And this on the heels of one of the worst meals I've had in a longtime last weekend at the recently renovated La Mamounia hotel in Marrakech. The hotel had shopped two two-star European chefs for its "French" and "Italian" restaurants, Jean-Pierre Vigato and Alfonso Iaccarino (Don Alfonso) respectively. Since I live in Paris, the "French" restaurant was of no interest--nor was their "Moroccan" table, since I know where to get great Moroccan food in Marrakech, so I settled on the "Italian," and it was a disaster.

  After a long wait, my spaghetti Don Alfonso arrived, and it turned out to be a tangle of miserably undercooked linguine with a dull sauce of cherry tomatoes. I sent it back, of course, but then had to endure a round of conversations with people who insisted that it had been cooked 'al dente,' and did I know what 'al dente' meant? Well, yes, indeed I do, which is why this almost $40 plate of pasta added injury to insult. Main courses were little better, and we ended up with a whooping big bill at the end of a meal that was a real ordeal.

 So why am I telling you all of this? Out of humility--I can be duped, too--and also to encourage you to a great vigilance when it comes to A) advice gleaned from the internet, and B) star-chefs in hotel settings outside of their home countries. The internationalization of the world's restaurant scene means that upmarket hotels shop brand-name chefs, who fly in and out as consultants and so can't be depended upon to deliver anything like what you might eat in the tables that made their reputations.

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  In Paris, the quandry I encountered this week revolved around the importance of restaurant decor. I went to lunch at the locally well-reviewed Le Percolateur with a good friend and very knowing food-lover, and the amiable service in this sunny, comfortable, attractive room made me more forgiving than I would normally be of the kitchen's shortcomings.

 My pal ordered a starter salad of spinach with grilled shrimp, which was, as the French would say, "correct," while I was letdown by my vonnaisiennes, mushy blinis of potato puree with small slices of ham and a salad similar to his. Next, he had beef filet with tapenade wrapped in brik pastry with ratatouille and I chose the Cajun chicken with homemade fries as part of the 28 Euro three-course prix-fixe menu. The chicken, a breast that had been rolled in a Cajun spice mix and grilled, came with a beurre blanc sauce and good homemade frites, nothing remarkable but a perfectly pleasant dish. We drank an excellent and very well priced vin du Pays d'Oc La Violette by brilliant winemaker Jean-Colombo at 18 Euros and finished up with small tarts of runny salted caramel, tasty but imperfect, since the exterior was soggy instead of crisp (microwave?).

  Still the pleasant atmosphere and good service in this nice looking dining room meant that this uneven meal was an agreeable event. Would I cross town to eat here again? No, but were I to find myself in the quartier de l'Europe again for any reason, this place would be a perfectly reasonable option for a simple and well-priced if gastronomically unremarkable meal. So the moral of the story is that atmosphere, or that curious mix of decor and service, really does make a huge difference to the way that one perceives of a meal.

  Generally, I insist that truly memorable food is requisite for me to be happy a table in Paris, whatever the price of my meal, but to my own surprise, I'd willingly let Le Percolateur slip under the radar another time if I had a good reason.

  Conversely, Chez Grenouille, just up the street from where I live in the rue Blanche has received a spate of glowing local reviews and so I trotted off for dinner with four friends on Thursday night. They were already seated when I arrived, and stepping inside, I immediately apologized for having chosen this restaurant. Why? It was a small drab dining room with harsh lighting, bare stucco walls and no charm whatsoever.

  To be sure, the main reason I go to any Paris restaurant is to eat well, but even if the kitchen here acquitted itself well, nothing could overcome the dramatic dreariness of this tiny room, which has had me wondering about the weight that any food writer should place on a restaurant's decor and setting. If wonderful company and pretty good food couldn't quite save our meal at La Grenouille, then obviously atmosphere is a more important factor than I am in the habit of acknowledging, a reality I intend to weigh more heavily in future reviews.

 We ate perfectly scrambled eggs with some species of black truffle and a disconcerting dose of "truffle" oil, one of the great cheats of modern gastronomy, since this oil has nothing to do with real truffles but is instead perfumed with an artificial flavoring that decomposes when heated, ravioles de Royan, or tiny cheese stuffed ravioli that were tasty but overcooked, a breaded pave of pig's foot that would have been excellent with a ravigote sauce instead of more of that evil truffle oil, an excellent parmentier de boeuf (the French version of shepherd's pie), and a perfectly cooked AAAAA andouillette. 

 Though the quality of the meal was much better-than-average overall, I spent much of it musing on the fact that none of my French colleagues had bothered to mention that this is a very sad spot in which to have a meal. 

 Ultimately, even though the food at La Grenouille is more interesting and gastronomic than what's on offer at Le Percolateur, it's the latter rather than the former that I'd be most inclined to visit again, and with this judgement, I plan to be more more explicitly attentive to ambience in the reviews I post here in the future than ever before. 

Le Percolateur, 20 rue de Turin, 8th, Tel. 01-43-87-97-59. Metro: Place de Clichy. Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday. Average 30 Euros.

