April in Paris

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The trouble with Paris is the human body is only designed to eat 4-to-5 meals a day.

Such is the conundrum we face daily as we ramble down its rues, and contemplate the cornucopia before us.

Spring is the perfect time to provoke the appetite for this moveable feast. The air is crisp but not cold. It may rain a little but there is revival in the air, and spring in everyone’s step. Sun worshipers flock to the public gardens and you can literally feel the city stirring itself from months of slumber. April is too late for somber bleakness to blanket the city in its wintry cloak, and too early for tourists to harsh your mellow. You can dress up (or down) without fear of ruining your clothes through sleet or sweat, and walk all day without rising temperatures stealing your stamina.

Other than October, April is the ideal month to eat your way through Paris.

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So gird your loins and crack a bottle of your favorite fermented French libation, for here is another love letter to the City of Light, and why springtime is the best time to pursue its pleasures of the palate.

HIT THE GROUND EATING

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It was around my third bite of a tangy tartare de boeuf  at Ma Bourgogne — one of my favorite bistros in Paris — that I realized one of my dreams had come true: despite my pitiful failure to master all but the most rudimentary words and phrases, I have never felt more at home than when I am dining in a French restaurant in France. (Lest you think me delusional, I can claim a fairly rigorous command of menu French — in comprehension if not conversation.)

“My Burgundy” puts me at ease even before we’re seated. The greeting may be in French (and they easily peg us as tourists), but they still ask (in jovial, broken English) if we prefer sitting outside (facing the gorgeous Place des Vosges), or inside, where the view may not be as spectacular, but neither do you have a highway of pedestrians jostling your table. We have the usual foggy-headedness from fourteen hours in an airplane, so it is comfort food we seek when ordering and we head straight for the classics.

Image(Grenache v. Mourvedre…how interesting,,,)

The fresh-cut tartare and some gorgeous smoked salmon hits the table while I am bloviating on the virtues of the house wine (50 cl of dense, grapey St. Emilion for 24 euros), as the groggy Food Gal feigns interest through sleepy eyes and soaks up some wine, and the atmosphere.

She finds additional solace in a soothing oeufs en gelee (another impossible-to-find dish on this side of the pond), and even after we’re stuffed and sleepy, we can’t resist the gossamer charms of an île flottante:

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Less than three hours after touchdown, we feel like we’re right where we’re supposed to be.

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We then trek back to our digs at the Grand Hotel du Palais Royale — one of the best-situated hotels in all of Paris — before resting up and strapping up for, you guessed it, dinner.

Only a few blocks from our hotel is the candy store for cooks known as E. Dehillerin, which is a stone’s throw from Rue Montorgueil (below) —  a pedestrian-friendly street where scores of cafes/bistros/restaurants beckon for a mile.

Stroll another ten minutes south and you find the cacophonous wonders of Les Halles and the Marais in one direction, or the beginning of the trés chere shopping district along the Rue Saint-Honoré, in the other.

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Rue Montorgueil (pronounce Roo Montor-GOY-a) is filled with joints like this below, all of which tempt you to sit and watch the world go by, or plan your next three meals from a cozy table nursing a cappuccino:

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We’ll get to dinner in a minute, but first some oyster discourse …another reason to hit Paris in April before the season ends.

OYSTER INTERLUDE…or PLEASE EXCUSE OUR SHELLFISHNESS

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France is the oyster capital of the world, and 80% of all oysters raised in France are consumed within the country. People used to American oysters — even the good ones from Cape Cod and Washington State — are in for a saline surprise when they slurp their way through these tannic-vegetal-metallic wonders, best described as licking a penny under seawater. April is the last great month of the year to get your fill of these briny bivalves, so consume by bucket-load we do.

They are sized by number on menus in inverse relationship to their heft: No. 6 being smallest, while 000s (nicknamed pied de cheval – horse’s foot) are big boys for those who love swallowing their fleshy/slimy proteins in tennis ball portions. We look for fines (small-to-medium) Ostrea edulis (called plates, flats or Belons, even though they don’t always come from Belon, yes, it’s confusing) usually in the No. 3-4 range, and always from Brittany, as these are the most strongly flavored (and usually the most expensive). If you like your molluscs on the sweeter side, look to Utah Beach.

Unlike America, oysters in France don’t travel far from seabed to table, so when you polish off a douziane at Flottes or Le Dôme, you will be so taken by their intensity, you’ll forget about how silly you sounded trying to order them in French.

undefined(JC’s Senior trip pic)

One does not live by oysters alone, so at Le Dôme Café one orders them solely as an entry point for a seafood feast amidst an old-school, brass and glass decor that would make Pablo Picasso feel right at home. The look may be classic, but it has aged like a soft-focus painting from the Belle Époque, and the service could not be better. The Dover sole is the standard by which all others are measured. Its firm, sweet, succulent nuttiness puts it on a level worth flying an ocean for:

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TAKE A HIKE

The language of France may have defeated me, but the streets of Paris have not. Various map apps have turned the city from intimidating into a walkable wonderland.

