Duck Fat Dinner

I did not leave Paris empty handed.

At our friends' place on my last evening in town, the mommy-to-be slipped me a hefty can of duck confit, to my great delight. Tonight I opened it up and made a meal designed to remind us of our little European sojourn.

Inside the can was one big ol' breast suspended in thick, milky white duck fat, not a drop of which will go to waste. Using our pals' Paris home cooking as my inspiration, I attempted something akin to a quick deconstructed cassoulet. I bought a nice French garlic sausage at the nearby luxury-consumables megastore Wine Library, which I sliced and browned and served with white beans cooked in duck fat. I also sautéed potatoes in duck fat and dressed them with parsley when they were done.

And I crisped up the duck skin by cooking the breast fatty side down in a pan, with a little... you guessed it... duck fat (it didn't take much -- that sucker was self-basting). I'd never before brought a duck into our home, so this part was big fun. It sizzled and sputtered and got all nice and brown. When we eventually cut into it, a perfectly brittle crust gave way to the silky richness of the fat beneath and, finally, to the dark and tender meat itself. Margy, normally monolingual, spoke a few happy words in French.

And now the rest of the fat is sitting in a container in the fridge, biding its time until we need it again. It won't be long.

Paris Journal 2006: Home Cooking

For my last meal in Paris, while Margy worked a thirteen-hour shift, I was treated to a home-cooked dinner at our friends' lovely new apartment. And did I mention I spent the day zipping around town on the back of a scooter? This is one of the finest possible ways to tour the City of Light, assuming you don't get into an accident as you clear accelerating vehicles by less than an inch, over and over again, as is mandatory.

The apartment was way over on the edge of town, mere blocks away from Bistrot Paul Bert. I arrived to find my pals, a couple expecting their first baby, setting a charming table and laying out plates of spinach salad with mustard vinaigrette and warm goat cheese. Delicious. The main course was a sort of riff on cassoulet that merged duck confit (in Paris this is wonderful even out of a can) with a mild yet porky Toulouse sausage and beans cooked in goose fat. Oh, yes. The lady of the house -- she's Parisian, her fella's from California -- had taken pity on me, knowing it was a goal of mine to enjoy a real French cassoulet, and though she was great with child and had worked a long day, she made sure I didn't go home disappointed.

Not even close.

As I reached for the bowl of beans for the third time and scraped the spoon against the bottom to try and liberate even the ghost of any remaining goodies, the father-to-be reminded me that we weren't through with dinner. Indeed, out came a nice piece of unpasteurized cheese, followed by cookies with ice cream and chocolate sauce. All the while, we drank wine that my buddies had bought in bulk from an independent vintner and bottled themselves. These were maybe my favorite glasses of the whole trip. It just goes to show you what can be achieved in a country that holds wine in high regard -- in the States, homemade wine is almost always terrible, at least in my limited experience.

But really the best part of the whole evening was being removed from the restaurant scene, as exciting as it is, and hanging out with some friends on their turf, chatting, laughing, listening to their music, eating their food. It was lots of fun, and it made the trip feel more personal. If only Margy had been able to join me.

Paris Journal 2006: Aux Lyonnais

I've always been interested in eating at an Alain Ducasse restaurant, and tonight I got my chance.

Ducasse, so decorated by the Michelin guides for his worldwide network of restaurants, isn't exactly thought of as a hero in New York. When his NYC joint opened at the Essex House in 2000, the reviews were not great ("a wow that wavers," the New York Times has said). If you weighed the so-so feedback against the astronomical prices, let's just say no one I know was beating a path to the door.

But when I began hunting for Paris picks before last year's trip, Aux Lyonnais started popping up everywhere. Ducasse has a bunch of restaurants in Paris, including an eponymous one that's supposedly incredibly opulent and hugely expensive, and Aux Lyonnais is regarded as more down-to-earth than many of the others but just as memorable. This was the place we booked way back on Friday afternoon.

Now, I've never eaten dinner in Lyon in the 1850s, but if I had, I'd imagine it would have been something like the meal Margy and I ate tonight. We weren't getting a "Ducasse" dinner (he was probably not even in the country), but that's to his credit -- he and his kitchen are clearly more interested in preserving the weighty charms of true Lyonnaise cooking than in advancing any modern, world-domination-through-excessive-amounts-of-truffles-and-foie-gras-type agenda.

After we had a lovely amuse of fresh cheese with herbs and shallots, Margy started with pumpkin soup with andouille sausage. A tangle of porky bits sat in the middle of the bowl, and a waiter poured the creamy orange potion over it. It was delicious, and I don't even like pumpkin soup (too sweet). As we started to dig in, another waiter swung over and placed a small plate next to Margy's spoon: "This is a cake that goes with the soup," he said. "Try it, and then after I'll tell you what it is."

What it was was awesome.

It was dense and contained little bits of meat. It reminded me of my mom's pizza rustica, or pizzagaina (ahem, "pizza keen"), but there was no cheese in it. Long after it was gone I had to beckon the waiter over to make good on his promise.

"It is a cake made with a pig's ear," he said. "If I tell you before, you would not eat it."

"Oh yes we would!" I said. I'm not quite interested in, say, gnawing on the whole ear of a pig, but I'm happy to enjoy the meat that comes from it. Especially now.