Chez Grenouille, 52 rue Blanche, 9th, Tel. 01-42-81-34-07. Metro: Liege or La Trinitee. Open daily. Average 40 Euros.

  This is why a styrofoam oyster tray lurks in the alarmingly crowded closet in my bedroom. Just down the street from me is the Garnier brasserie, which is open seven days a week and reliably serves some of the best oysters in Paris. I reuse the tray, which I obtained the first time I ever ordered takeaway oysters from Garnier, for ecological reasons, and oysters are a regular Sunday night treat when we're too busy to cook but want to give ourselves a good treat. Last Sunday on the way back from a cocktail party in the suite of a friend who was staying at the Plaza Athenee hotel, we stopped at Garnier on the way home, presented our tray and waited as one of the expert and amiable shuckers there artfully opened a dozen plump, creamy Gillardeau oysters, a dozen plein de mer, or Breton oysters that are like iodine rich shots of the sea, and arranged a little pink crown of cooked shrimp on a bed of ice scattered with lemon halves. He also gave us a big dab of their delicious ivory colored mayonnaise, and off we went after tipping him a couple of Euros.

 Knowing that we'd be having an oyster feast, I'd put an excellent bottle of la Poussie Sancerre on ice before we went out, and had also taken several Jean-Yves Bordier butters (available at La Grande Epicerie on the Left Bank and Gourmet Lafayette on the Right Bank, as well as at the excellent creperie the Breizh Cafe in the Marais) out of the fridge to soften and spread on the delicious new lemon-zest spiked rye bread that baker Arnaud Delmontel is baking and selling in his shop at 39 rue des Martyrs in the 9th arrondissement.

 Delicious, healthy, fast, festive and economical, this is one of the best takeaway meals in not only Paris, but the whole world as far as I'm concerned. Check with the oyster stand nearest you to see if they do takeaway and enjoy a similar feast for less than the price of a restaurant meal.

  Note, too, that Garnier has a charming miniature oyster bar just inside its front door and distinct from the main restaurant, for anyone who'd rather eat their bivalves on the spot.

Garnier, 111, rue St-Lazare, 8th, Tel. 01-43-87-50-40. Metro: Saint Lazare. Open daily. Plateau de Fruits de Mers to takeaway 70.50 Euros.

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  Even after almost twenty-five years in France, I remain an incorrigible breakfast lover, which is why I often wonder why this potentially wonderful meal is so often a mediocre after thought in France. To be sure, you can hunt down some terrific croissant and viennoiseries forbreakfast in Paris, but most cafe and hotel breakfasts are a disappointment, with certain exceptions.

  This is why I'm on a constant hunt for memorably good French breakfasts, and not long ago, I found a real grand slam set of a fast breakers at the Domaine de Rochevilaine, a seaside hotel with a stunningly beautiful setting in Brittany. 

  Here they offer four different gourmet room service breakfasts, and we sampled two. The Saveurs Retrouvees, or Flavors (of Brittany) Rediscovered, included:

Toasted freshly baked brioche, Jean-Yves Bordier salted butter (maybe the best in the whole world), freshly made fruit puree, faisselle (a light fresh cheese), organic eggs baked in buttermilk, crepes with caramel cream, baked apple with cinnamon and honey, organic vegetable stock, Plancoet mineral water and coffee or tea.

  Ever gluttonous, I chose the Accords Marins l'Amor, or the seafood breakfast:

Marinated salmon and salmon eggs, three Penerf (local) oysters, crab meat and cauliflower taboule, Bordier butter, freshly baked bread, freshly made yogurt in an earthenware pot, seaweed cream, and grapefruit segments with Matcha tea.

 Needless to say both of us were in heaven, especially since these delicious growning generous and profoundly Breton feasts were gently priced at 20 Euros. Next time round I'll likely try the Terroir Breton L'Argoat:

Breton cake with jam filling, old fashioned oatmeal, white ham braised on the bone, soft-boiled eggs with herb gelee, Bordier butter, fruit puree, faiselle and fresh apple juice.

 The fourth menu, L'Eveil en Fete ("Wakeup and Celebrate"), even included lobster with wheat semolina with almonds and kouign amann (the flakey Breton pastry) with apples.

  The fact that these feasts were served overlooking on a private flagstone terrace overlooking the ocean was the cherry on the cake, and the food was so good and so carefully considered that it really made me wonder why more French hoteliers don't do something similar. In the meantime, breakfast at La Domaine de Rochevilaine, a lovely place for a long weekend out of Paris, is well worth traveling for.

Domaine de Rochevilaine, Pointe de Pen-Lan, Billiers, Tel. 02-97-41-61-61, email:domaine@domainerochevillaine. www.domainerochevillaine.com

  As the train streaked through a frost-rimed landscape that brought Breughel to mind, Holthausen explained that he'd arranged a tasting of the "vins clairs," or still wines from which Champagne is blended, with Myriam Faure Brac, one of the company's top oenologists. Since so few people understand that Champagne is not a wine like "Chardonnay" or "Merlot," but rather an exquisite work of eminently quaffable art created almost like music with notes, these being gustatory, I was keen for this experience.

