* * *

The gilt bronze equestrian statue of Joan of Arc on Place des Pyramides, across the street from the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden, is one of the most well-known and copied statues of the martyred heroine of the Hundred Years War with the English. Though glimpsed daily by thousands of tourists, few stop to contemplate the work or even to photograph it—and with good reason: they are intent are on preserving their own lives as they cross the street. Greater notice is likely given to copies of the statue in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Portland and Melbourne. Nevertheless, holding her standard high, Joan rides on here in (temporary) victory over the “invader” as a symbol of, well, whatever one group or party wants or needs her to be.

In the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), France’s young Third Republic needed her to represent a proud and unified nation marching in progress. Emmanuel Frémiet was commissioned to create the statue. No sooner was it installed on Place des Pyramides in 1874 than another invasion gathered strength: the invasion, welcome this time, of wealthy British tourists for whom the 1st arrondissement was becoming their Paris headquarters. In the decades that followed the statue’s inauguration, major new hotels opened or expanded on and around Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Honoré—the Normandy, the Continental (now the Westin), the Meurice, the Ritz and others—as did shops and tea rooms and restaurants (“We speak English”).

As the prosperity and innovation of the Belle Epoque raced toward the turn of the century, a new hotel, the Hotel Regina, prepared to open on Joan’s Place des Pyramides. The Regina was under construction at the same as the Alexandre III Bridge, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, all to be ready in time for the World’s Fair of 1900.

The Regina was founded by Léonard Tauber, working with an associate named Constant Bavarez. Eventually Bavarez would take the reins, and the hotel is still majority owned by the Bavarez family, as are two other hotels developed by Tauber, the Raphael and the Majestic, both 5-stars near the Arc de Triomphe in the 16th arrondissement.)

Enter the Regina’s original art nouveau revolving door today you’ll find yourself in the lobby of old-fashion luxury with a choice of three directions: to the left to check in at the reception desk to one of 100 rooms and suites, straight ahead into the oak-paneled English bar for a cocktail or whiskey or to the right to the new wine bar.

The Hotel Regina was refurbished in 2015 without losing any of its character circa 1900, gaining a fifth star in the process. Its room style is clear and direct in its sense of well-being, with grey, beige and off-white walls and fabrics offset with the occasional touch of red. Excellent sound-proofing allows rooms facing the street to shut out the traffic on Rue de Rivoli.

Some furnishings, notably desks, from the opening years of the hotel are still present. Several rooms might even fulfill a guest’s fantasy of living luxuriously in Paris circa 1900, both for the décor and, in the case of exceptional corner rooms, the view to the Tuileries Garden and beyond it Eiffel’s Tower, a remnant of the World’s Fair of 1889.

Having refurbished its rooms and repolished its reputation, Regina opened a new wine bar this year. The bar is a sleek, boldly lit little white box with gold trim, high saucer stools and a corner view toward the garden and the tower.

It’s a sign of the times that the old English bar is called le Bar Anglais and the new French wine bar is named Wine & Friends.

Wine & Friends is the domain of sommelier and barman Antoine Henon, who counsels and pours with the cool and gracious demeanor of a man who is trying to please but not entertain or impress. Henon supplies the wine; you supply the friends.

With friends I turned right at the revolving door to have a drink—actually four, but I’m not one to try to impress with beverage consumption. They were small glasses, several tastes to get acquainted with the pleasantly balanced Dourthe wines while getting a feel for the place.

Dourthe is a company that owns ten Bordeaux vineyards (among them Saint-Estèphe, Haut Médoc, Saint-Emilion, Pessac-Léognan, Graves) including several grand crus. Producing grower and merchant wines, it is part of the Thiénot Group,  whose home soil is in the Champagne region. Other regions are also selectively represented at Wine & Friends.

I’m not a fan of the presence of branding stamped into the décor of luxury bars as found here, but many now have them—an indiscretion that is also a sign of the times. Nevertheless, Wine & Friends (& Dourthe) offers a nice variety of wine styles.

Considering the location between the Louvre and Rue Saint-Honoré, the sense of privilege of leaving hurried Rue de Rivoli and the elegant presence of Antoine Henon, a decent bottle of wine is rather moderately priced at 29-55€, a glass at 9-15€, with several more prestigious wines available by the glass or bottle.

A glass or a shared bottle can be accompanied by a fine plate of cheese and charcuterie, as one would expect in a Paris wine bar. Foie gras and sourdough toast (tartines) topped with smoked salmon or Bayonne ham or chicken are also available.

