L'OGRE, A Pleasant Bistro: B; LE PETIT LUTETIA, Boffo Bad Brasserie Service but Pretty Good Food: C+

L'Ogre  Though the location across the street from the exasperating (this building is much too big and it's impossible to find the entrance) round Maison de Radio in the 16th arrondissement isn't very convenient, there's still a lot to like about L'Ogre, a friendly and very lively modern bistro with an attractive and welcoming young staff, great views of the Eiffel Tower, and good solid traditional French cooking.

The main reason this place works so well is that it was born for all of the right reasons. To wit, a bunch of friends who were working as wine distributors and who love good food decided that it would be fun to do a restaurant together. So they took over this old corner cafe and kitted it out with a post-industrial-loft-look, i.e.  factory lamps and visible heating ducts. They kept the old zinc bar though, and made sure the lighting was good, a detail much appreciated by the media crowd who pack the place at dinner, and also decided the chalkboard menu would be sort of a greatest hits roster of simple tasty French classics like terrine de foie gras mi-cuit or rillettes de lapin (potted rabbit) to start, and then pedigreed meat, including an excellent steak tartare, boudin noir and a superb veal chop with shallot cream sauce for two, and shrewdly chosen and very fairly priced wines.

Not surprisingly, it's all worked a charm, and this place has become a real hit with well-heeled young Parisian professionals. Given the better-than-average cooking and reasonable prices, plus those swell views of the Eiffel tower if you get a Seine facing table, the real surprise is that this place hasn't yet been trumpeted as a great address for anyone visiting Paris. 

-----------

 On a rainy Spring Sunday night in Paris, Michele, one of my oldest French friends, and I were trying to figure out where to go for an easy impromptu supper not far from her charming apartment in the rue Vaneau in the 7th arrondissement. The easiest options were Asian, which is more and more often the case in Paris, but neither of us really wanted Asian food, much as we love it, so we had a think.

 I lived in the this neighborhood once a longtime ago, but the only place I could come up with that might be open on a Sunday night was Le Petit Lutetia, a decent but always curiously also-ran brasserie with a pretty art-nouveau interior just down the street on the rue de Sevres. Though neither of us were very keen, this seemed a reasonable solution, so off we went. Walking together in a light rain, I found myself wondering when the last time I'd eaten here might have been and finally rather cringingly recalled that it was during a visit from my mother some fifteen plus years ago. Sudden visions of that tetchy Sunday-night meal--we'd just spent three days in Istanbul together, accidentally sharing a room (a problem with the reservation), something she delighted in but I found somewhat challenging came to mind with a shudder, and, time healing all wounds, a giggle. Her main goal during our Turkish sojourn was sampling Imam Balyidi (The "Priest" fainted), an aubergine concoction of storied deliciousness that she must have read about in a novel, and all weekend long, she'd hopefully blurted out this phrase like an incantation at every waiter, desk clerk, tour guide or cab driver we encountered, all to no avail until a final dreadful lunch, her choice, at the Hilton Hotel, when the heaven's parted and there it was on the menu.

  But I digress, if only to explain my most 'recent' associations with Le Petit Lutetia. Arriving, nothing had changed. There was still a rubber-booted oyster shucker manning the shellfish stand out front, and the dining room retained its beveled glass partitions, wonderfully faded and foppish romantic wall paintings, tile floor, and zinc bar up front. Having taken the trouble to book before we set out, it was exasperating, however, to be kept waiting by the host's lectern in a restaurant that was only half full at best, and also to be repeatedly admonished to get out of the way by one of the staff of four waiting on a total of perhaps twenty people.

  Within seconds of a five minute wait to be seated--a moment more and I'd have left, we were finally led to a banquette table and given menus, which we then had fifteen minutes to study. Frantic waving and signalling until a waiter rather crossly deigned to take our order, and in the middle of doing so, he decided to amuse himself with a sly reference to my American accent, which made him forget what we'd just ordered. So we started again. "The service here is dreadful, the food better be half-decent," Michele said after we'd finally sorted things out.

