eternal return: le dome café, 75014

Upon arriving in Paris, one can take pleasure in almost any characterful feature of the city, regardless of fame or exclusivity. For six years the bins of Chinese vegetables in Belleville and the hair-weave tumbleweed around Barbés fascinated me more than the Louvre or the Musée d'Orsay. But conversely, as earlier this summer I prepared to leave Paris, I found myself drawn to the old, uncurious Paris, and establishments such as Le Dôme Café, the historic Montparnasse seafood brasserie whose iconic fame and ludicrous price point had heretofore completely repelled me.

What changed? I guess I just didn't want to leave the city with the nagging doubt that, in my peregrinations around rive droite wine bars, I was merely nibbling at the edges of what the city had to offer its wealthier diners.

Moreover, the Native Companion was leaving the city too, headed for a different destination. I thought I would mark the unbearably sad occasion by a kind of financial suicide, blowing memorable amounts of euros at Le Dôme on fresh fish, François Côtat Sancerre, and cinematic décor - all the accoutrements of turgid, laurel-resting Paris that, in our time together there, we'd been doing our best to ignore.

the decline of : la régalade, 75014, 75001, and 75010

I recently called Nicolas Lacase's 10ème Bistro Bellet "a giant defibrillator for the bistrot genre." So it behooves me to explain why I felt the bistrot genre needed resuscitation. Handily, recent visits to the three locations of chef Bruno Doucet's atrophic La Régalade empire have furnished me with exhibits A, B, and C.

The original La Régalade was founded by chef Yves Camdeborde in 1992 at the far border of the 14ème arrondissement. In its day it was ground zero for the bistronomie movement, in which disaffected young chefs were leaving Michelin-starred kitchens and opening simple bistrots where their gastronomic talents could shine at lower price points.

In America, where we tend to class eating establishments all together as restaurants, encountering gastronomy in a bistrot doesn’t scan as such a big deal. The closest American analogue to the shock of “bistronomie” in French culture is probably that moment in the mid-2000’s when, in certain US cities, it became possible to dine very well from food trucks. But where, just a decade on, most savvy diners I know have all grown quite tired of food trucks (except when drunk), Paris after two decades continues to unthinkingly congratulate any classically-trained chef who deigns to cook without the aid of chandeliers. (C.f. the overrated Restaurant Pierre Sang Boyer in Oberkampf.) The still-successful La Régalade restaurants, collectively, comprise the sacred cow of a bistronomie nostalgia cult, whose membership includes throngs of uncritical diners as well as most of the city's established food critics.

So let's get the knives out, shall we ?

where the treasure is : la cave des papilles, 75014

On the regrettably rare occasions I find myself strolling around Paris' 14ème arrondissement, I take a great deal of pleasure in the smell of money in the air. I breathe it in, moony-eyed, imagining that by some kind of magical osmosis, I might later discover, upon exiting the métro back at Barbès, an extra 50 centimes in my pocket.

Unlike other wealthy neighborhoods, like the 8ème or the 16ème, the 14ème contains a concentration of actual tasteful goods and services. The entrenched, mostly white families of this quartier purchase meat and bread and wine as I do, only their meat is by Hugo Desnoyer and for bread they have Ridha Khadher.

Their wine, if they have any good sense, comes from La Cave des Papilles, a veritable Ali Baba's cave of the treasures of natural winemaking France.

at my most parisian : la cagouille, 74014

I can pinpoint the precise moment at which, despite language struggles and disgust with service norms and volcanic resentment of patrician social structures, I began to feel at home in Paris.

It was when I was first able to pass along to a colleague a recommendation I had once received for a miracle-worker dry-cleaner. (In this case, a stuffy teinturier who is, at reasonable cost, able to remove tar and bloodstains from garments. Don't ask.) For city life is an agglomeration of knotty problems - from stained shirts to subway strikes to where to entertain on Sunday nights - and to feel at home among it all one must possess ready solutions. For expats, cut off from the oral tradition by which great addresses for obscure services are usually handed down, the challenge is that much greater.

So it's a great comfort to me to have been introduced* to La Cagouille, a poorly-designed, fusty, Charentais seafood restaurant tucked behind Montparnasse in the 14ème arrondissement. Deeply uncool and far removed from any part of town I frequent, La Cagouille nevertheless ranks among the city's best back-pocket addresses, simply by dint of offering very good food and wine - and abundant table availability - on Sundays.

all the right ingredients: jeu de quilles, 75014

Imagine you must throw a party. You invite your most amusing friends into a room with a balcony after sundown and open numerous bottles of sparkling wine. There is a band. Performance art. DJs. Clowns, sword-swallowers, and a man who walks around on his hands. But to your consternation, no one speaks to each other for the duration of the event.

Great party, they say, on their way out the door. Keep me in the loop for the next one.

I feel this way about certain natural wine restaurants. Like the friends in the above scenario, I sincerely appreciate the effort that has gone into getting all the right ingredients in place. Desnoyer meats, natural wines, manifestly fresh fish, etc. At Jeu de Quilles, a suberbly charming market-menu place in the 14ème, these elements are supported by that other, nigh-on unattainable Paris luxury, great hospitality. All that I felt was lacking, after a recent by-no-means-unenjoyable meal there, was a unifying vision: a reason all these good things have been gathered together.

straight classic: le severo, 75014

If we define popular staples as foodstuffs that could conceivably be employed as a "health boost" icon in video games - things like steaks, burgers, and fries - then we've pretty much isolated a segment of cuisine that everyone and their mother have strong opinions on, no matter how indifferent or clueless these diners may be about anything more sophisticated than sesame buns. Classic, simplistic comfort food is just very inviting to armchair critics. This manifests itself nowadays in the rainforest of blogs devoted such cuisine.

Conceptually pure restaurants like 14ème steak standby Le Severo are partial beneficiaries of this dynamic: the restaurant is rightfully famous city-wide for its marvelous cuts of meat. Nevertheless I can't help feeling that something gets glossed over, lost in the branding, when I read about the place: namely, the impressive sophistication of the panoramic blackboard wine list, which is basically a big billboard for all that is good about Le Severo's supplier, the occasionally controversial* Caves Augé.