The atmosphere depends on the aforementioned friends as well as the light, which together lend themselves to cheery aperitif, showy chicness, rising romance in fading light or post-dinner dialogue. Wine & Friends is open daily from 5pm to midnight.

The cocktail-drinker among a group of wine friends needn’t go his or her separate way since one can also get a cocktail served here from the hotel’s Bar Anglais. That bar, with its oak paneling and red velvet armchairs and sofas, is the domain of Marc Desange, who has been shaking and stirring cocktails and pouring whiskey here since last year.

Previously he worked at the Regina’s sister hotel the Raphael, another worthy stop on the Paris hotel bar trail.

Hotel Regina
2 place des Pyramides
75001 Paris
Tel. 01 42 60 35 58
Metro: Tuileries
© 2016 Gary Lee Kraut

The post Hotel Regina: Wine & Friends & Classic Paris Luxury appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

In her article In Paris, a New Breed of Wine Bar (Oct. 1, 2013), Ann Mah, assisted by a lazy editor, would have readers believe that three years ago there was “a cultural shift” that brought forth a “new breed” of wine bar in Paris that dances to a trio of beloved travel adjectives, “casual,” “modestly priced,” “convivial,” a breed that can now save us “an embarrassing collision with a heavy, leather-bound menu and the haughty gaze of the sommelier.”

The premise of the article is all wrong, as anyone capable of understanding “Bar à vins” (or “Bar à vin”) on an awning knows. The old breed of wine bar, still very much aive, is anything but a pretentious place. It has no titled sommelier, and it’s even more casual, modestly priced and convivial than those bars cited in the article. Mah doesn’t get it all wrong though, at least she wouldn’t have gotten it wrong had she written her article in a decade ago, for there was indeed a trend in wine bars of the type she describes… around the year 2000.

Ann Mah, who has just published the book “Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris,” has apparently confused the traditional Paris wine bar with the cocaine-fueled wine scene in New York in the 1980s. One wishes that in mastering the art of eating she had also learned to love research more during that year in Paris.

Upscale wine bars do exist (e.g. the delightfully smooth, somewhat stiff but ever-so-pleasant Legrand Filles et Fils, Galérie Vivienne, 2nd) but the traditional, basic wine bars in Paris, the ones on which the so-called “new breed” riff, are the furthest thing from haughty. They typically come in two kinds. There is the kind developed near market squares (the market has since disappeared in some cases) since markets and wine merchants/bars are part and parcel of the same economy. Le Baron Rouge, 1 rue Théophile-Roussel, 12th, and Le Rubis, 10 rue du Marché St-Honoré, 1st, Aux tonneaux des Halles, 28 rue Montorgeuil, 1st,  are well-known classics in the genre, very much “in their juice,” as the French would say of something that has authentically survived from another era.

The other kind of traditional wine bars are the non-descript café-bars, which might also serve cooked food during restaurant hours.  These are  places without airs, and you needn’t feel that you’re going slumming to go enjoy them since they exist throughout the city, including in the well-trodden districts of Paris, e.g. Les Pipos, 2 rue de l’Ecole Polytechnique, 5th arr., or Au Père Louis, 38 rue Monsieur le Prince, 6th. No “leather-bound [wine] menu” here, No need to know the difference between a château, a domaine and a clos or between the weather conditions in 2007 and 2008, but rather a choice between Burgundy, Bordeaux, Cote du Rhone, and maybe a Gaillac and a Sancerre. And if that’s too complicated then all you really need to know to get a drink is that rouge is red, blanc is white, and rosé is plonk.

Whether you care to frequent them or not, these wine bars are numerous and are the most unpretentious, basic wine joints around. The only “haughty gaze” in the old-fashion wine bar is that of American tourists peering in at the unisex Turkish toilet.

The breed of wine establishment that the author applauds actually raises rather than lowers the bar, so to speak, by being slightly more expensive and offering slightly better munchies. They are indeed enjoyable places—casual, modestly priced, convivial, as Mah says. Some have an edge of snobbery precisely because articles such as hers describe them as the latest greatest, but all are worthwhile if you find an open seat. Unfortunately, Mah’s use of them as exemplary of a “new breed” is simply untrue.

Even before the article appeared, Americans represented a large percentage of the clientele in some of the businesses recommended in the article. No problem with that; they’re my people too. That doesn’t mean that these bars are to be avoided as tourist traps; they are not. Trend or no trend, they are a natural choice for The New York Times Travel Section, written for an upper-middle-class sensibility that seeks safety in numbers. The editorial point of view of the typical Times travel piece about Paris (numerous as they are) seems to be based on the assumption that the last time the reader visited Paris was when she was staying with their parents at the Ritz. If true, that would explain the author’s traumatic experience with “the haughty gaze of the sommelier.”

