Having lived in Boston, New York, London, and Paris, along with having spent huge amounts of time in Barcelona and Prague, I've always been fascinated to observe the different ways in which various villes approach summer. Summer heat turns over-achieving Manhattan into a sexy slacker, or a place where people expose a lot of skin, stay up late, and party, while Barcelona lives at night, and Praguers head off to one of the lakes in the surrounding countryside to strip off and go for an icy swim (cold beer figures big in Prague, too).

The first summer I lived in Paris, my apartment on the elegant  rue Monsieur in the 7th arrondissement overlooked a beautiful interior garden with several magnificent ancient chestnut trees. One stiffling Saturday afternoon, I decided to set up camp here in a spot of shade with a good book. Instinctively knowing the French capital isn't a bare-chested kind of place, I wore a short sleeve shirt and shorts and carried a folding canvas chair into the shade, along with a thermos of iced tea. Engrossed in my reading for an hour, I was startled when I heard a rapping on a distant window. When I looked up, however, I saw no one at any of the windows on the back of the building. A few minutes later, there was another frantic bit of rapping, but again no face at the window. Fifteen minutes later, however, the concierge, a gentle Spanish woman, came to speak with me. "Bonjour," she said with the wistful smile of an unwilling messenger, and then, in her beautifully accented French, "I'm sorry, but one of the neighbors has complained about your being in the garden." Why?, I wondered, and then she continued, "What you did makes perfect sense to me, but they say that the garden is meant to be looked at rather than inhabited." She sighed and gently shook her head, clearly not enjoying being the messenger of this message.

Paris, happily, has made a lot of progress with summer since then, but it remains at very formal city, which is surely one of the reasons I like it so much. There are, however, ways of not only coping with but enjoying the summer heat a la francaise et en ville. One of the best is to seek out a terrace or sidewalk table for a meal al fresco after sundown. This is exactly what I did on this sweltering night, and despite the fact that I was pretty much dead-on accurate in expecting that my dinner with Bruno at Cru would be underwhelming, I enjoyed it very much. Tucked away in a courtyard in the antiquaires quarter of Saint Paul in the Marais, this place is a charming gadget that works best for summer, since almost everything on the menu is served cru (raw). The idea, of course, is that it's more refreshing to eat cool food than hot, and so they lay it on with a suite of carpaccios and tartares, most of which are better than average despite being rudely overpriced. Bruno enjoyed his starter salad of raw seiche (squid) with vegetables and greens, and my sea bass carpaccio was delicious despite being served with a quarter of lime so rotten it fell apart when I squeezed it. Still, the fish was of excellent quality, as was Bruno's tartare de veau a la citronelle (veal tartare with lemongrass) and my steak tartare with very tasty "frites de legumes" (fried slivers of sweet potato, potato and celeriac). Abetted by an absolutely charming waitress, a delightful student from an African country, and a cold bottle of rose, we had a lovely time, but you'd never find me here anytime from mid-September to mid-May--this place is as (precariously) seasonably specific as a restaurant could be.

A better measure of how much Paris has changed in its summertime comportment is La Terrasse du Mama Shelter, the funky and very hip ephemeral barbecue restaurant that's just opened on the roof of the Mama Shelter hotel in the 20th. It's not cheap at 39 Euros a head, but it's fun to lounge on one of the day beds or at one of the long wooden tables d'hotes with such summery fare as grilled salmon-and-tuna kebabs, merguez, beef, and chicken, accompanied by a variety of salads and side dishes, and a nice selection of desserts estivale, like strawberry tart or sliced water melon. 

Cru, Village Saint Paul, 7 rue Charlemagne, 4th, Tel. 01-40-27-81-84. Metro: Saint Paul. Average 50 Euros.

La Terrasse du Mama Shelter, 109 rue de Bagnolet, 20th, Tel 01-43-48-48-48. Metro: Porte de Bagnolet. Average 40 Euros.