In the past, we thought nothing of taking cabs or the Metro between sites and neighborhoods. Now we hoof it everywhere. Most of what a tourist wants to see (and eat) is within a three-mile radius of the First Arrondissement, and if you dress for urban hiking (thick, comfortable soles are a must), you will walk off those croissants in no time. And if you like to toggle between the Left and Right Bank (as we do), you’ll become as familiar with the Tuileries as your own back yard:

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Exercise is but a side benefit of all the sightseeing done much better on foot. Cars move too fast, and the Metro shows you nothing but your fellow sardines. Walking is the best way, the only way, to properly absorb the mood of a city. Even the ugly walks can be worthwhile; schlepping from the Trocadero to Saint-Germain-des Prés (if you don’t walk along the Seine) is one stolid grey block after another, but you get a feel for everyday Parisian life that you will never see if you stick to the tourist/scenic routes.

Five-to-ten miles a day is a snap for us these days, and a necessity when calories entice at every corner.  In my younger years (when ostensibly I was in better shape), I wouldn’t have considered walking from the Eiffel Tower to Les Halles. Now, as an aging boomer, I see that it is less than three miles (2.8 to be precise), and take off without a second thought.

The equation is simple: Urban hiking + bigger appetite – fear of gaining weight = more restaurants to explore.

SO MANY CROISSANTS

Our croissant quest began one morning at Stohrer — the oldest patisserie in Paris — and another at Ritz Le Comptoir: two ends of the pastry spectrum: one as traditional as they come; the other, a modern (perhaps too modern) take on puff pastry as you’ll see from the not-very-classic pain au chocolat below:

Image(Old school, actually, the oldest school)

Image(Croissant log au chocolat à la Ritz)

Neither of the above was the best croissant we had in our 17 days of patrolling the streets of Paree. We went high; we went low. We even went to a so-not-worth it 170 euro brunch at the Hotel Le Meurice which featured a tsunami of small plates aimed at the Emily Shows Off In Paris crowd.

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The meal had more moving parts than a Super Bowl halftime show, and like whatever the f**k this is:…was more concerned with choreography than harmony.

To be fair, its croissants were mighty fine even if they were linebacker-sized. (Any mille-feuille aficionado will tell you what you gain in girth, you lose in finesse — sorta like football players):

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Side note: the Meurice was one of the few places we encountered women as servers. Waiting tables in Paris (from the lowliest cafe to temples of haute cuisine) remains a valued profession very much dominated by men. Which is one of the reasons service is so good.

Oh No You Didnt GIFs | Tenor

I kid. I kid…

As for our best crescent roll we tried, that honor goes to an award-winner from La Maison d’Isabelle — which won best in show at some hi-falutin’ bake-off a few years back. In our contest, it was the compact, pillow-soft butteriness (encased in a delicate, easily shattered shell) that separated this laminated beauty from the also-rans.

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People were lined up every morning for them, as they were taken directly from the baking sheet to the oven to your hand: the kind of only-in-Paris experience that spoils you for French pastries anywhere but here.

Image(These are a pain to make)

THE OFFAL TRUTH

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The offal truth is you can’t find “variety meats” hardly anywhere in America. Americans have no compunctions about inhaling hamburgers by the billions, or polishing off chicken breasts and filet mignons by the metric ton, but put kidneys, sweetbreads, or brains in front of them and they recoil faster than a vegan at a hot dog stand.

This is where the classic restaurants of Paris come in to sate you with pleasures of holistic animal eating. As in: if you’re going to slaughter another living thing to keep yourself alive, you should respect the animal’s sacrifice and make the most of it.

Europeans are much closer to their food, both geographically and intellectually, and that relationship broadcasts itself on the menus of Parisian restaurants older than the United States.

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To give you an idea how old Le Procope is, they have a plaque out front (just above The Food Gal®’s noggin in the above pic) celebrating customers going all the way back to Voltaire, who, as you recall, died in 1778.

Whatever fat he and Jean-Jacques Rousseau chewed here is lost to history, but no doubt one of them was rhapsodizing over Procope’s blanquette or tête de veau when they did so. Three hundred and fifty years later, this 18th Century artifact (the oldest café in Paris) still delivers the goods, with cheery, old world panache, to regulars and tourists alike, at remarkably gentle prices.