I began with a marinated-eel salad. It had been a goal of mine to try eel outside of a Japanese restaurant, and this was my first opportunity (sadly, my mom has never prepared it on Christmas Eve). I even recognized the word on the menu -- anguille -- from a mile away. The eel was snow white and chewy, but pleasantly so. It wasn't far from the strong flavor of sardines or mackerel, and I look forward to eating it again in a non-Japanese context. Of course, I look forward to eating it again in a Japanese context too!

Margy had chicken with vegetables and crawfish tails (pictured) for her main dish. It came in a red enamel vessel, straight out of the oven, and the bird was bursting with pure chicken flavor, which just underscores how flavorless chickens tend to be back home. The skin wasn't crisped, or even browned, and the crawfish didn't add much, but it was a homey, satisfying entree.

Meanwhile, I had crawfish quenelles (clearly crawfish are big in Lyon). These were essentially two giant white dumplings, just right in texture, neither too firm nor too soft, and they also arrived in a red enamel dish, still bubbling away. The quenelles sat in a deep-brown shellfish stock that was richly flavored, with crawfish tails scattered around the plate. I'd never had anything like this, and I liked it more as I went along. But Paris eating was taking its toll -- had I eaten this on our first night in town, I'd have cleaned my plate, but as it was I couldn't quite finish it.

Dessert was a large sablé cookie, spread with a layer of sweet cream and topped with stewed pears and plums. A great cap to a fun meal.

Ultimately, Aux Lyonnais did not provide our favorite Paris dinner, but its sheer timelessness, or should I say old-timeyness, made it an integral piece of the French-food puzzle that we're slowly assembling. I love the idea of traditional yet somewhat offbeat dishes surviving intact through the ages, shepherded by caring history-minded cooks from one century to another, and another.

Paris Journal 2006: Vin & Marée

On any trip to Paris, eating shellfish should be part of the agenda. Parisians know how to get it right.

For our seafood meal, we took our concierges' suggestion of the nearby Vin & Marée (which they explained means wine and tide). When we walked through the door for our 8:30 reservation to find a quiet, harshly lit, and drab dining room, I remembered my new rule for Paris restaurant seating: Always choose the smoking section. In other words, we were standing in the smoke-free zone, while the smokers were led upstairs to a more comfortable and ever so slightly more charming dining room. Something analogous seems to happen in most other restaurants as well -- the good tables, whatever that may mean at a given place, are where the smoke is. This may not be a factor much longer, with talk of a smoking ban that has the French huffing while they're puffing, but for now it's good to keep in mind.

Even upstairs, among industrial carpeting and white walls that sported a strip of blue waves, I could tell Margy wasn't nuts about the decor. What can you do -- it was Monday night, not the best evening for Paris dining. At least the menu looked good, and there wasn't a nonseafood choice on it.

As we were finalizing our selections, a waiter brought us a bowl of mussels in a bit of chive-butter sauce. They were the best mussels I've had in years, briny and tender. We ordered snails and oysters, plus a bottle of white Sancerre.

A young woman came over with an ice bucket and a bottle of wine, and she proceeded to open the bottle without showing it to us. She poured me a taste as I strained to see the label behind the towel she'd wrapped around the bottle. Not bad. She filled our glasses and then left, and I picked the bottle out of the bucket. Nope, not Sancerre. I mentioned this to our waiter, who smiled, removed the mystery bottle, and declared our glasses an aperitif. (The Sancerre was noticeably more complex, and I was glad to have had a mini comparative wine tasting in addition to a free drink.)

The oysters were good but not spectacular. Their liquor was a bit too salty, so unfortunately it was wise not to slurp it all up. But the escargots were wonderful. Last year, they were my revelation -- I hadn't realized how much I loved them before that trip. Once I caught on, I ate big ones, small ones, and microscopic ones that came with a tiny needle, which was the only device that would make it possible to remove the minuscule amount of meat. (I don't mind working for my dinner.) Tonight there was no need for a magnifying glass, but the snails were just as good. They were meaty and firm yet not tough or chewy.

For my entree I had roasted prawns with "caviar d'aubergine." Now, "caviar" I understood, or at least I thought I did; "aubergine," not so much. The word looked familiar, so I just figured, Hey, I'm cool with caviar of whatever. Well, I was surprised to find out that this accompaniment to the prawns was pureed eggplant. Eggplant isn't my favorite, but I was nevertheless thrilled to find some form of vegetable on my plate. The prawns were very good -- they had a bit of char on them, and they offered much more flavor than the shrimp I get at ShopRite back in Jersey.

But Margy's bouillabaisse took home first prize. In fact, I probably stuck my spoon in the bowl almost as often as Margy did. The powerfully flavorful broth was deep and rich and offered a big blast of fennel that joined nicely with the fish stock. The pieces of fish -- mostly rockfish, I believe -- were abundant and weren't overcooked. Rather than being served with a rouille, the bouillabaisse came with croutons and a saffron-garlic aioli. Truly delicious.

