FORK PLAY July 16, 2008
Blue Skies in Paris, Lunch with Bocuse, Calves Liver Returns. Ghislaine, La Sorcière.
Dear Friends and Family
The two of us stepped out the door of our borrowed shelter on Boulevard Raspail Monday morning and were stunned to see a lineup of tanks with weapons pointed toward Sèvres-Babylone. No, President Sarkozy had not declared martial law to get his people to stop smoking in restaurants. (What a mad man, next thing you know he'll be forbidding dogs under restaurant tables.) No, it was the 14th of Juillet. A thrilling parade was in progress on the Champs Elysées - thrilling if you are stirred by memories of valor abroad, parachutists ejecting overhead to land 38 centimeters apart in front of le President and all the leaders of the Middle East assembled like good little Cub Scouts promising peace in our time (except for Khadafi, who didn't come out to play). All the tank brigades, male and female, mostly pink and getting pinker in the sun (but brown and black too), wore their medals and ribbons. Pedestrians were gaga taking photos of monster machinery and good-natured soldats posing with delirious youngsters. And the troops were getting an ooh-la-la over the locals, in trippety high heels, see-through voile and unfettered breasts in milkmaid sundresses.
In between the bluest skies, it rains at least once a day, nothing ferocious or torrential, but enough to prove I'm not a dweeb for toting the umbrella. And then the sun comes out in time for a big sunset spectacle behind the Eiffel Tower.
On July 4th we sat on the top deck for the "Gastronomy on the Seine" cruise past a diminutive Statue  of Liberty and my guy Steven Richter caught the Tower studded in midnight blue with the gold stars of the European Union flag. After applauding the winners of the Festival's young chefs cooking competition - a British youth took first, a solemn slip of a Belgian ingénue came in second - we navigated the Gare de Lyon to find our seats on the fast train for lunch with Paul Bocuse. As we waited endlessly in line to pick up our reserved tickets, I wasn't sure we'd make it. Only one ticket window was open. A traveler and the clerk seemed to be debating an expedition of immense complication. After about ten minutes, a porter arrived, and the perplexed traveler stepped aside as he proceeded to wash and dry the window, top to bottom, twice, and polish the metal with a cloth he pulled from his pocket, stepping back leisurely to survey his handiwork, and finally retreated. In the long line, no one went beserk, indeed, I didn't hear a mutter. I tried to imagine this happening at Manhattan's Port Authority without inciting mayhem.
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A Farewell kiss for Bocuse
I have so many memories of cuisinary hijinks in the late sixties and early seventies with Paul Bocuse, the man who led traditionally sequestered chefs out of their kitchens and set off a choir for seasonal and local marketing, igniting a revolution in the way we eat. Now in his eighties, I'd heard he was frail and ailing. I wanted to see him one more time. A friend had arranged a lunch at the wildly decked out house of Bocuse for the winemaker, Jean Luc Colombo, a Rhone hero for his rich red Cornas, and she invited us. I was touched to find Paul waiting in the courtyard on what he calls his "Rue des Grand Chefs" for its march of amazing murals depicting his vision of gastronomic history. We hugged and posed and toasted champagne and sat down to a classic Bocuse feast, without question, our best meal in these two weeks. A few nights later, celebrating our anniversary of meeting 22 years ago in Aspen, Steven and I might have  ordered L'Ami Louis's mythic chicken for two. But I couldn't. Not with the memory still so vivid of Bocuse's formidable Bresse birds - deliciously bruised with huge circlets of black truffle under the crackling skin. At five o'clock, as we said goodbye, Paul and I hugged and I felt a dampness on his cheeks. Tears. Mine or his? Click here for more.
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A Calves Liver Revival
When I met Betsy Bernardaud, we already had a certain destiny: her grandfather and my father were gin rummy pals in Detroit and we both share a deep affection for her uncle, Bob Shaye, creator with Michael Lynne of New Line Films. But Betsy and I only discovered each other when she brought Bernardaud to Citymeals as a sponsor (and later to my web site as an advertiser). That she is a legendary cook and obsessed gourmande makes us soul mates. So when Betsy said Le Caméléon is the restaurant of the year (echoing Le Pudlo Guide which called it the "bistro of 2008"), we asked her to book.
Jean-Paul Arabian, intense and as wild as he looks with his saturnine features and Mixmaster hair, flies around our table like a bat startled to find itself in daylight, pouring aperitifs and waxing solipsistic when in walks Wolfgang Puck.
Will he join is?
No, it seems Wolf is just waiting for his wife to finish dressing for dinner so he stopped by for a drink. "I was here for lunch," he says. "You must get the calves liver. It's the best I ever ate in my life."
So of course two of us will have the liver in its caramelized cloak deglazed in wine vinegar, rare and voluptuous within, cut four inches thick like a double filet or what the French call chateaubriand. I'm not as wild about everything dreamed up by Chef David Angelot - like Jean-Paul, he came from Ledoyen. Chopped snails and mousserons mushrooms in garlicky perseillade on a red plate are stunning, but the exercise reveals how elusive snails' charms can be. Still, an equally gorgeous pea soup with mint lacks only a little salt. And I love charashi of rare tuna with herbs, the rack of lamb and, quite frankly, something as simple as perfect asparagus, perfectly cooked, is a miracle. Citrus cream with segments of orange, lemon and grapefruit is the best dessert. 6 rue de Chevreuse (6eme) 33-1-43 27 43 27.