Our “calves head casserole, in 1686 style” was about as hip as a whalebone corset, and all the more delicious for it. Besides being the most wine-friendly food on earth, it is also the most elementally satisfying. No tricks, no pyrotechnics, just foods to soothe the savage breast.

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Having successfully tackled a veal head, it was time to go scouting for lamb– at a cheese shop/restaurant perched atop the tony Printemps store near the Palais Garnier, of all places.

Laurent Dubois is reputed to have the best croque monsieur in all of Paris, so we escalated to his cheese-centric spot for a jambon et fromage, but ended up swooning over the navarin (stew) loaded with tender morsels of lamb napped with electric green baby peas in a mint-lamb jus sharpened by jalapenos:

Image(Ewe won’t believe how peafect this was)

On the cuisine bourgeoise level, this was the dish of the trip.

As good as the stew was, we were hunting bigger game. So we strolled through a spring drizzle to Le Bon Georges, a temple of bistronomy which combines classic technique with terroir-focused creativity, hyper-seasonal ingredients, a killer wine list, and very informal but informed service — all squeezed into a cramped, casual space. Like all in the bistronomy movement — the food was simple but surprisingly intense.

Service is by kids who may look like teenagers (with big, patient smiles), but you can tell they are no strangers to dealing with out-of-town gastronauts with all kinds of accents. The chalkboard menu tells you all you need to know (they will happily explain a poussin (baby chicken) from a poisson (fish) to the clueless), and the wine list is Michelin-star worthy in its own right, at prices far gentler than what you’ll find at tonier addresses.

The noise level is tolerable (we were in a back room closer to the kitchen) and the chairs were actually comfortable (not always a given). Describing the food as gutsy doesn’t tell half the story.

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Clockwise from above left: duck paté en croûte with foie gras and prunes; smoked trout with orange sauce; morels with grilled onions, napped with Comté cheese/vin jaune sauce; and white asparagus smothered in vinaigrette, just the way we like them. And these were just the starters.

From there we proceeded to roast duck with carrot puree, sweetbreads over potatoes, and daurade royale (sea bream) with a citron/saffron sauce. We finished the meal with baba au rhum, soaked with booze drawn with a pipette the length of your arm from which you suck just enough libation from a humongous bottle (containing your spirit of choice) to bring it to your glass. Over the top? Of course, but also effective in sending everyone home with a happy glow.

We also got quite the show from chef Lobet Loic as he broke down a cow udder to include in a vol-au-vent concoction he was working on for the next night’s dinner.

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“Just when I thought I’ve tried every part of the cow,” one of our social media followers observed. Us too. This was a new one for even an all-animal appreciator like yours truly.

Even our very French waiters told us it was a part of the animal they had never seen broken down for consumption. They were just as amazed as we were.

LISTING DU PORC

Our hunt for oddball animal parts was hardly over after Le Bon Georges and Procope, so to Le Comptoir du Relais Saint Germain we trotted the next day to make a swine of ourselves over Yves Camdeborde’s crispy, rib-sticking pied de cochon:

Image(I suffer from foot in mouth disease)

Then there was a trek to the far reaches of Montparnasse to try what many call the best cassoulet in all of Paris. (An honest cassoulet being harder to find in America than an authentic choucroute…or a toothsome lamb stew on top of a department store for that matter.)

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L’Assiette (“plate”) has received this accolade from Paris by Mouth, who knows her way around a Tarbais, and the version we had in this non-descript spot was so dense with meaty/beany flavor all we could do is quietly thank her in between mouthfuls.

Image(Cassoulet a L’Assiette)

L’Assiette is the ultimate neighborhood gastro-bistro, so small (we counted 24 seats) and so far off the beaten path that nudging your way past Instagrammers will not be a problem. Even as strangers, our welcome was as warm as those bubbling beans, and as soothing as the Languedoc-Roussillon red wine (Domaine Les Mille Vignes Fitou Cadette) that hit the spot on a chilly night.

Choucroute can go stuck rib to stuck rib with cassoulet, which is why this apotheosis of pork beckons us like a holy grail, and why we usually make a beeline to old reliable  Brasserie Lipp  to demolish a platter at least once every trip.

We’ve always been in Lipp’s thrall — from its 19th Century vibe to the burnished wood and ever-present cacophony — it is a restaurant where time seems to stand still.

We even enjoy the narrow, elbow-rubbing two-top tables that are so cramped, they make flying coach on Spirit Airlines feel like a private jet.

And we’ve always found the service to be the opposite of the bordering-on-rudeness reputation of the place. Even now, they gave our brood of six the best table in the house for a late lunch without reservations, and our aging waiter couldn’t have been nicer. (At Lipp, “aging waiter” is a redundancy, since some of them look like veterans of the Franco-Prussian War.)

This time, we loved everything about it…except the food.

