GOOD EATS IN HARD TIMES: LA GRANDE CASCADE

As the economic storm clouds continue to gather all around the world, many restaurateurs are battening down the hatches for a very difficult year in 2009 by abbreviating their menus and serving hours and shifting to cheaper ingredients in places where they might be less noticed. Others, however, are rising to the challenge of a newly pecunious public with good-value prix-fixe all-included menus. 

An excellent example of this accelerating trend is the 85 Euro menu (65 Euros without drinks) menu now being served at La Grande Cascade, the elegant Napoleon III pavilion in the Bois de Boulogne. Best-known for its lovely terrace during good weather, La Grande Cascade is also a delightful winter destination. Arriving for dinner the other night, a fire crackled on the hearth in the main dining room, an elegant salon with old-fashioned Brussels carpets, crystal chandeliers, and heavy silverware with a pretty Belle Epoque floral motif. Waiters in black waist coats conducted themselves like guests at a ball--formal but galant and charming, and chef Frederic Robert, ex-Lucas-Carton from the days when it was still Lucas Carton, cooks brilliant contemporary French dishes with a ballast of classical haute cuisine.

Le Menu du Marche changes regularly, but on this wintery night, it offered a choice of four starters, four main courses, and three desserts. Though my terrine of foie gras and celery root with a fine gloss of Xeres gelee was delicious, I envied Bruno his superb Emiette de tourteau au kumbawa, crabmeat lightly dressed in a kubawa (a variety of lime from Reunion) vinaigrette and garnished with baby vegetables for its freshness and lightness. Main courses were outstanding, too--smoked steamed salmon steak on a minestrone of artichokes in pale green seaweed sauce for me and a miniature tourte of wild duck in a sauce poivrade for Bruno. An excellent white Lirac from the Rhone Valley was served with our first courses, followed by a brilliant Corbieres for Bruno's main and the fourme d'ambert cheese I chose instead of dessert.

Savoring such exquisite food and service in a grand and romantic setting made it easy to hold our worries at bay, and returning to central Paris by cab after dinner, we had the bracing impression of having really been away. Though 85 Euros isn't pocket change, you get more than your money's worth at La Grande Cascade, which is, with this menu, a terrific choice for a recession era splurge.

La Grande Cascade, Allee de Longchamp, Bois de Boulogne, 16th, Tel. 01.45.27.33.54.

THUMBS UP AND DOWN: L'EPIGRAMME AND COMMERC 7

THUMBS UP: There's something almost poignant about the number of foreigners who stalk the streets of Saint Germain looking for the type of bistro they first saw in "Funny Face" (Audrey Hepburn as an ingenue in Saint Germain when it was still bohemian). You know, a cosy little spot that smells delicious when you open the front door and where the wry owner seats you at a table with a checked table cloth and pours a complimentary glass of white wine. A place where you then feast on such Gallic dishes of anthology as boeuf bourguignon, blanquette de veau, coq au vin, etc. Unfortunately, however, it's now easier to find a plate of spaghetti in Saint Germain than it is a good, decent French meal. Why? The locals, professional types who watch their waistlines and their wallets, don't do restaurants per se during the week. Instead, they'll stop somewhere for a plate of smoked salmon and a glass of white wine, some pasta and a bit of rouge, etc. High rents and heavy tourist foot traffic further explain this conundrum--what many restaurant owners want is turn over in front and easily assembled dishes in the kitchen. And so many of the neighborhood's bistros have become clothing stores or Italian places, which is why I treasure L'Epigramme even more. 

Just steps from the Odeon, I've had one excellent meal after another in this tiny little place with exposed stone walls and an amiable host in Stephane Marcuzzi, who previously worked in several Guy Savoy bistros. After stints at Guy Savoy, Alain Ducasse and the Hotel de Crillon, young chef Aymeric Kraml has really come into his own with an excellent and reasonably priced chalkboard menu that runs to clever dishes like potato soup with vieux Comte cheese, pig's feet croquette on a bed of lentils with red peppers, braised duck with sauerkraut and pollack with a fennel bulb compote. If the kitchen suffers from an occasional imprecision, one is more than forgiving for a prix-fixe menu of 28 Euros, especially when the overall quality of the cooking is so good.