  And to my surprise, it was. Her marinated mackerel with mesclun was excellent, as were my Utah Beach (Normandy) oysters. Next, calf's brains meuniere for Michele and boeuf bourguigon for me, both part of the 26 Euro chalkboard menu we'd decided upon. And both were generously served and surprising good. Why surprisingly? The slatternly service hardly prompted exalted expectations of the kitchen. The "vin du moment' at 22 Euros was perfectly decent, too, and all told, we had a better than average meal of traditional French food in a rather pretty dining room. 

  So would I go back? I'd just decided I would, when one of the waiters somehow or another managed to break an empty bottle of Evian behind us. Then seconds later, a colleague dashed three wine glasses to the floor in a scene worthy of an episode from "The Three Stooges," a slapstick sixties-vintage American television comedy. So I'd say this place is hardly a destination restaurant, but if you're staying on the Left Bank and want a decent, reasonably priced feed last minute or on a day when almost everything else is closed, it's not a bad option. 

L'Ogre, 1 avenue de Versailles, 16th, Tel. 01-45-27-93-40. Metro: Mirabeau or RER Maison-de-Radio-France. Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday. Average 35 Euros.

Le Petit Lutetia, 107 rue de Sevres, 6th, Tel. 01-45-48-33-53. Metro: Vaneau. Open daily. Lunch menu 18 Euros, prix-fixe 26 Euros, a la carte 35 Euros.

SUAVE--Vietnamese in the 13th, C+; TERMINUS NORD--An Old Battle Horse of a Brasserie in the 10th, C-/D+

  Before I serve up the usual meat and potatoes, I'd like to urge all French speaking foodlovers to read the current issue of the news magazine LE POINT (For those who are unfamiliar with the French press, the country has two major news weeklies, LE POINT, and L'EXPRESS, rather like the good old days in America, when the country had two serious news weeklies in TIME and NEWSWEEK, both sorry shadows of their former selves, which is why I subscribe to the ECONOMIST). In any event, this duo has a dulling tendency to ignore the pressing affairs of France and the world in favor of recurring cover stories that rate the best hospitals in France, tiresomely regular articles on real-estate, freemasons, and other mind numbing subjects, which is why I was so surprised to find a really fascinating and urgent cover story on "les grands surfaces" (supermarkets) in LE POINT. Though not as exhaustive as it could or should have been, this serious collection of well-reported stories at least began to examine the catastrophic effect that supermarket style retailing has had on the French diet, the French countryside, French cities, French health, and a variety of other aspects of life in France.

  Suffice it to say that supermarkets, especially the really big ones, have choked the life out of hundreds of French villages, towns and cities by making it impossible for small merchants to compete, have ringed many of these same places with soul-strickeningly ugly collars of sprawl that are only accessible by automobile, and have privileged heavily processed industrial foods with high mark-ups over fresh healthy reasonably priced seasonal food people cook into good meals at home.

  Confronted with this reality, I am swearing off supermarkets--places I almost never shop for anything but clearning products anyway--as much as I possibly can. Instead, I'll continue to take the time necessary to buy my vegetables at the market or one of the very good green grocers in the rue des Martyrs, avidly frequent my very good butcher in the rue Blanche, etc., etc. The only way to free our food chain from the mad petroleum driven machine that profits huge oil companies, huge car companies, huge retailers, etc., is to just plain stop shopping in these places.

------------

  Returning to Paris after a week spent in Normandy, I was hungry for Asian food, and so decided to act on a Post-It note that's been stuck to my computer for some months. Knowing of my love for Vietnamese cooking, Kim Ta, the charming manager of Indochine, in the rue Mont Thabor, generously suggested that I might also try Suave in the 13th arrondissement. 