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Lipp’s jarret du porc (above) used to be de rigueur on every trip. This time, like most of our meal, it was disappointing, The portent came from a too-cold house pâté, then succeeded by a slapdash Dover sole and then the chewy pork knuckle, Everything felt perfunctory. Even worse, this “Alsatian” restaurant had but four wines from Alsace on its list. Wassup with that?

Perhaps it was an off day, but the food looked and tasted like no one in the kitchen cares anymore….which is what happens when social media ruins your restaurant.

Luckily, good ole Flo restored our faith in the flavors of Alsace.

Image(Not on menu: lots of falafel)

If Lipp is getting worn around the edges from over-popularity, Brasserie Floderer is holding its own in the sketchy 10eme Arrondissement. — perhaps for the opposite reason. To get there on foot, however, you’ll have to pass some pretty dodgy blocks and trip over lots of kebabs. You know things have taken a turn for the worse, we thought to ourselves as we surveyed the chickpea-strewn streets, when the falafel stands start popping up.

Against this backdrop of littered streets and skewered food, Flo shines like a beacon from days gone by:

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The interior feels like a movie set (above) and the menu is as no-nonsense as the 1909 vintage decor.

As the most stubbornly Alsatian of the remaining brasseries, the Franco-German classics check all the boxes: celery root salad (here cubed not shredded), textbook onion soup, and a “Choucroute Strasbourgeoise” of tender pork belly (poitrine fumée), spicy kraut, smoky sauccisse cumin,  a second sausage (Francfort) – because a single sausage choucroute is akin to sin when “garnishing” this cabbage.

Image(Choucroute is kind of a pig deal)

In case you haven’t had enough pork, there’s also a big hunk of shoulder (échine) to finish you off. How something so fundamental can feel so fresh for so long is a secret known only to Alsatian cooks. They also do a seafood choucroute here, named after Maison Kammerzell — the venerable brasserie in Strasbourg — but we were too busy pigging out to try it.

Brasserie Flo wasn’t the best meal of the trip. It wasn’t even in the top five. But there was something deeply satisfying about returning to a restaurant, far from the madding crowd, where locals still value out-of-fashion recipes for their pure deliciousness.

Which is why we never tire of Parisian bistros, brasseries and cafés —  places with deep roots in country cooking, which have withstood the test of time, and stand in proud opposition to the cartwheels-in-the-kitchen gymnastics of fusion food…and so much falafel.

This is the first part of a two-part (perhaps a three-part) article.

Image(Jardin des Tuileries)

Hail, Britannia! Part Two

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Man does not live by meat alone. Even if English cuisine is challenged by finding green things to eat, it more than makes up for it with its seafood. The British Isles take a backseat to no one in the flavor of their fishes and the succulence of its shellfish, and if you happen to be there in oyster season (the dead of winter) as we were, you will find no shortage of bivalves to keep your palate enthralled.

It would have been easy enough to stop into a fish ‘n chips shop around London, but we had bigger pisces to fry in our quest for the best. So off to Ramsgate we repaired (a couple of hours south of London), at the far southeastern end of England, to sample this iconic staple of British vittles at the Royal Harbour Brasserie — a cozy local’s favorite, located towards the tip of a half-mile long causeway, called the East Pier, overlooking the Ramsgate harbor:

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Our guide was an American friend of The Food Gal® who has called England home for the past 10+ years. He picked the restaurant both for the the setting (looking as if the dry-docked bridge of a ship had been hoisted wholesale onto the breakwater), the view (with windows on three sides giving everyone the sense of floating in the harbor), and the seafood, of which we plowed through some first class oysters and the best fish ‘n chips of our lives (made with local haddock):

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If you’re a student of fish ‘n chips (and let’s face it who isn’t?), you know that you’re looking for the perfect thickness of non-greasy, malty beer batter, fried to just done, so the moist, firm fish is enveloped in a steamy, soft, starchy blanket of just the right crunch giving way to a fish that’s allowed to show itself to its best effect. If done right, all you need is a splash of malt vinegar, or a dab of lemon dribble, or the slightest tang of tartar sauce to complete the picture. This fish was good enough to stand without accoutrements.

As for the mushy peas, we don’t get it. Never have, never will. No matter how concentrated the pea-ness, it’ll always be green wallpaper paste to us.

There, I said it.

After eating England’s national dish, it was back to London, where Wilton’s took us from one end of the seafood spectrum to another. Wilton’s is as iconic as any eatery in England, having been serving seafood in the city, in one form or another since 1742. For perspective’s sake — that is 280 years, and almost a century before the first restaurants opened in America. What began as an oyster bar is now the clubbiest of seafood parlors (in looks and clientele), catering to a carriage trade who know their fish like a ploughman knows his meat pies.