Having read rave reviews of the new Bar Breton in New York City, I was looking forward to dinner there on my first night in steamy, soggy Manhattan (it's been raining here for days). I'd always liked chef Cyril Reynaud's cooking at Fleur de Sel, and since I'm a huge fan of galettes, or buckwheat flour crepes with savory fillings, I was confident of a good feed. Alas, the meal was a major letdown beginning with a cocktail that smelled and tasted like long shoreman's sweat (rest assured that I'm guessing on this one), followed by a special starter of Virginia oysters that came to the table drowning in a sauce mignonette (shallots and vinegar) that completely obliterated their flavor. Why a restaurant would automatically apply such a heavy-handed garnish rather than serving it as as side dish is beyond me. Next, my galette with a small green salad--hungry as a farmhand, I ordered the version with Black Forest ham, Gruyere, and an egg. What arrived was a correctly crispy galette filled with a flabby slice of tasteless supermarket quality boiled ham--if they'd run out of Black Forest ham, the waitress should have said so--and bits of rubbery cheese which led me to conclude that the cheese was poor quality, pre-grated or both. The smoked trout in my friend Nanette's galette was completely tasteless, too, and the only saving grace of this meal was a fairly priced bottle of Spanish Rueda, a nice summer wine, and some very good company.

Having read a major shout-out good review of the Greenwich Tavern as one of the best places for brunch in Fairfield County, Connecticut in the metropolitan pages of a certain estimable New York newspaper, I invited Mom to lunch for Father's Day on Sunday. Despite the patrician sounding name, this rather frumpy little restaurant turned out to be located on U.S. 1, aka the Post Road, which is renamed Putnam Avenue in Greenwich. I was immediately suspicious of this place when I realized it had valet parking, too--I mean after all, what's the point of living in the suburbs if you can't park your own car. In any event, the meal was more of an intriguing study in profit-maximizing food-service industry practices than it was a good feed. Though Mom's wild mushroom and andouille potstickers were pretty good (if boldly overpriced at $12), the shrimp in my cocktail were flaccid and had been hanging around the kitchen for a while. Next, we both ordered the lobster roll, which arrived as two dainty little buns of barely dressed lobster, a smart way of tinkering with the bread to crustacean ratio. And we both had cones of cold fries, and then a large order of garlic Parmesan fries, entirely unnecessary, that the waiter charmed Mom into wanting. A middle-brow California Chardonnay at $12 a glass meant we clearly in hedge-fund territory, too, and the only half-decent moment of this meal was the nicely made pecan tart. Otherwise, yet another expensive and mediocre meal in southwestern Connecticut, a place I must visit regularly to see my family, so if anyone has any suggestions of truly good eats in Stamford, Norwalk, Westport, Bridgeport, etc., I'd be very grateful.

I won't waste anyone's time with Pala, one of the trendy new places that have opened in the Bowery neighborhood as that part of the city has so improbably gentrified. Though they won a reader's poll in the "New York Daily News" for having the city's best pizza, what I ate with my friend Joel from San Francisco was really third rate. The pizza came to the table cold and the cheese on my "fungi and sausage" looked and tasted like melted plastic. A robot-like bus boy stopped by every five minutes to see if we were "still working" on the pizza, an infelicitous phrase if ever there were one, and this brazonly mediocre meal added injury to insult by costing $100. 