The article quotes an American wine shop owner to voice the allegedly recent “cultural shift in France,” it plugs a wine bar and restaurant owned by another American, and it cites several bars largely frequented by Americans, leading me to wonder if what Mah has truly discovered is that a food or drink trend in Paris can’t exist without us. That would explain why the sudden appearance of several hole-in-the-wall oyster bars two or three years ago never reached trend status: there just isn’t a critical enough mass of Americans who like raw oysters.

I’m not knocking the pleasures of a glass or three and some tapas in any of the businesses mentioned in the article. Of the six, I occasionally stop at Ambassade de Bourgogne when in the Saint-Germain/Odéon Quarter when in the area for a tête-à-tête with a friend fond of Burgundy wines. (That bar is actually the odd man out in Mah’s list because less of a foodie scene and less convivial than the others.)

Still, Mah’s gratuitous mention of Le Verre Volé is where she shoots herself in the foot. Le Verre Volé opened in 2000, a full decade before the alleged 2010 start of Mah’s “new breed.” Le Verre Volé was once on the forefront of something (that something being a certain kind of organic wine snobbery, though its attitude has softened as that wine movement widened). A search on The New York Times’s website shows that Mah’s is the fifth Times article since 2009 to glowingly mention Le Verre Volé. I imagine that thousands of other journalists, bloggers and foodies have listed it as well. In fact, I’m one of them. I mentioned Le Verre Volé in the Canal Saint-Martin chapter of “Paris Revisited: The Guide for the Return Traveler,” my guidebook published in 2003. That doesn’t place me ahead of the pack so much as it shows Mah’s selection of “the city’s newest tables” to be both old news and the result of sloppy research. The bandwagon isn’t the only place to eat and drink well.

Mah is nevertheless correct, give or take a decade, that there’s been a movement in Paris toward easy-going bars and restaurants serving casual, talkative clients organic/natural wines, less industrial food, and products with a clearly stated provenance.

That movement stands on firm cultural and economic ground: cultural because Parisians are accustomed to seeking out appellation products and quality French food and drink in general (and furthermore because over the past two decades Parisians have become more comfortable drinking while standing up, though more beer than wine), economic because reducing or eliminating the kitchen is the key to a healthy bottom line in the food and drink business in a high-rent, high-labor-cost city such as this.

For all the appellation traceability promised by these wine bars, there isn’t much kitchen work involved in slicing charcuterie, cutting bread and wedges of organic cheese, and heating up some tapas. Artisanal products, though not fast food in the industrial sense, allow for significant margins when they require as much know-how and labor behind the counter as a Big Mac or a salted caramel mocha.

Thus, Paris saw the mainstreaming of sushi restaurants in the 1990s; the early 2000s saw the arrival of bars and restaurants serving organic and biodynamic wines (now broadened to include less regulated “natural” wines), which went hand in hand with an increasing emphasis on accompanying plates of artisanal cold cuts and cheeses and now other tapas (Mah’s “new breed”); the opening of the aforementioned oyster bars which coincided with the creation of appellation coffee shops, and most recently, first appearing in 2012 and coming into fruition in 2013, the creation of craft beer bars and craft beer shops. If there’s a new breed in Paris these days it has more to do with hops and malt than with grapes.

The true movement in the Paris wine bar scene over the past 12+ years has not been a downscaling towards relaxed wine bars but rather an upscaling since an increasing percentage of Parisians and tourists can easily affordable to pay for wine and tapas what used to be considered the price of a meal.

I don’t criticize this type of wine bar/restaurant. Au contraire. I go to such places with friends and I give food and may include them on my history-of-food-and-wine in Paris tours and in wine tours—typically not to bars Mah’s listed but to others (there are many) whose offerings and ownership fit in best with the evening’s themes. However, by presenting old news as new news and by failing to do simple research or, worse, by consciously scuttling any sense of history, culture or economics in order to appear trendy, the form of travel writing represented by the article treats readers as sheep-like lifestyle consumers rather than as curious travelers.