Image(How do you say ‘Hell ya!’ in British?)

Image(Luxuriating in Langoustines at Wilton’s)

The look and feel of the place may reek of old-school Brit exclusivity, but the welcome is warm and the service cheerful and courteous.  Located amongst the fashionable shops of Jermyn Street, this is a serious restaurant stocked with big fish in more ways than one. Our cozy two-top was perfectly positioned to watch the parade of patrons and waiters as they perused, pondered, and plated the various poisson to a fare thee well.

English food is best which is interfered with the least, and Wilton’s practically coined the phrase. This is food unfoamed and unfused (as Colman Andrews once wrote) — as true to its roots as Royals behaving badly.

The day we were there a coulibiac of salmon was being paraded around the dining room to ohs and ahs aplenty. (Typical Brit reserve seems to melt when faced with a salmon “Wellington” the size – and weight – of a fire log):

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Dutifully wowed, we ordered our hefty slice, which followed a dozen oysters, lightly smoked salmon, Scottish langoustines, and, of course, the Dover sole, barely breaded and on the bone.

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The food could not have been more straightforward, or scrumptious — tasting as if everything had jumped directly out of the sea and onto our plates.

What passes for Dover sole in America (often Plaice, Petrale, or lemon sole) lacks the sweet, firm meatiness of the genuine article. This is the real deal: the thin flour coating barely sauteed to a whisp of crispness, then de-boned to four dense fillets of uncommon seafood richness — the pinnacle of flatfish sapidity, and one worth traveling a great distance to taste.

“Sapidity”… great word that.

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Built in the grand cafe style of various European capitals — Vienna springs to mind, or a high-ceiling-ed 19th Century railway cafe full of ladies in ruffles, bustles and huge hats — The Wolseley (above) is a modern restaurant masquerading as an artifact of days gone by. It is one of those eye-popping restaurants that wows you even before you take your first bite. Being so capacious allows them to hold back a number of tables for walk-ins (just like they do in Venice and Budapest), so even without a late afternoon reservation, we were promptly seated by the amiable staff and within minutes were tucking into some first-class oysters, surrounded by folks taking in British high tea, wolfing down finger sandwiches, crumpets, and other ruin-your-dinner- nonsense, which seems like sacrilege when coquillage this comely is there for the slurping.

The menu is huge, the crowds constant, and the vibe something Oscar Wilde would recognize. Food offerings toggle between daily specials and recipes from all over the map. Our tiny sample size — those oysters and some spicy, smoky kedgeree (a Hindu-English rice-fish fusion) is hardly enough to take the measure of the place, but for a couple of weary Yanks wandering through Mayfair on a chilly afternoon, it hit the spot.

Image(BiBi = Indian nana)

Britannia may rule the waves, but in London, its cuisine shares equal billing with any number of countries, and one week is not enough time to get but an amuse bouche of all it has to offer. You may have to search for Spanish tapas or Chinese dumplings, but Indian curry parlors are as common as corner pubs. High-end Indian (on a level found nowhere else in the world outside of the country itself), is also in abundance. We put aside our search for classic restaurants just long enough to slide into BiBi — a mere sliver of a space, tucked into the side of a tony address in Mayfair (above), featuring impeccably-sourced groceries (they list the origins of everything from the basmati rice to the ghee), fashioned into some real menu stunners: buffalo milk paneer, beef tartare, aged lamb, and a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing green chilli halibut that was as fiery as it was plain to look at.

I make no pretense in knowing the fine points of northern Indian cooking (Indian menus in America are more predictable than an IHop), so whatever metaphors were being mixed, or traditions being upended, went straight over our heads. But we’re savvy enough to appreciate the “Wookey-Hole cheese papad” —  a sharp, cheese-flavored papadum dipped into cultured cream, mango and mint, layered in a cup to look like the Indian flag, and the raw Highland beef pepper fry (a crunchy-spicy tartare that will snap your palate to attention):

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Every bite of every dish seemed to be a hidden minefield of flavor — studded with glorious little surprises like the cheese in those papadum, or seared free-range buffalo milk paneer cheese overlain with chillies and a fenugreek kebab masala:

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None of it familiar; all of it an eye-popping reminder of why god gave us taste buds,

From the sigree (grill) section, we tackled a small portion of almost fork-tender aged Swaledale lamb and finished with an exotic Indian tea (the charms of which were lost on me), and a creamy/puffy, panna cotta-like saffron “egg”, whose delights were not:

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How you react to BiBi’s high amplitude cooking probably depends on how much you want to invest in deciphering the serious and complicated stuff going on in the open kitchen. It is very much an of-the-moment Indian restaurant which is seeking to shift the paradigm for what people think of as Indian food. But even if you don’t like cogitating on your plate that much, the tastable sensations will blow you away…in more ways than one.

