revolutionaries: bar à vin a.t & restaurant a.t, 75005

On the surface, not much differentiates Pierre Gagnaire-trained chef Atsushi Tanaka's Restaurant A.T. from most staid Left Bank fine-dining. Its presentation is in thrall to Le Guide Michelin, from the boardroom lighting right down to the weighty, over-designed furniture. The format of Tanaka's 95€ tasting menu is in keeping with the exquisite tastes of a previous generation of diners.

But Tanaka has struck out on his own in two quietly revolutionary ways. Firstly, with his "wine-selector" Lulie Kaori Tanaka, he has embraced natural wine wholeheartedly, breaking ground not just for his otherwise arch-conservative restaurant style but also for his neighborhood. (Restaurant A.T.'s semi-anonymous storefront sits quietly in the shadow of La Tour d'Argent.)

More recently, Tanaka has, in one bold stroke, up-ended his concept by hiring explosively amusing sommelier David Benichou (ex-Ten Bells, ex-Vivant Table) to run an incongruously fun natural wine bar in his restaurant's heretofore underused cellar space. One effect has been to re-orient late-night drinking for the 5ème arrondissement, which hasn't had a decent watering hole since Curio Parlour closed a few years ago. But, more importantly, the opening of Bar à Vins A.T. demonstrates the newfound sense of freedom with which its owner and its habitués - a certain circle of influential young Japanese chefs - are changing their adoptive city.

loire salons 2015: la renaissance des appellations, les penitantes, la dive bouteille, demeter france

I found myself with a late afternoon to kill in Angers on the Friday before this years' tasting salons. With the aim of avoiding drinking at all costs, I nursed a café crème on the terrace of a no-name bar beside a parking lot, where I soon ran into Beaujolais vignerons Karim Vionnet and Jean-Claude Lapalu.

They were toting several magnums between them, headed elsewhere. I said I'd see them tomorrow at the tasting, whereupon Vionnet reminded me that they were presenting at La Dive Bouteille, which didn't start until Sunday in Saumur. For the winemakers, evidently, as much as for me and most other attendees I know, the weekend was mainly a social occasion.

I'm guilty of complaining about this dynamic from time to time. The truth is, though, that the pageantry and partying of the Loire salons are signs of a vibrant community, and ought to be encouraged as such, or at very least, gracefully tolerated.  Take, for a counter-example, the Demeter France tasting at Angers' Palais de Congrès, where my friends and I tasted the following morning. Most of the winemakers looked embarrassed to be there, like they hadn't even been introduced to one another. It seemed illustrative of the limitations of merely-biodynamic collective marketing, at a time when even the natural wine off-salons, Vin Anonymes and Les Pénitantes, are metastasizing each year. I missed out on Anonymes this year, in favor of arriving earlier at La Dive Bouteille - a somewhat unnecessary precaution, it turned out, since this years' edition was notably better organised, and seemingly less overrun by local daysippers.  After the jump, some scattered takeaways. Slightly more in-depth posts on a few topics to follow in days to come.

n.d.p. in barcelona: coure

There are myriad indicators of good hospitality in restaurants: prompt service, thoughtful suggestions, graceful reservation systems, etc. Perhaps the most outright challenging for a restaurant, however, is the time-limited meal, such as what my friend / colleague R and I were obliged to impose on Barcelona gastro-bistrot Coure at the tail end of our Barcelona trip last fall.

This is where the guest shows up, hastily states the name of his reservation, and then explains in the nicest possible terms that he's delighted be here but must leave in under an hour - and can the host or hostess kindly work that out with the waitstaff and kitchen staff? Given the often terse or restricted channels of communication between front-of-house and back-of-house staff in restaurants, this is more challenging than it may initially sound - sort of the triathalon of restaurant communication. I hated having to perform it back in Boston and Los Angeles restaurants, and I hate asking for it myself.

But R and I'd had twenty-four hours in the city without sitting at a table for a meal. We'd worked through the night, we needed lunch, and I'd heard nice things about Coure from my friend Cesar E. Castro Pou from Terroir Santo Domingo (at that time my one Barcelona connection). It seemed worth chancing a last minute sprint, even if it did involve running literally a mile with our suitcases to the restaurant.

n.d.p. in barcelona: monvínic

This past fall my friend / colleague R and I were sent to Barcelona to install a display in a department store. I was delighted to at last get the opportunity to travel for work – until it dawned on us that, due to insufficiently devious planning on our part, we would be staying in the city only 24 hours, and the nature of our task obliged us to work through the night, denying us even a single night out to explore the city, drink heavily, pee in the streets, wear funny hats, solicit hookers, etc.

There was nothing for it but to reflect, ruefully, that this is why it’s called work travel.

Nonetheless, after arrival and check-in at our hotel we had a solid six hours to kill before installation of our company’s stand could begin, and I was hell-bent on packing in as much questing semi-informed wine tourism as possible. Our first stop was to Monvínic, a place my friend Cesar Pou of Terroirs Santo Domingo Imports had described to me as Barcelona’s premier wine bar, the ground zero for wine geeks in the city. Aware of my tastes, he had warned me it was a little futuristic – a disclaimer that, in the case of Monvínic, is like saying the Vatican is religious-affiliated.

something else entirely: la bodeguita du IXème, 75009

In the 3ème there is a faddish twit restaurant called Derrière that is outfitted to look like someone's shabby-chic apartment. It is pretty much a playground for inattentive club kids who, knowing nothing of what constitutes good cooking or good drinking, seek a restaurant that offers, as substitute for both, gimmicky things like foozball tables and a "hidden" smoking room.*

The dining area of the recently-opened La Bodeguita du IXème, sister-cave to La Bodeguita du IVème, happens also to look kind of like an apartment. With more emphasis on the shabby side of shabby-chic. But there, happily, the similarities between the two establishments end. La Bodeguita du IXème is not in fact a restaurant, just a solid well-intentioned cave à grignoter. I juxtapose it with Derrière only to provide a contrast between funny décor intended as the crux of a concept - a terrible idea, reminiscent of mini-golf courses - and funny décor as the result of hapless necessity, which is what you find at La Bodeg du IXème. The weird clocks suspended on the walls and the hideous rec-room couch at the latter establishment are basically forgiveable and even kind of charming.

Anyway, what matters is the wine.

joyous naked pagans: natural wine tasting at autour d'un verre, 75009

After making the rounds at Spring's "Une Promesse du Vin" tasting recently, I popped over to meet my friends D and C at Autour d'Un Verre's significantly more informal natural wine tasting in the 9ème.

The differences in atmosphere and philosophy between the two restaurants and their tastings could not be more pronounced. Both places prize fine winemaking and both are very enjoyable. But where Spring very astutely emphasizes the fineness - as in comprehensive luxury, right down to the Aesop soap in the toilets - the scene at Autour d'Un Verre seemed to celebrate rather the winemaking, the physical act itself, with all the attendant sweatshirts, red stains, and mud-encrusted boots.

It's also just the difference between very established vignerons - those at Spring that day, accustomed to high profile wine events in NYC, London, San Francisco, and so on - and the up-and-coming ones, like the ragtag gang of bearded farmer-savants who manned the tables at the Autour d'Un Verre tasting, many of whose delicate unsulfured wines see limited distribution even in France. Some of the wines of this latter category of vignerons are true mystical natural wonders, with a joyous naked pagan quality to them. Others just taste amateurish and unhygienic - 'look what I found in this barrel' wines.

I tasted both that day at Autour d'Un Verre, but for the sake of diplomacy I'll focus on the naked pagans.