Just when I'd started having a flickering doubt or two about the health of the New York restaurant scene, I went to dinner at Aldea, a beautiful new restaurant on 17th between 5th and 6th, and had a superb meal. Young chef George Mendes, a Portuguese-American from Bethel, CT, has worked in Europe with Roger Verge, Alain Ducasse, Martin Bersategui (Saint Sebastien), and Alain Passard, and it's the intensity of a certain European technicity applied to his personal riff on Portuguese food that makes this such an exciting place for a meal. Arriving late, the staff was friendly, relaxed and welcoming, and the store-front space designed by Stephanie Goto looks like one of the hip new restaurants in Barcelona--good lighting, chain mail dividers, frosted glass panels, lots of white. Hungry, we ordered two "petiscos," or snacks to nibble on while waiting for our starters to arrive, and both were superb. Fine slices of sea urchin topped cauliflower puree on wands of toast, while Benton's country ham from Tennessee was exquisitely silky and smoky and came with a pan tomate, or slice of baguette smeared with fresh tomato puree. Next, I had the shrimp alhinho, crunchy prawns flavored with pimenton, garlic and coriander, a brilliant melange of flavors, and Tom went with the "migliorelli farms' peas and Tennessee bacon" with a soft-poached egg, green garlic and summer truffle slices, a superb dish that's very similar to what's being served in really good young Barcelona bistros like Embat. I vaguely feared that the magic wouldn't last through our main courses--so often young chefs excel with their starters but lose their footing with the mains. Not Mendes, however, since his arroz de pato was one of the most delicious things I've eaten all year--think short grained rice cooked paella style (with a nice crust) and garnished with tender pieces of duck confit and coins of chorizo, a succulent and beautifully balanced dish. Tom's Niman Ranch pork loin with smoked yellow corn, manilla clams and a scallion-ramp glaze was excellent, too; a rift on a classic Portuguese cataplana, this version had the same intriguing mix of earthy and marine flavors but with considerably more finesse. We finished up with an order of sonhos, or little dreams, donut like nibbles with spiced chocolate, smoked paprika apricot, and hazelnut praline. All told, an excellent and very original meal, and since Aldea has a counter from which you can watch Mendes and team at work, I'm already looking forward to a solo lunch that will allow me to observe the crew in action.

Aldea, 31 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011, T. 212-675-7223. Avg $60

Bar Breton, 254 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY  10016, T: 212-213-4999. Avg $40

Greenwich Tavern, 1392 East Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT 06870, T: 203-698-9033. Avg $50

Sunday night in Paris for fish-lovers is always a challenge, since odds are that whatever you'll be able to reel in won't have seen the briney for at least four days. One place I've never hesitated to go for a seafood feast on Sunday, however, is La Cagouille, chef Gerard Allemandou's restaurant in an unlovely modern urban redevelopment near the Gare Montparnasse. I've known and liked Allemandou's minimalist seafood cooking for many years, and have always especially loved his moules bouchot (tiny mussels) cooked on a hot metal plaque. For a longtime, they've also offered good-value prix-fixe menus--26 Euros for a starter and a main course, or 42 for starter, main, dessert and wine--that led me to recommend it to visitors, too. But while doing the research for Hungry for Paris, I had two mediocre meals in a row here and it didn't make the book. On a pretty summer Sunday night, though, a couple of fish-mad friends from "fish deprived" Kansas City wanted to eat outside on a quiet terrace, so I decided to give it another chance. Since the terrace is set back from the street and hidden behind planters of bamboo and rhododendrons, it's a lovely setting for a meal, so I went off to Montparnasse with my fingers crossed. Things got off to a good start with a complimentary plate of steamed coques, or cockles, and the bread and butter was good, too. Unfortunately, the dishes that were available as part of the good-value prix-fixe appealed to none of us, so emboldened by an excellent bottle of Quincy for 29 Euros, we threw caution to the winds and went a la carte. Three of us started with chipirons (baby squid) with garlic, and the other one made an even worse error with a plate of dreadfully overcooked and overpriced asparagus. The "chipirons" were lukewarm, came as a stingy portion, and had an unpleasantly gummy, rubbery texture. Next, my cod steak with garlic cream sauce was pleasant, but the accompanying side dish of pureed celeri rave had clearly been microwaved. Because we were having a nice time--good company, good wine, a pleasant setting, no one had much to say about the food until we skipped dessert and went directly to the coffee. Then: "the salmon was very disappointing, over-cooked and without much flavor," "the scallops were massacred by the Balsamic vinegar sauce," and "one of the rougets was oddly mushy." Overall grade: C-

