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yonne bike trip: le bistrot des grands crus, chablis
Here's a hoary chestnut of dining wisdom: when choosing amongst countryside bistrots, one doesn't often go wrong sticking to those associated with Michelin-starred restaurants. In the best cases, one...
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yonne bike trip: alice et olivier de moor, courgis
Alice and Olivier de Moor were the main reason I'd long been keen to do a bike trip around Chablis. Along with their neighbor in Courgis Thomas Pico, the de Moors represent a small but ascendant...
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yonne bike trip: le pot d'étain, isle-sur-serein
Isle-sur-Serein isn't the most picturesque village in the Yonne. That honor might go to Noyers, a medieval town containing a superb butcher shop and an impossibly cute gallery-café where my friends...
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at my most parisian : la cagouille, 74014
I can pinpoint the precise moment at which, despite language struggles and disgust with service norms and volcanic resentment of patrician social structures, I began to feel at home in Paris. It was...
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an oyster bar for a better paris: clamato, 75011
I squirmed with embarrassment reading a recent NYTimes opinion piece bemoaning "How Hipsters Ruined Paris." Not because I consider myself a target.* But because I recognised another addition to the...
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a landmark : chez michel, 75010
An address that often seems to get overlooked or underrated in the perennial 'Best Bistrot' features these days is chef Thierry Breton's first restaurant, Chez Michel, opened in 1995. The reasons why...
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yonne bike trip: le vezelien, vezelay
I pretty much fell in love with Vezelay and its lowland twin Saint-Pere in the course of the bike trip through the Yonne back in June. So much so that I revisited both towns again in late July, on a...
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where the treasure is : la cave des papilles, 75014
On the regrettably rare occasions I find myself strolling around Paris' 14ème arrondissement, I take a great deal of pleasure in the smell of money in the air. I breathe it in, moony-eyed, imagining...
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kid stuff: 58 qualité street, 75005
My friend Christophe Philippe, the demure and talented chef of Restaurant Christophe in the 5ème arrondissement, has misgivings about his quartier. He rightly feels misunderstood: in the shadow of a...
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nice work if you can get it
For once, I've been writing enough bits and bobs for other publications to warrant a brief round-up post. - For PUNCH magazine in New York I wrote an enthusiastic profile of La Pointe du Grouin,...
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yonne bike trip: le bougainville, vézelay
Deciding where to dine in Vézelay was an easy decision. We cased restaurant's lining the town's one road and lumped for Le Bougainville, the only restaurant where Michel Tolmer's "Epaule Jété" poster...
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changing the landscape: bistro bellet, 75010
It took me a few years in Paris to appreciate how a single restaurant can cause a seismic shift in the city's dining landscape. Places like Le Verre Volé, Spring, and Au Passage opened as neighborhood...
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yonne bike trip: nicolas vauthier / vini viti vinci, avallon
I'll never forget how Le Verre Volé's Cyril Breward once described Nicholas Vauthier's range of low-sulfur north-Burgundian négociant wines to me. The delicate word he used was "perfectible," which is...
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the decline of : la régalade, 75014, 75001, and 75010
I recently called Nicolas Lacase's 10ème Bistro Bellet"a giant defibrillator for the bistrot genre." So it behooves me to explain why I felt the bistrot genre needed resuscitation. Handily, recent...
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native success story: pierre sang in oberkampf, 75011
The social media trajectory of Newsweek journalist Janine di Giovanni's recent France-bashing has been far more interesting than the article itself, which was basically a list of right-wing talking...
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hidden in plain sight: willi's wine bar, 75001
I should clarify by explaining that Willi's Wine Bar, the pioneering Paris wine destination founded in 1980 by British expat Mark Williamson, is only hidden to people like me. For the past four years...
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feed the captives: freddie's deli, 75011
One of my pet causes is holding writers accountable for use of the words 'hipster' and 'bobo.' Both words are blanket terms that absolve a writer from the responsibility of considering individual...
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why we dine out: come a casa, 75011
I still read Pitchfork. But since it now takes less time to download albums than it does to parse reviews, I usually just peek at the point score and make the call myself. I find it's a good way to...
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beyond izakaya: restaurant 6036, 75011
Last fall I helped my friends from 11ème arrondissement German bar Udo put together a small wine list for their new project, a gallery space and Japanese small-plates restaurant called Düo that opened...
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loire salons 2014: la dive bouteille, les penitantes, la renaissance des...
If ever you wish to experience an almost out-of-body sense of superfluousness, visit the January Loire salons and tell the natural winemakers you meet that you are a journalist. Of hundreds of...
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