That’s my motto when selecting restaurants for many visitors. And there’ve been a lot these past few weeks: friends, relatives, friends of friends, friends of relatives, classmates, fundraisers, writers doing research, travelers taking most excellent tours. We’ve had lunch together, dinner, we’ve been to wine bars, had picnics, stopped for pastries, chocolate, Bertillon sorbet.

“How do you/they stay so thin,” they ask, causing me to suck in my gut, “eating like this all the time?”

Now here’s a secret the food-bloggers won’t tell you: We don’t. At least I don’t.

Paris can be visited as a perpetual all-you-can-eat deluxe buffet but it’s lived as a city with countless venues for a shared meal or drink with friends, colleagues, clients and assorted visitors. Eating well implies choosing well, ordering well, buying well… enjoying good company. There is a form of Parisian self-control in matters of food and drink. One gets a hang of quickly enough. Spending two hours à table doesn’t mean consuming four times the amount of someone who sits for 30 minutes. And we actually eat at home sometimes. We have access to good fresh produce. We walk to shops. We do our 10,000 steps, including frequent staircases. We cook in our little kitchens. We may even exercise, gently.

However, there are times when some combination of visitors, work obligations, journalist events, birthday celebrations and ordinary social life lead me on an extended period of wining and dining. And no matter how much I protest when the dessert menu is handed out, there are quite a few crème brulées, moelleux au chocolat, pies and tarts placed on the table with an extra fork or spoon. “I’ll just have a little taste,” as my grandmother would say.

That period of indulgence can last a few days or a week or, with my most recent schedule of visitors, events and travelers on most excellent tours, a month. Indulgence, however, is not the same thing as overindulgence. Indulgence is a knowing pleasure. Overindulgence is loss of control. Admittedly, there’s a fine line of distinction at times.

A friend, in Paris for business, unsure of which side of the line we were on, said during our third straight high calorie wine-infused meal together, “My wife’s gonna kill me for putting on weight. I’m gonna tell her it’s your fault.”

If shared good living is my fault then guilty as charged. I don’t know what you’re during this afternoon, Scott, but I’m going for a run as soon as I finish this article.

10 Venues for Shared Good Living—Simple Food, Simply Good

What follows is a selection of simple, simply good restaurants and shops that have been on my eating trails of the past few weeks during this most recent bout of shared good living. It’s my food diary of the past few weeks, minus the less appealing, the less well served and the more gastronomic meals consumed along the way.

Simplicity is the theme, meaning relatively straightforward fare, meat and potatoes and the like yet unmistakably French. Some will call this restaurant fare “borrrrring,” others will call it “just what I was looking for.”

All are moderately priced, here meaning 25-50€ for 2 or 3 courses without beverages. All have good to excellent service. None require much, if any, advance reservation, though no harm calling ahead.

1. Le Sully
6 boulevard Henri IV, 4th arr. Metro Sully-Morland.
Tel. 01 42 72 94 80. Closed Sunday.

It’s easy to overlook this daytime café-brasserie (it closes at 8pm) because the intersection out front appears to be a place of transit only and not of pause. But here—between Ile Saint Louis and the Arsenal quarter of the Marais, between old blocks from the Bastille and a statue of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, between an equestrian center for the Republican Guard and the Center for information, documentation and exhibition for urban planning and architecture of Paris—Le Sully is a place with roots. The same family has operated it since 1917 and their roots still run deep into the Aveyron region of central France. Le Sully is old reliable when it comes to enjoying the café-brasserie experience in Paris thanks to the generous spirit of Robert and Dany Vidal and their son Romain and to their sense of quality. Le Sully proudly sports the government label Maitre-Restaurateur, which signifies that dishes are made in house essentially using fresh ingredients. Aubrac rump steak and other nice lunchtime brasserie fare, Languedoc wines. We linger into the afternoon.

2. La Poule au Pot
9 rue Vauvilliers, 1st arr. Metro Louvre-Rivoli
Tel. 01 42 36 32 96 Open 7pm-5am. Closed Mon.
Ever true the bistro tradition, Paul Racat has for 40 years now maintained this relaxed yet classy home for rustic bistro classics, attentively served, and an atmosphere of unpretentious chic that develops as the evening and the night move on. Come the later the better. Soupe gratinée à l’onion, blanquette de veau, white Sancerre. We linger into the night.