  And it was terrific. Trying three different Chardonnays from the 2009 vendage--Barbonne Fayel 2009, Avize 2009, and Oger 2009, was absolutely fascinating in terms of how different parcels of land in the Champagne AOC produce such distinctively different wines. "The recipe for blending changes from year to year, of course," said the charming Madame Brac was we sipped, swirled and spat. "Chardonnay brings the freshness to Champagne, along with mineral and floral notes," Mme. Brac added.

Next, three Pinot Noirs, all 2009, and then three Pinot Meuniers, all 2009, before we got to go behind the scenes and sample some of the most precious tools of the Champagne maker's craft, the vins de reserve, or aged wines from exceptional vintages used to add particular character to Piper's two very distinctive Champagnes, Piper Heidsieck, which is somehow younger, friendlier and more festive, and Charles Heidsieck, which is elegant, authoritative and ideal for drinking during the course of an entire meal. "The reserves are wines with real personality," said Mme. Brac, reminding us that the "genuis of Champagne is in the assemblage. Finding the correct dosage really is like writing music, you must respect and understand all of the notes you're working with."

  Finally it was time to sample two of the company's latest masterpieces, an Assemblage 2008 Charles Heidsieck Brut reserve, which was divine and totally Park Avenue or Beacon Hill, or well-mannered, suave, subtle and discreetly witty, and the Assemblage 2008 Piper-Heidseick Cuvee Brut, a sublime wine to set you up for an interlude of sunbathing and lovemaking on a tropical beach.

  They're no tropical beaches in Reims, of course, so instead off we went to lunch at Le Millenaire, a socks-pulled up provincial one-star that reminded me, a Parisian, of how very differently France eats outside of Paris. Even in Reims, with a major traffic of sophisticated international types drawn by the Champagne, this place was more Sunday lunch with the Curee than head-thrown-back good food. That said, the service was charming, in that fascinating way the French have of channeling obsequity, and the food was well-intentioned, although the risotto with black truffles was oddly tame--I wanted to be clobbered by the tuber, and my roast lobster with salsify and Chorizo beignets might have usefully raised its voice, too. 

  On the other hand, neither of these dishes overshadowed the brilliant Champagnes we drank with lunch--a Charles Heidseick Brunt Vintage 1996 and a Charles Heidseick Blancs des Millenaires 1995 (a drop-dead brilliant wine), and the kitchen here is clearly competent and keen to make people happy. 

  Having visited other Champagne houses aging caves before--most are ancient Gallo-Roman catacombs gouged into the chalk beds under Reims, I wasn't wildly interested in seeing Piper Heidseick's caves, but after tripping down a flight of stairs into the earth, I realized I was wrong. These cellars were beautiful and with an atmosphere that was almost sacred, like the reading room in a great library, and then Holthausen popped a couple of final corks, and I was utterly blown away by the Piper Heidseick Rare 1988 and the Charles Heidseick Champagne Charlie 1985, and would have remained a very happy and well-liquored troglodyte were it not for the necessity of catching a train back to Paris. I'd like to think I'm pretty impervious to PR grand-standing, but at the Cinderella like end of this day, or me in the Metro heading home, I decided that henceforth I'd be making my bubbles Heidseick, Piper or Charles depending on the occasion.

Le Millenaire, 4 rue Bertin, Reims, Tel. 03 26 08 26 62

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  If a week doesn't go by when I don't read at least two or three restaurant reviews in the French press that are either outrightly dishonest or much too gentle with the subject being treated, I have to say I was astonished to come across an outright elogy to the really dreadful Brasserie Lipp in a French magazine last weekend. Sure, this table is a favorite of the Gauche Caviar political and literary establishment, but if these people are willing to tolerate mediocre food in exchange for the privilege of being recognized and well-seated, this place offers no consolation whatsoever to the the hoi polloi, of which I'm part.  

  So against this backdrop of recent events, it was a relief to find that I am part of a general consensus when it comes to the newly opened and unfrotunately named Flottes O.trement, a bistro that's been created from an apartment upstairs (the stairs are new, too) from the popular Les Flottes brasserie in the swanky rue Cambon. It's a good looking place with a big old-fashioned wooden bar and club chairs upholstered in a brown fabric that brought back memories of compartments in Czech trains when that country was still communist. The chairs are comfortable, though, and the lighting's good, which is surely a priority for the tres Parisien clientele of fashion and luxury goods execs and designers its already attracting.

  The first surprise was the service. I expected Costes style attitude, but was dead wrong, since it was absolutely charming. The welcome we received was truly courtly, and all through our meal, the waiters and maitre d'hotel jumped through hoops to make us happy (when one of them spotted me raiding Bruno's very good aligot, he instantly asked if I wouldn't like a bowl of my own).

  Having eaten an ample amount of cod after several days in Portugal, I was eager for a really French meal, so I ordered an oeuf en gelee, because you never see them anymore, and blanquette de veau, one of my favorite dishes. Bruno didn't feel the same need for gastronomic mothering, preferring a tartare of smoked salmon with salmon eggs and a delicious filet of beef that had been cut into three slices and interleaved with a gently garlic herb butter.

