It was quite a scene at La Table 28 last night. This plain storefront space that previously housed talented Chicago born chef Daniel Rose's Spring, which will reopen on the rue Bailleul in March 2010 if all goes according to plan, was playing to a full house that was composed almost entirely of food writers and restaurant critics. Word had evidently gotten around very quickly that Rose had reincarnated the space as an intimate rotisserie restaurant, so an officious French lady food critic held court here, and a jet-lagged New York blogger was to be found at the table d'hotes across the way. Oh, and me? I was here to eat, and later write about it, of course, but also to have a good time. 

Rose himself was manning the new gas-fired rotisserie in the small open kitchen, and I have to say I really admired the way that he not only sent out excellent food all night long but adopted a cordial if thoroughly Zen attitude towards all of the sharp pencils in the room. They serve a single menu here nightly, and we began with a superb salad of gem lettuce garnished with pomegranate seeds and thin slices of delicious raw noir de Bigorre bacon and perfectly dosed with a cider-vinegar vinaigrette, a brilliant mix of textures and varying tones of sweet-and-sour acidity. Next, the main event, half of a beautifully roasted Coucou de Rennes chicken garnished with roasted carrots, turnips, parsnips and apples and a side of potatoes cooked with goose fat. This was happy, delicious, generously served comfort food at its very best, and the firm, almost alabaster-like flesh of the chicken was fine but full of flavor.

Finally, a baked pear cake with a wonderful garnish of creme fraiche, apple puree, lime zest and chocolate shards. 

A fine bottle of biodynamique Moulin a Vent vieille vignes at 23 Euros was just the ticket with this meal, and La Table 28, still a work in progress, is a place where I could very easily become a regular. Speaking briefly with Rose after dinner, though, he advised that reservations are essential, because he can only get so many of these chickens a day. He also mentioned that he'd liked to do suckling pig on the rotisserie, and maybe duck, and that he's toying with the idea of serving an all shellfish menu during the summer; rotisseried lobster just a ten minute walk from my front door? Now I really have something to look forward to next summer.

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Get ready to wince--the latest dispiriting French take on American eating in Paris is called HAND, as in Have A Nice Day. Oh help! During the twenty plus years I've lived in Paris, the city's popular idea of American food hasn't evolved one wit. It's still burgers, and burgers, and burgers, and Caesar salads, and brownies, and bagels, and Tex-Mex, and enough already! This stereotypical fat-fest is not only indigestible but just so totally wrong, as anyone who has eaten around America recently can tell you. From truly wonderful and very original little restaurants like Aldea in New York City to the terrific new wave of oyster houses in the South End of Boston, to say nothing of the gastro Renaissance of New Orleans and the endlessly appetizing food scenes of Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami and a dozen other major U.S. cities, America has never eaten so well.

So why the stodge fest in this great-looking little place with cobalt blue walls, industrial lighting, and the scuffed up wooden floors that are meant to recall, um, er, Soho? I went for Saturday lunch with one of many French friends who claim to love American food. She wanted a Caesar salad, a dish I could never imagine ordering in a restaurant, and what came to the table was something that might have been created by a drunk at a motel salad bar--chopped iceberg lettuce, oddly uniform chunks of lukewarm chicken breast, and a hair-pomade consistency dressing that had no taste at all.

Since I'm defenseless when it comes to onion rings, I had to have some with my bacon cheeseburger. If the burger was respectable enough, the accompanying "fries" were greasy, unpeeled potato quarters, likely baked, and an increasingly common cheat in busy profit-conscious French kitchen where real fries demand too much time and effort. To be sure, the "bacon" had nothing to do with real American bacon either and the bun was too large and too dense. But the beef was good, and if this burger didn't clock in at 13.50 Euros, or almost twenty bucks at current exchange rates, I might be tempted to return from time to time. Oh, and the onion rings? Just plain awful, as in in deep-fried. oil-impregnated little O's with the alarming consistency of a flabby arm. Or actually they reminded me of a deranged experiment a friend and I attempted a longtime ago with a box of Mrs. Paul's Onion rings while on a Spring break trip to North Carolina. College students with empty pockets, we avoided restaurants and spent most of a week living on sandwiches. Then one hot afternoon on the way to the beach, we stopped at a convenience store to buy beer and the onion rings called to me from deep inside of a frozen food case. The problem, of course, was that we had no where to cook them...but wait! Maybe we could leave them on a piece of aluminum foil on the hood of the car while we were swimming and the sun would cook them! The soggy, greasy muck that we found when we returned three hours later immediately went into a litter bin, and I swore off a career as a physicist.

La Table 28, 28 rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, 9th, Tel. 06-42-87-79-64. Mo Cadet. Avg 35 Euros

HAND, 39 rue de Richelieu, 1st, Tel. 01-40-15-03-27. Mo Pyramides or Palais Royale. Avg 20 Euros.