  Driving across Paris on a rainy night, Bruno and I reminisced about the first time we went to Vietnam and the astonishingly good dinner we ate at The Temple Club in Saigon--Vietnamese ravioli and then Bo Bun for both of us, so flavorful, delicious, and pretty to look at that we ate the same meal three other times while we were there. What fascinated me, too, was how vivid 'real' Vietnamese cooking tasted in comparison to most of what's served in Paris. To be sure, it's still tough to find certain fresh Asian herbs in Paris; French meat, fish and fowl are different; and they're other alimentary constraints on producing authentic Vietnamese food in a European country. But this didn't stop us from hoping that we might be headed towards a place that serves really terrific Viet cooking and which would become a new favorite.

  Occupying an attractively decorated corner shopfront on the edge of the Butte des Cailles, or some remove from the antic high-rise action of Paris's 'real' Asian village, Suave--its name oblige, immediately seemed to be setting itself up in opposition to the cheap, popular Asian places with steamy windows a few streets over. Instead, this place had a corner banquette with pillows, a beautifully worked framed embroidery of multi-colored birds on the wall, and gentle lighting.

  It was very busy on a Friday night, too, which seemed auspicious, although Bruno rightly pointed out that "il n'y a pas beaucoup des sourires ici" (The service is unsmiling and almost military in its desire to spin as many diners as possible through the money-producing wicket). A starter salade de boeuf was excellent, though, with fine rings of lemon grass; rare and tender beef; and crunchy vegetables, while a mixed assortment appetizers--two spring rolls, two deep-fried shrimp beignet, two taro-root flower fritters stuffed with chopped shrimp, etc. was decent enough but brought Trader Vick's to mind (Trader Vick's was a chain of "polynesian" style restaurants, often in Hilton hotels, in the U.S. that reached its hey day in the late sixties, early seventies, and offered a Sears Roebuck take on 'exotic' eating). 

  Bruno's bo bun--deep-fried nems (spring rolls) and grilled beef on a bowl of noodles was okay, as was my bun cha, a Hanoi specialty of grilled pork on rice-flour vermicelli noodles with bean sprouts, sliced carrots, shredded lettuce, chopped cucumber. What was missing? Generosity, for starters--these portions were modest, and also the, um, er, well, suave taste that both of these dishes have in Vietnam.

  I've had worse versions of both in Paris, but if the basic quality of the food at Suave is respectable, it's certainly not a place that's worth crossing Paris for and real connoisseurs of Vietnamese cooking are likely to be a bit let down by this place.

--------------

   Like many people who've lived in Paris for a longtime, I inevitably find myself having a meal at Terminus Nord every couple of months for the simple reason that it has one of the most enviably strategic locations in the city just across the street from the bustling Gare du Nord. And with a similar inevitability, I come away from every meal at this place crestfallen by the stunning mediocrity of the food and the bored and distant service. 

  Aside from good company, the only consolations at a really poor lunch today were some excellent Norman oysters to start and the pleasure of whiling away several hours in this visually enchanting dining room, with its odd hybrid of art-deco and art-nouveau, floral-pattern mosaic floor, and wonderfully witty mural populated with caricatures of Belle Epoque Parisian types by turn-of-the-century Russian artist Nicholas Nifontoff. Otherwise, the meal was a train wreck.

  I have a very strong suspicion that my 'gratinee,' or onion soup had been pre-prepared--right down to its melted cheese topped croutons--in a commissary somewhere, since it came to the table within minutes of being order and was lukewarm, or under-microwaved. A "tartare" of unripe avocado with shredded crab was watery and almost tasteless, and the blinis accompanying some unidentified smoked salmon--no provenance here whatsoever despite that fact that it cost 18 Euros, were cold, coarse and stale.

  My two English friends were terribly letdown by the plat du jour--overcooked filets of sea bass, at once leathery and mushy, with an unseasoned puree of fennel, and my choucroute was lukewarm and served with the perfectly round golf-ball shaped potatoes that are alas but just one of the alarming products of industrial-scale catering in France and the charcuterie was flabby and tasteless. The only one who managed a half decent meal was Bruno, who had a decent steak that he wisely didn't dress with the ramekin of sludgy looking industrial bearnaise sauce that came with it. 