You know how I said the dining rooms lacked a certain charm? Well, any missing pizzazz, and then some, could be found in the restrooms. Each of the four men's-room walls contained a row of tiles adorned with cartoons of people using the facilities (as this is a food blog, I'm trying to choose my words carefully). These included a zaftig couple locked in passionate embrace while set upon the porcelain god and a pair of suited businessmen shaking hands while crossing streams. Wouldn't you know I had my camera in my pocket, and I captured it all.

When I returned to the table and showed Margy one of the photos I'd just taken, she shot out of her seat without a word, grabbed the camera, and made a beeline to the ladies' room. Did she find four walls of toilet cartoons? Hardly. The little chamber was decked out in mirrors from head to toe. She'd never seen so many Margys at one time, not even in a Lord & Taylor dressing room...

Paris Journal 2006: Sapporo

On last year's trip, the hole-in-the-wall ramen house Sapporo was my safe haven, the place I could go when I needed a butter-free meal that featured the presence of vegetables. I ate lunch there three times, but always alone, and I regretted that Margy, who was working long hours with only a sandwich break during the day, was unable to join me. This time, though, she got to enjoy Sapporo's humble yet considerable charms.

We spent the day at Versailles, mostly waiting on line, and then we had plans to meet friends for a Jarvis Cocker concert in the evening. As we got back to town after strolling the gorgeous Versailles gardens and walking in the footsteps of at least several people who were eventually beheaded, we were starving, and we had just enough time to grab a little something to eat.

All day I had been worried that we were in for an entire day in Paris without a proper sit-down meal, and it wasn't sitting well with me. So when I saw the chance to return to Sapporo for a quick bite, I was more than eager to take it. Margy, of course, liked the sound of my plan.

The dynamic little woman who runs the dining room wasn't around, but the cooks were, and we had a delicious meal. After ordering a couple of beers -- Asahi, not Sapporo... oops -- we both got the essential ramen with roast pork, and Margy had fried rice and gyoza on the side while I had a plate of curry rice plus a salad and oshitashi (tightly rolled spinach in a soy and vinegar dressing).

It was one of those meals where we only realized the extent of our appetite once we'd lifted our chopsticks a few times, and it was one of those very few times when I eat quickly. We sat there at the Sapporo counter devouring our dinner, looking up now and then to watch the cooks perform some deft maneuver in a small vertical-handled pan or a giant flaming wok.

Though I watched them serve it last year, I had never eaten Japanese fried rice before. Well, it rocks. As you can see, it's not tossed with soy sauce or any other dressing -- oil is swirled around a wok, the ingredients (egg, peas, baby shrimp, bits of the finest roast pork available anywhere) are added, in goes the rice, and that's it. Simple, perfect.

Similarly, this was my first time eating Japanese curry, and it was also fantastic. (With a very short menu, Sapporo is pretty sure to nail every dish.) The sauce was a deep brown and bore the yellow tint of turmeric at the edges. The curry contained pork, carrot and onion, and it had a nice burgeoning hint of chili heat.

And the ramen is always excellent. It's fun to eat noodles that have a little bit of confidence, a spot of identity. Sapporo's are cooked just right and hold their own in their sea of broth, pork, scallions, mushrooms, and spinach.

I felt a moment of reflection coming on: I was able to read the entire menu, I had rice and vegetables and pork... I was in my element. We'll get back to proper Parisian eating tomorrow, but this meal was just what we needed tonight.

Paris Journal 2006: Bistrot Paul Bert

What a difference a day makes. By early afternoon today, after our concierge had a called a bunch of restaurants on our list to find them fully booked for tonight -- one of them gave her a "Wow, mademoiselle!" as if she'd been joking -- 10pm didn't sound so bad. That slot was offered by a place that had been plugged by a friend of a friend, and we jumped at the chance.

Bistrot Paul Bert, way over on the east side of the right bank (almost off our map), was hopping when we arrived. The menu was written on a blackboard that was passed around from table to table, the wine list was novella length, and the restaurant had that classic look that said I've been here a while, and I'm not going anywhere. The slightly crooked picture frames, the buckling and spotted mirrors, and, yes, even the floating clouds of cigarette smoke all contributed to the very Parisian aura of the place. I saw hunks of meat on plates all around the room, and I got excited.

The meat looked good, but I had fowl on the brain. And what do you know but I think I spotted some sort of bird on the list of main courses. When our waitress came by I asked for a few translations, and though she tried to be helpful she was nothing like the sommelier/waiter from last night. Her translations boiled a long phrase down to a word: côté de cochon fermier aux haricots mais became "pig." But that's okay -- you have to be ready for a wide range of experiences when you go to a foreign country and don't speak the language.

For our starters, Margy ordered veal carpaccio and I went with roasted scallops. I don't usually love scallops (except raw as sushi or sashimi), but they were in season and we'd already seen them around a bunch. Plus in French they're called coquilles St. Jacques, and to me such a refined and stately handle really makes a difference -- why order "scallops" when you can have "coquilles St. Jacques"?

For the main course Margy asked for steak frites, and I most enthusiastically requested roast pheasant (which I had noted actually came with vegetables -- chou vert, or green cabbage). As we began to wait, I rubbed my hands together in anticipation, and then... no, it couldn't be -- our waitress came back our way with the blackboard in her hands. Oh, no.

"I am very sorry. It is my fault. We have no more pheasant."

