Alexander Lobrano - Hungry for Paris : the ultimate guide to the city’s 102 best restaurants

2010 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright 2008, 2010 by Alexander Lobrano
Photographs copyright 2008 by Bob Peterson
Maps copyright 2008, 2010 by David Lindroth, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE T RADE P APERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in different form in 2008 by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-1-58836-710-5

www.atrandom.com

v3.1

TO BRUNO MIDAVAINE
FOR HIS REMARKABLE PALATE,
EXTRAORDINARY COOKING,
AND INVALUABLE PATIENCE

P ARIS, AUGUST 1972. THE CITY WAS STINKING HOT, THE mysteriously empty Champs-lyses (my family knew nothing about the month-long August holiday of the French) was paved with bumpy cobblestones, and most French cars looked like funny metal beetles.

After six weeks of maternally led but basically autonomous splendor in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, my mother, two brothers, and I were meeting my father and sister in Paris. Our first meal was spent at the Androut, a restaurant that specialized in cheese. We all loved cheese. So off we went in two small taxis; the one I was in included a smelly, drooling German shepherd looking over the front seat and a driver who managed two deliciously ripe-smelling Gitanes before we got to the restaurant, maybe a fifteen-minute drive. The blue cigarette packet on the dashboard was decorated with a fan-wielding gypsy encircled by a blue curl of smoke, possibly the stuff of erotic musings, but the best was yet to come.

The strange little restaurant with rough white stucco walls and wrought-iron fixtures shocked with a hairy dairy stink: cheese. We ate salad with hot goat cheese (with all due respect to Miss Healey, my third-grade teacher and the one charged with the awkward business of teaching us about mammals, it had never occurred to me that goats had milk, much less that you could make cheese from it) fondue, which made us kids nearly drunk with its kirsch fumes; Roquefort soufflserved with walnut bread; a small salad dressed with sharp vinaigrette, and sublime cheese; cheese; and more cheese. We went back the next night, and maybe the following one, but on our last night in Paris we ended up in a stifling cellar in the Latin Quarter, where we all ordered onion soup and boeuf bourguignon.

The beef was chewier than what I knew at home, but Id never eaten a sauce like that in my life. What did it taste like? Smoke, beef, blood, salt, onions, mushrooms, and wine. I spooned, dunked, and licked until not a drop of the velvety garnet-colored sauce was left and later spent a restless night knowing that Id never be free of a powerful, permanent craving for more. Little did I know then that this addiction would become the compass by which I would live my life.

Four years later I was in Paris again, dumb from the misery of British food on a student paupers pocket in late-seventies London and desperate for goat cheese and more of that sauce. But, on a night so cold it made your eyeballs ache, I discovered choucroute garnie, a vast smoking platter of tart sauerkraut mounted with several kinds of sausage, fatback, and brined pork loin. Eaten with waxy white potatoes and nostril-stinging mustard, its one of the worlds great winter dishes and immediately became a firm favorite. I amazed the waiter but not myself by polishing off every blond shred of cabbage, every nubbin of pork, along with a second serving of potatoes, yet secretly, I was still yearning for boeuf bourguignon.

The punitive wages of New York publishing subsequently kept me away from Paris again for a long time. Then, the next time I finally visited the city, and after a night of revelry, I found myself flat broke and walking back to my hotel without a map as the city was waking. Shop owners opened wheezing metal gates, a florist was secateuring lily stems into the gutter, and waiters in snug waistcoats set up regimented burgundy-and-ivory wicker chairs on caf terraces. The air smelled of melted butter, coal smoke, cigarettes, stale wine. Too tired to be completely panicked, I just walked, dazed but intrigued by the quickening pulse of the city. Somewhere I came across a small market, just setting up so early in the day. Jespre quelle la valu! shouted one of the stallholders, to the laughter of colleagues, and though it was five years before I understood the remark (I hope she was worth it, a reference to my disheveled appearance, assumed to be the aftermath of an amorous evening), I knew that being teased was also being included in a Parisian morning. I stopped and stared into an open wooden crate at fat bronze pears that not only had little gold labels with black Gothic lettering but had had their stems dipped into crimson wax (why?). Before I could even wonder if I had enough to buy one, a barrel-shaped woman in a knit cap handed me one that had been bruised. I didnt realize that it was a gift and tried to pay her, but she waved me away. I carried the surprisingly heavy pear in my pocket until I was in the middle of the Pont des Arts, and then, leaning on the railing, I bit into the fruit and rich, sweet juice sluiced through my fingers and ran into my sleeves. Happier than Id ever been, I crossed the river and found the Hotel La Louisiane, knowing, when I slid back into my lumpy bed, that I was meant to live in Paris. After all, Id just walked home like someone whod been born there, and my forearms were sticky with pear juice.