Category: Food & Wine

Fantastique Wine Restaurants in Paris

 

There’s so much to fall in love with in Paris: the history, the architecture, and of course, the cuisine. The 13 Wine Spectator Restaurant Award winners below enhance the magic of French dining with stellar wine programs that deliver experiences to match the grandeur of the city. From a family-owned bistro to high-end hotel eateries, these wine restaurants shine bright in the city of lights.

Epicure
Epicure is housed in the opulent Le Bristol Paris hotel, which first opened in 1925.

EPICURE
A fine-dining staple in a longstanding hotel
Le Bristol Paris, 112 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
(33) 1-53-43-43-40
www.lebristolparis.com
Open for lunch and dinner, daily

Grand Award
Wine list selections 3,000
Inventory 95,000
Wine strengths Head sommelier Bernard Neveu manages the wine list, which is entirely French except for a few pages of international labels. Burgundy is the strongest region, with nearly 200 grand cru reds alone. Additional highlights include Champagne, Bordeaux and the Rhône.
Above and beyond The team takes extra steps to ensure the best possible wine experience at Epicure. Each of the hotel’s dining outlets has its own cellar to avoid disturbing the wines with excess movement, and every selection on Epicure’s list is sourced from Neveau’s personal connections with winemakers.
Cuisine Chef Eric Frechon puts a modern spin on dishes firmly grounded in French cuisine, stuffing macaroni with black truffle, artichoke and foie gras, and serving lemon-thyme langoustines with an onion-mango condiment.
Noteworthy neighbors Le Bristol shares the block with the Elysée Palace, the official home of French presidents since 1848, as well as other cultural landmarks like Boutique Pierre Cardin and Christian Lacroix.

Le Taillevent
At Le Taillevent, a seasonal menu complements a world-class collection of French wines.

LE TAILLEVENT
A Parisian institution since 1946
15 Rue Lamennais
(33) 1-44-95-15-01
www.taillevent.com
Open for lunch and dinner, Monday to Friday

Grand Award
Wine list selections 2,300
Inventory 300,000
Going strong André Vrinat opened the restaurant in 1946, and his family maintained ownership until the Gardinier family purchased it in 2011. Seventy-two years after opening, Le Taillevent remains at the top of its food and wine game. It has maintained a Restaurant Award since 1984, longer than any other winner in Paris.
Wine strengths Antoine Pétrus is the general manager and wine director of the overwhelmingly French cellar. The Bordeaux and Burgundy sections are exceptional, with 12 vintages of Château Latour and more than two dozen labels from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Picks in Champagne, the Rhône, the Loire and Alsace are also outstanding.
Cuisine Chef Alain Solivérès serves seasonal French dishes with creative touches, like tomato jelly with lobster, and garlic flowers atop turbot cooked in butter. Occasionally, Solivérès will create a special tasting menu, like a recent one with a focus on black truffles.
Restaurant Award–winning sibling Le Taillevent’s sister restaurant, Les 110 de Taillevent in London, holds a Best of Award of Excellence for its 1,300-label wine list and 110 wines by the glass. Continue reading “Fantastique Wine Restaurants in Paris” →

Bored appétit! How we all got sick of French food

How and what and where we eat has gone through a seismic change in the past couple of decades. Where once a plate of paella or lasagne would have been seen as quite the sophisticated statement, such dishes are now boringly mainstream freezer-cabinet staples.

If we needed any proof as to how adventurous we have become, along comes the just-released Lonely Planet Ultimate Eatlist, a compilation of the world’s top 500 eating experiences chosen by writers, chefs, bloggers and Lonely Planet staff. Their aim was to create a directory not just of the world’s great dishes, but to evaluate them in terms of the whole gastronomic experience, taking into account not just taste, but cultural importance and location.Top of the list enjoying pintxós (the Basque version of tapas) in San Sebastián, Spain.

The rest of the top ten is a brisk global buffet of laksa, sushi, dim sum, bibimbap, with a bit of Texas brisket thrown in for the outdoorsy sorts, and smørrebrød in Copenhagen for the city break types.