I've come a long way toward becoming a somewhat mature semi grown-up-type person, but it took all the self-control I had not to start banging on the table and maybe even shouting "Waaaaa!" The pheasant was all I wanted; I'd barely glanced at anything else. I felt helpless. A long, quiet moment passed as I stared a hole in the blackboard.

"If you wanted the pheasant, you should try the rabbit," the waitress said. "It is very like pheasant." She pointed to a dish I hadn't really noticed. I guess that was because I didn't know the word lièvre but assumed it might be some variant of "liver" (even though I indeed know the word for liver). Well, it means wild hare. I'd had bites of rabbit, but I'd never eaten my own. I knew it wouldn't be that much like pheasant, but I figured she meant that it was also gamy and maybe even that it also had lots of tiny bones. All day, I'd been ready to deal with some tiny bones.

I asked how it was served, and I didn't get much. "Is there a sauce?" I said.

"Yes, it's in a sauce, with mushrooms."

The night wasn't getting any younger. I went with the wild hare. A nice bottle of Bordeaux arrived, along with our appetizers, and I started to loosen back up.

The coquilles St. Jacques were terrific, roasted in their shells and sitting in a rich pool of melted butter. The presentation was beautiful and the flavor was excellent.

When it came to Margy's veal carpaccio, the one word in the description that we didn't understand -- and we only figured this out for sure later -- was the word for kidneys (rognons). Looking at her plate, Margy said something like, "I think this is liver." I knew it wasn't, because it didn't look like liver. The slices, sort of freeform roundish, were too small, and the shading of each slice, from dark to lighter to almost white in spots, was too varied for this to be liver. Anyway, it was absolutely fantastic, and it only got more tasty with each bite. The veal was dressed with olive oil, parsley, thin-sliced mushrooms, and chopped nuts, and all of those ingredients staked their claim in the overall success of the dish. I noticed that a woman at the table next to us received a parsley-free version, and I felt sorry for her. Not only was the green a lovely color contrast, but the bright, herbal flavor of the parsley was a happy surprise when you got some.

And then the main dishes arrived. Margy's steak and fries looked good, but I was sure I had been given the wrong plate. Take a look at the photo above, which you may have assumed captured some decadent chocolate dessert. Nope. It's the wild hare. I poked at the big molded cake with my fork, and meat flaked off. I took a bite. I knew I wasn't tasting rabbit, but I wasn't sure what I was tasting. The flavor was familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. At this moment, I was extraordinarily confused. I didn't hate what I was beginning to eat, but I didn't love it, and it wasn't at all what I'd been craving. And on top of everything else, there were no mushrooms as advertised. The hare came with a side dish of large pasta shells dressed in a mushroom sauce. These were just lousy -- badly overcooked and tasting only of butter.

The waitress swung over at this most vulnerable time to check on things. I didn't really know what I was eating, but I was trying very hard to be happy. Margy had taken one bite of her steak, which she liked, but she hadn't learned the truth about her dinner either. When asked how everything was, we said it was okay. The fries were certainly good.

A minute later Margy realized her steak was essentially raw. The one bite she'd taken was one of the few perimeter pieces that were medium to medium rare (she'd asked for medium). And then I grabbed the non-English-speaking sommelier, whom I already trusted more than our waitress. I pointed at my plate and asked, "Lapin?" (That's the French word for rabbit.)

"Oui," he said, and then he proceeded to describe the dish, in French. I understood every word, though one grand gesture certainly helped. He kind of pretended to rip out his own loin, and then he said the loin was rolled and stuffed and served with a sauce of wine and chocolate. And what was it stuffed with? Well, that's the flavor I was struggling to determine -- the dish tasted of nothing else. It was foie gras!

Suddenly the six-euro supplement made sense. But now I really wanted to murder our waitress. She had misrepresented this dish straight down the line. It was not like pheasant in any way. And there weren't even any mushrooms.

Margy and I weren't sure what to do. We hate complaining in restaurants, plus we felt like we'd missed our chance to do so. (We've since sworn to each other that we'll be more assertive should anything like this ever happen again.) Her steak had been picked over, and I was really trying to eat my strange and heavy but not altogether horrible dinner. It wouldn't have been my cup of tea under any circumstance, but I wanted absolutely nothing to do with foie gras after having the best slice of my life last night. That was going to hold me for a while.

For a minute I was ready to pout. I'd come to Paris for six dinners, and now one of them was getting away from me, and that's a significant percentage. But hey, we were in Paris. We'd had great appetizers in a charming old bistro, and we still had a bunch of wine, plus cheese and desserts and a bracing snifter of Calvados, to look forward to. We surveyed the wreckage in front of us -- raw meat, the worst pasta ever, a plate swirled with chocolate sauce that looked like some abandoned meaty dessert -- and we started to laugh. It was all we could do. The waitress came and took our relatively full plates like she'd seen it all before. And I know she had. I believe it's not uncommon in Paris to eat a few bites and leave the rest -- but I'm assuming that's usually in the name of portion control, not frustration.

Next, Margy ordered cheese and I ordered ile flottante, a meringue set in a pool of crème anglaise, with praline and roasted almonds. This stuff set us back on track, big time.