  If the gelee of my oeuf lacked the punch of beef bouillon with a little Madeira that I'm always looking for, the egg itself was correctly runny, and my blanquette de veau was tender and full of flavor, if a bit short of sauce and missing the rice with which it should be served. I disliked the mushy consistency of Bruno's tartare, but his beef was good, and the slice of Cantal we shared in lieu of dessert was so good that I brought home the part we didn't finish.

  All told, this was a pleasant place, and I suspect it's going to be very successful with a young right-bank version of the same crowd who still frequent Brasserie Lipp. If it weren't so expensive, I might even be tempted to go back, especially because the location is so handy.

Flottes O.Trement, 2 rue Cambon, 1st, Tel. 01-42-61-31-15. Metro: Concorde. Closed Sunday and Monday lunch. Lunch menus 39 and 45 Euros, a la carte 65 Euros.

Before anyone tries to tar and feather me as a gastro dinousaur for cherishing classic, old-fashioned French restaurants, let me set the record straight by saying that I love many of the excellent new contemporary French bistros that have opened in Paris and elsewhere in France during the last ten years. The Cafe des Epices in Marseilles, for example, or the new take on La Mere Brazier in Lyon, or Paris tables like Jadis and Les Fougeres are all outstanding restaurants, and French culinary culture must and will move on. 

On the other hand, when a place like Chez la Vieille changes format, France loses one of those very rare tables that constitute its living culinary heritage. Contemporary French cooking is only possible because ambitious young chefs have passed through the kitchens at places that teach them how to make a blanquette de veau or a coq au vin, and when the lights go out at one of these restaurants, something very precious is lost, because no one is going to come along to replace these places. If the core of old-fashioned bistro cooking was the Gallic genuis for transforming difficult produce into delicious dishes through long, patient, ingenious recipes, modern French cooking is usually fast, expedient and more about broad strokes of bold taste than the subtle melding that is created by long simmered sauces.

So now I've been to the new version of Chez la Vieille by peripatetic chef Michel del Burgo several times in order to decide what I really think of this reboot. A very brusque and unpleasant waitress colored my first meal here, so that even though I was able to admire del Burgo's technical skills, I didn't particularly enjoy my meal. The old Chez la Vieille was about charm, abundance, generosity and flawless hospitality. My second meal started to sway me, because del Burgo's food really is good, and my most recent meal persuaded me that even though I'll never stop missing the glorious old-fashioned bistro food of yore, it's still a very very good restaurant.

In fact what del Burgo excells at is a type of cuisine bourgeoise, or dressed up restaurant cooking, that's become almost extinct in Paris but was once practiced at now gone restaurants like Le Recamier, Le Vert Galant, and Pierre au Palais Royal in their glory days, and I, for one, am very happy to find it again.

Consider the starters we sampled last night--a beautifully seared lobe of duck foie gras on a mirepoix of legumes oublies in a light port sauce and a giant mushroom ravioli (the filling was the texture of a perfectly made duxelle) in a cloud of white foam punctuated with four exquisitely veined slices of black truffle. Both dishes were impeccable, politely exciting, and discreetly luxurious.

Next a witty riff on beef stroganoff (del Burgo has worked on an off in Moscow over the years) consisting of a juicy filet with tiny button mushrooms and a gently acidulated cream sauce with shallots and a side garnish of sauteed Roscoff onions with Parmesan, and grilled scallops in more foam with a fascinating garnish of endives and fresh hazelnuts. Both dishes were fine examples of the elegant, intelligent cooking that made del Burgo one of the most exciting young chefs in Paris when he debuted his career.

For anyone who doesn't know, chef Michel del Burgo has had one of the more momentous and agitated professional trajectories of any of France's best working chefs. I first sampled his food, which was excellent, when he was cooking at the Hotel Bristol, and then followed him to Taillevent, where he didn't last very long. Next, a brief stint in Gordes in the Luberon, a fleeting post at the Negresco in Nice, and then it was off to Moscow, perhaps to lick his wounds and regroup, before he showed up in Paris again to relaunch L'Orangerie, actor Jean-Claude Brialy's beau-monde address on the Ile Sant Louis.

L'Orangerie never quite took off, and I lost the trace of del Burgo until my most recent meals at Chez la Vieille, a cozy, clubby bistro that was originally founded by brilliant and wonderfully ornery chef Adrienne Biasin before being taken over by Madame Cevoni, a charming Corsican, when Biasin retired.

We finished up with a reglisse (liquorice) flavored panna cotta with chopped pears in caramel sauce and a decent but less successful chocolate moelleux with the discordant note of pecans and the same caramel sauce, and I finally decided that if I'll always miss the old Chez la Vieille, the important consolation to this loss is rediscovering Michel del Burgo's cooking again and finding him in truly impressive form. 

