Our friends left Sunday morning; the apartment grew as quiet as the city and we wandered the streets, I, for one, quite relieved to have a break from traffic and pedestrians. Sometimes people romanticise Paris to such a degree that they forget the City of Light is also a city of commerce with people bustling and cars racing and scooters zipping and buses rumbling through its streets six days a week.

We wandered with purpose, however, Les Fines Gueules our destination. A cozy wine bar across the street from the Banque de France, it was the perfect place for a lazy Sunday lunch.

The Wife started with a chilled velouté of English peas, not the rather thin smooth purée you’d expect but a thick, slightly chunky wonder of a soup, a little sweet (the combination of peas and cream), scented with mint, and drizzled with olive oil. This, I’ve decided, is how all pea soups should be. Or, at least, all the pea soups I make in the future. Leaving little bits of pea to be chewed kept your interest; too many “cream of” soups grow tired with the sameness of every spoonful.

I started with veal carpaccio with shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano and olive oil. The veal was a creamy shade of pale with the occasional blush of pink (indeed, the veal was raised solely on mother’s milk), tender as a rose petal, and delicate tasting, yet not so delicate as to be completely overwhelmed by the condiments. I can now say I prefer this to the traditional carpaccio.

Which I can’t exactly say about Les Fines Gueules’ steak tartare of Limousin beef. Unlike Le Severo’s, the tartare here is hand-cut; where Severo’s tartare was as soft as silk (ground by machine), here the tartare has some chewiness which I really liked. It makes for a more interesting bite. When it comes to flavour, however, Les Fines Gueules makes a detour, seasoning their tartare with perfectly balanced pesto and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano. Delicious—I ate every bite—but a little overpowering. In my perfect world, Les Fines Gueules would hand-cut the tartare, and Le Severo would season it. Voila!

The Wife finished with the tarte tatin with a tangy crème double. I loved the caramel’s bitterness, especially when paired with the crème.

Like Le Severo and Chez Michel, Les Fines Gueules gets a permanent place on our must-return list for our next Parisian holiday. And I’ll probably order the steak tartare again.

You shouldn’t force yourself to enjoy a meal, no matter a restaurant’s hype, the glowing reviews of critics obviously far more knowledgeable than you, the bustling restaurant itself filled with a chic knowing clientele, the staff’s self-important swagger, the avant-garde food . . .

Case in point: Chateaubriand. Recently ranked No. 11 in S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2010. Highest ranked restaurant in France. And truly a case of the emperor’s new clothes.

The most important thing a restaurant must do is to serve good tasting food. I’ll allow service and accomodations to suffer if the food transports me to another place. Chateaubriand’s food, unfortunately, transported me back to every other meal I’ve had on this trip to Paris; I gazed fondly on them all and wished to be anywhere but Chateaubriand. Not that Chateaubriand’s food was awful (except in one instance), it just wasn’t memorable, neither bold nor imaginative, and certainly not avant-garde . . . unless you think putting Pop Rocks in dessert is avant-garde. (I guess chef Iñaki Aizpitarte needed something to tingle the tastebuds, since dessert was so pitifully pedestrian.)

Aizpitarte (according to S. Pellegrino) “has a particular penchant for deconstructing classics and reworking them, and also a focus on pared-back simplicity.” Take our choucroute garnie, for example. Raw cabbage, slightly dressed, replaced the sauerkraut. It tasted fine, but also seemed a tad lazy—or was it just pared-back simplicity? I’d’ve preferred pickled cabbage, which could’ve still retained the raw crunch Aizpitarte was looking for. That’s a minor complaint, however.

Our waiter informed us that there was sausage hidden among the great mounds of raw cabbage, but I’ll be damned if I found any. In fact, only D found sausage . . . pierced by his fork and held aloft, the sausage I first mistook for a wafer-thin slice of radish. Perhaps I ate mine without knowing it. I did, however, find a plethora of fish strewn about the raw cabbage. Unfortunately, our waiter never informed us of the fish, which he certainly should have considering the ratio of fish to the aforementioned sausage was 217-to-1. A little foreknowledge would also have explained the very unpleasant sensation of suddenly having the taste of rotten fish flood my mouth. At first I distrusted my tastebuds. Fish? You’re simply projecting after watching the guy next to you saw away at his third course of barbu fish, which, unlike ours, wasn’t even blessed with a wonderfully crisp skin. No skin for you! But then there it was again. Something fishy. Something rotten fishy. I trolled through the cabbage and found a little grey rubbery morsel and tasted it. Hákarl, perhaps? Whatever it was, it ruined the choucroute garnie for me. Was the fish meant to be smoked? That would’ve made sense. But not this extremely unpleasant piece of fish. And that’s when I gave up trying to like Chateaubriand.

