oh la honte: ma cocotte, saint-ouen

For a certain class of Parisian, familiarity with the marché aux puces is a basic mark of distinction. It doesn't matter if very few of us do any actual shopping in the stratospherically-priced high design markets north of the city. Les puces constitute the city's most accessible museum and, at once, its most cosmopolitan feature, for the knowledge that Paris entices the world's most discerning interior decorators to spend lavish sums in the center of a chaotic slum is something anyone can enjoy.

Who are these titans of the earth, we wonder, dropping tens of thousands on Finn Juhl chairs and Adnet lamps? Do they or their decorators mind dealing with the strange unhurried merchants who drip bad red wine and cut sausages on the merchandise during transactions? There is even poetry in this: to purchase a luxury item at the flea markets, a client must descend, momentarily, to the world of crowded guingettes and couscous.

But since fall 2012, the world's high-design tastemakers - along with us window-lickers - have had an alternative. Towering at the entrance to the Marché Paul Bert - Serpette, it is a Philippe Starck-designed megalo-bistrot called Ma Cocotte, run by Philippe and Fabienne Amzalak, proprietors of 16ème arrondissement restaurant Bon. Ma Cocotte is positively thronged on weekends, and its success with the flea market clientele reveals something about the separation of aesthetic spheres. Overpriced, anarchic, and irredeemably tacky, it would be Paris' worst restaurant, except that it is not, technically, in Paris.

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 ?

unpolished: miroir, 75018

The fashion company I work for used to have a shop not far from métro Abbesses in Montmartre. I think the original commercial rationale was: it's a picturesque neighborhood, with a lot roving tourists - surely they'll purchase accessories ?

The shop didn't work for several reasons. To put it simply, the neighborhood wasn't 'there,' yet; nor, with the constant influx of panting tourists looking for the Amelie café, was it clear it would ever get 'there.' All the knick-knackery shuts out higher-end retail. Tourists hiking towards Sacre Coeur, if they did stop to shop, did so in places that looked scruffier or more classically Montmartrois than our brand. (Paris tourists generally seek either the mythical cosmopolitan Paris or the mythical village Paris. The city's actual charm is that it contains both myths, often simultaneously, on the same street - but tourists in Montmartre are hunting for the latter one.)

I am getting around to discussing a neighborhood restaurant - Miroir, also located quite near Abbesses. I visited during Fashion Week in October on the recommendation of my favorite lunch purveyor and wine aficionado Balthazar de la Borde. On the one hand, I agree with Balt that Miroir is a godsend, given its location: an unfussy place to get a tasty and well-sourced, mostly-traditional meal, replete with a good, mostly-natural wine list. (The proprietors of Miroir also run the Cave de Miroir across the street.) On the other hand, I suspect that Miroir, like the neighborhood, is not 'there' yet, and on the night we dined there, one major service bungle made me despair of it ever getting 'there.'

situation vacant : l'office, 75009

I learned relatively recently that a restaurant I often passed in the 10ème arrondissement - a miserably named,* anonymous-looking establishment called L'Office - had been garnering great reviews under the direction of a newly-installed American chef.

Then the other day - after having met said chef, Kevin O'Donnell, through mutual friends, and after having dined once at his restaurant - I learned that O'Donnell is already slated to return back to the states. In Paris one gets used to people passing through; acquaintances often last for the duration of their summer courses or fellowships or internships. This still seems like quick turnover, particularly for a place that appears to have some momentum.

Maybe I have just been in France too long - I've forgotten how fast American careers can move. In any event, I thought I might as well share my impressions of L'Office, before they lose all relevancy. They can be summed up by saying that O'Donnell could perhaps benefit from more time in Paris restaurants, but I totally understand why he might want to escape France pronto. To phrase this less enigmatically: the cuisine at L'Office was a little under-sketched, which is something that can be improved, and one of the servers completely sucked at his job, which is something that, in France, cannot easily be improved.

b minus: agapé bis, 75017

When I was introduced to restaurateur Laurent Lapaire at Le Grand 8 a few months ago, I confessed that while I'd heard a great deal about them, I'd yet to visit any of his restaurants - not the 17ème's Agapé, not its "bistro" sibling Agapé Bis, not Agapé Substance, his tiny nigh-unbookable haute-gastro kitchen on rue Mazarine. I asked him which I ought to hit first. He suggested trying them in ascending order of price and refinement: first the Bis, then Agapé, Substance last.

To be fair, it's natural for restaurateurs to consider their restaurants as parents would their children. He was probably taking care to provide equal attention, and making allowances for differences of personality. But, taking his advice at face value, some colleagues and I took two taxis out west to the 17ème after showrooms one night this past fashion week, planning to check out the tasting menu at Agapé Bis.