We can’t quite leave England behind without a few recommendations and shoutouts to a few other stops — each of which was notable both for what we consumed, and its very British commitment to first-class hospitality; even to a couple of rubes from the Colonies.

No self-proclaimed gourmand should ever visit London town without a stop at one of their iconic food halls. We didn’t have time to hit Harrod’s, but we were a short walk from Fortnum and Mason  and found ourselves wandering its floors several times, marveling at everything from its bowler hats to bangers:

Image(Banger? I don’t even know her!)

Those sausages were part of a simple English brekkie, side by side with the yellowest eggs we’ve ever eaten. Calling F&M an upscale grocery store is a serious understatement. It’s floors are stocked with the best in gourmet gifts and dry goods, from tea towels to jewelry to stationary. Stores like this simply do not exist in America anymore. This one was packed day and night. No wonder they look down their aristocratic noses at us.

We can’t conclude our travelogue without a mention of some serious imbibing. But first an aside: We ducked into several local pubs advertising local ales and cask-brewed this or that, but despite the adverts and charming surroundings, all seemed to offer the same, boring industrial suds you can find on this side of the pond (Guinness, Harp, Boddington’s and the like). Whassup with that?

We’re long past our beer drinking days, so it didn’t phase us, but a word of warning: If you’re a serious about your brews, choose your pub wisely, because despite their outward charms, many of them have become more standardized than Taco Bell. Where you can’t go wrong, as long as you have the coin, is a cocktail at the Connaught . Swanky doesn’t begin to describe the joint, but if you don’t mind paying $40 for a drink, you get a pre-cocktail with your libation of choice, and the joy of sipping in a whole new tax bracket.

Image(Duck! And order another manzanilla!)

But our favorite tipple of all was at the oldest wine bar in London  — Gordon’s Wine Bar — which has been pouring out amontillados and vintage ports since 1890. The subterranean space is a treat, and the list of fortified wines is something to behold. You can’t give away sherry and port in America, but here there were oenophiles of all ages sidling up to the bar, and ordering  beakers of old wood tawny like Winston Churchill on a bender.

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I guess that’s the thing about a country this old and this steeped in tradition; it doesn’t have to keep re-inventing itself. People appreciate, even luxuriate, in their history without a need to jump to the next big thing to satisfy their short attention spans and lust for the next selfie wall. Everyplace we visited was sedate and welcoming. Best of all, none of them felt like they were trying too hard — a refreshing respite from the relentless boosterism which surrounds us at home. Dining around London town fit us like a cashmere cardigan, and was the perfect antidote for the modern American restaurant.

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Hail, Britannia! Part One

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For a Francophile like moi to admit he was enchanted by London is quite a leap.

“London? Really?” numerous friends smirked, questioning my sanity.

“Somehow I can’t see you hanging out in a Hugh Grant movie, quaffing down warm ale by the pint,” one of them scoffed.

“What are you gonna eat? And drink?” others intoned with eyes narrowed (and a concern usually reserved for discussing chemotherapy).

So strong are the biases against British food, I can’t say I blamed them. But anyone who knows me knows I could find a good restaurant on the moon. And London, my foodie friends, is full of them, if you know where to look, and if you have a secret weapon. And I had both.

Knowing where to look is easy. Stick with the classics, is my mantra. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In London, that means booking tables that have been around since the 19th Century (at least). Spice things up with a modern meal or two, and luxuriate in some old-school imbibing, and you’ll almost forget there is more refined cooking, and much better wine, 300 miles to the south.

Not to dwell on the differences between London and its gastronomic neighbor, but as a casual observer, I would say the Bulldogs are less food-obsessed than the Frogs, but that doesn’t make their grub inferior, just less in-your-face. Paris assaults the senses with its eating and drinking options. London, like the British people, takes a while to get to know.

Perhaps it is because the catechism of classic British diet (from meat pies to mushy peas) is so boring that the really good stuff (seafood, astonishing veg, cheese, and superb beef) get short shrift indeed. This is not the place to explore three hundred years of English eating habits, but I can say with confidence that (most of) the cliches are all wrong, and classic Brit cuisine will knock you over with its simplicity and succulence. Leave the frou-frou to the French — London will bring out the trencherman in you.

Knowing my proclivities for the ancient and iconic (restaurant-wise), my secret weapon (Marina O’Loughlin — for five years the restaurant columnist for the London Sunday Times) — weighed in with a baker’s dozen suggestions, of which we hardly scratched the surface. One week, as intrepid gastronauts know, is barely enough time to sample the hors-d’oeuvres of a country’s cuisine. But we did our best for eight days and here’s what we found:

Image(Tiny tables, quality cooking)

“Unmissable” is how Marina described The Quality Chop House, so to it we repaired for our first evening’s repast. The Food Gal® and I have become ardent urban hikers over the past decade, so the 2.5 mile stroll from our hostelry on Trafalgar Square to the Clerkenwell neighborhood was a breeze, even if we were a bit wooly-headed from ten hours on Virgin Atlantic.