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Madame la Sorcière
When her husband announced he was leaving, it was a double blow for Ghislaine Arabian. She not only lost a partner (and for all I know, a grand amour), she also lost that fabled institution Ledoyen, where she'd earned two stars, since the contract called for the two of them.
Publicist and unstoppable enabler Yanou Collart, urging us to visit Les Petites Sorcières, speaks of Ghislaine's passion. You can feel it as she hustles through her tiny spot in the 14th arrondisement. You can see it in the idiosyncratic menu mix of her native Belgian waterzooi of monkfish with a fabulous sauté of baby calamari a là Provençale with garlic and just a touch of tomato.
Ghislaine and her right hand in the kitchen, Thierry Cambier, have been together since they first cooked in Lille. A giant fossil from his collection sits in the window. "I am a little twisted in my mind," Arabian says of her  cooking vision. She smiles like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland, blue eyes under long blond bangs with telltale burns on her arms. Each day she writes a new à la carte menu, one for lunch, another for dinner, she says. "Thierry tells me there is something he cannot do but I write it down and he does it."
The idea of filling a perfectly cooked artichoke heart with slices of raw artichoke seems clever but it's merely annoying. It would be better for sure if the leaves were quick fried because the house is a master of pommes frites. The Road Food Warrior is happy with his rare rump steak as well. And even though Arabian is incredulous when I ask for my veal kidney rare - rosé (pink, she corrects me), our companion persuades her in more convincing French to do it rare. And it is fabulous, all in one huge globe, sweet and really rare. The crusty penne reggiano baked in cream warms a macaroni fiend's heart.
Alas, a frozen parfait a là chicory with beer sabayon on gingerbread is too twisted a notion for all of us. I clear my palate with a few spoonfuls of Steven's sorbets.
12 rue Liancourt, 14eme. 33 1 43 21 95 68
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Friends suggest we meet for lunch at Les Cocottes de Christian Constant, "if I don't mind sitting on a tall stool or waiting in line for a table." But Parisians have fled for the weekend and there's no line at all. Having been stool-trained at Momofuku Ko, I'm game, especially since most of these stool have backs. Constant has a little empire on this stretch of Rue Dominique in the Seventh. The gimmick here is that everything is cooked, finished or served in a casserole (cocotte) from his partner, Staub. And our first little black iron pot arrives as a gift from the chef (who knows my friends): a marvelous froth of egg yolk with a ravioli of langoustine hidden at the bottom. Real hams hang in the window with cups to catch the drip as they age and you can order Iberian jambon with leeks and truffle oil for just 12 Euros (alas that makes it $18.20).
But it's lunch, and the three of us each order a dish. Poached egg - one of those amazing orange-yolked eggs - with asparagus and morille. Pigs feet stuffed into potatoes carved out to look like Mario Batali's clogs. And the day's special lamb chops. All of it marvelous. I want to order the red fruit crumble (can never resist a crumble) though my friend Annette is pushing the "fabuleuse tarte au chocolat" for all of us to share. But the tarte of the day is apricot and I have to have it - it is seriously tangy and creamy, a triumph. 135 Rue Saint-Dominique. No phone.
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With the big weekend exodus, we are able to score a table at the highly touted Chez Michel on our last night in Paris. It's packed but there we are, doors flung open to the sidewalk tables and the weather is a benediction, neither chilly nor too warm. Idly pulling teeny bigorneaux from their snail-like shells with a pin to dip into thick aioli seems less foolish than overdoing on the sensational pumpernickel bread. So of course we do both. I recall Chez Michel as more of a fish joint on my last visit but memories of the soup still haunt. Tonight's soup is glorious too - the server comes by to pour it hot from a huge pitcher, full of lobster flavor, atop a nest of parmesan and crouton, leaving some for seconds.
Luscious salmon in thick ribbons, marinated like herring with onions, coarse salt and olive oil, comes layered in a canning jar to eat with a fabulous toss of greens. Indeed, the chef is stuck on greens. They arrive on top of a crusty brandade, delicious enough, but it might benefit from more cod and a hint of garlic. A pot-au-feu Breton proves to be pork many ways and a chunk of stuffing with currents in a powerful consommé, and my portion of beef cheek a là ficelle with more greens is huge, too much to eat after all that bread and the rich salmon. Still, we must have the Paris-Brest pastry the house is known for. Filled with almond-studded chocolate, it seems heavier than I remember but even so, worth the calorie splurge (as if anyone is still counting). A charming sweet cherry crumble comes with pits. That would definitely be a lawsuit in New York. 10 Rue de Belzunce. 10eme. 011 33 1 44 53 06 20.
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I plan to do a guide to my newest hot addresses in Paris soon. Watch for it in my travel section. Check out the site now to read about a soba noodle revelation in a first tasting at Matsugen, where Jean-Georges Vongerichten has partnered with a team from Tokyo in the spot where 66 used to be.
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Photos of the Eiffel Tower, my friend Jean-Pierre de Lucovich and me waving flags, Paul Bocuse, the fabulous bruised chicken, the great calves liver, and Ghislaine Arabian cannot be used without permission of Steven Richter.
FORK PLAY copyright 2008 Gael Greene.
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