The cheese was magnificent. The varieties were described by the sommelier, so I didn't really get all of it. But the Camembert was particularly memorable. It had an intense savoriness that I'd never experienced before in a cheese. All the varieties were tasty, and I'm guessing all of them were made with unpasteurized milk and would therefore not be available in such fine form in the States. We circled around and sliced bits off larger pieces until we'd had our fill, and then the waitress came and grabbed the board when we were done. That's some fun eating... and we certainly had the room.

The ile flottante was similarly amazing. We loved the texture of the meringue -- soft and supple yet firm enough not to lose its shape in the crème anglaise, which was rich and cool. And the almonds had been roasted to perfection and gave a nutty and almost smoky counterpoint to the sweeter elements.

In the end, Bistrot Paul Bert, though certainly not perfect -- damn that waitress and her pheasantlike rabbit! -- was absolutely unforgettable. (I mean, hey -- I learned I like kidneys.) I would go back. Just not at 10pm.

Paris Journal 2006: Point Bar

Margy and I alighted in Paris, back once again in the City of Light on (her) business. This year, though, we allowed a few extra days to play around before she had to get to work.

We got to our hotel around 10am, where they graciously allowed us to check in early, and then we immediately took a restorative nap. Once we came to, my first -- okay, my only -- order of business was to figure out where to eat dinner. I had a list of places, but we wanted to stick close to our hotel on our first night and avoid any situations where we'd have to try to speak French.

I did, of course, offer a shaky "Bonjour, madame" to our concierge before I began pestering her with a dozen questions and asking her to call a dozen restaurants to start getting things on the books. So here we were on Friday afternoon, needing a plan for Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday, at least. (The other nights were still up in the air.) And we began very badly.

Not only was Saturday a bank holiday, it was also a Saturday, and good Paris restaurants tend to get booked up on Saturday night. We tried a few places on our list, and they basically laughed at our very sweet concierge. One offered a 10pm rez. We didn't bite. Ten o'clock worries us a little -- among other reasons because I tend to take hours to eat anything. We kept trying, but now I was starting to feel like an imposition. Finally, though, we booked Tuesday, at a place I keep hearing about and I'm sure I want to try. Phew. Finally, an encouraging sign.

As a last-ditch effort to nail down Saturday, we tried the site of our favorite meal from last year's trip, which I was sure wouldn't be fully booked. I was correct. It would be closed, for Armistice Day.

So we sort of staggered out of the hotel to start exploring, with nothing set for Saturday and a plan to stake out a few nearby restaurants the concierge had recommended for tonight. She seemed particularly fond of a joint that I thought sounded like "Plum Bar," but she said there are lots of reliable places on the Place du Marché Saint Honoré.

We had a lovely afternoon, taking a long walk, checking out a great photography museum, and eating the finest ham sandwich we've had in twelve months. And then we strolled back to our hood to see what was up by the marché. It's a charming area, and it's packed with restaurants. We took note of a few, and then at the hotel we asked the new concierge, just starting her shift, what she recommended nearby. (I'm a big believer in cross-referencing, especially when you don't know the people who are making the recommendations.) She also said the "Plum Bar" place is excellent.

"What kind of food is it?" I asked, not being nearly as specific as I should have been, as indicated by her answer.

"French."

But then she caught on and added, "Inventive. It's a small restaurant, very nice."

So we booked it. But there was one lingering problem. We really didn't have a handle on the name. Upon hearing it a few more times, I was sure there was no plum involved. Basically, it sounded like "pwah bar," and given my not-too-close relationship to that elegant yet sadistic language that is French, that wasn't nearly enough. I was a little embarrassed, but I needed to have it in writing.

Point Bar! Of course!

And it was just fantastic. It's indeed very small, and it feels bright and modern. It's not one of those old-school Paris bistros with yellowed posters peeling off the walls -- that would have to wait for another night. There weren't even that many people smoking, if you can believe that.

The menu was short, and I felt like I had a handle on all but a few things, so when our waiter came by I told him I had a few questions. He proceeded to translate the entire menu for us, in excellent English, which I must say was incredibly kind and helpful -- sometimes that one word you don't know is the one that means "bathed in liver" or what have you.

Actually, we started with liver! We shared a foie gras appetizer that was hands-down the most I've ever enjoyed eating the stuff. I savored every morsel, especially the yellow layers of fat at the top and bottom of the slice. (Margy very halfheartedly suggested we leave that part, but she knows how it works. It's Paris -- you eat.) The foie gras was served with a fig, hazelnut, and walnut chutney and a caramel-port reduction, plus sea salt and course-ground black pepper. Oh my. The sweetness of the condiments and the richness of the foie gras, along with the flavor-sharpening effects of the salt and pepper, made for one heck of a good time. Did I even mention the crispy toasts it came with? As was the case with the ham sandwich a few hours earlier, this little dish was saying "Welcome to Paris." (Except it was saying it in French.)

