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.

world domination: l'épicerie du verre volé, 75011

When I mentioned to a friend that cave-à-manger pioneers Le Verre Volé were to open an épicerie beside their well-established wine shop location on rue Oberkampf, his initial reaction was, 'Geez, they're taking over the world.'

Then we reflected and realised, no, that wasn't the case at all. Given the high visibility and worldwide renown of their perpetually-thronged cave-à-manger by the Canal Saint Martin, it's actually astonishing that owner Cyril Bordarier hasn't done more with the brand in ten plus years. Total expansion, as far as I know, has until now amounted to the aforementioned wine shop, and a renovation of their dining room in 2010. On the one occasion I tried to purchase several cases of wine from the canal-side location for a nearby shop opening, there wasn't enough of anything in stock* and I had to go elsewhere. Meanwhile, any regular clients of the Oberkampf location will know already that its patron, the other Cyril, a good guy once you get to know him, possesses all the salesmanship and commercial ambition of a hedgehog.

Naturally, all this is incomprehensible to the impatient, money-hungry American in me. Were I the one who'd built up such an iconic purple wine concept, there would be a US and UK import business and a theme park ride by now. On the other hand, that's why Le Verre Volé remains cool: they haven't, as yet, shilled much swill, and their sprezzatura - the art of hospitality without seeming to expend effort - is, for a technical reason, faultless. With their new venture, which officially opens its doors tomorrow, Le Verre Volé is, thankfully, quite unlikely to unsettle its sterling reputation: it is an épicerie, selling cheeses, meats, and other artisanal foodstuffs, along with sandwiches.

assimilate this: guilo guilo, 75018

I would have some real thinking to do, if in the future I am ever given the choice between dining at a Japanese restaurant in Paris and committing seppuku. Which, I shall have ask myself, will be more painful? Or is the latter sort of inevitable, as a method of saving face after the shame of the former?

My experiences with Japanese food in the City of Light have run the gamut from grotesque - the gnarly bentos for sale on rue Saint Anne, with their unidentified fried objects atop shoe-sized rice wads - to dispiriting, as in the rapacious and tasteless stylings of the Issé group, who specialise in marking up much the same Far East paraphernalia as everyone else, only much further.

Until recently I held out quite a bit of hope, thinking that perhaps all the Japanese restaurants I'd tried in Paris had, despite their most ambitious efforts, simply not been expensive enough. But this past women's fashion week brought with it the occasion to visit Guilo Guilo, a somewhat pricey spot in the 18ème renowned for its tough reservations and the seasonal innovations of its chef, Eiichi Edakuni, who somehow simultaneously maintains a successful restaurant in Kyoto. I say "somehow" because I left Guilo Guilo with the impression that Edakuni's chief innovation there is not his food, which is unmysterious and delicious, but rather his aggressive rudeness and bald unprofessionalism, traits which I can't help thinking would only be tolerated by a French audience who, wowed by Japophilia, have been too quick handing out the Genius Card That Excuses Everything. (Polanski has one, too.)

bon courage: frenchie wine bar opening, 75002

At the opening party of 2ème bistro Frenchie's bar à vin spinoff on the night of La Fête de la Musique Insupportable, a wine industry friend and I amused ourselves by placing mock bets on how long it will be before the intended informal no-res bar becomes a small, slightly expensive restaurant with a difficult booking policy. (In other words, another Frenchie.)

Were it to happen, it would be through no particular fault or avarice of the excellent Frenchie team. It's just a familiar pattern in the Paris restaurant scene, nicely illustrated by 1èr restaurant Spring's short-lived Buvette bar à vin, which has now been more profitably repurposed as another dining room for the unflaggingly popular restaurant. Quality places in Paris shoot for informal and wind up sporting tastevins, for a number of reasons.

worth celebrating: rino, 75012

I'd intended our dinner at 12ème Italian-ish restaurant Rino earlier this month to be a celebration of the much-anticipated arrival in Paris of my sister and her boyfriend. They live across the world in Los Angeles, and I hadn't seen them in two years, so someplace soulful and slightly splashy was in order.

