THE PARIS BISTROS: INDEX
La nouvelle cuisine est mort – vive la nouvelle cuisine!
The death knell of nouvelle cuisine has been tolled so long and so persistently that it should have had the good grace to lie down and die. But at the top end of the gastromarket, the designers and the dieticians have kept it on life support. Tasting menus are served up like Readers Digest condensed books or Weight Watchers rations: any dish consisting of more than a few mouthfuls might bore us or fatten us.
On the enormous plates which are de rigueur, such tiny portions, if simply presented, would call to mind the old restaurant joke—“How did you find your steak, sir?” “I moved a pea and there it was.”—and so they are transformed into miniature works of art: the quail eggs must be Fabergé. This baroque embellishment has spread all over France—indeed, all over the world, to the point where any country’s most prestigious restaurants are liable to be as ethnically anonymous as its airline terminals.
A glance at the menu’s right-hand column will tell you that these elaborated titbits are not for peasants. As a result, expensive restaurant food tends to be rather bland. Back in the Great Depression, A. J. Liebling was learning about food in some of the cheaper Paris cafés. In a chapter entitled “Just enough money”, he wrote perceptively,
A man who is rich in adolescence is almost doomed to be a dilettante at table. This is not because all millionaires are stupid but because they are not impelled to experiment. In learning to eat, as in psychoanalysis, the customer, in order to profit, must be sensible of the cost.
As the price of food goes through the roof, this sensibility is increasingly forced upon us. It’s flattering to be treated and fed like royalty, but when you float down from your gastronomic heaven to headlines announcing yet another Third World food riot, the gloss tends to rub off. Fortunately Paris is still home to a plethora of bistros and cafés that serve up food you can eat every day 
with a big smile, a clear conscience and an undepleted wallet. During our las
t visit, which included a glorious repast at Taillevent, my most satisfying single dish was a generous pot of canard aux pruneau—a succulent half a duck slowly braised in red wine and armagnac with a dozen prunes and a few diced vegetables. Together with a big bowl of perfect soupe de poisson and a pichet of decent red wine, it provided Mary and me with a generous lunch for a mere 30€. From here in London, it’s still worth hopping over to Paris for a meal—including the cost of transportation!