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The loss of the old Chez la Vieille probably explains why I suddenly had a desire to try and find a couple of other old-fashioned Paris bistros that are still producing good, reasonably priced French food, and I so I met two friends for lunch today at Pharamond, a real old-timer in Les Halles. I hadn't been there in ages, and coming in on a sunny afternoon, I was cheered by the intact beauty of its interior of 1832 vintage faience tiles and the tables of businessmen wearing ties that matched their socks. Maybe, I briefly hoped, we'd eat well. Maybe this place was still solidly good and had just gotten under my bistro-loving radar.

Alas, aside from the very pleasant service, our meal went asunder the moment our first courses arrived--horribly overcooked ravioles de Royans (wonderful little ravioli from the Dauphine region stuffed with tangy cheese) in a completely unseasoned cream sauce and a sad looking bowl of vegetable soup with no garnish whatsoever.

Next, dried out confit de canard with an avalanche of baby potatoes, instead of the to-be-preferred pommes sardalais (made with duck fat and garlic), a decent but dull onglet de veau, and for me a very sad blanquette de veau. Blanquette de veau, veal stewed in lemony cream sauce with mushrooms, is one of the my favorite dishes, and this take was light years from anything I'd ever call by the same name--dry, stringy chunks of veal in a decent but underseasoned brown sauce with mushrooms and, oddly, carrots.

Pain perdu (French toast, which the French eat as a dessert instead of a breakfast meal) came with a thin almost tasteless caramel sauce, and ultimately the only redeeming things about this meal were the restaurant's stunning interior, the nice service, good company and a nice bottle of Quincy.

Chez la Vieille, 37 rue de l'Arbre Sec, 1st, Tel. 01-42-60-15-78. Metro: Louvre-Rivoli. Avg 70 Euros.

Pharamond, 24 rue de la Grande Truanderie, 1st, Tel. 01-40-28-45-18. Metro: Etienne Marcel or Les Halles. Prix-fixe menu 28 Euros, lunch menu (two courses) 18 Euros, a la carte 50 Euros.

At the risk of a little sacrilege, I'd say that a really well-made pizza can offer a punch of pleasure that's every bit as potent as a slab of foie gras or any other Gallic delicacy, and anyone who doubts me, should make a beeline to Keste on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. On an absolutely arctic afternoon before Bruno and I found the courage to try and jam everything we'd bought or been given during our visits to New York and the Bahamas into two suitcase that seemed to shrink by the hour, we dashed out the door for a last-minute pizza fix before the numbing misery of JFK.

With a pleasant young Italian waiter tediously playing the folklore card by calling us "Signore" (Gentlemen)--and this inspite of the fact that he perfectly understood me explaining in French what Buratta was to Bruno, things did not get off to an auspicious start. The shockingly high prices on the menu had me ready to pick a fight, too.

And then the pizzas arrived, and were truly fabulous. In fact, the creamy sweetness of fresh just melted mozarella meeting with the bright acidic tang of San Marzano tomatoes with a punchy floral note of basil has to be one of the most brilliant taste trinities ever invented. A sausage version of the same pizza came with a superb garnish of crumbled pork sausage meat from Faicco's butcher across the street, and though $8 for a glass of wine still feels like highway robbery to me, the house red went down without any problems. The only tiny flaw with Keste's pizzas was that a perhaps insufficiently heated oven made them a mite soggy--in Naples, the crust of any good pizza is always dry on the bottom, but this is just a quibble, and I was well and truly yearning for another pizza few hours later when I pried open the aluminum lid on one of the worst meals I've ever eaten on AIR FRANCE.

Keste's also provides an inadvertent but absolutely fascinating lesson in the essential differences between American and European dining, since our waiter spent at least half of his time telling customers that they couldn't order a half-and-half pizza (half mushroom and half sausage, say) like you can in most American pizzerias. "Why not? I'm the one whose going to be eating it and paying for it?" said a man at the table next to ours. "Er, well, because the chef thinks that only certain flavors work well together. This is why there is no compose-it-yourself pizza here." Or to wit, raised to believe the customer is king, many Americans resent it when gastronomic discipline is imposed by a restaurant kitchen.

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Before leaving Paris, I'd booked dinner at Le Concert de Cuisine for our first night home. Why? I'd heard it was wonderful just before I went away for the holidays, and the lightness and subtlety of Franco-Japanese cooking seemed ideal as the gastronomic balm to jet lag and the inevitable masochistical melancholia that follows the end of any good vacation. Suffice it to say that I made an excellent choice, too, since chef Naoto Masumoto served us one of the best meals I've eaten in Paris since, well, my last dinner at the Cafe des Musees (early December).

To be sure, the location in the 15th arrondissement wasn't particularly alluring, and the pleasant but anodyne decor of the dining room isn't memorable, but I've rarely eaten food as delicate but politely provocative in the genre of the culinary minuette created by Japan and France's reciprocal gastronomic fascination than Masumoto's pumpkin risotto, linguine with sardines and Nori seaweed (sublime), lacquered suckling pig, and baba au umeshu (plum liqueur).  Shrimp flambeed in soy sauce and Cognac were superb, too, and overall Masumoto, who previously cooked at the Benkay at the Hotel Nikko for ten years, has revealed himself as a major talent for so brilliantly understanding the best ways for French and Japanese cooking to inflect upon each other.

