“Go to the old places,” he said. “The old places will do.”
It is hard to talk much about food in Paris without plunging deep into the world of metacuisine, the world of cooking well-established in Liebling, Curnonsky, and Elizabeth David, which is to say, the struggle between present-day cooking and its romanticized past.
But in Paris, it is, of course, possible to dine on a certain level as if the last half century never happened. Who doesn’t like to fall into an ancient bistro like La Tour de Montlhéry: Chez Denise near the old Les Halles, drink sour Brouilly drawn from a barrel, and gorge yourself silly on lamb with beans, marrow-crowned steaks, and formidable tureens of stewed tripe? Or to wander into an art nouveau brasserie like Bofinger and eat essentially the same meal of choucroute garnie and thin Alsatian Riesling that Matisse probably enjoyed?
If you hit À Sousceyrac near the Place d’Aligre market in the right season, you can drink a young Corbières and lunch on divinely gamy grouse mousse, slabs of wonderful foie gras, and a splendid hare à la royale, marinated for days, then cooked in a concoction of red wine, puréed innards, and the hare’s own blood. To finish, perhaps a slice of pear charlotte and a glass of the plum brandy called vieille prune.
The meal, one can be fairly safe in assuming, is pretty close to the one you would have eaten in the same restaurant in 1923, which is to say, when the nostalgists were busy eating the old-fashioned dinners they would later claim they couldn’t find anymore. (À Sousceyrac was undoubtedly intended to induce deep nostalgia in Parisians the day it opened; its southwestern-inflected menu practically reads like a roster of what Frenchmen like to call The Patrimony.) The present proprietor, the grandson of the original owner, has himself been with the restaurant for forty years. The ruddy dewlaps on the customers have been well nurtured with goose fat and Armagnac. The dark wood is further darkened with nicotine; the wine list may be superficially rudimentary but seems well stocked with the sort of black-toned southern wines that go so well with this food. À Sousceyrac is also in its way, perhaps, perfect.
So is Le Petit Marguery, down near the carrefour des Gobelins, which is centered around a glassed-in diorama portraying a moth-eaten hunting ferret surrounded by giant mushrooms and battered copper pots. The restaurant, which has been run by the Cousin brothers for eighteen years, is also an old-fashioned bistro of plenty, populated with middle-aged locals who have the relaxed, satisfied air of people who have eaten well their entire lives and seem to have been looking forward to the exact details of the meal for weeks—hare, of course, and partridge, and bloody-rare slices of wild duck breast dusted simply with finely ground white pepper and fanned out over a mound of crunchy shredded cabbage moistened with sautéed foie gras.
In the fall, the Cousins serve an awe-inspiring sauté of woodsy wild mushrooms with garlic and a few pine needles for authenticity. The dish has a meaty intensity but is better, more complex, than mere animal flesh, a total breath of autumn in the forest: Crunchy and chewy, soft and stretchy, the different mushrooms parse themselves out in your mouth in a thousand different ways, like smoky, piney autumn air come to life.
There may be even more pleasure at Au Trou Gascon, a bastion of southwestern cooking in an obscure precinct of the Twelfth. Au Trou Gascon was apparently a hot address in the mid-’ 80s, the recipient of a level of attention not unlike that now being accorded to such reinvented bistros as La Régalade, when everybody crowded into the butter-yellow room with florid art nouveau moldings that seem to creep over half the ceiling to celebrate Alain Dutournier’s cooking.
Dutournier has been at his very uptown Carré des Feuillants for a dozen years now, but Au Trou Gascon, which he has maintained, is a dream restaurant, all pheasant and cèpes and fat Chalosse chickens, steaming bowls of cassoulet whose fragrance is enough to drive you mad, succulent confit crisp enough to deafen you, and an encyclopedic selection of Bordeaux and Madirans. The cabbage-wrapped young partridge baked in pastry is almost a miracle of execution, buttery, oozing juice, and flawlessly, utterly crisp.