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Though I've always been intrigued by Gilles Choukroun's cooking, I haven't always understood it--if some of his daring mixes of spices and textures were spectacular, others seemed like culinary mannerism. I loved what he did way back when he was at the Cafe des Delices in the 6th arrondissement, but then he seem to become rather over-wrought when he moved to Angl'Opera on the Avenue de l'Opera. The drab setting of a hotel dining room certainly didn't suit such a lively and inventive chef either, and the staff at this address, now closed, were singularly lacking in the enthusiasm necessary to serve such original food. Now Choukroun is back with MBC (menthe, basilique, coriandre) a wonderful new contemporary bistro that's offers a perfect and very pretty setting for his vividly imagined modern French cooking. Meeting a friend for lunch the other day, I was immediately impressed by the relaxed lounge-bar decor of Choukroun's new place and his 19 Euro lunch menu. After we'd perused the menu over excellent aubergine caviar with bread sticks, I started with a giant mushroom ravioli, which came to the table in a black-matte Japanese bowl. The ravioli was made from pot-sticker pasta, generously filled with girolles, and nestled into a miso-soy broth with fresh mint and Thai basil, and it was delicious. The elegant Monsieur R loved his mackerel tartare--a very popular dish in Paris these days because mackerel is healthy, cheap and one of the rare fish that isn't threatened with imminent extinction, with Moroccan spices. Next, I couldn't resist Choukroun's "hamburger prefere," which turned out to be a sublime sandwich of roast lamb seasoned with marinated mustard seeds and a luscious North African sauce on toasted whole-wheat bread. Desserts were excellent, too, including a sublime lemon tart and chocolate-olive ravioli with fermented milk ice cream. Though the Porte Maillot is not a part of Paris that often attracts me, I'm very much looking forward to my next meal at MBC.

MBC, 4 rue du Débarcadère, 17th, Tel. 01-45-72-22-55. Mo Porte Maillot. Closed Sat. noon and Sunday. Lunch menus 19 Euros, 29 Euros. A la carte 45 Euros.

In Nice this summer, there's bad news and there's good news. The bad is that talented young chef Jouni Tormanen has been mysteriously forced out of his job as head chef at La Reserve. For the moment, no one seems to know where Jouni has done or if he's planning to open another restaurant locally, which is a shame, because he really is a terrific cook. The good news is that a constellation of small, excellent modern bistros are popping up all over the city. A perfect example is Millesime 82 (which is named for the year the chef was born). Stopping in for lunch on a recent Saturday, I liked this funky little dining room, its relaxed and friendly staff, excellent wine list (including several brilliant Corsican roses), and their smart idea of serving a choice of three main courses and a single dessert at noon. From the little chalkboard menu, we tried a generously served and beautifully dressed salad of tender octopus with chickpeas, tomatoes, fresh coriander, parsley and a light vinaigrette and an equally good artichoke risotto that was topped with slices of delicious steak cooked rare. The apple-banana crumble we shared for dessert was delicious, too, and the next time I'm town, I'll definitely stop in for dinner, which has a full menu. 

