dine•o•crat

My first impression of the restaurant  Les Tablettes de Jean-Louis Nomicos‎  was mixed. One the one hand, the place oozed with cool, its basketweave interior an absolutely stunning marvel of modern precision interlaced with hand-craftsmanship. On the other hand, there was a dog at the table next to us. Granted, it was a small dog, quiet and adorable, a companion to the old madam  whose two younger female dining partners looked like they could be the second and third branches of the family tree. Parisian ladies who lunch? The Chanel jackets told as much. My imagination ran wild: in my mind, the two younger women were trying to save their inheritance because somehow, the old lady got involved with a much younger lothario, an opportunistic gigolo who was about to get half of her millions or billions of euros in assets. But les femmes did it all with such warmth and conviviality, all smiles and bonheur . It was even putting the dog to sleep. Welcome to Paris....

"Nicole Kidman is next door, vous l'avez vue ?" asked our waitress after we sat down at Les Bouquinistes. My dining companions and I looked outside, into the inscrutable and slightly drizzly evening. The sudden appearance of a swarm of paparazzi, circling the building like giant fireflies, gave credence to her claim. "Really?" I wanted to ask. "Did she bring her career with her? Because she seems to have left it somewhere equally hard to spot." Besides, we had already found our star that night and it was food. Les Bouquinistes , Ze Kitchen Galerie 's neighbor, is breathtaking at night. The Seine is right in front, lit up and glorious, Notre Dame is in the distance overseeing the night's activities on the Left Bank. It was Fashion Week in Paris, which made the appearance of a celebrity logical, though her appearance in the restaurant next door was a mystery worthy of Poirot. Les Bouquinistes is Guy Savoy's more "affordable" o...

It was another cold and gray February day in Paris. Scarves were out and my dining companions and I were wrapped up like babies in a manger. However, to make up for the gloom, we were on our way to a three-star Michelin restaurant. A block away from the Musée Rodin, in the quaint yet posh 7th arrondissement of Paris , L'Arpège blends in with its surroundings, in an almost nondescript building if not for the restaurant's sign, to which you would have to look up to see. It's not exactly hard to find if you're on foot, but I can imagine that if you were driving, you might miss it. The neighborhood looks very uniformly shabby but chic, with the occasional visual shock of brightly colored doors. Inside the restaurant itself, the decor is minimal and understated, with warm wood walls to emphasize an inviting and refined dining area which was simple and quietly elegant and which gave a white-tablecloth impression sans the stuffiness. I understood the location and decor m...