Described as a “19th Century ex-working man’s eating house revamped into a modern British dining room,” TQCH will put you more in mind of a pub than restaurant at first glance, until you see the menu and discover you might be in the coolest little meat emporium in all of London. That revamping is purely menu-focused, as the stiff, narrow benches in the front room look like they are only fit for the emaciated physique of a chimney sweep. The second room boasts actual bentwood chairs (above), but also tiny, over-matched tables barely up to the task of containing  the wave of tasty vittles soon to be crowded upon them:

Image(Small table, big flavors)

As we came late, and were exhausted from both the flight and the walk, we were interested in comfort food served quickly, and the restaurant came through. Service was extraordinarily friendly to a couple of strangers wedged into the last table of the night. The wine list was the very definition of “eclectic” and we loved perusing every odd-ball bottle.

Image(British beef)

The setting may be old school neighborhood eating hall, but the menu has new-school gastropub written all over it. Marina had raved about the steaks so we dutifully tucked into a Hereford sirloin and found it mineral-rich, fatty, tender, and flawless — even after our weary bones had already polished off half a loaf of tangy sourdough with good butter, pâté de campagne, salt cod brandade, pastrami-cured salmon, and chicken liver/foie gras parfait hidden blanketed with shredded black truffles.

Image(British spuds, French technique)

Our waiter chided us for forgetting to order the layered, buttery potato confit (resembling a mille-feuille of shaved spuds), and set them down on the table (with a wink and without charge) as soon as the steak appeared. He also insisted we end our feast with the olive oil ice cream and it was a show-stopper as well. I was too exhausted to drink much, but dimly remember a couple of glasses of a recommended French red I had never heard of going splendidly with the steak, and a bill that clocked in at around $200 American for small meat-fest fit for the gods.

If the test of a great restaurant is whether you can’t wait to return and try everything on the menu, then The Quality Chop House qualifies in spades.

Image(Tastes like hazelnuts, not salty, stale fish)

If the Chop House felt like the grooviest steak pub in London, Caviar House and Prunier represents the other end of the spectrum: a posh champagne and fish egg boutique where its nutty, subtly saline sturgeon eggs are a far cry from the fishy and salty stuff they throw on everything in America from desserts to Doritos. We couldn’t resist dropping a bundle on these and some smoked Balik Norwegian salmon — accompanied by warm blinis and tangy creme fraiche of the sort we can only dream of on this side of the pond.

Gird your loins if you wish to wallow in sturgeon eggs, because quality this high doesn’t come cheap. A few small bricks of salmon, two glasses of house bubbly, and the tin you see above set us back a cool $275. And no, our hunger wasn’t cured but our lust for quality oscietre was.

From the toniest seafood digs in St. James it was back to workingman’s London — specifically the Smithfield Market — where Fergus Henderson’s St. John has held sway for three decades. No self-regarding epicure travels to London without putting this notch on their belt, so here we marched, thirty years late to the party, to the holy grail of nose-to-tail.

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For the uninitiated, Henderson was not the first chef to serve tripe, headcheese and kidneys, but when he took over this bare bones, inauspicious space (in 1993) next to London’s famed meat market, and converted a former smokehouse into a whole animal-focused restaurant, his influence was felt world-wide. In effect, he discovered a market no one knew existed: boomers in their prime, eager to break out of the steak, fish and chicken template that had defined western menus since the 1950s. The success this restaurant saw in the mid-nineties (and the publicity it garnered therefrom) is partially responsible (or to blame) for why you see pork belly on every upscale restaurant in the world.

You can also lay the ubiquity of short ribs and bone marrow at his doorstep. So far though, despite the best efforts of Henderson’s acolytes, no one has been able to do the same with sweetbreads, pigs ears, and kidneys. Hope springs eternal.

Fergus deserves further credit, or opprobrium, for foisting the inexplicably popular industrial restaurant look on the world — defined by hard seating, minimalist decor, and lighting less flattering than a hospital waiting room. The look may be overdone elsewhere, but in its original incarnation it works, since the food is as spare and uncompromising as the surroundings. There is nothing fancy about the joint, from your first bite of crispy pig’s foot, to the bare bones oleaginous marrow to be spread on the exceptional house-baked bread, to a mountain of deviled lambs kidneys that would defeat all but the largest lover of “variety meats” as these organ innards are often called.

