Catching Ups and Downs: Part 1

Life is tough enough, do we really need Google to make it so difficult to access one's blog that was created before Google ruled the world?  Ok, cool man, or as the tax man really did say to me the other day: 'Zen.'  Wow, it's been a while and I blame my respite entirely on my day job.  So, if you're wondering where I've been, in this installment, I offer you 180 degrees (part 1) of a 360 degree recap, starting with some good old fashioned mama's home cooking:  NOT.

Mama Shelter

Way back around early November, I finally got the urge to check out the trendy Mama Shelter restaurant, situated on the ground floor of the trendy Mama Shelter hotel on rue de Bagnolet in the 20th and just across the street from one of my go-to venues for live music, La Fleche d'Or.  Mama's has long acquired Paris renown for its funky interior spaces, lively bar, pizza corner, and hip restaurant.  'Check' on funky interior decor, 'check' on lively bar, 'check' on pizza corner, but a decidedly 'thumbs down' on hip restaurant.  As for the funky decors, check out my photos.

Funky Mama Shelter decor 1

Funky Mama Shelter decor 2

Funky Mama Shelter decor 3

Funky Mama Shelter decor 4

Yes, the dark ceiling has a number of adages scrawled in chalk, including such deep musings as the following:

 Power is standing on a street corner without waiting for someone.

           Get out of my cloud.

Deep, huh?  About as deep as big Mama''s aspirations in the kitchen.
For a place that aspires to be so ostensibly cool, the menu offerings were decidedly dull on the evening that Co. and I made our visit (and probably all the other nights when we didn't, as well).
Below, the carte, followed by some food photos.

Mama Shelter's menu, Nov. 2013 (click to enlarge)

Burratta Tomates Cerises entree (14€)

The burratta was forgettable - not that anyone's could compare to that served at Aux Deux Amis, which I revisited a couple of weeks ago with the Moose.  The cerises were memorable - with so many, how could one forget?  Meanwhile, Co. was uninspired by her poele de champignon (13€).

Salmon snacke main dish (19€)

This actually looks pretty good, but to tell you the truth, I can't remember if this was my dish or Co's, and neither can she.  So it may have been good, but who the hell knows?

Plat du jour - some kind of fish and vegetables, take your pick (17€)

I know, I know, these photos suck, but then, so did the food.  (Actually, the place is so dark, you'll have trouble impressing your partner at the bar with all your stored selfies.)  Zen, man, zen.  Okay, the food wasn't that bad, but when it comes to Mama Shelter, you go for the decor, the lively bar action, and if you and your buds are up for group gourging on pizza, there's a special room set aside for that sort of happiness.  We downed our decent Pinot noir vieilees vignes (34€) and zenned back out into the Paris night without dessert or cafe at 97€.  Next question?

MAMA SHELTER

Address: 109 Rue de Bagnolet, 75020 Paris, France

Phone:+33 1 43 48 48 48

Website:  http://www.mamashelter.com/en/paris/restaurants/


Le Boudoir

This was a decidedly strange one.  The Moose, fully inspired by an earlier visit, suggested we check out Le Boudoir, a short block or two off the insanely crowded Champs Elysee.  I must admit, I was intrigued by the online carte, but nervous that it was in English, I guess a nod and blink to the hordes of tourists swarming around the fashionably ostentatious Champs Elysee shops.  By the time we arrived for dinner, only a few tables were taken, and we were seated next to a foursome of lovely young ladies finishing up what appeared to be a rollicking enjoyable early evening meal.  By the time we left, the place was filled with button-down male suits, hardly the touristy types, seriously huddled around their tables as if mapping out their strategies for their visits to a decidedly other kind of boudoir later that night.  My mind wanders, as it did at Le Boudoir, no doubt partly a function of the whiskeys I downed at a bar along the way.

The new seasonal Le Boudoir carte (click to enlarge)

I don't know what it is about the Moose, but he is the most gregarious person I know.  When we arrived at Le Boudoir, he asked for Stefan (manager?  owner?) and they greeted each other like lifelong pals.  Stefan spent some time at our table, just glowing about how the evening of our visit they were launching their fall/winter menu, which was why half of the items weren't available.  Don't worry, I didn't get it either.  The meal's a blur, but I remember ordering 'The famous poultry pie with duck foie gras - onion confit and foliage emulsion' because I wanted to find out what was so famous about it.  Stefan explained it is famous because care is taken to use only the freshest, most natural ingredients, which is fine by me.  I was less impressed by my dessert, the 'Black chocolate cream,' that would have worked a lot better without the bananas and with black chocolate cream.  Everything in-between is but a distant memory, but check out the photos below.  I do remember being surprisingly satisfied by the meal, however, although I'm not sure that I will return.  Still, if you're hanging out on the grand old C-E one evening and you want to check out something a bit off the beaten path (literally and figuratively) at fairly reasonable prices, you probably could do worse.