The service we received was pretty decent until a stunning Japanese woman was seated one table away from us where she dined, unbelievably, alone. The all-male staff immediately forgot about us and the two-top next to us, reserving for her their undivided hirsute attention. Not that I can blame them; she was far more attractive than the food or the dreadful décor, which wasn’t spared even an afterthought.

The esteemed critics and foodies who gave Chateaubriand good reviews didn’t fall in love with the food, the service, the restaurant; they fell in love with the idea of the food, the service, the restaurant. As any navel-gazing intellectual will tell you, there’s virtue enough in good ideas.

A good idea would be for Aizpitarte to replace deconstructing classics with a little classic technique.

We didn’t book a lot of repeat restaurants from our last trip in 2008. Chez Michel and Le Severo were the only two; I don’t count Chez la Vieille because it’s under new ownership.

Last night we returned to Le Severo and were reminded why we didn’t hesitate adding this tiny bistro-style restaurant dedicated to French beef (Limousin, to be exact) to our itinerary. That owner William Bernet is a former butcher tells you how seriously he takes his beef and its preparation; he selects and ages all the beef he serves as the lone waiter. Besides Bernet, the only other staff is the chef who works tirelessly throughout the evening plating dish after dish of perfectly cooked and seasoned beef.

We started with steak tartare, something we stupidly failed to do last time, and boudin noir (from Christian Parra). The tartare was soft as silk, seasoned with just enough mustard, Worcestershire, and Tabasco not to overwhelm the beef’s intensely beefy flavour (grass-fed beef naturally tastes more beefy than grain-fed; which should come as no surprise that an animal will taste more like itself when it eats what it’s genetically programmed to eat). The best steak tartare I’ve eaten? I’ll let you know in a couple days . . .

Last time at Le Severo, the côte de bœuf (€80 for two) wasn’t available; seeing it this time on the blackboard menu ended any discussions. Oh, M. Bernet, I must thank you for serving the best beef I’ve tasted. Charred almost black on the outside, bleu inside. Chewy. Not that horrible grain-fed mush steakhouses in the States serve. And perfectly seasoned with little crystals of grey salt from Brittany. I’m not a big steak person, but I could eat here weekly. And I’ve haven’t even got to the fries, which are hand-cut, crisp, and, again, the best I’ve had.

Reservations are a must; but Le Severo is one restaurant I will always return to whenever I’m in Paris.

A classic French restaurant serving classic French food.

For our tenth anniversary meal, Michel Rostang served up one of our most memorable dining experiences. The highlight of our trip so far. Remembrance brings a hungry yet sated smile to my lips.

I started with a warm “tart” of sweetbreads and foie gras with a rich reduction sauce. After taking my first bite I jotted down two words: umami redefined. The sweetbreads and foie gras were enrobed in a golden buttery pastry which helped sop up some of that glossy, meaty sauce. The technique, the flavours, the presentation . . . classic.

The Wife accepted our delightful waiter’s suggestion of the seafood gelée with mussels and asparagus, a light starter to offset her main plate—La Quenelle de Brochet soufflée à la crème de homard comme le faisait “Jo Rostang”, a souffléed pike quenelle floating on a lobster cream sauce. I know when we return to Michel Rostang there will be a fight as to who orders the “mythical” quenelle this time. As The Wife said, “There was nothing deconstructed or particularly new about the sauce. It was just the most wonderful lobster-y goodness, enriched with cream and cognac.” And the quenelle, its lightness belying its size, was the perfect vehicle with which to soak up the sauce.

For my main plate I ordered the milk-fed lamb with young vegetables and jus. The lamb’s sweetness matched the sweet delicateness of the vegetables—a perfect spring dish, everything cooked and seasoned perfectly. Considering the richness of my starter, this was the perfect foil. And then came the surprise. Our waiter sidled up to me with a dish hot out of the oven and bubbling with potato gratin. “Don’t tell anybody,” he whispered, a wicked smiling glint in his eyes as he spooned enough for two on a side plate. So much for a moderate main plate!

The Wife may have polished off every last drop of her quenelle and (two servings of) lobster sauce, but she failed miserably to make a dent in her Grand Marnier soufflé. I, on the other hand, had no problems devouring another Rostang classic: the warm bitter chocolate tart with coffee sauce and chocolate ice cream.

