Barcelona postcards

Corso, Paris - GOGO Review

La Briciola Paris, GOGO review

Full Michelin 2008 Guide Rouge results/ Michelin Red Guide 2008

Here.

Michelin Paris Red Guide 2008 Rumours

**LATEST NEWS** according to François Simon's blog: one star each for Il Vino and Aida, and no retrograding for Arpege (but maybe next year...)


It's the time of year when the rumour mill starts predicting who will win and who will lose those precious Michelin stars. Thanks to Chroniques du Plaisir for creating the first online discussion site on facebook and especially François Simon, who, for the last decade or so has had the goods before everyone else.

The guide comes out on March 6th.

Here are a few of the predictions, which seem pretty solid to me. Arpege, seem to be having more and more trouble with their organization (I have sent them tables daily for a very long time) and have noticed a huge difference in the (lack of) quality in their telephone manners and general professionalism. I think they've taken on too many low paid, non- experienced stagieres. . I'm sure the cuisine is still superb, but they need vast improvement on the PR side of things.

Gérald Passédat at Le Petit Nice (last year's espoir) in Marseille will get three stars

Philippe Legendre at Le Cinq will get back his third star

L’Oustau de Baumanière aux Baux- de-Provence, gets two stars and an "espoir" rating.

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon gets two stars

Jean-François Piège (Les Ambassadeurs, Hôtel de Crillon) misses out again on his third star.

Didier Elena (Les Crayères) gets his third star (false rumour?)

Alain Passard, loss of one star (probably false rumour)

William Ledeuil (Ze Kitchen Galerie – Paris) gets his first star

Alain Ducasse gets a star for his opening of the Jules Verne (wow, not bad after being open a month or two!)

This is a work in progress that will be continually updated as I get more intell....

Les Fines Gueules - GOGO

Just a I predicted, The Guardian mentionned my gridskipper "cool" smoking post in their recent article on the ban.`

Guess yet another travel journo is dredging up hot intell on my blog in view of writing a "cool" article like : "Bobo Burgers in the City of Lights", etc

Gridskipper Report: Paris Restaurants

Right here, written in collaboration with the lovely Meg.

Les Fines Gueules

Excellent tuna rolled in sesame seeds and accompanied with avocado purée and Joel Thiébault salad

Killer steak tartar


Nice surprise. Wine bar/bistro behind the Banque de France. Most probably the best steak tartar I've ever had. (Desnoyer meat au couteau with pesto, parsley and aged parmesan, and a side salad with Joel Thiébault veggies). Wine list is a little limited and I wish I hadn't seen the guy who worked in the kitchen leave the bathroom without washing his hands, but hey, we're in France..and it's still a great bet for getting drunk on a Sunday afternoon eating raw meat.

Or, as my GOGO review says:

Les Fines Gueules

Steak tartar with grenade potatoes, 17€

Located just off of the place des Victoires, this wine bar/bistro was a pleasant surprise during a recent Sunday lunch. Raved about in the French press when ex-Bistral owner Arnaud Bradol took over last year and gave the small, three-floored eatery a major makeover, their continuing success is due to a simple idea: offer the best produce cooked well. A plate of delicious charcuterie, sliced on a vintage hand-worked machine started us off just right, followed by a starter of juicy tuna, rolled in sesame and served with an avocado purée. The piece de resistance (which pretty much everyone in the restaurant was having) was a superb steak tartar au couteau , made with top grade beef from Desnoyer, mixed with persil and aged parmesan, and served with roasted grenade potatoes. The pear tarte tatin with fresh cream was a delightfully decadent ending to a satisfying meal.

Open daily for lunch and dinner, 43 rue Croix des Petits Champs, 75001, M° Pyramides, 01.42.61.35.41

The Guardian is hunting me down

Quite a strange experience today (not the first, but worth noting..). I wrote a gridskipper post last week about the coolest places to smoke after the ban in Paris, and then wrote it off (no pun intended) as a relatively uninteresting post doomed to virtual oblivion. The day before yesterday, a Guardian journalist, came to my place of work (Parisian palace) and asked me about smoking in and out of the hotel, if it was cool,etc, and then started asking questions about the other places I had blogged about... I realized immediately that he had seen my post, and had come to the City of Lights after having read it. I said nothing, but almost kicked myself afterwards for not having unveiled myself as the author... Then, walking to the Rival for a drink after work, I bumped into the journalist and told him everything. He told me that gridskipper was very cutting edge, and that he found my description of the Rival as the "poontang central of the Golden Triangle" a little far fetched as the place (afternoon time is always like this..) was full of old men smoking cigars. Can't wait to see the article. Proves that the Guardian seems to know where to find the real deal. Now, if only I can figure out how to get a few freelance gigs with them..

CPH

Cantada II - lucid night

The cast:
Failed/Useless Food Writer/Hospitality Slave (ie, "Yours Truly")
Luisa: Travelling-uber-chef/Talk-Show Host, Mega-Fixer, bloggeuse-extraordinaire
Heather: Smoking hot yankee hack and guidebook writer
Peter: absintheur, historian, niche businessman wunderchild and all around nice guy
Daniel: white-hot young yank chef in the City of Lights, bored of his golden existence, yearing for something new, soon to travel afar...
David, famous cookbook author,experienced pastry chef and expat
Olivier, funny guy, from a wine family, with his own special, unique tour company , highlighting France's wines..
... and assorted side characters..