3. Boucherie Roulière
6 rue des Canettes, 6th arr. Metro Mabillon or Saint Germain des Près.
Tel. 01 84 15 04 47. Open daily.

Having long associated this street between Saint-Germain and Saint-Sulpice with creperies, pizzarias and pubs, I thought it a bit risky to head here for beef. But the risk paid off: the sliced rib just right, attentive service, elbow-to-elbow seating that offered up a mix of good cheer and Parisian sophistication. Mille feuilles de tomate et artichaut à l’huile de truffe; côte de boeuf, bone marrow and steak fries; Saint-Estèphe (Bordeaux).

4. 750g La Table
397 rue de Vaugirard, 15th arr. Metro Porte de Versailles.
Tel. 01 45 30 18 47. Open daily.

If I lived on the southwestern edge of the city or frequently attended trade shows at Porte de Versailles, I’d be happy to consider Damien Duquesne’s Table my neighborhood restaurant for good chicken, good beef, homey side dishes, much freshness, a judicious wine selection and friendly service. But I don’t, so I consider 750g La Table as a sign that no quarter is immune to honorable food and wine.

5. Les Petites Ecuries
40 rue des Petites Ecuries, 10 arr. Metro Château d’Eau or Bonne Nouvelle.
Tel. 01 48 24 02 90. Open daily.
Walking by on a sunny day, it was the sight of the pleasantly odd alcove lined with a living green wall that gave me pause for coffee. Though suspecting that the place might be too young and hip for the food or service to be anything but an afterthought, I nevertheless returned for dinner with a visiting friend the following evening. And good thing, too: my duck was delicious, my friend enjoyed his steak, we were kindly served and we barely noticed that we were among the oldest ones there.

6. Le Plomb de Cantal
3 rue de la Gaîté, 14th arr. Metro Edgar Quinet.
Open daily.
Why waste your waistline on the meat and potatoes at an ordinary greasy spoon when you can do some delicious gut-busting in this joyful restaurant in the Montparnasse quarter with Auvergne comfort food, from deep in the center of France? Sausage served with aligot (mashed potatoes with cheese and garlic) or truffade (sliced potatoes, cheese, garlic) is king here, but duck, tripes or beef are also options. Hearty salads as well. It’s simple, it’s delicious, it’s caloric, it’s cheerful, it’s Paris without needing to be hip or sophisticated. There’s an extension around the corner and another outlet across the city near metro Strasbourg-Saint Denis, but come evening the greatest joy is on aptly named theater- and restaurant-filled rue de la Gaîté.

7. Terminus Nord  
23 rue de Dunkerque, 10 arr. Metro Gare du Nord.
Open daily.

While the Auvergnats accompany their sausages with cheesy potatoes, brasseries of the north, wonderfully exemplified by this large and brassy restaurant across the street from Gare du Nord (the train station that links Paris with London, Lille, Brussels and Amsterdam), serve theirs with sauerkraut. But upon returning from Amsterdam (Café Loetje for lunch) we came here for the other specialties of northern brasseries: fish (cod, sea bass, salmon, sole) and seafood. A reminder that simple fare, simply good, isn’t just a beefy affair.

8. Le Village Ronsard
47 Ter Boulevard St Germain, 5th arr. Metro Maubert-Mutualité.
Tel. 01 43 25 07 95. Open daily.
There are many like it, but when in this quarter come lunchtime I’ve always felt comfortable at this perfectly, excellently ordinary café-brasserie in the Sesame Street of Paris market areas. Poulet-frites, steak-frites, salads, omelets, etc.

9. Fil’O’Fromage
12 rue Neuve Tolbiac, 13th arr. Metro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand or Quai de la Gare.
Tel. 01 53 79 13 35. Open 10am-7:30pm Mon.-Wed. 10am-10:30pm Thurs.-Sat. Closed Sunday.

