Pros: sharp, seasonal cuisine; wholesome proportions; intriguing wine list; friendly service Cons: rather trendy, characterless mise-en-scène As the annual Nuit Blanche festivities kicked off in more kinetic parts of the city, I ventured to a quiet bourgeois neighborhood near the … Read More
How can people think of the Middle Ages as dusty and dull? To anyone who leans in that direction, en garde! A copy of Stephen O’Shea’s new book, The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt against the Inquisition in the Last Days … Read More
Pros: fresh food; easygoing, accommodating service; pretty decor; reasonably priced wine Cons: out-of-season asparagus, desserts lacking in oomph At first glance, Le Bien Décidé seems to be a meat-eaters’ paradise – the extremely limited menu the other night offered pied … Read More
Pros: Excellent, friendly service; quality ingredients and mostly good cooking Cons: Some dishes needed work, no fixed-price menu, noisy The service at Le Garde Temps, a railroad-car-shaped restaurant just down the street from the Moulin Rouge, is so sweetly solicitous … Read More
Pros: Tantalizing menu; quality, fresh ingredients; relaxed, charming atmosphere; personable service Cons: Rather unfocused fixed-price menu When my foodie father asked me, across the Skype lines from Florida, “What’s the perfect dish for a hot day?” I floundered, though, to … Read More
Certain aspects of novelist Amélie Nothomb’s work are utterly predictable: for example, every fall a new novel (usually around 150 pages long) appears without fail, with a portrait of the author (easily identifiable by her pale face and long black … Read More
Pros: Tip-top ingredients, creative cooking, friendly atmosphere and service, reasonable prices Cons: Rather noisy, uncomfortable stools After enjoying two utterly delightful meals at Frenchie soon after it opened in 2009, I wanted to go back often and introduce friends to … Read More
After a few months of life in a lively university town on the south coast of England, I was distracted by the siren call of Paris and decided, not entirely unwillingly, to heed it (and the request of my editor … Read More
Nicholas Hammond begins his groundbreaking new study, Gossip, Sexuality and Scandal in France (1610–1715), by pointing out that there is no satisfying equivalent to the term “gossip” in French. Such linguistic disparities are sometimes deeply revealing: while French has a … Read More
Elaine Sciolino’s new book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, adds one more tome to a mounting pile purporting to explain what makes the French different from mere mortals. But Sciolino, a longtime New York Times … Read More
