Provincial Comfort in Paris A quiet, comfy setting for a thoroughly unpretentious taste of classic French cuisine. It’s been a busy week on the food front – that’s what happens when you have houseguests – with return visits to Ze … Read More
Buttering Up Customers It’s not often that everyone in a party of four at a restaurant table (or boudoir-like dining area, but more on that later) goes into ecstasies over the butter, but that was the case the other night … Read More
Yellow Cab Cuisine Cheerful dining with often sublime results. February 2005; updated Oct. 15, 2008 THIS RESTAURANT IS NOW CLOSED The cheerful Taxi Jaune, located in the wholesale leather-goods section of the Marais (where tourists often fear to tred), has … Read More
The Sweet Scent of Stardom All the elements of success: gray-beige decor, great food sources, a talented chef and well-schooled staff. It’s getting to be a bit much, all this gray-beige decor. Every aspirational restaurant startup has it. Have those … Read More
Regional Byways Seasonal berries with a melon-ribbon bow. I take real pleasure in seeing a new restaurant open and take off seemingly effortlessly. A la Chataigne opened earlier this year, but when I was there very recently, it felt as … Read More
Simon Says: Don’t Miss It The decor is minimal, the food memorable. Japanese food remains largely terra incognita for me, and I have more than a sneaking suspicion that like other “ethnic” cuisines, Japanese food is dumbed down here for … Read More
Going My Way? When have sardine rillettes ever looked so lovely? A new restaurant has opened in my old stomping grounds, the quartier Maubert in Paris’s fifth arrondissement, and is already attracting quite a bit of notice. My own interest … Read More
Pushing the Bottle About The wine’s the thing at Les Papilles. Another one of those places that had been sitting on my list for an age, Les Papilles (it means “taste buds” but has overtones of lip-smacking pleasure, which the … Read More
Well-Bred Critic’s Choice February 15, 2006; updated May 23, 2008 French restaurant critics have a new chouchou. La Ferrandaise, which opened last September, has already been named restaurant of the year 2006 by Claude Lebey’s “Le Petit Lebey 2006 des … Read More
High Table If Les Cocottes is modeled on an Amiercan diner, it must be a very classy one. After our foray into Constant-land last year, I went back to give Christian Constant’s latest addition to his stable of restaurants … Read More