In Paris, it's taken a longtime for Alain Ducasse, Inc., to get Rech, the snobbish seafood brasserie in the 17th right, but to their credit, it's likely to become one of the best seafood restaurants in the world now that Jacques Maximin has been recruited to oversee the menu. Maximin, the 70s-80s wonder chef of the Riviera, is a hard-working, passionate cook with a deceptively brilliant aptitude for simplicity (his simplicity is the same as that of an Antwerp diamond cutter). What he knows how to do--and does with deep modesty--is extract all of the flavor out of every fin and frond he works with. He's just getting started in Paris, but I've been dreaming about an exquisite salad I ate here the other night for over a week--mesclun, poached egg, radishes, a few Nicois olives, fruity green olive oil, and thin strips (goujonettes, if you will) of steamed sole with the most magnificent aioli (garlic mayonnaise) I've ever eaten. Next, perfectly cooked salmon with a sauce vierge (chopped tomato and frizzled basil in olive oil), then a magnificent hunk of camembert, and a drop-dead good pain perdu ('French toast' made with brioche) with weepingly perfect salted-caramel ice cream. I didn't like this restaurant at all when it first became part of the Ducasse stable two years ago, but now, with Maximin, and the brilliant stewardship of maitre d'hotel Eric Mercier, it's become one of my favorite tables. 

Millésime 82, 6 rue Chauvain, Nice, Tél: 04 93 01 84 83, Avg lunch 30 Euros, Avg dinner 50 Euros.

Rech, 62 Avenue des Ternes, 17th, Tel: 01 45 72 41 60, Metro: Etoile or Place des Ternes, Dinner menu 53 Euros.

For anyone who doesn't have anything more pressing to do this weekend, you might want to watch my appearance as a judge on this weekend's episode of "IRON CHEF."

According to the website, it's being broadcast on Sunday night

Jun 07, 2009, 10:00 PM ET/PT

Jun 08, 2009, 1:00 AM ET/PT

Jun 11, 2009, 8:00 PM ET/PT

The allure of being in a secret garden makes many a Parisian less gastronomically exigent as summer arrives. Arriving on the white gravel terrace on the edge of the magnificent gardens that are hidden behind La Maison d'Amerique Latine in the Faubourg Saint Germain (7th arrondissement) the other night reminded me of how I'd first been seduced by Gallic elegance as a thirteen-year-old boy. The lush green lawn was perfectly mown and edged, unfurled like a carpet a few feet from our table, and rolled to the bottom of the garden where stone cherubim coyly peered from banks of rhododendron. On a summer night, the sky was pearled pink and almost irridescent behind a poplar tree that had been pollarded to resemble a vegetal version of one of the giant stone heads of Easter island. The delicious effect of this exquisite mis en scene was to be briefly transported beyond time and care, a wonderful escape that only became better as dusk fell and the garden more and more resembled a Magritte painting.

On the way to this beautiful bower, I mentioned to Devreaux, the friend who was joining me, that she shouldn't be packing heightened gastronomic expectations. With any luck, the food would be fine, but the reason one craved a meal here was the setting. Our meal began inauspiciously with over-cooked snippets of foie gras as an unnecessary and unwanted amuse bouche, and then debuted with langoustines prepared three different ways for Devreaux and terrine de foie gras de canard for me. While my foie gras was good, the langoustines were sadly tasteless, especially as part of a 79 Euro meal. Next, I had delicious turbans of sole stuffed with a mushroom flecked fish mousse and Devreaux came up short again with a tough and curiously tastely veal filet. A surprisingly awful goat cheese from Quatrehommes followed, and dessert was truly forgettable. Still, we left the garden with dread and melancholy, since it had been a longtime that I'd enjoyed a meal so much.

So weighing the fact that the setting is exquisite but the food expensive and uneven, what I'd do next time is book at 8.00pm to enjoy the best light in the garden and order the 55 Euro prix-fixe dinner menu with a bottle of the inexpensive but very pleasant Mexican rose to keep a lid on the bill. And overall, you'll do better here if you order the simpler dishes like cod sauteed with peppers and onions or grilled filet of beef with baby vegetables.

