Alas it was time for my vacation in France to end with the new year
in full bloom and my duties back in New York City calling. I had a
farewell dinner with my father at a little
bistro run by a very young chef. My father is a voracious reader of all
the Parisian publications and came upon a review of the burgeoning
restaurant Jadis. Various newspapers have lauded it as the best of its
kind in the fifteenth and possibly the city. The meal was very good in
a classic bistro fare sort of way though I feel it is a stretch to call
it one of the best in Paris let alone the very best. The food offered
was mostly updated classics and reinvented French conventions. The
cuisine could be called new wave French I suppose, archetypal though
innovative.
The food was mostly game oriented and incorporated every part of the animal from kidneys and entrails, to feet and brain. My father ended up being the bolder of the two of us, ordering two dishes that I loved tasting but would rarely order myself. He began with the pied d’agneau or lamb trotter. The round white bowl that appeared contained a strange looking soupy ragout with chunks of lamb foot meat, snails, button mushrooms, and sliced cardoons. It sounds more like a bizarre sorcerer’s potion but those were in fact the ingredients and they worked surprisingly well. The lamb trotter tasted like fatty pieces of roast leg of lamb and the saltiness of the sautéed snails matched well with the texture of the mushrooms. My father was overjoyed with the dish; naturally a big fan of organ meats given his French heritage. I tried two or three bites and would have gladly accepted my own serving.
I know it sounds blasphemous but one of my favorite restaurants in
Paris is an Italian joint. Casa Bini lies just south of the Boulevard
Montparnasse in a two-story building housing the family of Mrs. Anna
Bini. The food is traditional Puglian with a large menu of classics and
house favorites that never change. The principal allure of the place is
the leaflet of daily specials. I have rarely encountered the same dish
twice and the specials always impress so much so that my family, and
most people I know in Paris, list Casa Bini as one of their favorites.
Above the title of our local paper, the VINEYARD GAZETTE, is the pithy quote (they always have a pithy quote), “With rod and tackle box, I’m slogging through soft sand, A red sun going down in the surf, Swag-belly clouds drifting in,” authored by Peter Makuck. Just below the Gazette title is its mission statement: “Devoted to the interest of the six towns on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.”
I went snowboarding at Big Bear yesterday with a friend. As we drove up the mountain, we were immersed in a fog so thick that you couldn't see more than 5 feet in the distance. We figured a gloomy day was sure to be our destiny. We continued to drive into the higher elevation as we got closer the ski area. At about 7000 feet, the fog disappeared instantly and gave way to the clearest bright blue sky I've seen in ages.
A couple of nights before we left for Paris my sister came to my house for dinner and told me she heard a story on NPR about this man in Paris that invites guests for dinner every Sunday evening at his house. “Do you want to go, sounds interesting, don’t you think?” This did sound interesting, it could be very interesting or not, but either way it surely would be an experience. Jim requested that anyone that wants to come to his house send him an e-mail and tell something about yourself, pressure was on to say something short and creative to get his attention. Waking up in the morning I opened up my e-mail and there was a response from Jim. He said that there was a waiting list for the Sunday night dinner which he added us to and we should call him at noon on Sunday to see if anyone had cancel making room for us. He also invited us for a glass of wine sometime during the week if we had time. I guess the e-mail sparked his interest.