Image(Quite the pisser, these bad boys were)

“It’s quite a lot of one thing, isn’t it?” our sympathetic waitress observed as she laid the outcropping of offal before us. James Beard once wrote that kidneys derive their appeal from the “faintest tang of urine” left behind as one masticates through the rubbery morsels. Anyone describing the flavor notes on these bad boys as containing “undertones of urethra” though, would be guilty of serious understatement. The uric acid tang was there all right, side-by-side with enough rough-hewn wild gaminess to stop any carnivore in their tracks. And we loved it. Not enough to eat the entire batch, mind you, but sufficient to give us bragging rights in any organ-measuring contest in the future.

Like everywhere we ate in London, service was friendly, informed and fast. I’m at the age where almost all waiters look like teenagers to me, but in every place we tried, from the fancy confines of the Connaught Hotel to an industrial borough like Smithfield, we had nary a complaint to make. Our bill– lunch for two with a couple of glasses of cru Beaujolais — was also the cheapest of the trip: around $150 at the current exchange rate.

Straightforward food, served without adornment, is the mission statement of St. John. It no longer needs to proselytize about whole animal butchery and cookery because the whole world has picked up the chant. Or at least part of it. When lamb kidneys start showing up on American steakhouses, Henderson’s revolution in how we eat animals will be complete…but I wouldn’t hold my breath just yet.

Image(No humbuggery here)

Compared to St. John, Rules is positively antediluvian. Some may call it ossified eating, better suited to Victorian tastes in haunches of venison and fresh-killed birds (which come with a warning to watch for buckshot), but at Christmastime the place is magical. We met Marina and hubby David there, and truth be told, the conversation was so lively we paid scarce attention to the food.

What no one can ignore is the gorgeousness of the place. The walls could double as a mini museum, with portraits, cartoons and articles spanning 200 years of catering to the carriage trade. The wine list isn’t much (“If I’m going to drop 200 quid on wine, it won’t be here”), but the leafy, Victorian second floor bar (you have to be escorted upstairs) is so captivating you’ll be tempted to while away your mealtime sipping on good British gin or a Pimm’s Cup. Resist mightily these imbibing urges, pilgrim! Because a meal at Rules is timeless and one for the ages, and unlike any other in London.

Image(If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!”)

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Consider for a moment that you are eating in the same restaurant where everyone from Winston Churchill to Benjamin Disraeli once sat. Then concentrate on your food more than we did.

What you’ll find is a menu of rib-sticking standards that have withstood the test of time. What we did notice was Marina’s gorgeous Devon smoked eel, and David’s pheasant disappearing quickly, and once we broke through the suet crust on our steak and kidney pudding (above), we discovered the most meltingly toothsome of beef stews, enriched with the flavor of (you guessed it) more kidneys (urine tang not included). This bastion of ancient Englishness has been around since 1798, and how you take to it will depend on your taste for no-nonsense dishes like potted shrimps, Dorset crab salad and whatever game is in season. But no matter what you order, you’ll find a kitchen not resting on its laurels, but deeply-steeped in the classics and doing them proud.

Quote of the evening: “Sancerre is the U2 of white wines.” Yes, we are soooo stealing it, and henceforth, intend to claim proprietary rights to this juicy putdown — humiliating white wine sheeple on both continents with David’s all-too-true bon mot.

Also too true was this sticky toffee pudding — the last word in English desserts:

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Rules is a splurge, but not as dear as you might think. Even with two bottles of wine (one champagne and one Burgundy, natch) coming in at around 300 pounds sterling, the food bill was about the same, meaning we ate like King Henry VIII for under $100/pp American.

Like St. John, Rules is a place I had always wondered about, and longed to try for decades. Would it be as good as its history and hype? Is English food going to be one big blandburger? And what’s the deal with all the meat? And so few sauces? Do they even know what seasoning is, or what a green vegetable looks like?

Seek and you shall find, the saying goes, and what we found was straightforward cooking with little of the cartwheels in the kitchen invoked in American gastronomic restaurants, where the chefs seem duty-bound to strut every trick they’ve ever learned in culinary school (or have seen on Instagram). There was an unapologetic honesty (and a purity of flavors) to the food we encountered that only comes from confidence. Confidence in oneself as a cook, confidence in your ingredients, your culture, and in what the restaurant stands for — be it a small, modern steakhouse in an antiquated setting, or an icon of British gastronomy.  Most of all, these places evinced a trust in their customers to appreciate the labor and the traditions behind the food being served. Aside from Marina and I doing our duty as serial restaurant chroniclers, I didn’t see a single person snapping pictures of their meal in any of them.

Hail, Britannia, indeed.

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This is the first part of a two part article on my recent eating adventures across the pond. Part Two will drop in a week or so.