Past the loud brasseries, the cavernous cafés and the undesirable restaurants that first assault the rare explorer of the new Rive Gauche quarter of the 13th arrondissement, Clément Chérif Boubrit (“I’m the Sheriff,” he says), philosopher, photographer, cheesemonger, oenologist, operates an off-beat wine and cheese shop and eatery where I recently organized a tasting for a group of eight bloggers/writers. Don’t worry, you needn’t be eight or even organized to enjoy the Sheriff’s approach to tasting wine, cheese and cold cuts vertically, horizontally, blindly or what the hell let’s just share-ingly.

10. My kitchen. Leftovers from last night’s party. Open 7/7, by invitation only.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Paris Restaurants: 10 Ways to Keep It Simple and Simply Good appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

So subtle is the interplay of surveillance and performance that it took this reviewer several minutes to grasp the true significance of the abundance of security personnel. As I visited the allocated space within the glass and steel building designed, I was increasingly enthralled by the way in which the foundation’s curators, financiers and merchants have create, inadvertently perhaps, a choreography of security personnel that offers deep insights into the work of the artists and the working of the foundation itself.

We spectators, arriving on Sunday afternoon with invitations and those invited to pay at the gate, were like shadows milling about, an unobtrusive audience leaving free range to the gestures, expressions and movement of the security personnel, themselves circumscribed by the work they “guarded.”

Dennis Oppenheim’s Table Piece, 1975, acquired by the foundation in 1996, occupies the larger of two rooms downstairs, where the presence of the vigils turns an examination of public discourse into a curatorial tour de force, however unintentional that may be. Oppenheim’s table organizes the space like the basement ping-pong table of American suburbia. Two doll-like figures, resembling Paul Simon circa 1969, sit on chairs at opposite ends of the long narrow table. One is gold and is dressed in a black suit, the other silver with a white suit. They call to each other “black, white, light, dark.” Evocative enough on its own, the installation is given greater presence thanks to the foundation’s decision to place a guard at each end, the one stout and vague in his gaze, the other a slight brune with glasses. But the overall effect would be narrow were it not for the presence of yet another guard in a corner of the room. Long jet black hair, an apprehensive stillness over a poised stance, she approaches after a moment the corpulent fellow and mouths something unheard as the Paul Simons quicken their dialogue of “black, white, light, dark.” (Performers will likely change through the length of the show.)

The French word for security guard is vigile. Linguistic “false friend” though it may be, I cannot help but think of the performers here as “vigils.” Their presence made for a tremendous performance piece in the eyes of this reviewer. Removed from the spectator yet one with him they stand near walls at the juncture of surveillance, witness, patience, participation.

Each work revealed itself in its dialogue with the vigils, and those interactions are so seamlessly spread throughout the space that one feels no dead zones of the they type that one might feel in, say, the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris. Indeed, it’s unlikely that a public museum could achieve the intensity of what is best called Dance of the Vigils.

A most extraordinary dialogue between the “vigil” and the artwork is found the smaller room in the basement. The room is dominated by Ron Mueck’s In Bed, 2005, created for the Ron Mueck exhibition of 2005. A stunning piece on its own, a giant figure lies as though in bed, knees raised, and watches visitors enter the room. Ill? Depressed? Psychotic? Dreamy? Expecant? Renounced?, the viewer wonders before noticing the guard standing awkwardly nearby, anxious witness to both the expression on the face of the figure and the wondering gaze of the viewer. But no? He is not witness; he is protagonist, a man caught between two worlds—the reality of the viewer and the unreality of the sculpture. He now skirts the room, entrapped, a man who cannot escape his larger-than-life wife or mother but aware that he must perform his “duty.” This is my favorite of the vigil scenes.

There are many others worthy of attention. A vigil at the bottom of the stairs, standing against a canary-yellow wall, is doomed, it seems, to watch visitors descend the final 6 steps after the landing. What, one wonders, is he watching, is he waiting for, is he expecting? He appears to be counting our rise and descent: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I went up and down several times trying to grasp the nature of his performance. The rest rooms, I discover, are to his left down the hallway, one wall of which is bordered by transparent installations echoing the glass and steel of the building. The vigil against the canary yellow wall, counting our steps, therefore stands as ironic commentary on the transparency of numbers: years, dates, visitors, costs, etc. Fascinating.