Place: the Cantada II, Paris' (France's?) finest absinthe bar, retrofitted funnily enough into a strange goth/punk bar, peopled with aging New Music fans of all kind and persuasion (perversion?).

Fuelled by Pete's extraordinary absinthe offerings (100 year old Berger anyone?), this turned out to be a unique and enjoyable evening.

Funniest (most illuminating?) moment: A newbie, when proffered the ultra-rare, pre-prohibition CF Berger absinthe to taste, tipping back the contents of the glass into his mouth , then proclaiming, with a shrug of his shoulders :"Tastes like Ricard". Puzzled sigh coming from Peter's corner..Heathens never die..

From Adrian Gill on Organics in Today's Times

ORGANIC

Can we just get the organic thing clear? Organic does not mean additive-free; it means some additives and not others. Organic does not mean your food hasn’t been washed with chemicals, frozen or kept fresh with gas, or that it has not been flown around the world. Organic does not necessarily mean it is healthier, or will make you live longer; nor does it mean tastier, fresher, or in some way improved. Organically farmed fish is not necessarily better than wild fish. Organically reared animals didn’t necessarily live a happier life than nonorganic ones – and their death is no less traumatic.

More importantly, organic does not mean that the people who picked, packed, sowed and slaughtered were treated fairly, paid properly, or were free from artificial exploitation. The Chinese workers who drowned in Morecambe Bay were picking organic cockles for a pittance. If you really want to feed the hunger in your conscience, buy Fairtrade.

So what does organic actually mean? Buggered if I know. It usually means more expensive. Whatever the original good intentions of the organic movement, their good name has been hijacked by supermarkets, bijoux delicatessens and agri-processors as a value-added designer label. Organic comes with its own basket of aspiration, snobbery, vanity and fear that retailers on tight margins can exploit. And what I mind most about it is that it has reinvigorated the old class distinction in food. There is them that have chemical-rich, force-fed battery dinner and us that have decent, healthy, caring lunch. It is the belief that you can buy not only a clear conscience, but a colon that works like the log flume at Alton Towers.

In general, I applaud and agree with many of the aims of environmentally careful producers, but it is time we all admitted that the label “organic” has been polluted with cynicism, sentiment, sloppy practice and lies to the point where it is intellectually and practically bankrupt.

And it hasn’t made anyone a better cook.

Le Grand Pan , Paris restaurant , GOGO review

La Copenhague Restaurant Paris

I'm quite intrigued by this Danish restaurant located in the heart of the tourist Hell known as the avenue des Champs Elysees. The food was great. Fresh fish. Danish classics as interpreted by a French chef (with a ten year pedigree at the Prunier Goumard restaurant, with Mr. Goumard himself), friendly staff, modern design. Scallops with gingerbread sauce, salmon cooked a "l'unilatéral". The lunchtime vibe was very businessman, but we had a fine lunch. And a nice fillet of reindeer to prepare for the upcoming holiday season!

Rival - GOGO review

This video is a sort of reaction to a situation recently, where a top (apparently) UK magazine , upon being pitched by yours truly responded: "We have no budget for freelance writers as most of our material is produced in-house, however, if you would like to contribute smaller articles, most of our freelancers find they can use this to lever complimentary services from the establishments they choose to cover". Now if that isn't journalistic integrity and license, I don't know what is".....The following writer described a similar situation with eloquence...

Le Troquet - GOGO review

Damn!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiP07urPAlY

Les Cocottes de Christian Constant - GOGO Review

Number 35

Afaria - GOGO review

Afaria (or: You'll never see blood sausage the same way again)

After having done a tour of the 15th arondissement's ghetto bistronomique this week (Grand Pan, Le Troquet...), Friday's lunch at AFARIA was a superb surprise. Julien, the chef, surely has a talent far in advance of his 26 years, and many more surprises up his sleeve than the dish Parisians cross town for , the Boudin noir aux pommes, cuit en crout de moutarde. The amuse-bouche a starter of chiperons, deep fried was both light and tender, as might be compared to other's elastic offerings, followed by skewered chunks of pork cooked in espelette pepper. The starter of scallop carpaccio with artichokes and doused in a creamy pumpkin soup an excellent, light winter dish. The Lebanese "boulghour" (crushed wheat) topped with oysters and a side of hummus, remarkable for its freshness and unique texture. The famous aforementionned boudin, followed by a delicious roast maigret de canard grilled in a fig/balsamic vinegar sauce, ending with a gingered fruit salad. Their three course menu is & steal at 26€.

Afaria
15, rue Desnouettes, 15th
Telephone: +33 1 48 56 15 36

Biarritz , etc...

Can you imagine I've been living for more than a decade in France, and that I've never been to the Basque region ,and that I've been missing out on this?.....

The Saga of the Red Bull Inn...to come

This Pennsylvanian chain restaurant left an indelible mark on my childhood memory with its dark dining room, buxom waitresses and buttery lobster. Sadly the chain no longer exists, but it' worth reviving the memory for what I believe to be one of America's greatest ideas in mass food, especially since there seems to be very little info on the web....more soon...