  Dessert was out of the question after such a letdown, and over coffee my London pals wondered aloud at how it could be that the very simple standard-issue classics of traditional brasserie cooking could be so poorly done. I really hated to make matters worse, but I did tell them that the menus at most Parisian brasseries have been repeatedly pushed through the eye of a needle by teams of accountants to make them as profitable as possible and that they soldier on as money-spinners--adding injury to insult, Terminus Nord is not cheap--for people in a hurry and others besotted by the beauty of their Parisian decors. Guidebooks never delete them and most food writers indulgently turn a blind eye to their failings.

  So where should you eat in the environs of the Gare du Nord? Well, you can always just order some oysters and a glass of white wine at La Terminus Nord, but wanting a real meal, I'd suggest Chez Casimir, the annex of the excellent Chez Michel, which is open daily, or La Vigne Saint Laurent, a very pleasant bistro a vins about a ten-minute walk away. 

-------------------------- 

Chez Casimir, 6 rue de Belzunce, 10th, Tel.  01-48-78-28-80. Metro: Gare du Nord. Open daily noon-2.30pm, 7-10.30pm. Prix-fixe menu 29 Euros, Sunday brunch menu 25 Euros.

Terminus Nord, 23 rue de Dunkerque, 10th, Tel. 01-42-85-05-15. Metro: Gare du Nord. Open daily. Prix-fixe menu 29 Euros, average a la carte 40-45 Euros.

Suave, 20 rue de la Providence, 13th, Tel. 01-45-89-99-27. Metro: Corvisart. Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Average 20 Euros. 

La Vigne Saint-Laurent, 2 rue Saint Laurent, 10th, Tel. 01-42-05-98-20. Metro: Gare-de-l'Est or Gare du Nord. Open Monday-Friday. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Average 30 Euros.

RINO, B+/A-; L'AROMATIK, B

  Ever since I first tasted Petter Nilsson's food over lunch with an old fried in Uzes some years ago--he was cooking locally at the time, I've been fascinated by the nuanced Nordic nudity of his style. Who else could paint yogurt onto fish, steam it, give it a pinch of seasoning, and end up astonishing a bunch of blase holiday diners? I know, I was there, I saw what happened--our lunch was a social occasion, no one had given much thought to the food, or rather a lot more thought to the chess-board like social composition of our table, and yet it all went out the window when we started eating. Nilsson's food was so good, so intense, that it became the most interesting thing about this otherwise artfully cast meal. And thank goodness, since I guilessly go out for pleasure, and it never occurs to me that a meal can be a heavily freighted social occasion. 

  

  Nilsson's style--a quietly baroque take on the simplicity of Scandinavia--only gets better and better at La Gazzetta, the Paris restaurant where's he's been cooking for a couple of years, too. And now this talent is sending disciples out into the world. Earlier this week, a friend called and insisted on lunch at an oddly named new restaurant called Rino in the rue Trousseau. "It's Nilsson's sous-chef, Giovanni Passerini. I've been trying to get in for a week, and finally scored a table this morning. Come!"

  

  So I did, and I had a delicious and fascinating meal. Passerini clearly absorbed all of his master's snow-blinding Nordic lessons--the main one being the primal purity of produce, but has slyly made Nilsson's slightly disciplined and occasionally austere style a little bit sexy, and this modest dose of sensuality lights up the medium in a major way. 

  

  We ate barley risotto with orange zest and silky strips of squid; a sublime pork shoulder cooked sous-vide so that it was still succulent, pink and tender, served with white cabbage, raisins and crushed hazelnuts; and a superb apple tart with a sable base and a glossing of apple caramel. Simple, sincere, delicious, intense, this was one of the best meals I've eaten in a longtime, and I can't wait to go back for more.