The New York Times Travel Section has long been the weakest link in a great brand (I subscribe) but it’s a weak link with significant influence. A list that appears in the Times will be clipped, printed, forwarded and used by numerous travelers for many months to come while also inspiring other journalists and bloggers to repeat the same misinformation. (Some of my own faithful readers are fond of unwittingly insulting me by forwarding me such articles along with a kindly “Do you know about these places?” or a benevolent, “You might want to share this.” Ouch!)

Last week, I had a fine dinner and an easily ordered carafe of wine with the editor of a newspaper whose territory in the New York region is occasionally covered by the New York Times. After I told of my annoyance with Ann Mah’s article, the editor remarked, “When we read an article in The New York Times about a subject we know well and realize how uninformed the journalist is it’s a wonder that we believe the rest of the paper.”

Of course, Ann Mah’s wine bar article is a fluffy travel piece, however misinformed, can lead some to happy travels. The paper’s hard news, of greater important for the national discourse, presumably receives more vetting. Still, if one of our finest news gathering organizations can be so far off about Paris, which is a 10-minute metro ride from the headquarters of the International New York Times and among the foreign destinations the mother paper most frequently covers, then maybe we should all be drinking more wine, wherever we can get it.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Mastering the Art of Travel Writing in France: Lessons in Paris Wine Bars appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

But how to get to know the wine that is Champagne? Ideally by visiting the region where it’s produced and by coming into contact with all that contributes to producing and enjoying it: professionals, towns and villages, vineyards, grapes, cellars, methods, marketing, history, food, drinking companions… and a designated driver.

In late September, while the harvest was winding up and the first fermentation was underway, all of those came into play as I joined four English journalists and a Canadian journalist on a 72-hour tour in the Champagne-Ardenne region, whose Champagne-producing zone mostly lies 90-110 miles east of Paris.

Here below is my Champagne diary, a drink-by-drink and dish-by-dish account (excluding breakfast) of 72 hours in the southern half of the Champagne-Ardenne region. Getting to know Champagne means drinking sometimes as an aperitif, sometimes at a tasting, sometimes with a meal, with the appetizer, with the main course, and even with dessert. This diary therefore offers a glimpse of the variety of both the wines and cuisine in the region, along with a glimpse of over-indulgence à la française.

You will note that on this trip we aimed for variety of regional drink rather than top-of-the-line grandness.

Three major facets of Champagne production define the taste and quality of the final product, and these became evident in drinking the wine (and noting the label):
1. the quality of the grapes,
2. the percentage in the final blend of the three Champagne grapes: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay.
3. the dosage of sugar and liqueur that is added (or in rare cases not) to a bottle after its second fermentation.

I am not necessarily recommending these particular wines other than to note the enjoyment of tasting them all and their contribution to my own sense of Champagne over this 72 hour period. Some of the restaurants, however, are quite recommendable should you venture this way, as you will see in my comments below.

My Champagne Diary

September 22
A. Place: Troyes (Click on “View Map” to see the location of the towns and villages where we stopped)

Dinner: Valentino, 35 rue Paillot-de-Montabert, 10000 Troyes. Tel 06 25 73 14 14. Open Tues.-Sat.
Comment: Fine dining, strong leaning toward fish, notable if spending the night in Troyes.
Aperitif: Ratafia, more precisely Ratafia Champenois or Ratafia de Champagne, an 18° aperitif from the Champagne region made of grape juice (in this case Pinot Noir grapes) and marc de Champagne, grape pulp distilled after the juice has been pressed out for wine.
Wine: Rosé des Riceys, Guy de Forez 2005. Not all grapes in Champagne go toward making sparkling wine. This is a still rosé made from Pinot Noir grapes.
Appetizer: Fricassée d’asperge et scampi, omelette noire et huile parfumée
Main course: Râble de lapereau rôti (saddle of rabbit), aubergine en tandoori, asperges vertes et jus réduit à l’orange
Dessert: Soupe de fraise pétillante et baba bouchon. Strawberries with fizz crystal thrown in the bowl.

September 23
B. Place: Urville

Champagne house: Drappier, in the Côte des Bar area of Champagne.
Champagnes tasted: Brut, rosé brut, and, most interestingly, “brut nature,” “zero dosage,” which dryer than regular brut in that the sugar-liqueur that is added Champagnes in varying doses is absent. Interestingly, the various professionals encountered over these 72 each had a different opinion on zero dosage and low dosage Champagnes, with comments from “it’s a fad that didn’t last” to “we tried it but consumers didn’t go for it” to “if the market warrants it we can always produce some” to “real Champagne requires the dosage.” I liked its dryness.

