not drinking poison in paris

I seem to have had an atypical experience of Dean Street restaurant Duck Soup last winter. At that time it was a relatively new restaur...

I have nice things to say about Glou , unlike seemingly every respectable food writer I can think of. (Am I respectable? I have no idea....

My longtime English friend A and I often refer to one another as the evil twin, never able to agree on who is the good twin ever since d...

I'm sure I'm not the only expat who has occasionally marveled at the aesthetic poverty of Paris beer culture. This is a country ...

Writing about the wines of Bordeaux, I feel perennially obliged, before airing opinions, to quote Plato's Socrates , who said, '...

Since my impolitic skewering of whopper misnomer wine bar La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels last summer, a number of that restaurant g...

There are myriad indicators of good hospitality in restaurants: prompt service, thoughtful suggestions, graceful reservation systems, et...

It's embarrassing to admit, but my vegetarian upbringing has left me squeamish about chicken. I grew up surrounded by them - my moth...

Not Paris ! Barcelona ! To mitigate the drop in readership that occurs whenever I begin talking about cities other than Paris, I've ...

I learned relatively recently that a restaurant I often passed in the 10ème arrondissement - a miserably named,* anonymous-looking estab...

My friend L and I hadn't intended to go to Racines for lunch. We'd planned to go to Gyoza Bar , a very contemporary Japanese co...

For various reasons, updates will be sporadic for the next week or so. I'll eventually post a few musings on Greek wine, should find I...

Exclamations are ridiculous words. We emit them in surprise or joy or horror with little forethought, and this spontaneity places them in...

Brunch in France is sort of a sham.  It is as though at some point in history a Frenchman visited America and observed an American diner ...

Most wine geeks learn to take the recommendations of non-aficionados with a cellar full of salt. This is because wine, or rather the idea...

My excuse for the recent blog drought: I've been traveling. The Native Companion and I spent twenty-four hours in the town of Bordeau...