But the meal I had probably been most looking forward to on this trip was at L’Ami Louis, the battered, relentlessly old-fashioned bistro on a dingy street near the Musée des Arts et Métiers that has been a symbol of old-fashioned good times for Americans at least since James Beard started writing about the place fifty years ago, and whose roast chicken, foie gras, and garlic potato cake are in some circles as big an attraction as the Louvre.
L’Ami Louis probably does have the best snails in the world—sizzling hot, plump, drowned in garlicky butter—and formidable scallops à la provençale. And actress Neve Campbell was sitting right behind us, ready for action (though perhaps not for three-pound slabs of steak) in tight, low-cut black leather. But the refrigerator-cold slabs of foie gras, rimmed with yellow fat, were as appetizing as raw lard, and the duck was tough as a biker jacket. The huge côte de boeuf, as big a hunk of meat as you have ever seen that wasn’t impaled on a meathook, had almost no flavor. And even the famous roast chicken didn’t differ appreciably from its unfamous brethren all over town. La Régalade was better in almost every respect.
We all want to experience the Paris of Hemingway, of Picasso, of Baudelaire; we want to dine in Atget photographs, to sup on meals that Alice B. Toklas might have approved of, that Mère Poulard might have cooked. Americans are not alone in these fixations. When I walk out the door of my apartment building in Greenwich Village, the sidewalks are almost always crowded with French tourists bent over their guidebooks, trying to find Hart Crane’s house or the bar where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death.
A friend recommended Chez Georges, a faded-looking place on a weary street near the newsrooms and wholesale decorator showrooms on the Place des Victoires. Chez Georges looks as if it might have come out of the pages of a Maigret novel: handwritten menu smeary and fading into purple, old mirrors darkening in blotches, leather banquettes, century-old ceiling moldings lumpy and misshapen with a zillion coats of paint. The tables are so close together that when someone needs to leave the banquette, practically everyone on that side of the restaurant stands up to allow her to pass, almost as if it were a row of seats in a movie theater.
I was happy, spooning a well-vinegared salad of museau (cattle snout) onto my plate from a big bowl the waitress had plopped on the table, plowing through a delicious plate of chops and fries, draining a bottle of Brouilly, looking hungrily at the great-looking frisée aux lardons at the next table, and contemplating the steak with shallots or grilled andouillettes I might have the next time I came in—until I glanced up from my plate and noticed that most of the other tables were filled with people who were no more working-class Parisian than me—journalists talking shop, decorators with their clients, a healthy subset of the sort of rich Texans (cowboy boots, big belt buckles, expensively dressed wives) that have been a cliché since at least the time when Mark Twain was an innocent abroad.
Ironically, the best bistro cooking reflects old-fashioned French values—values that the grand restaurants in grand, old-fashioned French spaces are barely permitted to embrace. Which brings us to my dinner at Le Cinq, in the newly renovated George V, an ornate hotel dining room that looks like the one every grand hotel in the United States once tried to copy: high ceilings, serene oil paintings, gilt everywhere, carts, gleaming silver domes, and perfected old-style tag-team service. In other words, everything the new bistro chefs are trying to escape.
The George V, of course, is famous as the hotel most beloved by Americans in the golden age of travel. The new owners apparently want to reinvent the place as a benchmark of ultraluxury, and the chef, Philippe Legendre, stolen from Taillevent in a famous raid, is amazingly assured, easily up to Michelin three-star level. (He had the stars for around a decade at Taillevent.) Legendre’s cooking is modern, although unlike Gagnaire he is working in a recognizable idiom, definitely within the context of the three-star luxury meal. But as with Debussy, even when one of the melodies seems familiar, it’s not as i
f you could leave the place humming the tune.
The first dish was Gagnaire-like, but also somehow not: a large, silver soupspoon containing a single warmed oyster, an incredibly fragrant slice of truffle, and a few grains of caviar. The truffle made the natural muskiness of the oyster blossom with loveliness, and the caviar brought out its deep-sea notes like a violin doubling the melody an octave above. There was a drizzle of foamed beurre blanc, which deepened the richness. The oyster had been gently warmed to that magic point where brininess was still the most prominent flavor, but the flesh had firmed just enough to make the internal bits slightly crunchy, like a rare scallop: an oyster amplified in all its components, heightened, but still an oyster. This one spoonful may have contained everything great about French cooking at its best. Under the spoon—a single bite, remember—was a sort of ravioli stuffed with a little more caviar, which functioned almost as a Talmudic commentary on the mouthful that had preceded it.