C. Place: Magnant

Lunch: Le Val Moret, 10110 Magnant. Tel 03 25 29 85 12. Open daily. Also a 3-star hotel.
Comment: A roadside stop with a view of the countryside. No need to go out of your way to come here, but it made for a nice lingering lunch off the highway, 20 miles east of Troyes just off exit 22 of Autoroute A5.
Aperitif: Pass, just came from a morning wine tasting.
Wine: Coteaux Champenois, a local red made from Pinot Noir grapes. Bouzy rouge is the most famous of these.
Appetizer: Salade estivale : noisette de melon (cantaloupe) au Magra Bendi, jambon cru (cured ham), galantine de pintadeau (young guinea fowl), salade (lettuce). Magra Bendi, a cousin to ratafia, is another aperitif/dessert wine made in the Champagne region. It is often peach- or pear-flavored.
Main course: Noix de veau sauce forestière (veal fillet from leg portion with a mushroom sauce.
Dessert: Tarte fine aux pommes sauce miel et glace vanille gousse (thin apple tart with honey sauce and vanilla ice cream).

D. Place: Matougues

Dinner: Auberge des Moissons, 6 Route Nationale, 51510 Matougues. Tel. 03 26 70 99 17. Also a 3-star hotel.
Comment: Another roadside stop, this time worth the detour. Relaxed, rustic gastronomy deeply rooted in the earth. We went truffle hunting with the owner and his dog here in the late afternoon and then enjoyed a dinner of truffles and Champagne. The harvest for the local truffle, tuber uncinatum, known as the truffle (truffe) of Burgundy or Champagne or Lorraine, is September to December. I slept well after this lengthy meal.
1st Champagne: Janisson Baradon, non-dosé/ultra brut (i.e. without sugar added), Epernay.
Appetizer: Four bites, variations on the theme of truffles: foie gras with tuffle, “sandwich” with truffle and butter, scrambled egg with truffle, truffle mousse.
2nd Champagne: Mandois, Blanc de Blancs (100% chardonnay), Vintage 2004, Pierry.
Main course: Pavé de boeuf, sauce au Ratafia, purée au truffe (thick piece of beef with a Ratafia sauce, pureed potatoes with bits of tuffle.
Cheese: Langres (from southern Champagne), Brie (just west of Champagne)
3rd Champagne: Château Jacques Rousseaux, rosé (color by brief maceration of Pinot Noir, i.e. méthode par saignée), from the village of Verzenay.
Dessert: Croustillant de framboise, crème pistache.

September 24
E. Place: Chalons-en-Champagne

Champagne house: Joseph Perrier, the only Champagne house in Chalons.
Champagnes tasted: Brut, rosé, blanc de blancs, demi-sec, and JP’s fine top-of-the-line vintage Cuvée Josephine 1998.

Lunch: Les Caudalies, 2 rue de l’Abbé Lambert, 51000 Chalons-en-Champagne. Tel. 03 26 65 07 87.
Comment: Turn-of-the-century kitsch (19th-20th) meets turn-of-the-century kitsch (20th-21st) in this mansion serving polished brasserie fare at lunchtime.
Wine: Pays d’Oc, Chardonny, 2006. A Chardonnay from southwest France while in Champagne? Well, Chalons is outside of the zone of Champagne vineyards despite the presence of the Joseph Perrier Champagne house in town, and we’d had enough Champagne already that morning.
Appetizer: Tartine de saumon fumé au fromage de chèvre.
Main course: Choucroute de la mer (fish, seafood, cabbage, potatoes)
Dessert: Crème brulée à la vanille.

F. Place: Epernay

Chocolate tasting: Chocolatier Vincent Dallet, 4 rue du Capitaine Deulin, 51200 Epernay. Tel. 03 26 55 31 08. www.chocolat-vincentdallet.fr.
Comment: Behind his pastry and chocolate shop, Vincent Dallet, one of the top chocolate chefs of France, offered us a tasting of chocolates and ganaches in his demonstration kitchen while he demonstrated his recipe for the biscuit rose de Reims, a pink biscuit that is the tradition sweet treat in the Champagne region that goes well with a glass a bubbly or at teatime.
Chocolates tasted: Too many to recall, and furthermore, knowing that that we had a full evening of eating and drinking ahead, I merely took a nibble of each offering. Wonderful nibbles through. Ate the whole biscuit fresh from the oven.