9 rue de l'Eperon, 6th, 01.44.41.00.09. Metro: Odeon. Closed Sunday dinner and Monday.

THUMBS DOWN

Oh when will I ever learn to give up once and for all on Italian food in Paris? Just after I got back from New York, I was paging through the latest edition of a popular local restaurant guidebook and noticed that an Italian place with an odd Catalan name, Commerc 7, had won a special "favorite places" award. Normally I'd never go to an an Italian restaurant in Paris, but this was just after the holidays, and the idea of antipasti and some pasta sounded good on a cold night and I was having dinner with my friend Nadine, who lived in Milan for many years and loves Italian food, too. So off we went. The first sign that something was wrong was that the place was empty on a Friday night. But we'd both shlepped across town to get here, so we settled in and ordered a glass of very good Sardinian Vermentino. The waiter stopped by the table every two minutes to take our order, but we succeeded in ignoring him until we'd finished our apperitif. Then we decided to split an antipasti, plus a plate of prosciutto, and Nadine had eggplant parmigiana and I chose the risotto primavera. Though it took a lesson in logic to order a bottle of the Vermentino--the waiter insisted that it was only served by the glass even though it was listed by the bottle on the wine list, so I suggested he sell us all of the glasses in a bottle, but for the price of a bottle, and though this clearly left him deeply perplexed, he agreed (tortured logic, no?), we were having a good time until the food showed up. Rolled eggplant, artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes had been ruined by being marinated in a shockingly astringent vinaigrette, and the plate of ham was two transparent slices for almost 10 Euros. The risotto came drowning in cream, a horror, and the strange chewy texture of the eggplant in Nadine's parmigiana led me to guess it once had been frozen. This was my ultima cena Italiana a Parigi, so if you ever spot me going into an Italian restaurant in Paris again, please stage an intervention, i.e. grab me by the collar and bring me to my senses. 

7 rue Bayen, 17th, 01.47.66.12.71. 

Goumard--A Good Address for Hard Times

After reading The Economist's terrifying article on the state of the world's oceans (dire, of course, but even more so than I'd thought), plus following the latest tragedy in the Middle East and experiencing another one when I opened my latest bank statement, I've been feeling very humble at the outset of this new year. To wit, with the world so roiled, a preoccupation with good food might be interpreted as escapist at best, delusional at worst. 

On the other hand, lunch with a delightful couple from Baltimore on this icy winter day in Paris reminded me that even in the darkest of times, we still need not only sustenance but the pleasure of good wine, great food and nourishing conversation. And this I found in abundance at Gourmard, a venerable fish house in the rue Duphot in the heart of Paris. I've known this place almost ever since I arrived in Paris,  as I was often invited to lunch here by fashion designers during my improbable stint as an editor at a fashion-driven American press group Fairchild, then located around the corner in the rue Cambon. I think it may have even been Patrick Lavoix, a very elegant man who was the men's wear designer for Lanvin, who very patiently and non-chalantly showed me how to deal with a whole fish (sole meuniere, if memory serves) at the table in a quiet corner of the now radically transformed (into an oyster bar/eat-on-the-go space) ground floor dining room (the main one is upstairs).

Since Gourmard has always been expensive, I hadn't been in a longtime, and so was surprised by the dramatic new decor, a sort of louche lounge look in aubergine cut velvet, deadly nightshade purple, ivory and ebony, with low chairs at low tables and Roman shades in the windows. Quite a change, in fact, from the previous decor, which was rather forgettably modern but still made a feint at the good art-nouveau bones of this place. 

If the original motto for this place coined by founding owner Alfred Prunier in 1872 was "Everything that comes from the Sea," the latest menu by chef Philippe Dubois is more than half meat and the oyster counter of yore on the first floor has disappeared. Clearly this restaurant is making an urgent effort to remain viable and valid not only at the beginning of the 21st century, but at the outset of a potentially harrowing new year. 

