symbiosis: la cave du daron, 75011

For better or worse, the fate of tiny 11ème arrondissement caviste and wine bar La Cave du Daron seems intimately linked to its famous neighbors across avenue Parmentier. Inaki Aizpitarte's ubiquitously publicized triumvirate of Le Chateaubriand, Le Dauphin, and Le Cave are like the Great Whites Sharks of Goncourt, leaving the impossibly low-key La Cave du Daron to perform a remora-like function, living off the overflow.

I lived three blocks away for four years, and for all that I appreciated owner Jean-Julien Ricard's varied and intelligent wine selection, I could never think of much to say about the place. It's the size of a sardine tin, comprising just eight or so seats. Small snacks of prepared foodstuffs are available. While Ricard organises semi-frequent events with outside chefs, including Maori Murota (ex-La Conserverie, presently making lunches at Le Verre Volé Sur Mer) and Adeline Grattard (of Yam Tcha), La Cave du Daron's miniscule size pretty much restricts their audience to the hardcore fanbase of the visiting chef in question.

Ricard, too, has a loyal fanbase of young professionals who populate the bar during apéro hours. If I'm quite late in joining the party, it's because his wine prices can be a little high. What changed, then, to make me visit the other evening, and finally discover the charm of La Cave du Daron? Well, in the time since I praised the utility and simplicity of apéros at Aizpitarte's Le Cave, that wine shop has stopped serving bottles on premises, leaving La Cave du Daron as the block's only option for fine wine consumption without the attendant obligation of expensive cuisine. Modest and welcoming, Ricard is well-suited to the role he's found, as the Goncourt local's favorite low-key foil to the brouhaha across the street.

the highest bidder : table de bruno verjus, 75012

A good way for a writer to earn money is to cultivate a reputation for authority on a subject rich people like. Wine and food are quite good. Things like polo, yachting, and racehorses are probably even better. All you have to do is publish a great deal on these subjects and sooner or later some organization will reward you for your apparent expertise with a sponsorship or a panel discussion or a publishing deal. Because you will have attained credibility as bait for a luxury clientele.

French food writer, blogger, cookbook author, radio personality, and now restaurateur Bruno Verjus both exemplifies and transcends this phenomenon. On the one hand, he seriously knows his stuff. His blog, FoodIntelligence, is a treasure trove of good recommendations in any price range. In his writing and in his wide-ranging interviews with chefs and artisanal food producers, Verjus evinces a passionate appreciation for, and a nuanced understanding of, the business of real food.

But Verjus is no stranger to promo work. He helps organise the Omnivore food festival. He works as an advisor to Paris auction house Artcurial and coordinated its first charity auction of gastronomic products. And with Table, his new restaurant on sleepy rue de Prague in the 12ème, he's made an ambitious play for the affections of deep-pocketed food fetishists city-wide. It's a dream restaurant for anyone who has ever cried from a balcony, "Honey, let's go bid on a wheel of 48-month parm !"

for what it's worth: l'écailler du bistrot, 75011

L'Ecailler du Bistrot, the seafood-slinging sister restaurant nextdoor to Bistrot Paul Bert, shares many qualities with the latter legendary steak-frites destination. The décor is traditional but not overbearingly so, the service is snappy and relatively warm for the city, and the wine list, laudably, is tilted towards natural stuff. But - besides the menus - there is one unmistakeable difference between the two restaurants, and it becomes perceptible a few moments after one is seated at l'Ecailler du Bistrot. 

You hear a lot less English at l'Ecailler.  

There are certain very rare occasions in Paris when a lack of Anglos in a dining room can herald the discovery of some rough-cut gem of a resto, as yet unknown to tourists and expats. A visit to l'Ecailler du Bistrot is not one of these occasions; the restaurant, booked solid most nights and situated right beside every good Paris host's go-to for entertaining out-of-towners, is not that sort of gem. Here the lack of Anglos unfortunately means the restaurant provides a service that only the natives in Paris, the Chicago of France, would popularise: very expensive seafood. 

loire road trip, pt. V: bistrot de la place, saumur

Among the chief occupational hazards of the wine industry are dinners with many other traveling wine professionals. By the time the plats arrive there are invariably more bottles on the table than pins on a bowling lane, and a sort of mad profligate glee takes over, as yet more bottles are ordered, not to replace the unfinished ones already in play, but to provide further points of aesthetic comparison at any cost. If, like me two Sundays ago at Bistrot de la Place in Saumur, you are traveling without recourse to any kind of expense account, you're toast - you have to just surrender to the spirit of the occasion and bring homemade soup to work for the rest of the month.

What the hey, anyway. All of us were fortunate to have had any kind of night out in sleepy Saumur on a Sunday. During the period of the Renaissance des Appellations and La Dive Bouteille, the Bistrot de la Place books up solid, and we'd only snagged a twelve-top thanks to the admirable foresight of my friend J2,* who'd narrowly missed out on a table the year before.