Another lovely setting for an alfresco meal is the ivy covered interior courtyard of the Hotel Plaza Athenee where the seasonal restaurant La Cour Jardin sets up for the summer. Run under the auspices of Alain Ducasse this restaurant is offering a truly interesting and delicious menu this season. Throwing the usual summer cliches out the window, this menu focuses on vegetables and grains. Lunching here with Bruno, we had a truly excellent meal that began with a vegetarian version of les petits farcis, the Nicoise dish of stuffed baby vegetables, the difference here being that they'd been stuffed with spelt instead of meat, and a sublime lobster salad with a zucchini-millet piperade. Next, a terrific Catalan inspired rice dish garnished with fresh baby peans, fine slices of squid and lemon rind, and cooked so that it has formed a delicious crust on the bottom for me, and roast lamb with simmered flageolets and broad beans for Bruno. The strawberry tart we shared for dessert was excellent, too, and were it not for the fact that this place is very expensive, I'd be a regular here this summer.

Finally, for anyone who finds these prices totally out of reach, I had a wonderful meal the other night at a sidewalk table at Au Coin des Gourmets in the Latin Quarter that ran less than 30 Euros with several shared carafes of the house wine. Don't miss the twelve-vegetable spring rolls or the Vietnamese ravioli, and note that the Crepe Saigonnaise, a crunchy squid and shrimp omelette filled with bean sprouts and fresh herbs, makes for a wonderful summer supper.

Au Coin des Gourmets, 5 rue Dante, 5th, Tél.: 01 43 26 12 92. Mo Maubert Mutualite or Saint Michel. Average 30 Euros. Closed Sunday.

Maison de l'Amerique Latine, 117 boulevard Saint Germain, 7th, Tél.: 01 49 54 75 10. Mo Rue du Bac or Solferino, Lunch menu 40 Euros, Dinner menus 50 Euros, 79 Euros. Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner.

La Cour Jardin, Hotel Plaza Athenee, 25 avenue Montaigne, 8th, Tél.: 01 53 67 66 65. Mo Alma-Marceau. Average meal 100 Euros. Open daily.

  During the last few months, I've been traveling all over France for various stories I'm working on, and so I've had a very intense in-the-trenches experience of what it's like to eat-on-the-go in France today. I'm not talking about leisure travelers who have the time to track down a great bistro off of the autoroute and make time for a good meal, but someone who is doing busy, time-short business travel in the country that has long claimed to have the world's best food.

I actually think it still does, with the woefully glaring exception of eating-in-transit situations. French food in airports, on trains and in highway rest-stops is just plain awful, and rather than waste billions of Euros vainly promoting the French language around the globe annually through the Alliance Francaise (do that many people in Katmandu really want to learn French, or does it appeal to Caviar Gauche sensiblities to have an AF there), I'd like to suggest that France launch a NASA style initiative to reinvent mass catering, i.e. fast food. The fact that it was recently announced that McDonald's is soon to pick up another cluster of franchises in French highway rest stops speaks volumes. That said, I agree with chef Thierry Marx, who recently told me, "You can't kick McDonald's--they are only answering a need." Indeed, but let's have a French response instead.

And if anyone is looking for pointers on the subject, please allow me to share a recent hungry-in-transit experience that ended, er, um, happily, herewith:

With Nicholas Sarkozy and Barack Obama planning major road repair and building projects, it’s obvious that this is also the perfect time to totally rethink the quality of what both the French and Americans eat when they pull over for a meal along their country's high-speed road systems. Here, America actually has a longer and vaguely more glorious history, since stopping at the now defunct Howard Johnson’s chain (mostly in the North East and Middle West) used to be part of the fun of the long drive from my childhood home in Connecticut to summer vacations on Cape Cod and Nantucket—HJ’s fried clams were actually pretty good, as was their ice cream, especially the pale green mint chocolate chip. Unfortunately, however, most highway rest stop in both France and the United States have long since become culinary black holes, peddling only fast food and industrial sandwiches.

But as I recently discovered during a meal that was never meant to happen, it doesn’t have to be this way either. Let me explain.