-------

  I'd walked by L'Aromatik many times, since it's just up the street from my flat (I'm midway between La Trinitee and Saint Georges) and had always been curious about this place. Why? It's packed at noon with local office workers, and then again in the evening with a mixed crowd of theater-goers and locals. Clearly they must be doing something right to cater to two such disparate clienteles, I told myself, and put a "GO TO" Post-It note on this place months ago.

  

  So there I was still day-dreaming about the truly spectacular food I'd eaten at Ciya in Istanbul a couple of days earlier, when the phone rang today at noon and Marius, a South African friend whom I hadn't seen in years, asked me to meet him for a quick lunch. He was calling from the corner, so I rang L'Aromatik, booked us in, hastily changed out of my sweat-pants and T shirt, and dashed out the door. 

  

  On my way to the restaurant, I found myself hoping it wouldn't be too expensive, because Marius, like many Afrikaners, is admirably thrifty and finds Europe exorbitant. One way or another, I planned to invite him for lunch, and coming in the door, there he was, little changed from the days we were students in London picking up lost carrots and potatoes from the sidewalk after the North End road market in Fulham shut down for the day.

  

  Tall, solid, conservative, blonde, he's become a very successful insurance exec in Pretoria, father of four, etc., etc. And me....well, who's to say. But he was clearly happy to see me when I came in the door, and a friendly waiter stood a chalkboard menu on a chair and I was immediately relieved to see that lunch was only 15.90 Euros. 

  

  We had so much to say, but were also shy, so we ordered, and sipped a glass of white, sizing each other up after such a longtime. "Alec, who'd have ever though it! My eldest son wants to become a food writer. I tell him it's a terrible, terrible idea all the time. But the other day I came home from work, and he told me he'd left something for me in my study. Your book. A food book. It made me angry--with him and with you. I never understood why you chose to write about food. But then I started reading it, and I had some fun. Oh, Alec, you're still crazy aren't you?"

 

  Probably am, but was much too busy tucking into a delicious Staub casserole filled with creamy scrambled eggs and country ham to offer a verdict on my mental state. Marius loved his lentil soup with a garnish of smoked fish, too, and my cod steak with a garnished of Chorizo and sauteed red onions was exquisite, as was his ragout of veal with Mediterranean flavors.

  

  To be sure, our "pancake" with Grand Marnier wasn't wonderful--it really was a pancake, instead of a crepe, but all told this charming little place--a 1928 vintage former "mercerie," or notions shop, is a charming spot for a meal, and earnest young chef Bertrand Martin really delivers the goods. Interestingly, his main background was in Costes brothers restaurants, but as he told me at the end of Marius and my lunch, "Here I'm really cooking for the first time." Indeed.

  

  "That was a delicious meal, Alec. But what is there to say about it? This is what I don't understand about food writing. Didn't your father think you should write about politics? I still think you could. Or art. Or business...."

L'Aromatik, 7 rue Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, 9th, Tel. 01-48-74--62-27. Metro: Pigalle or Trinitee. Closed Sunday dinner and Monday. Lunch menu 15.90 Euros, Dinner prix-fixe 35 Euros.

  

Rino, 46 rue Trousseau, 11th, Tel. 01-48-06-95-85. Metro: Ledru Rollin. Closed Sunday and Monday. 22 Euro prix-fixe. 