Aperitif/Champagne tasting: C Comme, 8 rue Gambetta, 51200 Epernay. Tel. 03 26 32 09 55. www.c-comme.fr. Open daily 10am-8pm, Fri. and Sat. until midnight.
Comment: This Champagne bar and wine shop provides both an excellent introduction to the various types of Champagne. The sparkling and other regional wines of Champagne sold here mostly come from small and medium-size producers, mostly family-owned. The originality of the bar is that you can order a series of small or large glasses of Champagne selected to give a sense of the different grape varieties or blends available. You can also simply order a bottle or a glass as in a wine bar. C Comme (C as in) is short for C.Comme Champagne de Propriétaires.
Champagnes tasted: Five of them. Didn’t note names, but the idea was to taste the grape, so one (small) glass was Chardonnay, one was mostly Pinot Noir, one was mostly Pinot Meunier, the other two blends.

Dinner: La Cave à Champagne, 16 rue Gambetta, 51200 Epernay. Tel. 03 26 55 50 70. www.la-cave-a-champagne.com.
Comment: This was clearly a long day of eating and drinking, but I was still able to enjoy the various sips and tastes of this hearty, relaxed yet genteel restaurant.
1st Champagne: Marizy, blanc de blancs, 2002. From the village of Cumières in the Marne Valley.
Appetizer: Matelot de poisson, a fish, langoustine, and leek starter.
2nd Champagne: Eric Taillet, brut, 100% Pinot Meunier. From the village of Baslieux sous Chatillon in the Marne Valley.
Main course: Chicken breast stuffed with foie gras and with a Champagne sauce.
3rd Champagne: Marizy, rosé.
Dessert: Coupe de vigneron, a ice cream cup of filled with vanilla ice cream, peach liqueur, grapes, topped with whipped cream.

September 25

G. Place: Hautvillers

Champagne house: G. Tribaut, 88 rue d’Eguisheim, 51160 Hautvillers. Tel. 03 26 59 40 57. www.champagne.g.tribaut.com.
Comment: Family-owned and operated, producing sincere and inexpensive Champagnes, with most of the sales being out the side door. The setting overlooking the vineyards along the southern slopes of the Montagne de Reims, with harvesters out in one of the fields, was so pretty on a sunny September morning that it was hard to leave the back yard and then hard to leave without buying a couple of bottles.
Champagnes tasted: Cuvée de Réserve (1/3 Chardonnay, 1/3 Pinot Noir, 1/3 Pinot Meunier), Grande Cuvée Spéciale (50% Chardonnay, 50% Pinot Noir), Vintage 2002 (50% Chardonnay, 50% Pinot Noir), Rosé de Réserve (80% Chardonnay, 20% red wine)

Lunch: Le Restaurant de l’Abbaye, rue de l’Eglise, 51160 Hautvillers. Tel. 03 26 59 44 79. www.abbayehautvillers.org.
Comment: The billowing plaster ceiling here is so disturbingly ugly so you’ll just have to ignore it as best you can. Otherwise, the regional, well-cheffed cuisine here makes for a delicious complement to an hour or two of visiting one of the most famous villages of the region since it is here, a few miles outside of Epernay, that Dom Perignon (the man not the brand) helped develop the Champagne as we know it.
1st wine: Coteaux Champenois from the village of St. Martin d’Ablois. The wine tasting above had lasted for two hours so I ignored the wine at this point.
Appetizer: None. We were short on time and short on appetite.
Main course: Cassoulet of scallops and prawns in a Champagne bisque with small lentils (lentillons de Reims), girolle mushrooms and purple basil.
2nd wine (with dessert): Magra Bendi, pear-flavored. Just a sip.
Dessert: Charlotte of biscuit de Reims and pear with a syrup from Champagne grape juice and some Pinot Noir grapes.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Champagne Diary: 3 Grapes, 3 Lunches, 3 Dinners, a Bit of Chocolate, and Countless Bubbles appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Les Fines Gueules might be more appropriately considered a restaurant with a bar area up front than a wine bar, but I always approach it as a wine bar where I might eventually stay for dinner. I therefore like to stop by with friends relatively early in the Paris evening, say between 6:30 and 7:30, when there are few others around. We sit on the stools before the stylish curve of the zinc bar and, after giving some indication of our likes and dislikes, let ourselves be talked into whatever owner Arnaud Pradol or the friendly barman on duty thinks we should try among the great selection of organic wines. Accompanied with a platter, small or large, of organic cheeses and cold cuts, plans for dinner elsewhere typically get put off until eventually we order a main course. Yesterday that meant sea bass with risotto.

The photo below shows Arnaud Pradol discussing the Saint Joseph that we ordered. Notice behind him the beautiful red manual deli slicer from about 1950.