Keste Pizza & Vino, 271 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10014, Tel. 1-212-243-1500. Avg $25.

Le Concert de Cuisine, 14 rue Nelaton, 15th, Tel. 01-40-58-10-15. Metro: Bir-Hakeim. Lunch menus 24 et 29€, Dinner menus 40 et 57€.

  For years, my fail-safe burger has been the one served at noon at the Union Square Cafe in New York City, but after a real wipe-out of a dinner there the other night, I decided it was time to shop around, and so I quizzed a group of the most exigent food-lovers in Manhattan at a Christmas party and three out of seven recommended BLT Burger in Greenwich Village. 

  On this arctic but sunny day in Manhattan, I set out early to do a flock of errands, including a stop at Trader Joe's on West 14th Street to stock the larder of the house where I'll be spending the holidays on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. This delightful little island has several outstanding restaurants, a good bakery (Arthur's) and a very pricey diminutive version of Dean & DeLucca, so I thought long and hard about some of the things I could bring to make our quartet happy, including Trader Joe's excellent California olive oil. Afterwards, I was starved and made a hopeful bee-line for BLT Burger on Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue) a few blocks away.

  I liked it right off the bat, too, since the lighting was low, but not too, and it offered a choice of seating--bar, booth or table, plus a relaxing decor of old Americana, including a Gulf Oil sign and a Coca-Cola clock that were both bona fide vintage. The friendly bar-keep poured a big glass of ice water, poured me a glass of Jaboulet Parallele 45, a terrific all-purpose food red, and brought me a little saucer of spicy, salty pop corn, and I was as happy as a clam. Having toyed with the idea of Japanese lunch--I'll be on the beach tomorrow with any luck, I wondered at the wisdom of a fat fest, but decided to go whole hog (or cow, as it were), with a BLF burger with Vermont Cheddar and a side of Vidalia onion rings. 

  Ten minutes later, the perfect burger arrived, a juicy flavorful beauty made of sirloin, short rib, chuck and brisket, with crispy bacon, trimmed iceberg lettuce and a slice of tangy melted cheddar. The only thing that prevented this beauty from getting an A was a wan slice of tomato, but otherwise it was sublime. The onion rings were superb, too, and while chowing down, it occurred to me that this place was the ideal combination of American generosity and gutsy eating and French savoir faire, since it belongs to New York based French chef Laurent Tourandel. Bravo, donc, for one of the best burgers I've ever eaten.

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   Several years ago, I did a madcap assignment for an American travel magazine that involved visiting almost every island in the Caribbean. It was a fascinating, if challenging trip, and I discovered some spectacularly beautiful places and was intrigued by how these tiny islands have such distinctively different cultures. 

  One thing I rarely did during this month-long safari, however, was eat well. To be sure, I did have the occasional memorable meal, especially in Martinique and Saint Barth's, but otherwise, the impact of the American economic imprint on the Caribbean has been pretty dire. Tourists show up wanting Cesaer salads, cheesecake, cheeseburgers and pizza, and the big American food companies have filled the shelves in local groceries with noxious ready-made salad dressings, canned goods and junk food like instant macaroni-and-cheese or stuffing mixes.

  The reality, then, is that it takes a lot of work to run a good restaurant in the islands. Sourcing is a challenge, since so few of them grow much of their own food anymore, and it's tough to stray to far beyond those tourist standards if you're going to remain a going business.

  This is why I really like the Rock House on Harbour Island in the Bahamas. They make a real effort to source as locally as possible, dare dishes that challenge priveleged palettes, and have one of the best wine lists in the islands. Last night's meal was a perfect example. My friend Kato joined me and we began our meal with an excellent salad of baby beets and pinenuts for Kato and a beautifully fried panko-crusted crabcake in a light bearnaise for me. Made with a generous helping of fresh crab meat, this cake was beautifully and very delicately seasoned and served on a bed of salad.

  Next, Kato had pan-seared locally caught hog fish filet on basmati rice with a gentle curry sauce and I couldn't stay away from one of their hour classics and a favorite of mine, the cappellini with locally caught white rock shrimp in a light tomato sauce spiked with red pepper flakes and brightened by tiny cubes of preserved lemon. Service was absolutely charming, and with a fine bottle of Viognier from California's Russian River, this was a terrific meal right down to a finale of Bahamian rum cake with vanilla ice cream. 

  Now if only hoteliers on other islands would take the intelligent culinary risks that the kitchen does at the Rock House, the Caribbean might be a much more enticing destination for people who love good food and who also feel strongly about the importance of local sourcing and culinary diversity.

BLT Burger, 470 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10011-8400, Tel. 212-243-8226. Avg lunch for one $30.

The Rock House, Harbour Island, Bahamas, Tel. 1-242-333-2053. Avg $100. 

