I look down at my red suede shoes. Yes, just like the Carl Perkins song, only a different colour. And without the dancing.
“But they will chuck me out,” I complain.
Actually, they won’t. Two waiters will politely, and sans a word, escort me by the elbows outside, prop me up against the wall, and shoot me. Then someone from the kitchen will rush out to mop the blood and do something nouvelle cuisine with it.
“But they will,” I insist.
My wife, in the meantime, has slipped into the guise of a French waiter – that is, she is ignoring me. She stands by the restaurant door (plain with frosted glass – it doesn’t even look like a restaurant, which means it’s posh beyond your stiffest notions of posh), rummaging in her handbag – I suspect she’s looking for a copy of the prenup, which she carries around with her for such occasions.
“No they won’t,” she says. “It’s lunch – you’re meant to be casual.”
I look up at the street sign. Rue Beethoven. How fitting, I think. At least, my execution will be set against a backdrop of soaring violins and a triumphant brass section. Sweet.
“Yes they will.”
I look down at my shoes, deep in thought like some scholar searching for an ancient truth. Mind you, they’re not ugly – but by no stretch of the imagination an apt dress code for a restaurant with three Michelin stars.
I drag my feet (adding dusty insult to injured shoes) for a bit more, buying time. But of course, two minutes later, I’m sitting down at a whiter-than-a-cloud table, as rigid as one of those swan-shaped napkins from 1980s Chinese restaurants. And, to sustain the simile, my shoes – set against the all-white décor of L’Astrance – look like the two remaining neon, glow-in-the-dark prawns at a cheap Chinese buffet.
There is hope. The restaurant is tiny, which means that the waiters will be eager to do a second sitting, and our lunch will be over in five minutes. But apparently, my wife isn’t familiar with the concept of fraternité, and orders the six-course degustation menu. With wine pairings. I brace myself for a two-hour lunch.
The lunch lasts for three hours. The food is cry-out-loud good. There’s a lot of praline this and mousse that. The poached langoustine could be my deathbed dish. The kitchen conjures up plenty of visual trickery – the eggshell filled with eggnog and jasmine is a magic moment.
About €280 plus tip later, we’re out on the pavement.
“You know, with that kind of money, I could have bought a pair of very nice shoes,” I tell my wife. But from inside the taxi, she can’t hear me. She goes off to do her shopping duties, and I walk to my hotel to sleep off my embarrassment. That’s the thing with Parisan restaurants. They’re very good and they spike your life with a love of food. But they are so up there that, unless you look like David Gandy, they will make you feel uncomfortable.
The following evening, I put on all my finery, including my €280 pair of very nice shoes (I had to make a point).
“Where are we off to?” I ask, with the same interest of someone who thinks he has a choice.
“Oh, somewhere casual,” she says.
I know what that means. It will be another Cafe de la Paix, at the Place de l’Opéra, where we had dined the previous evening. The waiters all looked like models and the food was styled, rather than plated.
As soon as we enter Bistroy Les Papilles, everyone turns to look around. I don’t blame them – I look like a fish out of the bouillabaisse. My shoes are way too formal and the carefully ironed stripes on my shirt don’t match the casually lined-up wines on the wall-to-wall shelves. The atmosphere couldn’t be more laid back. And – the height of informality – there’s no menu. For €38 you eat the same three-course meal all the other diners are having. Well, not having – enjoying, rather, because the food is casual in appearance, but very smart in execution. It’s so good that we return the following evening.
Mood is the key ingredient here. All over Paris, menus are being binned and instead, you just eat what the chef’s mood dictates.
“What if chef wakes up in a bad mood?” I ask.
“Well, he just doesn’t come to work,” she assumes.
Fair point.
This must be one of the very few gastronomic concepts that actually works. It’s a win-win situation, toast buttered on both sides – there’s less wastage for restaurants because they only buy in small quantities and only what is fresh, and the diner gets surprised every day with a different menu.
Such randomness goes against the backbone of dining, which is consistency. And yet this randomness doesn’t come with bad surprises – the food is consistently good. Such irregularity cooks up a daily menu that is fresh, adventurous and willing to discover new things and cheeses. More than that, chefs are allowed to make mistakes, because sometimes, those mistakes are delicious. In Paris, the world is your culinary oyster, with or without frites.
That said, Paris still does luxurious dining better than anyone else. And it does great casual dining – you cannot get more casual than, for instance, Le Relais de l’Entrecote, which only serves steak frites with sauce. But this new cooking according to mood is like the love child of both – beautiful food eaten in a flip-flop state of mind. At L’Avant Comptoir, for instance, the food is delicious, but you eat it standing up.
It’s like with Joël Robuchon. There’s the fine dining restaurant La Table, and the casual L’Atelier. You can dress up for the former, or dress down for the latter. You have the liberté of choice. After all, that is the whole point of eating out – having a menu to choose from.