Following a flight from my home in Paris to Llubljana last Fall, I’d planned lunch at Pri Lojetzu, the best restaurant in Slovenia, before heading to the Mediterranean resort of Portoroz to meet friends.  Alas, Air France was more than an hour late in leaving Paris, so around 2pm, I found myself hurdling down the highway during a light snow storm in the Justinian Alps with a growling stomach. To be sure, there were restaurants at the rest stops along the way, but since I was pretty certain that the odds of finding a decent meal at a Slovenian truck stop were nil, I pressed on.

   Though I’d never make it to Pri Lojetzu in time for lunch, I was still clinging to the idea of a platter of grilled langoustines at one of the little restaurants that overlook the pretty bay of Portoroz. As it snowed harder and harder, however, I realized I’d never get there in time for lunch and so very reluctantly pulled in to a rest stop with a restaurant. With any luck at all, I told myself, I could just get a plate of Prsut, the excellent prosciutto like Slovenian ham, and a nice glass of Teran, the best local red.

   If the hokey “old-fashioned country farmhouse” décor of the Marche restaurant where I stopped was rather wilting, the buffet style dining room smelled surprisingly good, like real cooking. Then I took a look at the salad bar and was amazed by the variety—grilled baby onions, marinated baby fennel bulb, five different bean salads, grilled eggplant, artichoke hearts, spelt salad, roasted tomatoes, and several different cabbage slaws, among other very fresh and tasty looking possibilities, plus a condiments stand featuring a bottle of first-rate Slovenian olive oil and another one of pumpkin-seed oil.

   After loading up on salad, I warily eyed the main courses, until I noticed that there was a rosti station (rosti is the signature Swiss dish of grated potatoes and bacon bits sautéed until it develops a crunchy crust) manned by a rosti master, and further along, a carvery with delicious looking roast chickens, roast beef and a rolled veal shoulder stuffed with vegetables. There were also three black cast-iron soup pots filled with soup, and a wonderful surprise—a big heated casserole of Jota, a hearty Slovenian classic that’s one of my favorite winter dishes, is also eaten in Italy’s Friuli and Croatia, and is made with sauerkraut, smoked pork, carrots, potatoes, red kidney beans, garlic and onions. I filled a plate with Jota, added a quarter bottle of pleasant Slovenian wine, a small mineral water, a still warm-from-the-oven pumpkin-seed-flecked roll and a slice of gibanica, a pastry-lined cake filled with poppy seeds, nuts, apples and quark. My lunch cost less than $9 and was absolutely delicious.

  I hadn’t, in fact, come across such good Euro highway eats since the first time I discovered Italy’s Autogrill restaurants, which serve up a better-than-average pan-Italian menu for reasonable prices along the main roads in that country. Of course I wondered if this Slovenian spot was a fluke, so during the next few days, I tried two other Marche restaurants along Slovenian roads, and both of them were just as unexpectedly good in terms of their regional cooking and seasonal produce as the first one.

  Intrigued, I investigated when I got home. It turns out that the Marche chain is owned by the Swiss hotel and catering company Moevenpick, which explains the rosti station I’d seen in the original Marche restaurant. The Marche restaurant web page also offered a succinct and happy explanation of the chain’s gastronomic goals—“The Seven Point Freshness Program: More Flavor Through:

*The use of fresh herbs and spices

*The use of high-quality oils (olive oil)

*The selection of regional and local products

*Our Emphasis on seasonal vegetables

*The fresh preparation of the products

*The gentle preparation of the raw products

*The accentuation of the unique flavor of the products”

Since Moevenpick has succeeded with its Marche restaurants in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland in Europe, plus franchises in Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea, it’s very much to be hoped that they’ll decide to take on France and North America. And if they don’t, that some other company will be inspired to launch of a renaissance of highway dining by the admirable quality and surprisingly excellent food the Swiss group. Of maybe the French and U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture could launch a Moevenpick inspired program to show off the astonishing agricultural bounty and regional cooking of France and the United States in roadside settings.

http://marche.moevenpick.com/#/marche_restaurants/627/-1/empty/en/