There was an extraordinary fricassee of Breton lobster, in which the tail, still in its shell, had been briefly sautéed, chopped into three hunks, and lowered into a sort of beurre blanc, sweetened with bits of chestnut, that gradually darkened into an intense lobster sauce as you dipped your spoon into it. The shell-on technique seemed fairly amazing, both as a way of getting you to interact with your entrée (sometimes in luxury restaurants it almost feels as if the food has been predigested for you) and as a way of adding to the flesh the special succulence that meat roasted on its bone always seems to have.
The captain cheerfully substituted for the scheduled lamb on the tasting menu the moment I indicated even a slight interest in game. And it was hare (it is always hare): lièvre à la royale, served under another bed of mashed potatoes, which was perhaps slightly lighter, more refined than anything you might find at a bistro but delicious in its genteel way. The glorious stink of the hare, almost dissolved into the glorious sauce, was all anyone could have asked for. And at this point, twenty days and maybe fifteen hares into my trip to Paris, I was asking a lot.
CHOCOLATE SOUFFLÉS
(Adapted from Pierre Gagnaire)
Serves 4 generously
Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 40 min
The French, who invented soufflés, understand that the whole point is that everything that rises falls. Soufflés should not be overcooked; they should be slightly creamy in the middle.
2 tablespoons superfine granulated sugar plus additional for coating soup plates
4 oz Valrhona Caraïbe bittersweet (66%) chocolate, finely chopped
6 large egg yolks
½ tablespoon Cognac
7 large egg whites
⅛ teaspoon salt
Unsweetened cocoa powder for dusting
Special equipment: 4 (1½-to 2-cup) ovenproof soup plates
Accompaniments: pistachio ice cream, warm chocolate sauce, and caramelized nuts
Preheat oven to 400°F.
Butter inside of soup plates, then coat well with some superfine sugar, knocking out excess. Chill plates.
Melt chocolate in a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Remove bowl from pan.
Beat together yolks and Cognac in a large bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until yolks are thick, pale, and form a ribbon when beaters are lifted (about 4 minutes with a standing mixer or 7 minutes with a handheld). Mix in chocolate at low speed.
Beat whites with salt in another large bowl with cleaned beaters at medium speed until they just hold soft peaks. Gradually add remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, beating at medium speed, then beat at high speed until whites just hold stiff peaks.
Stir one third of whites into chocolate mixture to lighten, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly in 2 batches. Divide among soup plates and put 2 plates on each of 2 large baking sheets. Bake soufflés in upper and lower thirds of oven until puffed and set, 12 to 14 minutes (soufflés on top rack may finish cooking first).
Lightly dust soufflés with cocoa and serve with accompaniments.
Cooks’ note:
The eggs in this recipe may not be fully cooked, which could be of concern if salmonella is a problem in your area.
PISTACHIO ICE CREAM
(Pierre Gagnaire)
Makes about 5 cups
Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 5 hr
Because the oil in the pistachio paste separates from the solids, it is necessary to blend the contents of the entire can of paste in a food processor until it is creamy and light in texture.
4 large egg yolks
¼ cup sugar
1½ tablespoons water
2 tablespoons well-blended pistachio paste
1 cup chilled heavy cream
Special equipment: an instant-read thermometer
Beat together yolks, sugar, and water in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water with a handheld electric mixer at high speed until thick, pale, and registers 140°F on thermometer. Continue beating over simmering water, maintaining 140°F, 3 minutes more. Remove bowl from heat and gradually add pistachio paste, beating until incorporated. Chill until cold, about 15 minutes.
Beat cream with cleaned beaters until it just holds stiff peaks. Stir one third of cream into pistachio base to lighten, then fold in remaining cream gently but thoroughly. Scrape into an airtight container and freeze until firm, about 4 hours.
