Posts tagged restaurant
Aux Lyonnais
Jul 26th
Last week, I found myself at a place that people don’t much talk about anymore – Aux Lyonnais. This is Alain Ducasse’s take on the bouchon - a style of restaurant from Lyon specializing in that region’s traditional and very meaty fare. I brought my boyfriend, a real Lyonnais, for dinner last week. We started with an apéro at the nearby Coinstot Vino and then arrived for our 9:00 reservation (booked online).
My first impression: this restaurant is beautiful. With its gleaming zinc bar, tiled floors, and checkered tablecloths, Aux Lyonnais is decorated like the French bistro of my dreams. If I were a More >
Spring Restaurant reopens in Paris
Jul 22nd
I ate at Spring on Friday night, along with two other writers who have already published accounts of the very same meal. I’ll spare you the repetition and simply direct you to these reviews by Barbra Austin and Adrian Moore. You might also like to read the review by Mr. Lung from the following night, which Daniel Rose told me was the “most sensitive review” that he had seen in a long time.
For my part, I wrote a story that was published by BlackBook today, detailing the hype that surrounds this opening. I’ve excerpted a bit below and you can head over there to More >
La Régalade Saint-Honoré
Apr 28th
La Régalade is one of this city’s most beloved classic bistros. Founded by Yves Camdeborde in 1992, it was left in the hands of Bruno Doucet, a chef who (high praise) didn’t ruin it. I visited this bastion of bistronomy last year, loved my meal, but never returned. I suppose that distance trumped delicious. How excited was I, then, to learn that Doucet was opening a new location in central Paris? Daniel Rose filled me in about this when I ran into him yesterday at Spring Boutique (I am addicted, of all things, to their spelt). After chiding me for not being More >
La Bigarrade
Apr 7th
I went last night for the first time to La Bigarrade, approximately two years after everyone else. This far-out restaurant (in terms of both cooking and location) has been a hit ever since it opened back in December 2007. In the model of Spring restaurant (Daniel Rose was a consultant), chef Christophe Pelé produced a no-choice menu from his open kitchen that was, by all accounts, inventive and delicious. It was also dead cheap – €45 for the standard “gourmet” menu and €65 for the “gourmand” extravaganza.
In February, after failing for perhaps the fifth time to book a table within the More >
Rino
Mar 19th
My boyfriend recently informed me that he had made a dinner reservation: “Someplace new… someplace I think you haven’t heard of.”
“That’s not possible,” I replied, and I meant it. For the past six weeks, in preparing to launch a new website, I’ve been following the restaurant press quite closely. If I hadn’t heard of it, I thought smugly to myself, then it probably wasn’t worth knowing about. I then proceeded to mock his choice. “Rino (the French pronounce this Reeeno)… will there be gambling after dinner?” He looked puzzled, knowing nothing of the Nevada town, and then decided to drop the More >
L’Office
Feb 12th
3, rue Richer, 75009. 01 47 70 67 31. Open for lunch Thurs–Fri, and for dinner Tues–Sat. Closed Sun and Mon. The area around Grands Boulevards has suddenly (and surprisingly) become cool. This major thoroughfare, not far from two landmark department stores, used to be nothing but chains. In recent years, however, a handful of hype restaurants has put this neighborhood back on the foodie map. Among these, Racines and Passage 53, tucked inside the Passage des Panoramas, are the most well known. But another relative newcomer—named after a place that I try to avoid—has begun to establish a following. I More >
La Gazzetta
Feb 3rd
29, rue de Cotte, 75012. 01 43 47 47 05. Closed Sun and Mon.
Located in a bustling market neighborhood behind Bastille, La Gazzetta has been a favorite for several years. With soft lighting, leafy palm trees and polished dark wood, this beautiful space would be a hit among the local bobos no matter what was happening in the kitchen.
The output of that kitchen, however, reveals that La Gazzetta is aiming to be much more than a neighborhood bistro. Their choice to install an avant-garde Swedish chef behind the stove attracted plenty of first-year media attention. Since that time, Petter More >
Chez la Vieille
Jan 21st
I first learned about this tiny bistro from Hungry for Paris, that excellent book of bedtime stories by Alexander Lobrano. He recounts, in the review of Chez la Vieille, the story of his first encounter with the namesake old lady (Adrienne Biasin), as well as the things (classic dishes, cheek-pinching) that came from her hand.
My first meal there was memorable for reasons that had nothing to do with the food. The evening began with a visit to (the soon-to-be) Spring restaurant on the rue Bailleul, where I found the construction site overrun by models and wolves. As the fashion shoot was winding More >
Ze Kitchen Galerie
Jan 18th
Ze Kitchen Galerie is a restaurant that I avoided for many years for one simple and superficial reason: that name is stupid. The faux-French pronunciation . . . the dual-purpose (food/art) pretension . . . I can barely think about it without rolling my eyes.
But perhaps there’s another reason for my tardy arrival at the door of chef William Ledeuil: his reviews were, and still are, very mixed. More than perhaps any other restaurant in Paris, ZKG divides its diners into fans and full-on haters. After two recent visits, once for lunch and once for the dinner degustation, I find myself More >
La Cantine du Troquet
Dec 23rd
It’s been more than a year since my last visit to the Cantine du Troquet. Since that time, I’ve told countless friends that this informal Basque resto is among my favorite spots. Still, it’s been hard to find my way back to this southern corner of Paris, which lies three subway lines away from my nest in the 19th. I suppose I was also afraid that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered.
That meal last winter was a revelation. I arrived at opening time (8:00) with two boys and ordered more food than is really polite. We shared and devoured nine More >
