevreuil too dry for me. But they are trying, which gets them several points over a place like Les Ombres, below, which had, in contrast to this “will do, can do, want to do” attitude, a sort of “f*** you, take it or leave it” attitude. My bill was 44.50 €. P.S. I know I’m getting to be an old fuddy-duddy when I object to the “new trend” of mounting the huge chalkboard on your table and reading everything off, expecting you to order instantly - I know, I know, these CEO’s are in a hurry.

5.05 Chene Vert, 99 Rue de Provence, 01.40.23.52.31, closed Sunday (when its host, Galeries Lafayette is). The easiest way to enter is from the GF wine shop and you find yourself suddenly in a restaurant not a department store. There is modern but not goofy furniture and superb service. The place is under the wing of David Van Laer whose food I liked at Maxence + Manufacture before that. It’s a nice menu but, as I was warned, a bit pricey, 45 € for the 3 course menu, but the wines are more reasonably priced (from 15-35 €). The amuse gueules looked “standard” but were superb. I didn’t like the choices on the carte, my companion had trouble deciding, but I was saved by the market menu. I started with the soup of lobster and lentils and diced undercooked (properly) veggies, she had a “minute” of tuna that was vastly over-cooked (the waiter apologetically said that’s the way the clientele (who, like Galeries Lafayette customers, are a mixed lot) like it – we didn’t, although the accompanying salad was good. Then I had sweetbreads with crunchy asparagus that was quite good; interestingly, her Iberian pork tasted more like superbly toasted on the outside, raw on the inside, slices of cote de boeuf than pork – it came with swiss chard and a butter croquette. Finally, I had the dessert special where the pineapple was terrific, the mango sorbet OK but the Magnolias-type shot glass full of a layered thing, was “so what?” Total = 110 €; do it again? I don’t think so.

5.0 Girondine, 48 bvd Arago in the 13th, 01.43.31.64.17, closed Sunday night only, menu-cartes are 18.90 and 30 €, bills itself as the bistro of Gargantua, and it surely is. I saw the announcement of its getting a new chef on RestoaParis and when my enquiries about it among my food critic buddies were greeted with silence, I decided to go. It’s in that funny no man’s land in the 13th where no metros run but restos abound to feed the residential buildings at night and hospital staffs and lawyers in the day. The day I went the weather was splendid, the terrace was wonderful but despite the occasional breezes, two chain-smokers marred it. The two menu-cartes are startlingly good values; the 18.90€ is less interesting (ex., avocado and shrimp salad, rabbit gigolette and foie de veau) but includes a glass of wine with two courses; the 30€ offers an apero (small but refreshing) and tapenade on toast and a ¼ pitcher of wine. I had what was called a croute of morilles and champignons but was really a cream sauce of just morilles, that tasted like the woody forest itself. The confit de canard was surprisingly bland but had a nicely browned, crunchy skin: but the accompanying potatoes and chocolate moelleux dessert (called a kif) were my best of the genre of the decade. The arrival of plates was quite slow, likewise delivery of water; the morilles and salad had the same shredded stalks of some exotic item; coffee was Florio; and the service was strange – despite seeming friendliness, the waitress never enquired why I ate only 2/3rds of each dish (Ans: portions being Gargantuan, it was too much for me, but maybe she knew that from experience.) Total = 32.50€.

1.02 Petit Pamphlet {I do these numbers just to drive John Whiting nutz}, 15, rue Saint Gilles in the 3rd, 01.42.71.22.21, closed Saturday and Monday lunch and all day Sunday, was described to me by my most trusted Parisian food critic as “not fun;” now, what does that mean? Oh I know, Bernard Loiseau (The Perfectionist,) is reputed to have said it’s all about providing pleasure, but not fun? Well, my friend/colleague was right, but not completely right. It was pathetic and pretentious too. You enter, not bad, nice space, nice table coverings, nice bullfight poster (like you had in college in 1953, except not Manolete in Madrid but nobodies in Bayonne), nice rillettes and olives with three kinds of nice bread), nice wait-staff, nobody smoking except the proprietress, nice wine list all at 20 € - right?, you’ve stumbled on a find, despite the fact that you hated the mother ship Le Pamphlet. Ok, so it’s in the heart of the touristy Marais, half the patrons are either Anglo-Saxons making notes or persons speaking English as their common tongue and the menu is terribly limited (4 starters at 9 €, 3 mains at 15 €, 4 desserts at 7 € and 2 specials, and they all have a Latinate, e.g. Italo-Spanish, spin to them). Soldier on, stout fellow! Order the pasta with coquillagey stuff like paella (an homage to the Fables of Fontaine, I presume); the faux filet with potatoes and tiny girolles (seasonal) and roasted figs with caramel ice cream – how can one go wrong? Well, the figs and chocolate mignardise were great, the rest barely acceptable, plus the plates, except for the figs, arrived with such astonishing rapidity that either they have a brigade of 40 all set to prepare your food or it’s all flash-prepared. This meal caused me to reflect on why it was so different from that at the Grande Ourse. OK, it’s the 3rd vs the 15th, an annex vs an original. But I thot they weren’t really trying, as the Grande Ourse was, they were coasting - where they were, they didn’t need to hustle. The bill = 54 €, clearly the worst price-quality of the rentrée.