Les Petits Plats, B; and La Tete dans Les Olives, a Taste of Sicily in the 10th

   It was a relief to see the fire-engine red painted facade of Les Petits Plats when I finally arrived for dinner the other night after a long Metro ride and then a bracing walk, and the welcome at this very happy restaurant couldn't possibly have been warmer either. If I was late, the friend I was meeting for dinner was even later, and so we were both a bit rattled by the time we were seated as two at a bare wooden table for four, always a welcome development, since it offered not only the luxury of more elbow room but more psychic space into which we could relax. One of the terrific young servers promptly came by to pour us an excellent glass of Saint Veran and brought us a little plate of very good saucisson and we studied the appealing chalkboard menu, the work of a young chef who previously worked with Alain Reix when he was the head chef at the Jules Verne. Looking at the bill of fare, I immediately thought of Le Paul Bert, that usually very good cult bistro in the 11th, and in fact Les Petits Plats is clearly gunning to become a similar destination bistro with an excellent wine list and simple but appealing food that distinguishes itself as much by the quality of the produce used in the kitchen as any particular flight of culinary imagination. A singular originality here, though, is that you can order all of the main courses in half portions, a nod to weight-watchers and anyone who wasn't born with the same trencherman's appetite I have.

  The restaurant, which is low-lit (but not too) in the evening is decorated with retro funky flea-market finds and was packed with an interesting cross-section of Parisians, including a lot of young media types, all of whom were having a really good time, and as is true of such places, this conviviality, which is generated by an exceptional cordial and good natured-staff, proved to be contagious. 

  I started with a little cast-iron cocotte of eggs baked in cream with a delicious chunk of foie gras, and if it needed salt and might have benefitted from a unifying garnish, maybe a judicious sprinkling of chopped fruit, it was very good, as was my friend Laverne's terrine de campagne--nicely seasoned, not too fatty and generously served. Next, I had a yearning for tartare and because an adjunct slate to the main menu vaunted their Aubrac beef, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt--they're only a handful of restaurants in Paris where I eat steak tartare and I'd almost never order it the first time I was trying a new place, and see what they'd get up to. Though it wasn't aux couteaux, or hand-chopped, the beef was outstanding and it came with ramekins of all the condiments you'd want to prepare this dish correctly--chopped capers, cornichons, Tabasco, etc. With a tartare this good, I'd have preferred frites to the over-roasted grenaille potatoes, but they were good, as was a small side salad of mache. Garnished with the same spuds, Laverne's lamb was a nice juicy piece of meat, too, and the cheese board we shared showed that attention to quality is consistent throughout a meal here. She loved her moelleux au chocolat, and with an excellent bottle of Beaucastel Cote du Rhone this was a fine feed for a fair price.

  Since most visitors to Paris tend to cling to well-known neighborhoods in single-digit districts, I'm not how much of an international trade the charming crew at Les Petit Plats is likely to pull, but it's a very nice address for locals and an ideal spot for a large group of friends to go for dinner--book the round table for six in the back room and let it rip.

-------------------

   Ever since I rebooted my life in Paris twelve years ago by moving from the Left bank to the Right, I've had a growing soft spot for the 10th arrondissement, not just the trendy precincts around the Canal Saint Martin, but the funky and almost antically international neighborhood in and around the rue Faubourg Saint Denis. For me, the 10th is the Paris I dreamed of when I poured over books of photographs of the city by great photographers like Edouard Boubat and Robert Doisneau in the art-department of the Weston, Connecticut public library when I was an adolescent library page seething with scorn for my suburban surroundings and aching to climb into one of those earthy images. So I was happy to head off to meet friends for dinner at La Tete dans Les Olives, an off-beat address on the rue Sainte Marthe that's already received a lot of attention in the French press.

  To be sure, this place isn't really a restaurant, but rather a table d'hotes that seats six in owner Cedric Casanova's olive oil, olive and grocery shop cum kitchen in a pleasantly cluttered and very cozy old atelier space. The way it works is that you round up your clan and book the place for a B.Y.O.B. evening that starts off with a superb selection of giant caper berries, olives, tapenade and olive oil for dipping. Casanova imports his sublime oils directly from small Sicilian producers, and used by a variety of famous Parisan chefs, they're reason alone for any Parisian to make a bee-line for this place.