Michel Rostang gets my highest praise and recommendation. A memorable day made even more memorable by the meal and the company.

From Theodore Dalrymple’s Not With A Bang But A Whimper: The Politics & Culture of Decline:

The state has become a vast and intricate system of patronage, whose influence few can entirely escape. It is essentially corporatist: the central government, avid for power, sets itself up as an authority on everything and claims to omnicompetent both morally and in practice; and by means of taxation, licensing, regulation and bureaucracy, it destroys the independence of all organisations that intervene between it and the individual citizen. If it can draw enough citizens into dependence on it, the central government can remain in power, if not forever, then for a very long time, at least until a crisis or cataclysm forces change.

At the very end of the chain of patronage . . . is the underclass who (to change the metaphor slightly) form the scavengers or bottom-feeders of the whole corporatist ecosystem. Impoverished and degraded as they might be, they are nonetheless essential to the whole system, for their existence provides an ideological proof of the necessity of providential government in the first place, as well as justifying many employment opportunities in themselves. . . . [L]arge numbers of people corrupted to the very fibre of their being by having been deprived of responsibility, purpose and self-respect, void of hope and fear alike, living in as near to purgatory as anywhere in modern society can come.

Amen, Mr Dalrymple.

We dined at Chez Michel for lunch today; our second visit to chef Thierry Breton’s restaurant in the 10^th. No trip to Paris will ever be complete without a meal here. It’s that good.

Every meal starts off with periwinkles and mayonnaise and the housemade bread with salted Breton butter of the deepest yellow. I’ve been dreaming about this bread for 18 months and I can’t tell you how relieved I was that it actually tasted better than I remember. It may be the crust . . . thick, crisp, chewy, and bitter with a slight oven char. And I love bitter. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t suck on charcoal bitter. It’s the bitterness that’s so sadly lacking in the majority of meals I eat out. We taste bitter for a reason; and it’s not just to warn us off dangerous foods. Combined with the sweetness of the butter, it’s an unbeatable combination.

Beaten down by five days of sweltering, sticky heat, I opted to start with the cold marinated mackerel with cilantro, pickled onions, and carrots. Fresh and light without the slightest oiliness, the mackerel briefly made me forget about the sauna awaiting the end of lunch. Simplicity is never simplistic; it takes years of experience to achieve, finding a harmonious balance when using so few ingredients.

Breton’s practised touch of simplicity was also in evidence on my main plate of veal kidneys with beetroot. A jus of beetroot, slightly perfumed by the perfectly pink kidneys, held al dente chunks of beetroot atop which sat the offal. Delicate’s not a word usually associated with kidneys; they tend to be drowned in strong sauces to offset the “funk”—which I happen to enjoy. Leave my funk alone. Breton added a touch of acid to brighten the jus’ earthiness and that actually lightened the kidney’s flavour without losing the funk.

I ended with the best Paris-Brest I’ve tasted. I will always order Paris-Brest for dessert here. And I will always go to Chez Michel when I visit Paris.

I must add a final note to echo yesterday’s praising post: the service was fantastic. Friendly and helpful and never condescending. Yet another reason to make the trip into the 10^th.

My original plan for this post was to discuss today’s wonderful spring tasting menu at Le Cinq, to wax rhapsodic about countless cocktails at Bar Hemingway. Let’s get that out of the way: Go. Enjoy. Your only regret will be not going.

I’d just like to focus briefly on some of the most wonderful service to which I’ve been treated on my travels. Granted, great service is to be expected at Le Cinq and Bar Hemingway—especially given the prices—but the service we’ve received everywhere on this holiday has been superb.

Perhaps “whimsical” is the wrong word to describe the attitude of Le Cinq’s staff, but I can’t think of a better one. Certainly not patronising. We were treated with such graciousness and humour that the fabulous, decadently rich meal at times was briefly forgotten for the laughter and smiles on all our faces. Had the food lacked, the service alone would still garner my recommendation; that the food was as delicious as it was artfully plated only gilds that lily.

Colin Field wasn’t behind the bar tonight but his presence was felt. The cocktails were perfect and the staff entertained and educated. Our friends D&S were as smitten by their first visit to Bar Hemingway as we were on ours: they didn’t want to leave. So a couple rounds turned into multiple rounds, and we eventually wandered home with wonderful recommendations for little-known yet beloved restaurants and the best Normandy calvados to take home.

Have you ever been experienced? Well I have . . .