Meeting up in Paris
IMAGINE yourself in Paris, hungry, sans reservations, but with a serious hankering for veal blanquette. If such a happy fate befalls you -- and you can't rustle up a Left Bank native for a bistro crawl -- you'd do well to have Daniel Young's new book "The Bistros, Brasseries and Wine Bars of Paris" in your bag.
The former restaurant critic for the New York Daily News and author of "The Paris Cafe Cookbook," Young has written a book that's as casual and friendly as the eateries and food he describes. And, for those of us not out strolling in search of dinner along the Rue de la Bastille, the book -- part cultural guide, part cookbook -- provides recipes for about 100 bistro favorites.
But first Young asks the pivotal question: What exactly distinguishes a bistro, a brasserie and a wine bar? After discussing origin myths for all three and providing a handy checklist of questions to pose regarding the establishment in question (Does it serve oysters on the half shell? Do the waiters carry trays? Does it have a terrace?), Young concludes that the distinctions have been pretty much blurred. All three originated to meet the needs of the working class; all originally focused on serving drinks rather than food; and all saw the cachet of their humble institutions rise over the years to epically chic proportions.
There are, however, still some essential tenets. As Young writes in the introduction, "If the place under consideration has no plats du jour, no bar to speak of, no overcrowded tables, and no Parisian soul, chances are it's only a restaurant." At which point, presumably, the hungry diner should quickly flee, with his handy duck confit-detector, his soul intact, to find a real place to eat.
But in the process of not finding a definitive answer to his question, Young brings up some good points. Times have changed, in Paris and elsewhere: People these days are drawn to comfort food, homey settings, affordable prices. Over the last 70 years -- Young dates this to the end of World War II -- bistros, brasseries and, more recently, wine bars have rushed in to fill that need. And when, in 1987, star chef Michel Rostang opened a bistro right next door to his haute cuisine flagship, the gulf between formal and casual cooking got a whole lot smaller. It was a successful move -- superstar chefs Guy Savoy and Alain Ducasse soon opened bistros, and Rostang branched out with three more -- and one that reflected the growing tastes of the public.