  The next course here is a wooden tray of mushroom caps stuffed with a delicious caper-olive tapenade that would be terrific on pasta, a clever and very Sicilian nibble of carrot shavings wrapped around ricotta salata with fresh mint leaves, and chunks of candied squash. Our gang decided to try Casanova's bottarga (pressed salted tuna eggs, the best of which comes from the region around Trapani in the northwestern corner of Sicily), anchovies, and preserved tuna with a creamy iodine rich taste and a consistency not dissimilar to fine pastrami shavings, and then it was time for la pasta, which Casanova's colleague Marco cooked up on a single electric burner across from the shop's sink. 

  With a choice of two pasta main courses (the other was pasta with bottarga) we chose the pasta alla Norma, a Sicilian classic of Durum wheat pasta dressed with Casanova's own tomato sauce--maybe the best I've ever tasted, more ricotta, cubes of fried eggplant and a terrific blast of mint and parsley pureed in olive oil. I could easily have eaten a second, and then even a third, bowl of this pasta, which was Sicilian home cooking at its best.

  Casanova joined us at the table that night and we yammered away in a mix of French, English and Italian about our travels on this wonderful island, shared addresses--the restaurant at the Hotel Moderno in Erice, a perched village just outside of Trapani, emerged as a crowd favorite, and overall had a great time.

  This is, however, a place that I think is likely to be more appreciated by Parisians than anyone visiting the city for the simple reason that most travelers crave French food, and also because they're not a lot of visitors who could round up the quorum necessary for a meal here. But if you live locally, though, La Tete dans Les Olives is a guaranteed great night out with friends.

Les Petits Plats, 39 rue des Plantes, 14th, Tel. 01-45-42--50-52. Metro: Alesia. Open Monday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Lunch menu 15 Euros, Prix-fixe 32 Euros, a la carte 35 Euros.

La Tete dans Les Olives, 2 rue Sainte-Marthe, 10th, Tel. 09-51-31-33-34 or 06-73-75-74-81. Metro: Goncourt or Belleville.  Prix-fixe menu 30 Euros. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Les Crayeres, Reims: A-; La Cantine des Tontons, Paris: B

  Located in an elegant 1904 vintage limestone mansion on the outskirts of Reims, Les Crayeres has long enjoyed a mythic status as a French destination hotel among foodlovers from all over the globe. Some part of this exaltation might be explained by the fact that visitors to this eastern French city are invariably here for the most mirthful of reasons--to joyously deepen their knowledge of Champagne, Reims being the Oz of this most famous of sparkling wines, and then there's the fact that Les Crayeres has also been synonymous with the pinnacle of French gastronomy almost ever since it became a hotel.

 My first gastronomic experience of this famously epicurean place occurred just a few months after I'd moved to France, when a friend and I decided to cast off the gloom of an endlessly rainy winter and treat ourselves to a day trip culminating in a really good lunch. And what a lunch it was! Chef Gerard Boyer, who had three stars at the time, engraved his name on the living pith of my memory with a (widely copied) artichoke cappuccino with black truffles, the best smoked salmon I've ever had, and a veal chop with a satiny citrus sabayon and a garnish of baby onions and wild mushrooms. 

  When Boyer left, he was replaced by the amiable young Didier Elena, who came fresh from a stint as head chef at Alain Ducasse's lukewarmly received restaurant in New York. I ate here several times when Elena was in the saddle, and if the food was always very good, I often found it a little gimmicky and trying too hard, especially when any chef at the most prestigious hotel in Reims should have the modesty, faux or otherwise, to offer menus that serve as perfect screens against which to discover the glory of Champagne as a table wine (as opposed to its most common casting as an aperitif or a party tipple). During the Elena era, I also found the dining room at Les Crayeres had become a bit stuffy around the edges--when people feel that it's incumbent upon them to whisper at the table, something's clearly gone wrong. 

 With all of this history, and a great affection for Les Crayeres, I was very keen when I went to sample newly appointed chef Philippe Mille's menu for lunch this past week (as most people know, Reims is now just a hop, skip and a jump from Paris since the new TGV train line opened). Arriving, we met Herve Fort, a charming Auvergnat who has just become the property's new general manager, and I understood why I had immediately detected a change in the ambience of the hotel--Fort, a passionate foodlover, wants to make Les Crayeres "the best resort in France, a place known for its conviviality and its generosity." Suffice it to say that he's well out the gate.