Les Fines Gueules, 43 rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, 1st arrondissement. Near Place des Victoires, a 5 minute walk from metro Palais Royal or Bourse. Tel. 01 42 61 35 41.

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So it was with Fabien Nègre at Le Cotte-Roti, a year-old “bistronomic” restaurant near Marché d’Aligre in the 12th arrondissement. With his doctorate in philophy and post-graduate degree in economy, professional experience in radio and television, and expertise in gastronomy and cigars, Fabien Nègre is the kind of person whom you can ask how he got from there to here and then sit back and enjoy the ride.

Marché d’Aligre, the nearby food market, is notable for its own pairing of character and history. The neighborhood of a food market is traditionally prime territory for homey bistros and rustic wine bars. For the latter, Le Baron Rouge is now part of the city’s folklore, so if you’ve never been there you might push past the smokers outside and cozy up to a barrel for a glass of down-home red before going for the more refined stuff at Le Cotte-Roti two blocks away.

While traditional bistro and ethnic fare is found all around this market area, we’ve come to Le Cotte-Roti to examine a more contemporary development in Paris market (and non-market) neighborhoods, something that has in the past few years come to be called bistronomy.

Bistronomy is a combination of bistro and gastronomy. The term best applies to bistros where the chef continues to emphasize seasonal produce and nearly traditional recipes while displaying his knowledge and interest in more polished or sophisticated cuisine. These are indeed bistros since the additional elements required of a truly gastronomic restaurant—elegant services, fine tableware, more expensive produce, a section-by-section kitchen staff, a decorator—may be absent.

A number of famous (read: trademarked) mid-career and older chefs who have made their name in gastronomy now have an adjacent business of bistronomy, while opening such a restaurant is now also a way for chefs in their 30s to try to strut their stuff and take full control at an early stage in their career.

The term bistronomy is naturally a fad, a bit of a marketing ploy by which its owner or chef claims to be a cut above the ordinary bistro. Yet beyond the easy way the word rolls off the tongue lies the sensible notion that traditional French cuisine evolves and that gastronomy is just another of saying a good meal. Add to that the notion that a hungry traveler can have a relaxed, well-conceived meal in an unpretentious setting at an inviting price.

Le Cotte-Roti is a classic example. It is an open 30-seat space that’s pleasant enough without having any particular charm. Service is kind if direct. The chef sometimes gives a hand in the dining room. A three-course meal is currently an honest 30€ without supplements. One comes for the food.

Thus a tasty October lunch with Fabien of hare terrine containing bits of foie gras; braised veal tournedos with stewed mushrooms; a fruity-cum-earthy bottle of Faugères, a Syrah-Mouevèdre-and-then-some blend from the Languedoc region.

Re-thus a notable November dinner with Jean-François (who not only allowed me to share in the conversation but also in his meal) of oeuf mollet frit, a fried soft-boiled egg on a pesto-lined “dipping” bread; a mi-cuit foie gras terrine; a succulent scallop and potato purée dish; a sea bream (dorade/daurade) on a bed of salsify heightened with white truffle oil; poached quince with a triangle of French toast; poached pear on a creamy rice putting laced with caramel. Wine: Saint Joseph 2006, a Syrah from the northern portion of the Rhone Valley.

All these are good examples of bistronomy’s enhanced bistro fare and of someone giving it his best effort in the kitchen. Regarding those efforts, the foie gras lacked umph (and curiously of toast), an indication that one can’t expect the chef in a two-man kitchen to do everything well.

Nicolas Michel, 33, owner-chef of Le Cotte Roti, is in many ways the classic example of the type of culinary beginnings and ambition that have led to such praisable, acceptably-priced bistronomy. His C.V., punctuated by the names of notable restaurants, also serves as a language lesson for anyone looking to learn the terms for kitchen help in French: stagiaire (trainee/intern), divers extras en cuisine (various on-call jobs, i.e. Hey, Nick, I need someone to help out Saturday night, are you free?); 1er commis de cuisine (basically the cook helper); demi chef de partie (somewhere between a commis and a section head): chef de partie (section head);chef de cuisine (head chef); second de cuisine (sous chef); chef cuisinier (big boss, accompanied here by the title propiétare-gérant/owner-manager)

Cotte-Roti is a play on words involving the name of the street (rue de Cotte) and the Nicolas Michel’s reverence to Côte Rôtie, the Rhone Valley appellation that has made a name—and a price—for itself over the past decade. Mr. Michel, having lived in the Côte Rôtie area for two years, is a big fan of these wines. Sold here at 80-90€ per bottle, they can overwhelm the price of the meal. That’s not a judgment, just an observation. Indeed, despite the moderate price of bistronomic meals such as served here, bistronomy does assume a clientele capable of spending more and of aiming high when in the mood or at the appropriate occasion. Most wines here are priced in the 30-45€ range on a list that sits broadly in Côtes du Rhone, therefore mostly Syrah, territory, while occasionally spilling north to Beaujolais, Burgundy and the Loire, and west to Languedoc as during my lunch with Fabien Nègre.