The famous poultry pie

Lightly browned scallops, risotto, red squash - fresh and succulent, no kidding

The Moose's choice: Quail stuffed with dried fruits and foie gras

Black chocolate cream - this one didn't work

Not to be forgotten, Le Boudoir includes the railroad car dining space, some more intimate private rooms upstairs (no, not those sort of rooms), as well as a 'cigars smoking room' 8-seater.  Now you've got the idea.

LE BOUDOIR

Restaurant & Wine Bar

Address:  25 rue du Colisée, 75008 Paris - France

Telephone:  01 43 59 25 29
website:  http://www.boudoirparis.fr/

Alain Milliat - It's In the Juice

It's a juice bar, it's a tea shop, it's an elegant restaurant, it's a boutique, it's a human being.  A person could go crazy, hypnotized by the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in the upwardly mobile 7th and coming across the  corner establishment on rue de Grenelle, Alain Milliat.  Yes, it is all these things, including a Telerama recommended stop for Saturday brunch with the 'mamies et papys.'

Four of us met up for dinner (on reservation, of course) a couple of rainy (aren't they all?) Friday evenings ago in our handsome attire, not really knowing what to expect.  What we found was a place that looked like this, and those are indeed Alain Milliat juices lining the walls (actually, I 'found' the photos as well, online):

 

As Co. and I awaited our dinner companions, we were chatted up, and chatted up, and chatted up, by the server who apparently was really lonely until we arrived.  Part of the chatting involved convincing Co. that she simply must try an Alain Milliat mandarine juice.  I would have joined her, but with so much alcohol in the world, who has time for juice, except on top of whatever I'm eating for dinner.  When I asked Co. earlier today for her assessment of said juice, she said, "It was good," then she said, "It was high quality," and then she said, "It was excellent."  The moral of this story, I guess, is that the AM juices really grow on you.  Fortunately, our dinner companions arrived just in the nick of time.  After some confusion about the 'menu degustation' vs. the ala carte selections, Co. and I opted for the menu and our companions ended up with half the selections we took, only twice as big, so I guess it evens out, except on the bill which turned out to be twice as expensive for us.  As my elegantly-scarved cohort later moralized, "It all evens out in the end."

The food was very good, which is all you really want to know anyway, am I right or am I right?  Well, in my humble opinion, you will probably not be disappointed, and may, depending on your whims, well be quite delighted.  First, the offerings:

And now, what some of the offerings looked like, decoded:

This colorful entree was the marinated lotte and it was terrific, so good that it's worth looking at a second time, with different lighting:

 

This all-natural mushroom dish was a creative preparation, although rather skimpy on the mushrooms, especially relative to the non-menu degustation plate.

  This delicate salmon filet was light and vaporized.

 

For my money, this canette and yams dish was the pinnacle.

 

A humble, yet satisfying, bonus cheese dish for the menu degustation, with a well-appointed confecture - bread, cheese, confecture, wine - could anything so simple be so French?

 More evidence that the young, creative neo-bistrot chefs of Paris (in this case, the Brit Jon Irwin) forego the traditional cake and tarte dessert offerings for more oddball glace, fromage, praline, etc. concoctions, and this one, with its - do I remember this correctly? - cucumber/cumin ice cream was very, very nice.

As mentioned, you get more dishes, but less quantity, with the menu degustation (65€), so if there are a couple things that really, really tempt you on the blackboard, go ala carte (34€).  One of our companions was quite impressed by the cauliflower risotto, which is not pictured here, mainly because I didn't want to embarrass her by leaning over her plate with my tablet camera.  We ripped through a couple bottles of a very fine Morellino di scansano, one of several reasonably priced reds on the wine menu (34€).  

ALAIN MILLIAT

159 rue de Grenelle

75007 Paris

tel: 01 45 55 63 86

Website: http://www.alain-milliat.com/en/the-restaurant

L'Antre Amis - Hidden Lair

Without asking an expert, I've done my best to understand the meaning of  antre amis, and I'm left with two choices - 'friends' lair' and 'home depot'.  I'll go with the former, because call it what you will, L'Antre Amis, the satisfying bistro situated on the cusp of the 15th and 17th arrondissements is enough under the radar to rank as a hidden gem.  Well, not completely hidden, given the restaurant's proximity to the UNESCO headquarters and various sundry foreign embassies.  And not completely unnoticed, either, despite what everyone who has noticed seem to suggest, and I hope you get that paradox.  My much more widely read counterpart John Talbot veritably glowed about L'Antre on his blog, titling his review, "Wow, Zowie, Pow, Zap: where have all the critics gone?  Far far away."  And not unnoticed in the 2012 Le Fooding guide, which boasted the following description:

Chic but discreet neo-bistro.  Daily set menu at the standard, unobjectionable price of 32€.  Beautifully presented dishes, cooked to perfection.