WARM CHOCOLATE SAUCE
(Pierre Gagnaire)
Makes about ¾ cup
Active time: 10 min Start to finish: 10 min
2 oz Valrhona Caraïbe bittersweet (66%) chocolate, finely chopped
½ cup heavy cream
Put chocolate in a bowl. Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan, then pour over chocolate and whisk until smooth. Keep warm, covered, until ready to serve.
CARAMELIZED NUTS
(Pierre Gagnaire)
Makes about cups
Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 45 min
The coating on these nuts is wonderfully delicate, and the method couldn’t be simpler.
½ cup hazelnuts (2 oz)
½ cup blanched almonds (2 oz)
½ cup unsalted roasted cashews (2 oz)
½ cup whole pecans (2 oz)
½ cup whole walnuts (2 oz)
Vegetable oil for greasing foil
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup water
1½ tablespoons honey
Preheat oven to 350°F. Toast hazelnuts in a shallow baking pan until fragrant and a shade darker, about 8 minutes.
When hazelnuts are cool enough to handle, wrap in a kitchen towel and rub to remove skins. (Not all skins will come off.) Transfer hazelnuts to a large bowl with almonds, cashews, pecans, and walnuts. Line baking pan with foil and lightly oil.
Bring sugar, water, and honey to a boil in a small saucepan over moderate heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Pour over nuts and stir until nuts are well coated. Transfer nuts with a slotted spoon to baking pan (discarding syrup) and roast in 1 layer in middle of oven, stirring and redistributing nuts occasionally, until golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes.
Lightly oil another sheet of foil and put on a work surface. Spread nuts in 1 layer on foil and cool completely. Break apart any nuts that are stuck together.
Cooks’ note:
Candied nuts can be made 1 week ahead and kept in an airtight container at room temperature.
March 2001
THE NEW FACE OF PARIS
Paul Goldberger
In Paris, the writer Françoise Sagan once observed, the past was ever present; you could not escape it. For all its beauty, the city could sometimes be stifling, which is why Sagan, like so many Parisians in the 1950s and ’60s, looked across the Atlantic for a sense of the new. “The French are the spoiled children of history, and the Americans are its resourceful orphans,” she declared.
That was then, and this is now. The days when Paris felt like a Belle Epoque theme park have been over for a while, but t
oday, forty years after Sagan made that remark, Paris is less in the grip of its past than ever before. The Paris that everyone knows, the extraordinary city of old buildings, streets, parks, and monuments that make up the most sensual urban fabric in the world, isn’t gone, and it isn’t even terribly different. But it is no longer the inhibiting force it once was. What has changed is the way that the Paris we all carry around in our heads no longer makes architects afraid to design new and different things. All of that history that weighed so heavily on creativity now seems to have the opposite effect. There is more of a sense of adventure, more sheer modernist exuberance, in the public architecture of Paris right now than in that of any city in the United States.
It isn’t just a matter of great modernist monuments, like the Centre Pompidou and the pyramid at the Louvre, or the immense and odd Grande Arche de la Défense, a 362-foot-high hollowed-out cube. But they set a tone that has now shown up in things as small as phone booths, bus shelters, and the design of the métro, and as large as new and innovative parks along the edges of the city. Most of these places are far off the tourist route (though the phone booths and bus shelters are everywhere), and they don’t so much change the fabled image of Paris as coexist beside it. The new architecture and design that have come increasingly to define the public realm in Paris have created a setting for the routines of daily life that is far more connected to the twentieth century—or the twenty-first. Almost no other city in the world can make that claim.
Where else, after all, would you walk your dog past a sleek, white office building housing a television network to enter a park that is designed with abstract structures of concrete and monumental glass houses? Nowhere, I suspect, but in the Fifteenth Arrondissement, in the southwest corner of Paris, where Richard Meier’s headquarters for Canal Plus sits beside the entrance to the Parc André-Citroën, the site of a former automobile factory that has been turned into a kind of thirty-five-acre shrine to avant-garde landscape design. You wouldn’t see either one of those places in New York, let alone both of them.
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