Rino, with its fixed market menu and Franco-Italian natural wine list, is actually very reasonably priced, for what it is, but I'm not (yet) such an inveterate gourmand that four or six courses at dinner is the norm for me. Ben Franklin famously said, "Three good meals a day is bad living"; an addendum for contemporary Paris dining might be: "Six fine courses is two meals."

Unfortunately, due to a complicated story involving an arrest, my guests missed their flight and arrived a day late. I found out that morning, by which time I'd already corralled a gang of friends and the Native Companion had invited her sister, who I'd yet to meet. So, what the hell, we celebrated anyway. I was delighted to meet the NC's sis, and furthermore it turned out my friends C and J had just settled on an apartment that day. Then, even setting aside those happy circumstances, simply to encounter such a splendid, well-priced Italian wine list in Paris is a major occasion for me.

depressing espresso changes

A depressing change has occurred at the huge office building that houses our company's warehouse. Where used to be two immense old-fashioned hand-packed espresso machines now sits a sad little automated push-button machine that dispenses truly execrable highway-rest-stop café.

What disturbs me about the change, however, is not that I can no longer enjoy acceptable espresso at subsidized prices (0,60€!) when I make my infrequent visits to the warehouse. (Honestly it was never very good, even at the best of times.) It's that on the basis of many previous conversations with the genial old ladies who work there, I'm aware that the horrible new machine was probably installed because years of packing real espresso had caused wrist problems for said genial old ladies.

Obviously I wish these ladies nothing but the best wrist health. But it seems fundamentally misguided, that instead of finding new jobs for employees whose age or frailty prevents them from performing their jobs, the accepted solution is to leave them where they are but make their jobs easier, even if doing so means inflicting a sickening fake soul-draining product on the thousand or so people who work in the building.

There's something very ominous and Orwellian about it all. I can't help feeling this change in espresso machines at a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris in 2011 is somehow representative of the greater societal shift we face this century, as the necessity of caring for previous generations diminishes the expectations of current and forthcoming ones.

the fashion at the time: l'hedoniste, 75002

Last Saturday the intended cosy casual dinner for two or three with my friend D eventually (and happily) turned into a roving thirsty party of eight, when it turned out a number of other colleagues from NYC and Tokyo were able to join us.* This presented the conundrum of where one might dine not-horribly in the center of Paris on a Saturday with a brigade of people in the middle of fashion week.

Happily, this is just the function in which the recently-opened 2ème restaurant L'Hedoniste excels, for the time being. It is extraordinarily not horrible - even excellent, at times, if one is able to forgive the prices, which are all a notch above what dishes and wine actually merit, and the slightly hapless one-man kitchen, from which most things seemed to leave lukewarm, rather than hot.

But that is the kind of restaurant this is. If it were hot, there is no way I could have invaded on a moment's notice with D et al , and had, despite my criticism, a very enjoyable meal.

some other, better paris: le dirigeable, 75015

Update: 23/10/2013: I've just heard Le Dirigeable has closed. Bummer. 

Gilles Bénard, owner of another great restaurant, Quedubon, on why he doesn't cross town to see his friends at Le Dirigeable more often: "Ici à Paris, on est très sedentaire..." (Trans: Here in Paris, we're very sedentary.)

Let's see: a 35-hour workweek, an employment-for-life system that gravely disincentivises turnover in any form, lopsided rental law that pretty much prohibits eviction, powerful unions totally opposed to even reasonable sorts of labor reform, whose frequent crippling strikes are viewed as kind of national pastime... No kidding, Gilles! Getting Parisians to cross a medium-sized city for dinner is probably a little like raising the retirement age a wee bit.

But so it goes. Le Dirigeable, one of the city's most well-hidden dining gems, is way out in the 15eme arrondissement. Unless you're an entrenched Parisian family who lives out there, it's a hike. I can enthusiastically attest, however, that it's worth every step. Owned and run jointly by my friends Guy and Franck, this is the sort of natural, unpretentiously fine restaurant that in a perfect world would crown every neighborhood.

Guy & me.