Let's say that if any of us ever make it to the other two restaurants, the bar is set pretty low.

worst hospitality in solar system: saturne, 75002

Anticipating a dinner with friends from New York in town for fashion week, I booked a table two weeks in advance for a Monday night at Saturne, a renowned, self-consciously high-end "cave à manger,"* where on basis of reputation I'd expected a sparkling experience. Chef Sven Chartier and sommelier Ewan Lemoigne both previously worked at Pierre Jancou's Racines in its heyday, and Chartier had put in time at Alain Passard's L'Arpège before that. It seemed reasonable to think my friends and I were in the hands of professionals, when we arrived a few minutes after 9pm for our reservation.

We never sat down, however. To my totally incredulous dismay, Saturne had botched the reservation in a laughably amateur manner, and instead of apologizing for the restaurant's error - it was without a doubt their error, for several reasons to follow - the Lemoigne fellow instead refused to seat us and, with such unquestioning emotionless self-certitude that I began to suspect he was developmentally challenged in some way,** proceeded to insist it was my own fault.

To jump ahead a bit, I'd like to publicly wonder: is this where we are now, with dining? Have we so fetishized fine product and fine wine, on both sides of the service equation, diner and restaurant, that a place like Saturne can succeed despite its operators having no sense whatsoever of basic hospitality principles, even civility? The situation disimproved, as you might have guessed. My friends and I left for a last-minute reservation hastily gleaned elsewhere before the police arrived.

n.d.p. en suisse: chateau de villa, sierre

On the way to Monforte d'Alba, where the Native Companion and I had booked a flat for a week with our friends J and C, we all spent a night in Sierre, in Switzerland, where C's brother N lives in a narrow multistoried wooden house with something like six decks that clings to a steep hillside crammed with vines. 

Sierre, I only realised upon arrival,* is smack in the Valais, Switzerland's biggest and most dizzyingly diverse wine-producing region. "Biggest" here should be taken relative to Switzerland's overall wine output, which in 2009 was a tiny 1.1 million hectolitres**, almost none of it exported. (For comparison, French wine production in the same year was over 48 million hectolitres.***) The Valais is, however, ampelographically diverse by any standard, home to a panoply of regional oddities, ranging from refreshing white Fendants to the rich oak-aged red Cornalins. Many, for all practical purposes, cannot be tasted elsewhere, because both the incorrigible strength of the Swiss economy and the generally feather-light character of the wines make the product uniquely unsuited to the global marketplace.

I was accordingly over-the-moon when N suggested we all take an apero at a local wine destination, a bar / restaurant / cave / museum called Chateau de Villa. 

beaujolais bike trip: le coq à juliénas, juliénas

Note on the text: due to an infuriating error, in which I deleted from my iPhone the photos that were to accompany this text before having put them on my computer, the pictorial content of this post is laughably pathetic. I considered not even posting this episode of the Beaujolais Bike Trip, but decided, in the end, to let the text just stand (mostly) alone. 

I find myself, on these bike trips, unable to shake the naive faith that at each meal in a village of oenological interest I will discover a treasure trove of local delights and unforetold curiosities, on the plates and in the glasses. That this almost never happens does nothing to prevent me from seeking such an experience everywhere I go. To wit: when my friends J, C, and I stopped for Sunday lunch beneath murky skies in the eponymous village of the esteemed Beaujolais cru Juliénas, we found ourselves hesitating between two restaurants in the main square, debating whether the short wait at one was worth enduring to avoid the higher prices and slightly pretentious-looking menu of the other.

The restaurants' names are Le Coq à Juliénas and Chez La Rose, respectively. We found out later they share ownership, along with an attached grannyish hotel. Our decision to wait for a table at Le Coq turned out to be an ambiguous one, for while the cuisine was honest and decent, the wines were null, and the only server, a contemptuous middle-aged bruiser with a buzz cut and an ex-con demeanor, ensured that the restaurant's name remained uncomfortably apropos regardless of whether chicken was on the menu.

n.d.p. in rome: da enzo: travesty in trastevere

Our Rome-based friend D hipped us to a common trick played by no-reservation restaurants in Rome: whoever answers the phone at the restaurant, whether or not it is the owner, will insist you just come on down, that you'll be seated no problem, regardless of the no-res policy, as long as you mention that you spoke to the owner on the phone. Upon arrival, naturally, the owner is either absent or has no recollection of you, and you get stuck milling around with all the other anonymous tourist cattle waiting for tables.

Ristorante Da Enzo, a noted destination for traditional Roman home-cooking on Via dei Vascellari in the eastern Trastevere, does actually take reservations. At least for their first seating. For their second seating they perform a variation on the above ploy, by merely claiming to take your reservation, at which point they note your name on their hand, or something, and then wash their hands.

who needs enemies? aux deux amis, 75011

A brief note on restaurant service, occasioned by my last two visits to Aux Deux Amis, an otherwise excellent wine / small plates place in the 11eme. If you've missed it walking by on rue Oberkampf, it's because it's disguised as any old run-of-the-mill Parisian bar, replete with tacky countertops and lighting that belongs in a dentist's office.