With the ambient penny-pinching that's likely to dominate most of meals in mind this year, two of us opted for the 49 Euro all-in menu, which includes three courses, a half-bottle of wine and a half-bottle of mineral water. We fared reasonably well, too, with an odd but not unpleasant starter of crab in a sauce that fell somewhere along the bechamel, hollandaise spectrum, delicious cod steak on a bed of beautifully prepared brandade de morue (shepherd's pie made with lots of garlic and salt cod) and a few tasteless and superfluous dots of arugula juice, and a nice apple pastry dessert. To be sure, the wine was a screw-cap white from the Languedoc Roussillon that was a bit too floral to suit this meal and could probably also be hunted down on the shelves at Franprix for less than 4 Euros, and service was scattered and unsure, as though the waiters had been given lessons in the Costes brothers school of fashionable dining, but hadn't scored very well. 

The third member of our party fared considerably less well than we menu-takers, however, since she had sea bass with girolles mushrooms and haricots vert, a promising sounding preparation that was absolutely tasteless. I also thought that it was nervy to charge 26 Euros for this dish without specifying whether or not the fish was wild or farm raised. 

As fish stocks continue to crash the world over, this distinction will become more and more important, and one that I'll use as a compass as to whether I'll eat fish or not. Why? Because pisciculture is mostly a disaster in every part of the world in which it's practiced, from the shrimp farms of Thailand to salmon farms of Chile, Norway and Scotland, to say nothing of the "Tilapia" or Nile Perch that arrives on our plates from various unidentified African destinations with no back story whatsoever.

Before lunch ended, I lurched back to the magnificent art-nouveau toilettes, and was relieved to discover them still intact with magnificent ivy motif tiles, sturdy brass fixtures, massive Sarreguemines lavebos and the marble partitions between the urinals that were installed at the bequest of Charles de Gaulle, or so the story goes. This fleeting experience of a pur jus Belle Epoque atmosphere reminded me, however, of why I had always so urgently wanted to live in Europe, a place where even the homeliest settings seemed to me as an adolescent boy to have a glamour sorely lacking at home.

In any event, Gourmard has slimmed down a lot for this new century, and I'd certainly be willing to give it another go for the good value menu, but I couldn't help but regretting what it once had been, which was a distinguished luxurious seafood restaurant in the best French old-school tradition.

Goumard, 9 rue Duphot, 1st, Tel. 01.42.60.36.07. Mo Madeleine or Concorde. 

An American Road Trip - CT, MA and Long Island

A trip to Connecticut proves that one of the more puzzling mysteries of my increasingly distant childhood in Fairfield County remains unsolved. To wit, with a handful of exceptions, how is it possible that a constellation of some of the richest suburbs in the United States is still unable to generate a restaurant culture that's on par with that of nearby New York City? Instead, the standard-issue offer in these gilded precincts runs to mediocre Italian places, third-string ethnic restaurants, and fly-in-amber steakhouses like Bennett's in Stamford.

Until recently, Bennett's was such an old-fashioned place that I actually sort of enjoyed the occasional meal here as a form of gastronomic time travel. It reminded me of the two Manero's steakhouses in Westport and Greenwich where my maternal grandmother would take us for a birthday dinner of shrimp cocktail, steak, onion rings and cheesecake. Bennett's had actually improved on this boilerplate, however, by offering Niman Ranch (organic) meat, a much-better-than-average wine list and a terrific standing-order good-buy on boiled lobsters. A recent meal, alas, revealed that an ownership change had ruined this anthropological relic of a place. Stuffed mushroom caps were a stodgy mess, clams on the half-shell were the size of my thumb nail, and all of the side orders (onion rings, hash-browns, creamed spinach and sauteed mushrooms) that came with our steaks had a decidedly industrial taste. Further, the Niman ranch meat had disappeared, service was terrible (our appetizers arrived before our wine, our main courses were tepid, and then there was an interminable wait before the table was cleared), and the food exhibited sorry signs of food-service-industry short-cuts. 

Dinner at Telluride the following night was considerably better--I loved my wild-rice and chorizo chowder and Block Island swordfish steak with a salad of shaved fennel, golden onions, tomatoes and raisins, but the prices were so heart-stopping that I couldn't help but thinking about all of the terrific food I could eat in New York and, most of all, Paris, for half the price.