One entree sounded so appealing that both Margy and I ordered it. Anyway, the waiter (who said his real gig is sommelier and recommended a wonderful and affordable pinot noir) had told us it was one of Point Bar's signature dishes: Parmesan-crusted veal loin with truffle-cream sauce. Hiyo! Not since being in Paris a year ago have I so enjoyed a meal so utterly devoid of vegetables. The veal was cooked beautifully and was a little pink in the middle. The crust was incredible -- crunchy here and there, perfectly salty, and offering just the right amount of Parmesan flavor. And the sauce was delicious. The truffles made their contribution to the dish without being overwhelming. Potatoes included, this dinner had Margy and me oohing and aahing.

Dessert? Vanilla panna cotta with mango and mango ice cream. The waiter brought us glasses of strawberry wine that I believe he said had been made by a patron. It was good -- not too sweet and tasting very clearly of strawberries. Plus it was just nice to know that we, the Americans, had won his favor rather than invoke his tourist-loathing exasperation. Meanwhile, the panna cotta was creamy, sweet, fruity... just as delicious and memorable as the rest of the meal.

Score one for the concierges!

Paris Journal: Le Vaudeville

We'll always have Paris.

Our last dinner of the trip was a late, hastily arranged affair due to Margy's torturous work schedule, but it was still a good time. I used the opportunity to tie up some loose ends, in the form of eating more oysters and snails; trying the classic frisée salad with bacon, croutons, and a poached egg; and finally devouring a profiterole with chocolate sauce. I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if I didn't get that last one accomplished.

Margy had dorado, that oft-appearing fish, with a sauce made with star anise, that oft-appearing spice. I think I liked the fish more than she did. The skin was crispy.

When the waiter came over with a coffeepot full of bubbling-hot chocolate sauce for the profiteroles you see here (which are filled with vanilla ice cream) and he began to pour the sauce slowly and dare I say suggestively over the puffs until they were about to swim away on a sea of chocolate, he looked at Margy's colleague and said, in French, "Let me know if there is not enough."

Paris, a bientôt!

Paris Journal: Sapporo Restaurant Japonais

Our hotel was in a neighborhood that's packed with Japanese restaurants. Day in and day out I would pass these places, usually either sushi/sashimi joints or noodle houses specializing in ramen, and look at their menus, trying to catch a glimpse of someone's lunch. Given my weakness for Japanese food and my need for an antidote to meals based on bread and butter, it wasn't a matter of if I'd duck into one of these inviting little nooks, but when.

One chilly afternoon, faced with the idea of chewing another sandwiche while sitting on a park bench, I made up my mind to check out Japan town. Five paces later I came upon Sapporo and looked inside. It was packed and humming. This will do. I walked in, waited ninety seconds for a seat at the counter, sat down, and asked for a beer. Ordering food was no problem -- when it comes to menus I speak much more Japanese than French.

The tiny dynamo of a woman who runs the place, in many languages, took my order and yelled it to the back line: "Yakisoba, s'il vous plaît!" Her red-dyed head streaking up and down the small room, she maintained a strict sense of order while still managing a wisecrack to break up her busy line cooks. Total pro.

This is the last of three solo lunches I had at Sapporo -- the house-special ramen, with gyoza. The pork broth was smoky, the noodles were al dente, and the two slices of roast pork on top were, I swear, the best pig product of any kind I had in Paris… right next to the crackling skin at Joël Robuchon's place.

"See you again!" the Japanese proprietress smiled and repeated on my leaving, adding, "Arigato, merci au'voir!"

Paris Journal: Aux Fins Gourmets

The word got out: Margy and I were on the hunt for duck confit.

Finally, on Saturday morning, as our time in Paris was coming to a close, the word came back: Go to Aux Fins Gourmets. I do not know the man who recommended this place (his name is Eric; of that much I'm sure), but I owe him a great debt. Not only was this the best traditional French meal of our trip -- the food at Joël Robuchon's restaurant is glorious but not exactly traditional -- it was some of the most fun we've ever had eating out. We drank, we ate, we ate, we drank, we snapped tons of pictures (no flash, of course; let somebody else be the "ugly Americans"). Margy even ran into a friend. We had a ball.

And every single bite was delicious. There were a lot of bites.

Hours before dinner, as I casually strolled by Aux Fins Gourmets on my way to the Musée Rodin, just to case the joint, a curling yellowed menu on the door assured me that this is no cutting-edge establishment -- this is a classic. I chuckled as I wrote down the phone number, which seemed to be long out of date (it began with "BAB." and had only four actual digits). Our hotel concierge would later call information for the "new" number.

When we arrived for dinner and were shown our table up by the front windows, we knew only that we wanted confit de canard. Our friendly, deep-voiced waiter wore traditional formalwear and helped us make sense of a menu that was tempting us at every turn. For our first course we selected marinated white anchovies, because when I asked about them the waiter beamed. In an impressive example of Franco-American trust, he brought us an enormous ceramic crock full of firm, perfectly salted anchovies in golden olive oil and told us to simply take what we wanted -- with bread and, yes, butter -- and leave the rest. This being our appetizer, Margy and I were certainly capable of leaving nothing, but we wisely chose to save room for the confit.

You must rely on the photo to provide a description of the duck itself, as words fail me every time. To suffice for a proper report, let's just say that crispy skin, luscious fat, and tender meat combined in forkful after forkful of the very reason I was so excited to go to Paris. The potatoes weren't bad either. Some were crispy, some were crunchy, and some -- I still think of them every day -- were crispy, crunchy, and chewy in spots from a trickling down of duck fat. Just to push things over the top, the garnish was a mixture of parsley and garlic.