One year later, that 32€ 3-course menu (plus amuse bouche) now stands at 34€, but that's a minor quibble, it's still a great deal.  

I chose L'Antre as the destination for my 40-year, give or take a decade or two, reunion with Long-Lost Cousin, particularly given its proximity to her temporary abode as well as the disappointment I experienced when I tried to reserve this past August during their vacation period.  My mind-set was more reunion than review, so my details here will have to remain sketchy.  One of the last unseasonably balmy weeks of September had us briefly ruminating over indoor/outdoor seating, especially once I arrived and saw LLC sitting comfortably outside sipping a glass of wine.  Inside we went, however, more a nod to the rapidly approaching autumn than the fleeting summer breeze.  Once seated, our amiable server proceeded to direct our attention to a small posted tapas list until I told her of our desire to partake in the famous 34€ menu offerings.  Without further ado, the ardoise was brought to the table, boasting a couple of choices for each course.  Both LLC and I opted for the chiperons entree, nicely presented, but a bit underwhelming on the taste front.  Nonetheless, by the last bite, I had come to appreciate the delicate and subtle orange cauliflower sauce.

Our main plate choices were where the action was.  I thoroughly enjoyed my caille/quail dish and LLC ripped through her bar.  I was underwhelmed by my Brie de Meaux cheese finale, but LLC happily proclaimed that her dessert was the best she's ever had in her life (one that has taken her from the plains of Oklahoma to the bustle of Manhattan).  Wow, zowie, pow, now that's an endorsement.  LLC apparently was also quite impressed by our Chantemerle medoc (28€) because each time she tried to take a photo of the food, she made sure the wine was prominently in view, alas to the chagrin of her memorable dessert.  But the fish photo came out loud and clear, and for that I thank LLC, given my total camera malfunction for the festivities.

 

So there you have it.  If not the gastronomical stratosphere, L'Antre Amis definitely ranks as a spot to check out in its tucked away corner of the 15th.  Not exactly around the corner from my home depot, but a lair worthy of the detour.

L'ANTRE AMIS

9, rue Bouchut

75015 Paris

tel: 01 45 67 15 65

website: http://www.lantreamis.com/

Le Mary Celeste - Hipster H(e)aven

Who the hell is Mary Celeste?*  Who cares?  All I know is that after two visits in the span of four days to the new hotspot bar/snackeria Le Mary Celeste on the corner of rue Commines in the northern part of Le Marais, I conclude:  I really like this place.  Mary's owners now have their Paris troika with the firmly established Candelaria and Glass, reflecting a trend toward a new hangout movement - good drinks, good food, and good vibes.  Did I say youth?  True, nearly everyone is younger than me, but when I say youth, I mean, were those two girls sipping cocktails at the table next to me and the Moose last Tuesday evening legal?  (Who cares?)  Although jeans and scruffy beards lead the way, the venue is a melting pot of French, foreigners, young (them) and old (me).

I already gave it away, but if it's the rentree, the Moose is back.  When I arrived for our rdv at 7:00 p.m., the bar was already packed and Moose was sitting off to the far right at a small square of a table sipping a Brooklyn Lager beer.  A Brooklyn beer in Paris??  That's about as likely as Hollande getting reelected as President, or finding a legal parking space within 5 blocks of Mary C., but my eyes did not deceive - Brooklyn it was.  In fact, a big selling point for Mary C. is not the beer, but the cocktails.  I'll take their word for it, because me, with the exception of a gin martini - which my fellow ex-Baltimorean H. L. Mencken dubbed the one American invention as perfect as a sonnet - I'm not a cocktail guy.  So sue me.  When I drink, I need a glass, a bottle, and, sometimes, ice and a twist of lime.  That didn't quite work at Mary C. - I ordered a vodka and, displeased with the brands that I knew, opted for some French brand that tasted like rain.  That's not a good thing.  I fared better with their whiskey during my second visit as I bided time at the bar awaiting my evening's companions - Co. and Friends, ending up with a glass of the peaty Laphroaig, which did the job.  But at 8 euros a pop, 'glass' is an exaggeration.  More like 1-1/2 inches.  But I quibble - if you like cocktails, I think this is your place.  I came to that conclusion after reading David Lebowitz's gushing blog about the umbrella set, which is where I swiped the following drinks images from.