 Then we were seated, and while sipping a superb J.L. Vergnon Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut, everyone decided they wanted to drink Champagne all through the meal, always a brilliant way of discovering the extraordinary complexity of this wine. Our "Menu Gourmande" opened with an hors d'oeuvre that sent a very clear signal about Philippe Mille's style and intentions, a soft aspic-like soup of cubed boiled beef and carrots and parsnips and two superb garnishes, horseradish spiked whipped cream, and a crispy little beignet filled with chopped cornichons (pickles) and capers. Earthy but sophisticated, and displaying a technical excellence that was engagingly blunted by a bit of gastronomic wit (the garnishes), this dish instantly told me we'd be eating well.

 Mille had most recently been second to Yannick Alleno at Le Meurice in Paris, and before that had worked with Frederic Anton at the Pre Catelan and Michel Roth at Lasserre and L'Espadon at the Hotel Ritz), so I was very curious to see if this excellent opening salvo of a culinary calling card played out. And mostly it did. I'm not a fan of King Crab legs--I'd rather eat langoustines, but as the first course in our menu, the crab was pleasantly garnished with citrus segments, a citrus vinaigrette, avocado puree and a few baby beet leaves. John Dory braised with seaweed and garnished with chopped ormeaux (conch fished off of the Channel Islands) and razor shell clams renewed the excitement of our hors d'oeuvre and then we had a sublime slow-poached Bresse chicken breast with a slightly silly decoration of pureed summer truffle 'zebra' stripes and a delicious garnish of pasta with black truffle shavings. 

  "Les Crayeres" was a terrific dessert, too, with "biscuit rose de Reims," a sort of cross between a soft meringue and sponge cake, with grapefruit sorbet and a gelee of Champagne with citrus fruits. 

  All told a truly excellent meal, and if Mille has found his footing this quickly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Les Crayeres once again became one of the great restaurants of France.

---------------------

  Not many people are likely to take me up on the suggestion of a trip to the rue de Dantzig at one of the farthest flung corners of the 15th arrondissement, but for anyone whose looking for a solidly good bargain feed in a very pleasant setting and doesn't mind a long Metro ride, La Cantine des Tontons is a great address. To be sure, the concept of a serve-yourself buffet in cozy, convivial surroundings isn't exactly new--La Cave de L'Os a Moelle and several other restaurants pioneered this very good idea a longtime ago, but this place is very pretty (owner Jean-Guillaume Dufour loves to scour flea markets in search of objects that will elicit a poignantly nostalgic reaction in French eyes) and the quality of the very French food and wine is very honest.

  I loved the terrine de campagne and the hot vegetable soup on the first-courses sideboard, and a jarret de veau (veal shank) braised with shallots was enormous, tender and full of flavor. Desserts could be better, but the cheeses were good and there's a terrific selection of very fairly priced wines like the 22 Euro Morgon we drank at dinner the other night.  

  Part of the fun of this place is that you sit at table d'hotes, and so we ended up chatting with a very friendly shoe-importer and his wife who had just come back from a cruise to Libya, a place I've always wanted to go. They had a fascinating trip, they said, but the supremely French grub served at La Cantine des Tontons was driving them to near bliss after ten days in a country they described as "pas de tout gourmand."

Les Crayeres, Boulevard Henry Vasnier, Reims, Tel. 03-26-24-90-00. Average 150 Euros, Prix-fixe 110 Euros, Lunch menu 65 Euros and 85 Euros. Closed Monday-Tuesday.

La Cantine des Tontons, 36 rue de Dantzig, 15th, Tel. 01 48 28 23 66. Metro: Porte de Versailles. Prix-fixe three-course menu 21 Euros. Closed on Sunday.