1.01 Les Ombres, 27, quai Branly (in the Musee du Quai Branly), 7th, 01.47.53.68.00, closed Mondays. I went to this over-priced (entrees 18+, mains 26+, wines up to 180 €) but beautifully-sited place with my eyes wide open. My terribly perspective food critic friend called it “crappy food,” an acquaintance who uses our apartment when I flee the summer canicules said that “the roof restaurant has an amazing view” (Note bien: no comment on the food) and GaultMillau, that largely now toothless and pale imitation of its past incarnation, called it “chic et cher” and suggested it should be serving brasserie food at brasserie prices. Good things first, it does have a great, really great, 180° view (from left of the Eiffel Tower to right up the Seine); second, it’s not crushingly expensive if one takes the 3-course market menu for 32 €; third, the waiters are dressed in black tees with custom-fitted really cool off-white linen suits, next, the men’s room had urinals with lids, lids I say, and a little black fly painted near the bottom of their bases, (yes, I peeked at both) and last, the coffee was respectable. Ah, but the negatives: first the noise: between the wait-staff (the women in heels were worse than the men) clattering across the admittedly beautiful parquet exotic wood floor endlessly (remember the way the waiters at the St James, outside Bordeaux, paced back and forth in the railway car salle like guardsmen outside Buckingham Palace?) and the kitchen staff shouting up the passage between the kitchen and salle like workman maneuvering I-beams at a construction site – one could hardly think. Then the food; to be charitable, it wasn’t crappy, it was pathetic. The amuse bouche was strange but passable; the bread unimaginably bad for anyplace but Auchan; the carpaccio of bar lacking in zip (one teeny, tiny miniscule piece of lemon when it needed tons of it; one had to scoop up the bar and try to eat it with a teeny slice of radish and grain of salmon egg to offset the blandness); the rouget was that type that was gamey as can be (I take responsibility for that – rouget is always a crap shoot) but refuse to be responsible for the tasteless baby artichokes which I left without eating; a moelleux of chocolate that was lukecold (now that was a first for me - the King of Moelleux); and the mignardises were not much of a much. Was it worth the 48 € sitting by the window watching the clouds go by? Funnily enough – almost. (P.S. Downstairs, on the ground floor, the café was doing a land-office business and the moules/frites looked pretty good after my miserable fare.) Oh, by the way, you didn’t ask, but did I like the museum without a name? (Clearly in anticipation of calling it le Musee Chirac after he leaves office). Actually no, I hated it; OK, so put me in the Philistine/Michael Kimmelman box. They took art collections I love and know well, stuffed them into glass boxes in a building that only an architect who thinks taking Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim stairwell and smooshing it into Richard Meier’s Barcelona Museum, could love and called it macaroni. The museum deserves the restaurant and vice versa; you’ll never catch me at either again. By the way, don’t even try to enter by the entrance gates indicated as such on the map, like the Metro entrance to the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterand, they’re just there to fool the tourists.