On to Boston via Amtrak, and a very good lunch at Scampo, Lydia Shire's new neo-Italian place at the over-hyped Liberty Hotel (the lobby of the hotel was created from the old Charles Street jail). On a cold, wet afternoon, the ribollita (Tuscan vegetable soup) served here was excellent, and my curiosity about an improbably sounding lobster pizza was well-rewarded. Delicately seasoned with gently tangy white cheese, herbs and shallots, the pizza was perfectly baked--the lobster didn't dry out or become rubbery, but the cheese melted, and the flavors of this dish were surprisingly distinct and delicious. Next, Berkshire pork milanese with a saffron risotto rice cake for me and chicken breast with white polenta, spinach and grilled eggplant for Bruno. If the taste of my pork scallops was overwhelmed by greasy breading and an excessively punch salsa, Bruno's dish was impeccably prepared, and overall, I'd recommend this very good-looking restaurant as a terrific place for a casual lunch or dinner. 

Sunday lunch at Barbara Lynch's B & G Oysters in the South End was fabulous. I love the soft Soul sound-track, smart waitresses, little prop card that comes when you order oysters so that you know which ones are which, and nice selection of wines by the glass. Little neck clams cooked Portuguese style with tomatoes, hot pepper and scallions were superb--generously served and perfectly cooked. I also love B & G's lobster roll, since the lobster salad is lightly marinated in lemon juice instead of being slathered with mayonnaise, and it comes with bread-and-butter pickles, cole slaw, and delicious herbed fries. Just two quibbles--there was just a little too much hot pepper on the littlenecks and it's a shame they don't serve espresso (only "regular" American coffee), but I suppose that this latter omission is to keep the turnover brisk at what is, after all, an oyster bar.

Probably no single address I visited during this American trip better showed off how wonderfully good American food has become today, though, than the Village Cheese Shop in charming little Mattituck, New York on Long Island's North Fork. Here we picked up a terrific assortment of American farm house cheeses--Womanchego from Connecticut, Hooligan (also from Connecticut), Lamb Chopper (a sheep's milk cheese from Long Island) and a Peconic Blue to bring back to Paris for a dinner party on Sunday. This cheese, along with a couple of bottles of wine from local vineyards on the North Fork, will surely leave our Parisian friends dumbstruck.

Bennett's, 24 Spring Street, Stamford, CT, Tel. 203-978-7995

Telluride, 245 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT, Tel. 203-357-7679

Scampo, Liberty Hotel, 215 Charles Street, Boston, MA, Tel. 617-224-4000

B & G Oysters, 550 Tremont Street, Boston, MA, Tel. 617-423-0550

The Village Cheese Shop, 105 Love Lane, Mattituck, NY, Tel. 631-298-8556

Manhattan Musings

One of the most consistently important and interesting parts of my work as someone who avidly loves good food as much as I love writing about it is keeping track of what’s up in the world’s other major food cities. This is why I always look forward to a trip to New York, a city where I lived for nine years and a place I deeply love and enjoy. Having been here a week, however, I have to say that a scattershot sampling of various new and old New York restaurants has made me profoundly grateful to live in Paris. Why? For $35 or so, you still eat vastly better in Paris than you do in New York. 

My first meal in Manhattan was with Steven, a dear book-editor friend, at Grano on Greenwich Avenue. Though the Latin American waiter pretending to be Italian was a nice guy, the only memorable aspect of this meal were Steven’s carciofi alla Romana, or Roman style artichokes. Leaving to one side the fact that artichokes are completely out of season and that alla Romana in Rome means griddled between two heavy plaques of metal, this was a tasty little saute. My mozzarella with red peppers and cherry tomatoes came as a mingy serving, and my “macaroni” with tiny meatballs and cherry tomatoes was desperately disappointing for the fact that the pasta had so obviously been par-boiled or otherwise pre-cooked. With a single cheap bottle of mediocre Italian red wine, we both left the table here with a $60 hole in our pockets, which is absurd.