PARIS

Cafe des Musees. This deservedly popular place in the Marais consistently delivers spectacularly good food at very reasonable prices. I wish the wine list was easier to work with, but I'd happily eat here once a day if I lived nearby. My last meal here was truly superb--house smoked salmon and then a Noire de Bigorre echine de porc was tender and bursting with flavor. The cheeses are terrific, too. 49 Rue de Turenne, 3rd, Tel. 01-42-72-96-17. Metro: Chemin Vert. Avg 35 Euros.

Jadis. I've eaten at chef Guillaume Delage's modern French bistro in the 15th a dozen times this year, and his cooking is consistently Delage’s lean, clean and muscular, with an almost frighteningly flawless technical perfection. My favorite dishes? His perfect pate en croute, roasted shoulder of lamb with sun-dried tomatoes and black olives, and the brilliant gateaux des rois I enjoyed with friends on the fete des rois. 208 rue de la Croix-Nivert, 15th, Tel. 01.45.57.73.20. Metro: Porte de Versailles. Avg 45 Euros.

Yam'Tcha. I've eaten at chef Adeline Grattard's place just off Les Halles almost a dozen times, and he subtle, original Franco-Asian cooking just gets better and better. Every meal here is a discovery, since the menu changes almost daily, but I often think of Grattard's sublime grilled scallops on a bed of steamed bean sprouts in wild garlic sauce. 4 rue Sauval, 1^st, Tel. 33-1-40-26-08-07. Metro: Louvre-Rivoli. Menus 45 Euros and 65 Euros.

Thoumieux. But wait...I wasn't very enthusiastic about this place when I reviewed it here a few weeks ago, so what gives? Chef Jean-Francois Piege's squid a la carbonara was one of the most original and most delicious things I've eaten all year. Thoumieux, 79 rue Saint Dominique, 7th, Tel. 01-47-05-49-75. Metro: La Tour Maubourg. Open daily. Avg 50 Euros

Les Fougeres. I loved everything about this restaurant near the Place des Ternes in the 17th arrondissement. Charming service, a pretty dining room, and terrific food--I just can't get the ravioli stuffed with Auvergnat pork in star anise broth out of my head. 10 rue Villebois Mareuil, 17th, Tel. 01-40-68-78-66. Metro: Ternes. Avg 50 Euros.

FRANCE

La Mere Brazier, Lyon: Months after I'd tasted chef Matthieu Viannay's La Vollaile de Bresse en Demi-deuil (poached Bresse chicken with black truffles under its skin), I'm still dreaming of this incredible dish, a brilliant update on a great classic of the French kitchen. Viannay serves the chicken with baby vegetables, a garnish of pickled sour cherries, and a voluptuous velouté de volaille monté à la crème, one of the ultimate French sauces. Where Viannay goes his own way, is that the bird is served as two courses—first, the breasts, succulent and white as alabaster, and then the legs and thighs, which are grilled and garnished with a small salad of herbs. 12 rue Royale, 69001 Lyon. Tél. 04-78-23-17-20. Avg 70 Euros

ITALY

Meloncello, Bologna. This simple cheerful trattoria is on the edge of the city, but it's worth the effort of getting here for but the superb home-cooking and a warm welcome from the two delightful sisters who own the place. There’s no printed menu—instead the daily offer is recited, but all you need to know are tagliatelle al ragu and polpette (meatballs with potatoes and peas in tomato sauce), the house classics. The veal ragu on the buttercup yellow tagliatelle was as mellow and suave as any I've ever tasted, and though the canned peas with the meatballs were disappointing, the dish was superb, since the meatballs are made of a mixture of veal, pork, mortadella, ham and Parmesan. Via Saragozza 240, Bologna, Tel. 39-05-16-14-39-47, Avg 35 Euros. 

SLOVENIA

Kendov Dvorec, Spodnja Idrija. Though I've been to Slovenia several times and know how well one eats there, nothing prepared me for the meal I had on a Spring night in the dining room of the country's only Relais & Chateaux hotel. The service at dinner that night was charming and the food delicious. The waiter explained that the hotel specializes in local cooking, always interesting, since the cuisine in Slovenia changes ever twenty miles or so, and I loved my meal of savory cabbage soup, smoked lamb with horseradish, polenta with grilled porcini mushrooms, veal with fried gnocci, and strucjkli, or Slovenian streudel filled with cottage cheese and raisins and served with pear jam. Superb Slovenian wines by the glass, too. Tel. 386-5-37-25-100. 

Aldea, New York City. Chef George Menendez's tiny little restaurant in the Flat Iron district in New York City is well worth going out of the way for. He trained with a suite of heavy weight toques in Europe before setting up shop on his own, and his cooking is an intriguing take on the Portuguese food of his ancestry informed by haute cuisine technique. Don't miss the Shrimp Alhino with garlic, coriander and pimenton (smoked paprika), my new favorite ingredient. 31 West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011. Tel. 1-212-675-7223. Avg $50.