The foundation’s anniversary exhibition opened against a backdrop of rain clouds, sun showers, bright blue sky and May greens. It is dense with quiet staging of the apprehensive gaze of the personnel and the works on display. These “vigils,” each with a subtle mix of attentiveness, sexuality and distraction are dressed in black suits, black shoes, black ties and white shirts for the men, narrow black slacks and prudent blouses for the women. Some wear an ear piece, but for what?, the viewer wonders. In anticipation of Godot? of a bejeweled donor? of the entrance of an artist with “vision” or “plastic wit”?

One male performer touches his earpiece as though to wonder if an organization so well-funded and clear-goaled a man might stand alone, apart, disconnected, perhaps abandoned. It’s a wonderful echo of Il Cavaliere di Dürer, 2011, by Allessandro Mendini, the work beside which he stands.

No sooner does that brief action take place than our—my— attention is drawn to that of two vigils standing together the playscape towers of Bodys Isek Kingelez’s Projet pour le Kinshasa du troisième millénaire, 1997. Approaching, I hear that they are discussing New York. Brilliant.

Inside, Raymond Hains’ Brise-lames de Saint Malo, plage du Sillon, 1994, and Jean-Michel Alberola’s Eclairage en groupe, 2014, serve as timid reminders that we are in France, otherwise the dearth of works by French-born artists draws attention to the lonely thumb in the garden by sculptor César, that seems to say that the new realism of the past 30 years is how little attention living French artists get (deserve?) on the international market. The panels describing the individual works are in French while the “vigils” are unnamed, undated. A brave curatorial approach, that.

I visit the garden, as is called the greenery that surrounds the glass box of the building. Through the transparent wall a vigil checks her phone. She is standing behind the brightly colorful partition “OMG!” by Allessandro Mendini and Peter Halley, 2014. How wonderful this illusion of hiding behind the bright wall while seen through the transparent wall, as though the latter were coverage by the mere fact of being an enclosure. Archictect Jean Nouvel should be pleased by this homage to his work.

At the food shack by the garden café, its chairs empty but for the rain, a vigil, the only “client,” stirs his coffee, his red umbrella by his side. “Les photos,” he says, “sont interdites.” “Il est interdit,” he says, “de fumer dans le jardin.” His tone is light, apologetic yet clear, an magnificent articulation of the use of the word “interdire” (to forbid) in contemporary art foundations, where freedom of commerce encounters freedom of art under the complex gaze, at once placid and anxious, biding and operational, in need of coffee or a smoke or a message from the world beyond, of a dozen security figures. A celebration of artistic freedom circumscribed only by the forbidden and the unsaid.

I return inside, drawn still to this extraordinary performance of the security personnel. At times the “vigils” don’t seem to watch as much as they do to submit to the space, the sound, the color, the movement. I look up to the bookshop balcony. There, arms crossed, stands a vigil with shave head—an excellent choice of figures since we think of him as the most guard-like. He stands as straight-faced commentary on the hinge of the conversation between commerce and art; the vigil against the canary yellow wall stands between foundation and basement; the vigil furtively checking her phone stands between the opaque and the transparent; the vigil by In Bed acts out the works emotions in a confrontation between display and (in)security; a vigil stretches discreetly from the back of the screening space, loosening wrists, stretching shoulders.

Is this planned or unintentional or inevitable? No matter. I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate the foundation than with this Dance of the Vigils.

1984-2014: 30 Years at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, May 10-Sept. 21, 2014. 261 boulevard Raspail, 14th arrondissment. Metro Raspail or Denfert-Rochereau or RER Denfert-Rochereau. Open daily except Monday 11am-8pm and until 10pm on Tuesday. 10€; 7:€ for students and those under 25; free for children under 13 or on Wednesday for those under 18. For further information see www.fondationcartier.com.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Dance of the Vigils: Fondation Cartier Surveils 30 Years of Art Collection appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Like any good doctor, veterinarian Dr. Jean-Francois Quinton is chronically late for dinner appointments.