 

Even a non-cocktail drinker like myself is tempted by these babies, including the Rain Dog, a ton of ice doused in small-batch bourbon, mint, and amaro bitters.                                                                                                                Where was I?  Oh yeah, the Moose.  Before heading off to the meet, I received my reservation confirmation by email - the only way to reserve at Mary C., by the way - and was warned that Monday and Tuesday evenings feature a reduced carte consisting of bar food and 2 - 4 cold plates.  Big disappointment, but we were modestly impressed by the two plates we both ended up selecting - marinated lieu with radishes, a bit salty but very tasty, and some croustillant bread topped by trout.  So, without the opportunity to catch Mary C. on a full menu evening, I reserved for Friday night.  The bar was really hopping when I arrived around 7:30 p.m. and once my cohorts showed up, we were ushered to a slightly trapezoidal table towards the rear of the bar by the window, instead of the more secluded downstairs room by an open kitchen.  Our table was private enough to engage in copious conversation and drinking - a marvelous couple bottles of the Spanish red, Douro Muxagat Almeida 2011 (28€ per bottle) - yet still catch the bar activity. 

The food carte mirrored the cocktail carte you see above - a rectangular single strip of light cardboard, only with 'A Partager' written on the top - 'to share.'  (As you can surmise, Mary C. eschews formality.)  And share we did.  We ended up doing a round robin of virtually everything on the carte, with each plate rhythmically passed around the table among the four of us:  endives, poivron, courgette, crostini salami, ceviche, crepes, slow pig, lieu jaune (the same one as the other night), crudo lieu, and a fruit compote for dessert, each ranging from 6€ (e.g., the endives) to 10€ (e.g., the crepes).   A listing like this doesn't do the dishes much justice, each of which was imaginative enough to anticipate the next go round the table.  The ceviche and crepes both warranted second helpings.  The two Chinese crepes came stuffed with lamb and crudites, and reflected the Asian leanings of  multinational chef Haan Palcu-Chang, who changes the carte daily.  The tamarind-glazed endives were excellent as well - I'll take these in lieu of potato chips for munching anyday.  One of the dishes, I think it was the peppers, was topped by razor thin slices of luxurious parmesan.

 

 

Among the other dishes that chef Haan has conjured up, and which I avidly hope will make a comeback, are several spicy dishes, including radishes and cucumbers marinated in deep-fried Korean chili powder.  Other past hits: pickled topimambour; beef jerky; kimchi; Urchins Galicia; and eccentric oysters  (bouzigues, tiny Kumamoto, Blackwater and English wild flower Maldon; and fish tacos.  Wow.  I'm definitely going back.

Dinner for four:  two bottles of wine and 13 small plates: 171€

*Most of you no doubt do know who the hell Mary Celeste is/was - a British-American merchant brigantine that was found intact and abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872 and immortalized in Arthur Conan Doyle's tale of the ghost ship.  Unlike its namesake, le Mary Celeste in Paris is alive and well.

LE MARY CELESTE   

1 rue Commines

75003 Paris

no phone

reservations at: http://lemaryceleste.com/

 

Relais de Guermantes: Proust Country the Geurmantes Way

If you remember your Proust, you no doubt recall that the Geurmantes name figures prominently in the author's epic Remembrance of Things Past.  Not far from the Geurmantes manor you'll find a cozy country inn that itself looks like something that sprung out of a historic French novel, and the setting for mine and Co's choice on the 'at least one restaurant out in the country per summer' circuit.  This being late August, we didn't have much time left to choose, and our preference, La Mere Au Diable turned out to be closed for vacation for another week.  The devil is in the details, so to Le Relais de Guermantes we gamboled. 

Le Relais was definitely open, with each table in the smallish secluded courtyard eventually taken, and some tables in the quaint restaurant interior also filled.  You couldn't ask for a more idyllic late summer, early evening setting, even with the occasional mosquito dropping by for a chat.  Unfortunately, the setting trumped the food, which ranged from pretty good (my croustillantes de gambas served with a puree of avocado and a pepper chutney) to pretty bland (Co's lamb, a replacement for the gigot on the carte which was unavailable).  If you check out the carte below (click to enlarge), you'll observe that Co. opted for the 34.50€ Maxine menu and I went upscale with the 44€ offering.  Washed down with a reasonably priced Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil (28€), which arrived at the table from a rather frigid cave.