1.0 Roger la Grenouille, 26, rue des Grands-Augustins, 6th, 01.56.24.24.34, closed Sundays. Why did I go to this place described as “old” and “old school” by two friends? You’ll recall Bogart in the role of Rick Blaine replying to Captain Renault as to how he got there: “I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert. Rick: I was misinformed.” And so it was. Someone, somewhere, said they had a new chef or something new, well, in my defense, they opened in 1930, so something must have changed in 76 years. As I was walking smack in the heart of the Right Bank in the 6th between the backpackers’ cheapo places, you know them, 10 Euros plus wine for 2 courses on the ardoise, and Jacques Cagna/William Ledeuil/Relais Louis XIII-land, I had a sinking feeling that I was walking into a trap (I know, I read too many polars.) Entering, I thought it looked exactly like it did in 1930. And it probably does. But the ardoise said “New Proprietor,” there were two young men in the salle rather than the older Maitre d’ described elsewhere and there were two young women in the kitchen. I was mostly alone in a place that must seat 100 covers; a French family with a screaming kid left after one tantrum too many and their replacement, a three generation triple, didn’t sit down ‘til I was almost finished. Anyway the food; it’s Roger la Grenouille, after all, so I wanted and one gotta have frogs, right? If anyone can fix them well, they must, right? It’s old and old school, right? Wrong x3. They were barely OK (basically tasteless but without any accompanying sharp parsley zip or garlic zatch) and their price was outasight (25€ for 6 as an entrée and 31 for a main course). I also didn’t like the chopped fennel either – so there! Then I had veal kidneys that were properly cooked as we had agreed (that is pink) with potatoes dauphinoise. I dunno what happened, the kidneys were again barely OK, the bordelaise sauce ditto but the potatoes were again tasteless and uncrispy on the exterior. The coffee was great so I have something nice to say, but the financier was limp and chocolate cookies less than basic. Now sometime during the meal I noticed that while the women were bustling about the kitchen, out of the window observing every bite I ate was an older guy and when I got the check they handed me two cards, one for Roger and one for Allard with the same names on both and like Jonathan Safran Foer, suddenly everything was illuminated: the Allard bunch had taken over this tired place and were transitioning the old guys out to be replaced by younger kitchen and waitstaff; but I got caught in the middle. Cost of lesson = 59.70 €. Ouch!

H.C.** Les Fondus de la Raclette, 19 Joseph Dijon in the 18th, 01.42.58.34.22, never closed, was a throw-away meal, around the corner on cook’s night off (that is, me). It opened two months ago and I’ve been eyeing it thinking, hummm, could be interesting- and it was new in the nabe, so…. – but actually it’s not totally new, there’s another in the 14th on the Blvd Raspail. Let’s start with the revelations: 1st as opposed to my Gold Standards – the raclette at The Monk’s Inn near Lincoln Center in the ‘60’s and every place I’ve been to in Geneva and the Savoie, whose raclette is made by scraping off raclette cheese from the wheel, here they made nothing except the wonderful baked potatoes in aluminum foil, you did all the work; 2nd the place was so full they turned folks away at 9 PM; 3rd the chief waitperson spoke “spent a year in Kansas” English and was funny, sexy and efficient at the same time; 4th miraculously they controlled the grills on each table centrally; and 5th when you got this huge platter of cheese, ham, salami, sausage and prosciutto it looked awful, supermarket stuff, eat quick and get out, but in fact was great. OK, the negatives: unless you’re selling/buying antiques at the St Ouen flea market or living in or staying at the nearby Ibis or Eden Montmartre Hotels (both of which I can endorse) or are lost in the deepest 18th, and are dying for raclette or cheese fondue, you would never think of this place. But for the record: 3 courses (huge) cost 21 € at night and much less at noon – I had a monumental salad with the best ever lardons (better than Aux Lyonnais) and surprising good warm goat cheese on peasant bread (that did not come – horrors – from our famous local #9 Rue du Poteau Quatre-Hommes cheesery but the mothership in the 14th); a raclette that I could finish only ½ of and was terrific (and most of all, totally destroyed my wife Colette’s theory that hot heat destroys Teflon pans – these were all white hot); and one of, if not the, best crème brulées ever. With a spot of wine I paid 35 €. Not bad for a throw-away meal. But that’s Paris, in’t it?

Scale Nov 2005 Scale (subject to fickleness and change):

10 - Giradet in the old days.

9 - Ducasse, Bocuse, Loiseau at their prime

8 - Bon Acceuil, Ze Kitchen Galerie, Cerisaie, Constant now

7- Bistro Cote Mer at its flowering best

6 - Cinq Mars

5 - Terminus Nord

4 - 2 Pieces Cuisine

3 - Le Bouclard

2 - Sale + Pepe

1 - le Nord-Sud

0 - Auguste, The Place

Ø- Iode

N* = a place that if one lived nearby in the neighborhood (N) would be a great place to go but gets a lower grade due to the schlep (perhaps unfairly).

H.C.** = outside the grading system.