Bistro nights

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015
The Weekly Screed (#724)

Bistro nights

by David Benjamin

PARIS — A while ago, I sent a New York editor to one of my favorite Paris bistros, a rustic meat-and-blettes eatery called Chez René. I warned her that the head waiter, Michel, would be scary. Sure enough, Michel intimidated Katie and her mom while performing impeccably and responding to their every beck and call.

I knew Michel would be present for Katie’s visit. I even knew which tables he would tend (I directed Katie to one of them). I confidently sent people to (be scared by) Michel because he’d been a fixture at Chez René ten years before when Hotlips and I first dined there (on the best boeuf bourgignon and coq au vin in Paris). He was still there ten years after Katie, when — tragically for us — he retired.

In our first half-dozen times at Chez René, Michel was the same — as cool and proper as a Drones Club butler, while doing everything perfectly. Then, one evening — after we had proven our loyalty to Chez René — Michel greeted us at the door and made sure we had the best table in the corner of the “smoking” (tourist-free) salon. Next time, he kissed Hotlips on both cheeks and shook my hand. Thereafter, we were all on hugging terms.

Of course, his service remained flawless.

Like all veteran waiters in a city where waiting table is a career, Michel did everything with fluid grace. His service was swift. The courses were intuitively timed to the pace we set for our meal. In Paris, rushing one’s repast is a cardinal sin. Hurrying the customer is more like a capital crime. Everything comes in a logical sequence that has been customary here since France was an empire. For all his propriety, Michel created an atmosphere as relaxing as a back rub.

When Hotlips and I return to Paris, we have many places where, like Michel at Chez René, we’re treated like the prodigal son. At our morning coffee place, Patrick, a tattooed ex-seaman who balances white and black flawlessly in his café crème, embraces us both mightily. At Azabu, possibly the only good Japanese restaurant in Paris, proprietress Mami Nakamura glows at our arrival, chef Tamura nods austerely and our favorite waitress, Sachi-chan, giggles with delight.

There’s also the genial bald waiter at Le Bistrot du Dome (best fish we’ve found in Paris), and the one who smiles gently and treats us like family at La Gueuze, where we go for moules et frites and Belgian beer. And so on.

Eating out in Paris is more important to us than museums, graveyards, cathedrals and boat rides, especially in the cozy, congenial bistros that populate every narrow street, broad boulevard and hidden square.

I often wonder why such unforced familiarity and comfort are hard to find in places where “gourmet dining” occurs in America. The USA is overflowing with jovial greasy-spoons and bars where everybody knows your name. But as the prices go up, the warmth tends to go down.

When Hotlips and I used to dine in New York City, we sometimes found cuisine — for twice the price — almost as lovingly prepared and sophisticated as the standard fare at a Paris hole-in-the-wall. But, besides sticker shock, New York offered waiters colder than Michel but without his professionalism. And there was — at every high-class eatery in New York — that one dish, laid before me, the hapless rube, with a flourish and a smirk. Everyone who’s ever dined in Manhattan has faced this culinary conundrum. You’re afraid to tip it over — or even poke it gingerly — and you don’t know how to eat it. Fork, spoon, chopsticks, forceps?

Madison, where we live, has developed a few joints that rival New York in snootiness. Instead of just listing choices on the menu, they publish short essays that detail the provenance of the carrots, the original address of the pissonlit (but no explanation of what the hell it is), the cattle breed of the filet mignon and how old it was when it was castrated. Fascinating, but… the waiters are condescending and oddly defensive. They convey the impression that they’d be working in a much cooler restaurant in a way bigger city if only their talent were properly appreciated.

At any fancy restaurant in America, the wine lists are impressive, even awesome. They go on for 20 pages, separated by regions, appellations and varietals that are a mystery to most diners, with markups four times wholesale. Even a simple table wine, like a Touraine, Tempranillo or Montepulciano — ten bucks at Riley’s Wines of the World — is jacked up to $50.

In Paris, you can find similar encyclopedias. But my favorite wine list is at Le Bistrot du Dome. It has six whites and six reds, each attuned to the dishes on the menu (a blackboard that changes twice daily). They all cost 24 euros (cheap anywhere). At Chez René, the list is longer, but it’s for tourists. Regular customers just ask for the sublime house Beaujolais, which has been bottled and labeled specifically for Chez René for more than fifty years.

And then there’s the whole rigmarole of opening the bottle.

For most of our years in Paris, Michel’s wine ritual consisted of yanking the cork, setting the bottle on our table and shimmering away. Lately, in deference to tourist expectations, Parisian waiters are doing the Latin version of the wine ritual, pouring a dab into a glass and watching non-judgmentally as the alpha customer fusses with it pretentiously. I have yet to see an American do this properly.

The difference between “fine dining” in the U.S. and the joy of the French bistro might come down to the fact that Parisians decided long ago that eating out is more of a party — for everyone involved — than it is a capitalist transaction.

Hotlips and I felt this the other night at a mom-and-pop bistro called Epicure 108 on a remote street in the 17th arrondissement. Every dish was a small adventure. Each of chef Tetsu Goya’s sauces, two days in the making, were good enough to drink straight. The wine ritual lasted about nine seconds. Chef Goya’s wife, our hostess and head waiter, circulated helpfully among her patrons, who are mostly her neighbors. Now and then, she would start to chat, her customers — including us — would stop eating and we all just shmoozed for 15 minutes. Then, back to the food, the wine, the bread, dessert and coffee after.

When people arrive at Epicure 108, they embrace Mrs. Goya. They thank her and embrace her again when they leave. Every night, chef Goya comes beaming from the kitchen, shaking hands, kissing women, telling everyone thank you I hope you liked it.

How could we not? He’s one of Paris’ best-kept secrets.