Dessert was crème brûlée, which I'm not even sure we ordered. By this point our waiter knew exactly what to do. Was the prune eau de vie his idea? Clever man! We love him forever.

And Eric, thank you.

Paris Journal: Restaurant Bimal

Every trip to a faraway land must include at least one dinner fiasco. Tonight we had ours. Somehow even our camera picked up on the out-of-focus nature of our Friday evening.

Margy and I had plans to meet up after she finished work, to grab a quick bite before going to a party she had been invited to. Though we had been told the party would feature some good homemade food -- and the idea of eating at the home of a local was quite tempting -- I was deeply skeptical. I pictured great crowds of people with whom I could not communicate and big empty bowls that had once held delicious things to eat. So we figured we'd deal with dinner first rather than fight a Frenchman over a forkful of lentil salad.

And then we lost our nerve. We decided to go straight to the party and eat there.

We waited around a bit after Margy finished work, eventually caught a cab, and then stood outside our destination trying to get the door code to work. When we finally cracked the code, climbed a wide winding staircase, and pushed through the door of a huge and majestic Paris apartment, we found exactly the scene I'd feared, only on an even larger scale than I'd pictured it. There were four big rooms packed with people sitting in front of cleaned plates and empty bowls. So Margy did a few quick double-kiss hello/goodbyes, and we left.

With the clock running out on dinner -- it was past 10:30 at this point -- we had to find a place to eat. Fast. Our standards slackened by the minute, and we considered the cookie-cutter sushi joints that for some reason dotted the block we were on. We even sat down at one, only to look at the mass-produced menus featuring bright photos of almost nothing but salmon, and bolted.

A couple of minutes later we shrugged and chose Bimal, an Indian and Pakistani joint near all the sushi houses. It was fine, if nothing spectacular. We picked a vegetarian menu of samosas, palak paneer (spinach and Indian cheese), and dal makhni (lentils), and washed it down with a bottle of the Beaujolais Nouveau that had been grandly unveiled the previous evening. The wine does not have a great reputation, but after seeing innumerable signs announcing its arrival and hearing little local bands play raucous odes to its potency, how could we resist? It actually went well enough with Indian food.

So in the end, as far as dinner fiascoes go, this one could have been much worse.

Paris Journal: Il Cardinale Pizzeria

CFM has always focused on dinners, but I thought I'd make an exception for this lunchtime treat. Plus the photo came out too well not to share.

This is the "Regina" at Il Cardinale, the pizzeria counterpart to an Italian gourmet shop/restaurant near our hotel. The toppings are mushrooms and slices of fantastic ham. As I sawed away at the pie I watched the local color come and go, always chatting with the Parisian pizzaiolo, who treated one of his regulars to a great-looking multitopping sandwich made from pizza dough and baked in the small oven next to his work station.

Afterward I brought my leftover pizza to Margy at work, and she devoured it in seconds.

Paris Journal: La Mousson

Cambodian food in Paris? Oui!

This wonderful little place, fragrant with the enticing aroma of jasmine rice, was right next to our hotel and provided the perfect break from all that meat and bread and potato and butter. The charming host, with a silk ascot coiled around his neck, shook my hand warmly and guided me from my desired prawns with chili sauce (I was missing spicy food something awful by now) to his suggestion of prawns with Cambodian spice. Of course I assented. No matter what, I knew we'd be getting those juicy European prawns whose heads I so love to suck. Yeah, I hoped for more than three of them, but what can you do. The dish was rich with lemongrass -- called citronella by the host, bringing to mind mosquito-repelling candles -- and the prawns were as succulent as I'd hoped. We also had wonderful steamed shrimp and pork dumplings (which came with a chili paste that we mixed with a soy-based brown sauce) and a coconut milk curry bursting with galangal root.

Dessert was green tea ice cream that was quite different from the Japanese version in that it contained the unmistakable presence of coconut milk. The ice cream was garnished with a delicious not-too-sweet sesame cookie. And we tried a lovely digestif of Chinese rice wine, which I believe is called Mee Ku Lu. It reminded me of grappa (which I actually like).

From this single foray into Cambodian cuisine, I would put it close to the more familiar Thai food that we love so much. And Margy and I would definitely recommend La Mousson to those looking for something a bit different on the Paris dinner trail.

Paris Journal: L'Ardoise

I'm afraid this is not true cooking for Margy, as the poor kid had to work so late (yep, she was in Paris for work, not just play) that I was forced to dine without her. Anyway, she had a so-so late-night café meal, not really worth writing about.

After spending the day and evening at the Louvre, I tried the Fodor's pick L'Ardoise, a homey storefront joint not far from the Rue de Rivoli. I believe the name means blackboard, and in a spiffy touch the waitress simply sets a big board in front of you that lists the day's prix fixe choices.

My main course was venison (steak de biche) au poivre. Eating steak au poivre was one of my goals for the trip, and I thought venison, which I like but rarely order, would be a nice twist on the theme. It was indeed, but the sauce wasn't peppery enough for my taste. The Australian couple next to me, with whom I chatted throughout the meal, said they too found the peppercorn presence to be generally muted when they'd ordered steak au poivre in Paris. The potato galette was beautifully crisp, but I have to admit that by now I was getting tired of the richness of traditional French food -- the smell of butter was starting to make me woozy, and I was homesick for vegetables. So I guess you could say I misordered, but I didn't want to miss out on the classics.