Next meal, Adrienne’s, a highly rated pizza place in the financial district. Though overcooked, the pepperoni and mushroom thin-crusted square sheet pizza I had was delicious and just the kind of thing I dream of in Paris, although most New Haven, Connecticut style pizza is still better than this. The following day was marked by a memorably mediocre meal at Pasacalou, an unfriendly French place in the East 90s where I was mystified by my starter--a bacon-and-cheese souffle in a phyllo pastry cup (who needed the phyllo pastry?), and heartbroken by a bowl of reheated bean stodge passed off as cassoulet. 

Fortunately, a terrific late super at the bar of the Union Square Cafe rescued New York City's reputation for gourmet dining for me the following day. I loved my crudo of Nantucket Bay scallops flecked with jalapeno pepper and lemon zest, and a Savoy cabbage, bacon, Granny Smith apple and robiola risotto was one of the best and most original versions of this heavenly concoction I’ve ever had (Thank goodness I was able to get it without the Balsamic vinegar reduction that would have completely muddled this delicate constellation of flavors, too, and this only because I asked for a very complete description of the dish). Oh if only Danny Meyer would open a contemporary American bistro like the Union Square Cafe or the Gramercy Park Tavern in Paris!

What puzzles me most about dining out in New York, aside from the appalling prices--Paris is so much cheaper than New York, absurdly marked up and usually very dull wine lists, deafening noise and frequently antic service (too present or invisible, with too little in between) is how and why almost all of the really dreary places I’ve eaten in in New York so far are so well rated in a bouquet of different food guides. Consider Il Buco on Bond Street, which everyone raves about.

“There’s very little French cooking left in New York--it’s all Italian these days in Manhattan,” observed bon vivant Bert Sonnenfeld during a meal that Bruno and I had with him and the ever lovely Noel Fitch Riley at this restaurant on Sunday night. We agreed that the grand French restaurants of yore that had once defined good food in Manhattan have almost all sadly vanished, and with a few exceptions--Fleur de Sel, notably among the them, the bistro scene in Manhattan is pretty much withered these days as well. Instead, France has been profoundly shunted off the scene by Italy, and with very mixed results. If the Tuscan country style decor at Il Buco is charming and wonderfully cosy for winter dining, and our starters were pretty good--a lovely kale salad sprinkled with Pecorino cheese, codfish balls with a bland salsa, sausage with resina beans, bruschetta and quince mustard, and empanadas (ordered out of curiosity), the lasagna touted by the waiter was ordinary, as was a wild-mushroom risotto. Ignoring the good looks of the dining room, I’d give this place a 70/100 and a scolding for being so egregiously over-priced.

As we head into 2009, it’s obvious that the New York City restaurant scene is going to take a beating, and I think that convivial, good-value places serving great quality comfort food are going to star in the New Year. Two wonderful examples? Pio Pio, the terrific chain of Peruvian restaurants that have taken the city by storm and which do one of the most delicious roasted marinated chickens I’ve had in a very longtime, and Frankies Spuntino 17. a superb Italian place on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side (N.B. There’s a branch in Brooklyn, too). 

Lunch with Kato and Charles from LA, and Bruno, was one of the happiest and most delicious meals I’ve had in the last few weeks. Kato and Bruno raved about the lentil soup, while Charles and I went with the fennel, celery bulb, red onion, and flat parsley salad in lemon and olive-oil vinaigrette, a truly sublime salad. Next, Charles and I, the meat dudes, loved our Faicco’s Italian sausage (out of the skin) in a saute of red peppers on polenta (more grits than real Italian polenta, but this is just a quibble over the difference between the U.S. breakfast cereal texture and the coarser version found in Italy), while Bruno had a surprisingly good baby watercress salad with pear and gorgonzola and Kato was happy with a pretty little plate of broccoli rabe. All four of us loved a killer trio of American farmhouse cheeses from the Saxelby Cheesemonger’s in the Essex Street market (the best Yankee dairy I’ve eaten in recent memory), and my single espresso rivaled anything I’ve sipped recently in Trieste. 

Frankies Spuntino 17, 17 Clinton Street, New York, NY 10002, Tel. 212-253-2303.  www.frankiesspuntino.com

Pio-Pio, 702 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10025, Tel. 212-665-3000. www.piopionyc.com (plus six other branches in the N.Y. metropolitan area)

Happy Holidays to one and all, and I look forward to sharing more great eating with you in 2009.