He called as he was leaving his thriving group clinic in the 12th arrondissement to say that he’d been delayed by a canary, and as he walked to the metro he told me the heart-rending story of a 10-year-old boy and his mother and a bird wilting in the doctor’s hands. It had otherwise been a good day, with only one death (“a rat, but put to sleep”) and the usual parade of rabbits, ferrets, and chinchillas.

Dr. Quinton is a specialist in exotic pets, particularly small mammals and birds. I’d enlisted him to test with me the restaurant Monsieur Lapin (meaning Mister Rabbit) for the simple reason that both he and the chef are highly skilled specialists working with rabbits. The encounter of Doctor Rabbit and Monsieur Lapin.

Should any of Dr. Quinton’s patients be reading this, I note that he truly does care deeply for the health and longevity of rabbits. Furthermore, he feels a great affinity to rabbit owners since, like him, they tend to be anxious and sensitive people.

Your Dr. Quinton was in fact initially hesitant about accompanying me to test a restaurant specialized in rabbit. But his hesitation sounded as disingenuous as a gynecologist refusing to enter a singles bar. And he so he accepted.

As to Monsieur Lapin’s chef and owner Franck Enée, he has nothing personal against rabbits either. His son actually owns a pet rabbit, had it even before his father took over Monsieur Lapin in 2005. The rabbit once escaped from the apartment upstairs and ran through the restaurant during mealtime—but that’s another story.

Despite his restaurant’s name, Mr. Enée should not be pigeonholed as a rabbit chef. In fact, he halfheartedly took on the moniker Monsieur Lapin when he purchased this restaurant. It was the previous owner who had been completely immersed in rabbit dishes, whereas Mr. Enéehe’s admits to a preference for working with fish, perhaps due to his Norman origins. Yet once he decided to leave the restaurant’s name untouched he developed a fondness for preparing rabbit as well.

The menu reveals the wide scope of his polished talents and quality provisions—baked scallops, grilled tuna, monkfish, brill; roast lamb, sweetbreads and foie gras, roast pigeon. Appetizing words on a menu can be illusory, but to hear Mr. Enée’s enthusiasm (in a subsequent interview) in describing his various preparations is to hear the passion he has for his craft. And to taste them is to share that passion.

Dr. Quinton and I nevertheless feared upon entering Monsieur Lapin that we were in for a stiff, inexpressive evening. Though the seating for 40-45 diners is comfortable and well-spaced the atmosphere initially struck us as overly mannered; while being led to our table we passed polite groupings of diners sporting ageless hair styles and well-pressed clothes, whereas Dr. Quinton had the marks of a man who has recently watched a rat and a canary die and I, well, I’m a bald writer.

Yet the welcome was warm and the décor has quirkiness going for it due to the contrast between the cantankerous (temporary) exhibit of artwork and the rabbit tchotchkes niched here and there around the dining room.

We could only take as a good sign the amiable politesse of Corinne Enée (whom it would be boorish to think of as Madame Lapin but difficult to resist) and her dining room staff.

But nothing reassures more than a well-prepared appetizer. For the purposes of this review Dr. Quinton and I both selected lapin for the main course. In choosing an appetizer I’d elected to stay with the theme of small animals with strong hind legs and so ordered what turned out to be among the tastiest, freshest frog’s legs I’ve ever had, sautéed with a mix of sate spices. Dr. Quinton’s scallops marinated in lime and heightened with herring caviar gave rise to an I-can-finally-relax sigh and the comment, “Good choice!,” referring to either the scallops or the restaurant, possibly both.

Restaurant reviewers pick specific restaurants to write about for many reasons, the main one being because someone else has, but having chosen to have dinner with Dr. Quinton at Monsieur Lapin for its name alone the restaurant had the added feel of discovery, a feeling that only increased as the evening progressed.

It isn’t solely Dr. Quinton’s occupation that brought me to invite him to co-test the rabbit, for Dr. Quinton grew up in hospitality business. He is originally from Dinan, Brittany, where his parents ran a hotel and restaurant cheffed by his late father Georges Quinton, who earned and maintained a Michelin star for about twenty years beginning in the early 1960s.

The son, born in 1958, dates his interest in veterinary medicine to his childhood and tells about two watershed moments of his budding curiosity. One occurred at the age of eight when he attempted to operate a pet hamster that had been mortally wounded by a cagemate, only to put the animal to definitive rest with excessive ether.