Yet after the steak, a warm apple tart, butter level be damned, served with vanilla ice cream, slapped me in the face and warned me to remember where I was. It was magnificent, with little blackened bits on top. At this moment I rue the fact that I was too full to finish it. Let me try again. I'll eat it all!

It was now time for Margy and me to take a little break from hearty French fare, but we'd be back. Would we ever be...

Paris Journal: L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon

"That was before I was born!" said our waitress, who'd asked if Margy and I had been to Paris before. I'd told her yes, I'd been there twenty-one years ago. "I am just twenty," the server added. But like everything else at this incredible two-year-old food shrine from famed restaurateur Robuchon, she was terrific. Her explanations of the complicated tapas-sized dishes and her suggestions for both food and wine were spot-on. This was our one true Paris blowout -- though honestly even a bottle of eau is expensive in the City of Lights -- and it was one of the best restaurant meals Margy and I have ever had. It was one of those dinners where we kept looking at each other with wide eyes and shooting each other little grins.

The place itself sets the tone for the excitement that's found on the plate. There are no tables, just endless counter seating that wraps around the room, putting the open kitchen at center stage. Every little detail is taken into account: The high stools are more comfortable than they look, the silverware is sleek and inviting (I can't wait to put this fork in my mouth, I thought), and there are even little hooks beneath the counters so you can hang your bag and keep it out of the way.

And the color scheme is almost as striking as the food. Everything at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon -- atelier means workshop -- is in black or red, or both. The eight or so cooks in front of us were clad entirely in black, as they whizzed almost silently around what looked like an enormous griddle with adjacent burners. Margy and I drooled over the dazzling array of red pots and pans they were using, including tiny Le Creuset saucepans (at least we assumed they were Le Creuset).

Here's what we ate. Everything was perfect.

Dorado, or daurade, tartare made with fromage blanc, served with a grilled slice of bread, and topped with radish sprouts

Grilled calamari with chorizo, tomato, and grilled baby artichokes

Sardine escabèche on melba toasts with tomato confit, topped with greens, with spicy mustard on the plate

Langoustine raviolo with black truffle sauce

Braised pork in mustard sauce with a crispy piece of pork skin on top and a dressed heart of romaine on the side, served with a small red pot of the creamiest, most wonderful mashed potatoes ever crafted (we suspected that potatoes accounted for oh, about fifty percent of what was in there; the rest was pure richness)

Grilled baby lamb chops au jus with roasted garlic and fleur du thyme, also served with mashed potatoes

For dessert (pictured -- look at that stone plate!), a Chartreuse liqueur soufflé with a scoop of pistachio ice cream dropped into the center

Since most of the dishes featured seafood, we chose a white wine -- Cot. Charitois Dom. de la Vernière. Luckily it went well with our meat choices. And we couldn't resist finishing off with a quick eau de vie, to which we were quickly becoming addicted.

I'm pretty sure I thanked everyone who worked there a little too profusely as we walked out, but when I've eaten well I feel no need to play it cool -- even in one of the world's coolest cities.

Paris Journal: Le Dauphin

This place was recommended by our hotel concierge and turned out to be very good. Its Southwest French cooking emphasizes meat grilled alla plancha, which I thought was a Spanish term but I would hear again a few times in Paris. This is Margy's dinner, playfully called "La Mer" on the menu (mine was "Le Boucher"). It included half a lobster and pieces of tuna, salmon, dorado, and cod. You can see some fantastic pesto (pistou) on the plate. The sauce on the tuna is something we kept running into: a brown sauce flavored with star anise. And Margy's still not totally ready for star anise.

At the very top of the photo is a small round dish of potato gratin that accompanied the plancha entrees. It really packed a wallop.

I amused the staff by assuming the men's room was downstairs (isn't it always in big European cities?). Wandering around down there rather than trying to speak a few words in French, I bumped into the red-haired chef. I gave him a shrugging "Twa-let?" and he laughed and brought me back up.

Paris Journal: Le Grand Colbert

There's something I like about a meal that requires its own equipment.

Most such meals involve shellfish, and Paris brasseries often feature huge, ornate platters of all manner of mollusk and crustacean. In this case the coolest and most necessary tool was a sharp needle that you twist into a minuscule snail shell and which usually comes out holding a quarter of a bite of delicious meat. But there were other utensils, like a cracker for the langoustine and crab claws and a long thin fork for the larger snails. Like surgeons, we kept changing tools as needed. "Cracker... needle... foreceps..."

Then we just surrendered and used the long thin fork for everything. The snails were the best, followed by the shrimp -- big succulent pink ones and tiny grayish brown ones that I ate whole like popcorn.

Margy had steak tartar for her main dish, and we watched our British waitress (I had told her she speaks English very well before I learned it was her native language) add onion and pickle and Tabasco to a huge mound of very fresh looking ground beef. In the end it was enough to feed two hungry Dobermans, but Margy did her best.