As for what Fabien was telling me during this time, there’s no need for me to repeat it here. You’ll soon be able to sit back and enjoy his affable, wide-ranging conversation yourself by reading his series of portraits of some of Paris’s most celebrated chefs to appear on France Revisited beginning with his portrait of Guy Martin of Le Grand Véfour in February 2009.

Le Cotte-Roti, 1 rue de Cotte, 12^th arrondissement. Near Marché d’Aligre. Tel. 01 43 45 06 37. Metro Ledru Rollin. Closed Sun., Mon., Dec. 25-Jan. 1, three weeks in Aug.

Le Baron Rouge, 1 rue Théophile Roussel, 12^th arrondissement. Near Marché d’Aligre. Tel. 01 43 43 14 32. Metro Ledru Rollin. Closed Mon.

© 2008, Gary Lee Kraut

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The editor or guest writers or contributors to France Revisited have personally tested, and in many cases retested, the establishments described here.

The personal nature of these choices will be clear to you as you read them. Along with the table, the dishes, the wine, the service, the atmosphere and the decor, what leads us to appreciate a place or dish or drink is the adventure and the experience of eating and drinking in various setting with various people, and sometimes alone.

Wherever we eat, it’s the people at your table who make or break the meal. Good company, even if that company is yourself, will save a bad meal, but a good meal rarely makes up for bad company—though good wine helps. That in mind, you will encounter here a smorgasbord of food-friendly co-testers in these reviews, from faithful sidekicks to notable professionals to curious travelers.

Some of these restaurant writings may even read as interviews as much as reviews—call them restaurant intereviews.

There are no “must eats” on the Paris restaurant scene or in the various regions of France, only wise, personal selections. The wise hungry traveler knows that there’s a time to spend more for quality and a time to spend less for character, a time when you want to luxuriate in the view from the high road and a time to sit down to hearty tradition, a time to go regional and a time to go foreign, a time for a brasserie and a time for a café, a time to make reservations and a time to carry bread and cheese to the park.

If you want what are generally considered the elite of French restaurants you need only head for the stars in the Michelin Red Guides, a major influence of the reputation of restaurants of haute cuisine in France. We love haute cuisine with the right company, on the right expense account. We highly recommend the experience and the luxuriance. However, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you choose a restaurant by its ratings or polling results, whatever guide you may be consulting.

More than any specific restaurants, it’s variety that we recommend. It isn’t where you should be eating in Paris that counts, but where you will find your personal blend of enjoyment and gratification, perhaps with a touch of adventure and discovery.

A sophisticated palate is a nice arm to have in your traveling arsenal, but eating out in France shouldn’t be approached as an intellectual exercise or some form of X-Game in which only the strongest stomachs survive. Instead, this adventure calls for exploring the rich variety of eating experiences available in France (and this is particularly true of Paris): outdoor markets, cafés, bistros, brasseries, cuisine bourgeoise (serving polished classics), regional cuisine, gastronomic restaurants, foreign restaurants, wine bistros, and wine bars. You’ll find that variety—and variety within that variety—among these reviews and intereviews.

We am a hopeful, optimistic reviewers. We hope that every restaurant we test will excite us in some way, that we can recommend it as a perfect place for romance, family, friends, celebration, negotiation, onion soup, duck, fish, apple pie, etc. So we enter each restaurant wanting to believe the promise that led us there in the first place—its situation, its menu, its décor, its name, an advertisement, my own previous meals there, suggestions of friends, acquaintances, strangers, chefs, restaurateurs or fellow restaurant writers. By the time we leave we want to feel that we’ve discovered (or rediscovered) something, even if what we’ve just (re)discovered has been known and written about for years.

Of course, that isn’t always the case, so don’t expect rave comments about every dish and drink mentioned here.

Add to these reviews and writings your companion(s) for the meals, your taste and mood at the time, and the hazards of dining out, and you come away with your own restaurant adventures in France.

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