 

And here's what the food looked like:

 

 

 

Alas, the closest we got to a madeleine were the little cakes that made up part of my dessert, the illustrious Cafe Gourmand, which was better than this usually turns out, and accompanied by a nifty wooden box containing various sugars, pistachio nuts, and chocolate pieces filled with marshmallow.  However pleasant the meal turned out to be, it fell way short of Proust's famous madeleine moment from the Remembrance books:

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.

LE RELAIS DE GUERMANTES
Place de l'Eglise
77600 Guermantes
tel: 01 64 30 13 03
website: http://www.relais-de-guermantes.com/

L'Apibo - Fresh Air and Breaking Glass

Last Friday night Co. and I ventured to rue Tiquetonne, the animated, pedestrian-oriented street in Paris's Montorgueil quarter to check out L'Apibo, a small venue across street from what appears to be a very popular pizzeria, amid a plethora of other cafes and restaurants.  This being a temperate evening in the waning weeks of the summer, we asked for one of the 10 or so tables on the sidewalk.  Our Thai hostess/owner/waitress (staff on vacation, we were informed) congenially discussed with us the absurd evening ritual of garbage collection - on rue Tiquetonne, not once, but twice - on a Friday evening when people are outside trying to eat.  She ruminated on the god-awful parking situation - thankfully, we took the metro - and how her unassuming moto was ticketed twice in the past week.  But otherwise, the street was more people than vehicles, the main form of transportation being the asundry baby carriages we espied as parents waited to be seated at the pizzeria.  Animated more than boisterous, except for the obnoxious guffaw coming from a pizzeria table of heavy drinking, but apparently harmless, Eastern Europeans. C'est la vie a Paris.

I remember reading another post about L'Apibo somewhere (now forgotten), with the author dubbing the restaurant as 'quasi-gastronomique' - I can't say I disagree.  As described at the restaurant's website, L'Apibo offers 'une cuisine d'instinct, curieuse et spontanée,' and I think you'll figure that one out even if you don't speak French.  Note that the description doesn't say 'fantastic,' 'unforgettable,' and 'super-fantastic,' but you can't have eveything.  Price/quality speaking, you could do worse.  Chef Anthony Boucher conjured up a very satisfying, quasi-innovative, summery carte on the night of our visit.  All washed down with a very good Corsican Sartene red (28€).  Grand total: 92€.

Not long after we were seated we were brought a refreshing amuse bouche in the form of a cold melon soup.  

Co. and I opted for the 3 course 32€ menu, selecting from among the options classified under the headings, 'pour commencer,' 'pour continuer,' and 'pour finir.'  There, you've just learned some more French.  The carte looked like this (click to enlarge):

A commencer:  Nearly seduced by the gambas, I ended up more intrigued by the daurade tartare, accompanied by vegetables, deli style pickles (hard to find in Paris), wasabi, and lime, the latter three being my Achille's (or is it stomach's) heel.  This was good, but nothing special until I hit the wasabi, which, when combined with the pickle, adhered to L'Apibo's promise of instinct, curiosity, and spontaneity.  Co., ever a lover of the foie gras, selected foie gras (and that's not a carrot, but a piece of melon you see).  On a warm night, these dishes hit the spot, even if they came up short of dazzling.  Meanwhile, a couple more hearty guffaws and rowdy back pats from our European neighbors across the narrow street at the pizzeria.

ALERT: Don't rush out to get your eyes examined, yes, my tablet camera failed me again and the photos below are blurry.  But consider this, if you drink a lot and then go to L'Apibo and keep drinking, this is probably what you food will actually look like.

A continuer:  The highlights of the meal fell in this category, with Co.'s bar on a bed of black rice (also hard to find in Paris), tandoori sauce, and eggplant caviar on one hand, and on the other, my stuffed encornet with blettes (chard) and pine nuts.  Both of us turned out to be reluctant to swap much of either dish and when we did, it was a jolt, with tastes apparently coming from opposite sides of the globe.  Meanwhile, some louder discourse from our European neighbors.

 

A finir: Summery selections, Co. went with the peaches and I went with the far healthier chocolate, both pretty decent.  Meanwhile, more yukking it up by our European neighbors across the narrow street at the aforementioned pizzeria.

 

And a grand finish it was:  as we stood and began to navigate our way past the tables to the left, all of a sudden our Eastern neighbors' table across the narrow street at the pizzeria thrust forward and every single plate, glass, and bottle smashed into a million pieces in the middle of the street.  Continuing with the evening's theme, an act replete with instinct, curiosity, and spontaneity.  My only regret is that I didn't take a photo, but the ever popular phrase 'it looked like a war zone' should suffice.


L'APIBO

31 rue Tiquetonne
75002 Paris
tel:  01 55 34 94 50
website: http://www.restaurant-lapibo.fr/