  The perfectly lit dining room with a long banquette upholstered in pea-green cut-velvet with a patterns of ferns (fougeres) actually reminded me of what European first-class dining cars were once like before they were so regrettably phased out in favor of fast-food snack-bar coaches with airplane-like design, another accountant's tragedy (it was surely the bean-counters who did in real dining on the rails), since there was nothing quite as romantic as some good rigatoni and a veal cutlet alla Milanese with some Chianti while traveling from Rome to Milan, for example.

  My only slightly drier and less stressed-out friend Judy was waiting for me, and things got off to any excellent start with the delicious amuse bouche of brandade de morue stuffed with goat cheese we received to accompany our glasses of white Macon. Next, a sublime butternut squash soup, another amuse bouche, opened the actual meal and I stopped in my tracks when I tasted my ravioli stuffed with Auvergnat pork in a bouillon hauntingly seasoned with star anise, one of the best dishes I've eaten all year. Judy's crevettes en infusion chaude de citronelle, coriandre fraiche et lait de coco was sublime, too, for being a very suave Gallic take on this Thai classic. What made it French--the absence of bird chili peppers for one thing, but also I'd suspect a really first rate old-fashioned shellfish fumet was hidden behind the coconut milk and coriander. 

  Both dishes were as pretty to look at as they were to eat, the bread was excellent, and suddenly both of us had forgotten about everything that had made our respective days so miserable and were firmly in the present, a table, and enjoying an excellent meal. Truth be told, I'd had this place on my Go-To list for a while, but the location was just a bit off my normal beaten paths and it was a bit more expensive than what I like to spend on a casual week night supper with a friend. But due to several recent raves from friends who live in the area, I'd decided the time had come, and I'm glad I did.

  Our main courses were excellent, too, including one of the most beautifully cooked soles I've seen in a very longtime, still a tiny bit pink at the bone, and accompanied by delicious rice with slivered black olives and a sauce made with its gizzards. My veal breast was fork tender and came with pretty magenta-and-orange ribbons of carrot that I suspect was supplied by Joel Thiebault, the most famous truck garden farmer in the Ile de France.

  My dessert, included in the 36 Euro prix-fixe dinner menu, was a slightly disappointing soupe de Coing (quince), and we were underwhelmed with our wine, an odd Cotes du Rhone from the Gard that we chose because it was one of the cheaper bottles on an expensive list, but I loved this restaurant for its quiet creative cooking with excellent produce, svelte service, and delightful atmosphere and will definitely go back. 

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  Because I live in the 9th and most of my friends live on the Left Bank or in eastern Paris, I rarely get to the 16th arrondissement, a part of the city that always sort of fascinates me with its reassuring bourgeois steadfastness. When I do get out this way, I often find that the local restaurants are quite good, as they'd have to be catering to a rather more local clientele than those in the center of the city.

  On Friday I ended up here because I had a lunch with some ladies from Message, a terrific local support group for English speaking mothers living in Paris, who wanted to interview me. Since they all lived in western Paris or its suburbs, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to see what excellent young chef Nicholas Duquenoy had gotten up to since I first discovered his cooking at the still very good La Ferrandise in Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

  He's now working at the attractive Le Beaujolais d'Auteuil near the Porte d'Auteuil and from the moment I stepped into the room, I knew we'd have a good meal. The welcome was prompt and cordial, the dining room was painted dove gray and had a pleasant mix of antiques and modern furniture and there was a lot of light at noon through the large picture windows. 

  So we convened, this man from Connecticut, two wonderful women from Santa Barbara, and a charming gal from Miami via Puerto Rico, and we ate, sipped, laughed, and swooped stories until almost 5 o'clock in the afternoon without anyone trying to nudge us along by bringing the bill before we asked for it or pointedly asking if we wanted anything else.

  Suffice it to say that Duquenoy is in great form and continues to do his own smart, urbane version of French country cooking, including dishes like mushroom stuffed ravioli with cubes of bone marrow in bouillon, coquelet style coq au vin (with a delicious red wine sauce filled with mushrooms and chunks of bacon), pork belly with an intriguing garnish of acidulated ribbons of black radish and potato puree, roasted pineapple, and a 15 month old Mimolette that was a tiny bit dried out. With a juicy bottle of Domaine Philippe Gilbert red Menetou Salon, this was a happy and occasionally almost raucous meal that proves that all of those naysayers are just plain dead wrong--even in a relaxed and reasonably priced bistro like this one, you still eat very, very well in France.

  And by the way, I'm off to New York and the Bahamas on Monday, so if any of you make a great find while visiting Paris during the holidays, please come share it here! 

Le Beaujolais d'Auteuil, 98 boulevard de Montmorency, 16th, Tel. 01`-47-43-03-56. Metro: Porte d'Auteuil. Open daily. Prix-fixe menu 29.50 Euros. Avg 35 Euros.

Les Fougeres, 10 rue Villebois-Mareuil, 17th, Tel. 01-40-68-78-66. Metro: Ternes. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Prix-fixe menus 25 Euros (lunch), 36 Euros (dinner), a la carte 60 Euros.

Please follow this link: http://www.paris-expat.com/interviews/4-08alec.htm