The other occurred when even younger when he would visit his father’s kitchen and watch him open rabbits and empty chickens. He recalls asking his father what various innards were and how they functioned and his frustration at having his father answer, “It doesn’t matter how they function, I’m going to show you how the animal’s cooked!”

By the time he was in his early teens he was caring for up to 26 rabbits (without attempting another operation) and various birds.

As a veterinarian in Paris, however, Dr. Quinton largely treated cats and dogs until a renewed passion for less familiar pets led to his professional readjustment in the late 1990s.

The turning point came in 1995 when the clinic he was then working for became a top seller of a brand of cat and dog food. As a prize the brand of nibbles paid his way to a veterinary convention in Orlando, FL. Since he’d already visited Disneyworld and environs while vacationing there only six months prior, he actually went to some of the lectures at the convention, including talks on the treatment of rabbits and ferrets.

While rabbits and ferrets were then largely considered as barnyard animals in cosmopolitan areas of Europe, Dr. Quinton discovered that some American veterinarians were busy treating them as household pets and that Americans were willing to pay significant medical bills to keep them healthy and at home. Above all, Dr. Quinton rediscovered in Orlando the passion and intellectual pleasure of learning about the animals of his childhood.

Back in Paris he then continued to study up on those and other small mammals, and a year later he set off on a two-month internship in Westchester, IL, outside Chicago, to learn more about the field from Drs. Susan Brown and Richard Nye, American pioneers in creating a clinic specialized in exotic pets.

In 1997 he began teaching and consulting about birds and small mammals at the Ecole Nationale Veterinaire at Maison-Alfort, an eastern suburb of Paris. The turn of the millennium then saw a boom in such pets in France. In French these pets go by the acronym NAC, nouveaux animaux de compagnie, indicating new or modern pets.

Dr. Quinton has since published two books (a reference guide to small mammals for fellow veterinarians and a popular guide to carrying for pet rabbits) and written many articles on the subject. He is now an occasional guest on a morning television talk show.

In 2007 he joined three other veterinarians in opening a new clinic, where he is fully devoted to NACs.

As we were finishing our brief interview, two plates of lapin arrived before us. As noted earlier, one should in no way feel limited to choosing rabbit as a main course though for the purposes of this review Dr. Quinton and I both did.

In the hands of an inexperienced chef rabbit tends to be a dry meat that’s dolled up with a chasseur or mustard sauce. But Mr. Enée’s preparations bring out more succulent flavors.

While the croustillant de lapin with dried fruit and wild mushrooms, served with unctuous mashed potatoes, is a delight for the knowledgeable rabbit man (Dr. Quinton), the less experienced rabbit eater looking to taste a range of rabbit possibilities (me) is well-advised to choose the trilogie de lapin à la niçoise.

The trilogy is made up of saddle (râble) wrapped around a preparation of kidney and sage, a delicate thigh (cuisse) spiked with rosemary, and roasted rack (carré) highlighted with rabbit stock and balsamic vinegar, accompanied by mini-vegetables and those unctuous mashed potatoes.

Come dessert, the warm praline soufflé, the Caribbean chocolate with caramelized hazelnuts and mango sorbet, and other enhanced classics sustain the uninterrupted quality of the meal.

The complete menu takes the form of a 45€ three-course fixed-price meal (with several supplements possible), which is quite reasonable for the quality of the cuisine and level of service, making Monsieur Lapin well worth the venture into the lesser-known reaches of the 14th arrondissement, behind the Montparnasse Cemetery and the Montparnasse Tower.

Since you’re unlikely to be visiting Paris with your pet chinchilla or ferret, I have little reason to recommend Dr. Quinton’s services to you. So I will simply recommend a meal at Monsieur Lapin, a most honorable, cordial, and delicious foray into rabbit and much more.

Monsieur Lapin – Chez Franck Enée

11 rue Raymond Losserand
75014 Paris
Metro Pernety or Gaité
Tel. 01 43 20 21 39

Closed Mon and lunch on Sat. Also closed in August.

© 2008, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Doctor Rabbit and Monsieur Lapin appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.