In the French village I visit each summer, one of the most popular restaurants has no square plates, no stiff linen napkins, no blobs or foams. It may be nestled against the walls of an eleventh century church, but its tables are Formica, the chairs mismatched, and its chirpy waiters tattoo’d and lushly bearded

This list obviously reflects the adventurous, backpacking, city-hopping and road-tripping vibe of many Lonely Planet devotees, but – quelle horreur – France doesn’t even make the top ten. There’s noPerigord truffle grated over softly scrambled eggs, a bowl of bouillabaisse on a sunny day in Marseille, nor a cassoulet on a cool Languedocien evening. Yes, a slightly random “cheese in France” is thrown in at Number 14, but it feels like their heart isn’t really in it.

Since my first French lesson with Mrs Snow (Madame la Neige) at the age of eight, I have been such a devoted Francophile that by rights there should probably be a statue of me in a square somewhere, possibly an annual parade. But – it pains me so much to say this – but something bad has happened to French food in the past 20 years [. . . ]

Source: Bored appétit! How we all got sick of French food

A year in Paris is as bad for your health as smoking 183 cigarettes 

A study by the European Transport & Environment association published on Friday confirmed that spending a few days in various popular European capitals is equivalent to smoking between one and four cigarettes.

Spending a long weekend in Paris could be as bad for your health as smoking two cigarettes. But this is at least a lot less polluted than in Prague, where your mini-break could be the equivalent of smoking four cigarettes, or even worse in Beijing, where it could be same as puffing up to 16 cigarettes.

You no longer need to sit next to a dedicated smoker to be a victim of passive smoking. Air pollution is such that you only have to walk around for a few days to breathe the toxic equivalent of several cigarettes. This study obviously has serious implications for tourists, who typically spend their days wandering the streets visiting sites, but it also will cause concern for native cyclists and joggers striving for a healthier lifestyle but instead exposing themselves to toxins.

The Transport & Environment study compared the contamination from fine particles of the ten largest European tourist cities by converting it into the number of cigarettes smoked. The NGO used a method of calculation created by Berkeley Earth, an international climate association [ . . . ]

Continue reading at FRANCE24: A year in Paris is as bad for your health as smoking 183 cigarettes – France 24

Heat brings relief for French vineyards

Torrid temperatures across much of France have made the past few weeks unbearable for many, but with grape harvests kicking off this week, the country’s winemakers say the heat could not have come at a better time.

“Grape vines like the sun,” said Bernard Farges, president of the wine grower’s association for the Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur appellations.

“It rained a lot last spring in nearly all winegrowing regions, especially in the south… so the vines aren’t suffering from the drought,” he said.

Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert told AFP on Monday that this year’s grape output was expected to be “higher than average” after production was hit by weather-related losses last year [ . . . ]

Continue at Source: Heat brings relief for French vineyards

Joël Robuchon, A Giant In French Cooking, Dies 

Robuchon won more Michelin stars than any other chef. He embraced his role as a steward of France’s cultural treasures and rejected pretentiousness. After all, his signature dish was potato puree.

“I believe it’s necessary for them to live like all other children and to discover a little of all these cuisines. They loved it because, at a certain age, all children love McDonald’s for its ambience. It corresponds to the taste of children.

“Myself, I drink Coca-Cola. Now, someone is going to say a grand chef who drinks Coca-Cola, that can’t be. But I also use ketchup. One must be open to everything. Sometimes, you feel like eating a pizza; the next day, you may feel like couscous or paella, then, the day after, you eat some more refined cuisine. All of it is necessary.”

Read full story at NPR: Joël Robuchon, A Giant In French Cooking, Dies : NPR

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Bon Appétit!

Vindigo Blue Wine Is Taking France By Storm & You’re About To See A Lot More Of It

Did you think that uniquely-colored wine was just a brief and momentary fad? Think again — because Vindigo, a new blue wine, has arrived, and it’s making waves that are just as big as they were the last time we saw such a colorful boozy creation hit the internet. Created by a Frenchman and produced in Spain, Vindigo has a sweet, fruity taste and a delicate hue that’s closer to turquoise than to royal blue — so naturally, everyone is obsessed with it. I mean, how could we not be? It’s just so pretty [ . . . ]

Continue at BUNGLE: Vindigo Blue Wine Is Taking France By Storm & You’re About To See A Lot More Of It