Mark Eggleton

From the outside the steel framed door and windows of Le Chateaubriand on Avenue De Parmentier in the 11th arondissement looks just like any other bistro. Even after you enter and pull back the curtain encircling the door it still exudes the air of an average French bistro. A smattering of tables and bistro chairs on a wooden floor, an open kitchen at the rear and a bar running from the door halfway down one side of the restaurant.

Fresh... chef Inaki Aizpitarte

The fripperies of an expensive fitout and the attendant staff pretentiousness are nowhere to be found. This isn’t some temple of gastronomy in which the room is designed for you to worship the high cuisine and its creator – it revels in its simplicity and chef Inaki Aizpitarte might just be the saviour of French cuisine. 

Aizpitarte’s neo-bistro brings boldness and vitality back to French cuisine at a time when it seems to be going through an existential crisis. It’s a crisis that is probably the continuation of a deeper malaise affecting the whole country. Unemployment is high, the manufacturing sector stagnant, property prices are down and the Gallic shrug has become an involuntary spasm. There are solutions but for the moment the nation is content to blame two old favourites – the banks and the rich.

Reason being is the French don’t really trust wealth nor do they care much for extreme displays of it either. Sure they’re home to some of the world’s premier luxury brands but those brands exist for the tacky nouveau-riche consumers of China and Russia or the extended families of Gulf-state royals. They’ve even managed to turn on one of their favourite sons, Gerard Depardieu, who says money means nothing to an artist and at the same time flees as a tax exile.

So unlike Americans, the French don’t blame the poor for not dragging themselves up, they blame the rich for pushing everyone down. Unfortunately this funk has made its way into French cuisine. It’s weighed down by its own history and a lost desire to continue to innovate. Where once you could drive around regional France and easily find a half decent bistro or restaurant now you’ll often find over-prepared food made without passion. And unfortunately, it’s the same in Paris.

No frills... Le Chateaubriand

Dare I say it, but much of the cuisine of France has lost its joie de vivre. Where once the delectable joys of French cuisine burst into life on the palate they now seem tired. Food has become a chore and even the Michelin-starred chefs are hiding their lack of innovation, artistry and panache behind ever-richer yet duller creations. It would seem they’ve become fearful of produce and its ability to inspire through natural flavour combinations.

Aizpitarte embraces produce and his creations are genuinely exciting. He makes it interesting by reinventing the simple in a stylish manner. There’s also a certain anger in his culinary invention – it’s not quite polished and it’s stylishly raw.

On the night I visit nearly every course melds normally discordant flavours into seamless creations. A scallop, treviso and butternut squash dish fills the mouth with herbaceous fresh ocean flavours while Iberian Pork belly with roman broccoli and grapefruit provides a new twist on comfort food – the fatty crunch of the pork layers the tongue but it’s peeled back by the citrus tang of the grapefruit and freshness of the broccoli.

A dessert of quince and Jerusalem artichoke ice-cream doesn’t sound right but it cleanses the whole mouth beautifully. The subtle natural sugars of the quince work beautifully with the earthiness of the Jerusalem artichoke.

All of this is matched with some quirky but inspired wine choices, including an Assyrtiko from Santorini – an unusually delicate white wine paired with monkfish. An altogether fascinating Sicilian Pantelleria Gabrio Bini is a rose-style, aged in clay amphora. It’s an extraordinary wine but works wonderfully with the pork.

Aizpitarte conjures up food to make you think but it’s thoroughly enjoyable. Wonderful natural flavours meld together in innovative, unusual combinations. He embraces a whole of European cuisine and, in a way, his edgy, raw creations provide uneasy comfort to a city and a nation that’s suddenly uneasy and unsure of whom to blame for its travails.

Le Chateaubriand

129 Avenue Parmentier, 75011 Paris

01 43 57 45 95 ‎

www.lechateaubriand.net

Amy Hughes

There’s a place in Paris that’s been causing a stir for 40 years.  Dinner is served every Sunday, reservations are required, it attracts an international crowd as well as locals, is standing room only, and it’s not the food people come for.   

On Sunday nights this is one of the most popular places to eat in Paris.  “Tonight it’s just lasagne and salad and tiramisu.  You can get that at any good restaurant in Paris,” our host tells us. 

From Parrallel People by Jonathan D Pryce...Jim Haynes' atelier is an exhibition space too

But this isn’t a restaurant.  It’s the home of Jim Haynes…a boy from the Bayou, Jim was born in Louisiana, raised in Venezuela, and has lived in Paris for the last 40 years, hosting weekly dinners since he arrived. 

Jim explains how it all began, “They started in a totally accidental fashion.  A woman arrived in Paris, a dancer from LA.  She didn’t know anyone.  She sat in a restaurant next to a friend of mine…she said her hobby was cooking and the rest is hysteria.”

And, Jim says not much has changed, except the size of the guest list: “I think there were 25 at the first dinner but it went up very quickly.  I think it was as high as 130, but for everybody’s sake I try to keep the numbers down.  We’re about 70 tonight, which is really too many for the winter but then people pop in and say, ‘my cousin just arrived from Buenos Aires’ and what can you say?  You welcome them.”

Every Sunday night Jim welcomes both locals and tourists with a different guest chef each week. People book online and are asked to contribute 25 euros.  In the summertime, and on a recent mild autumn night, guests spilled out into the garden.  His flat isn’t large, or even grand.  And the food?  You don’t come for the cuisine.  You come for the company.

"When you’re cooking for 75 people, fine wines and fine cuisine goes out the window.  You just do the best you can and it’s mainly the people and out of it comes hundreds of marriages and love affairs and babies and that’s the point.  I’m not that interested in food and wine.  I’m more interested in people.  I want people to have a good time."

Host of good times and good company...Jim Haynes (right) kicks back at his pad

And they do.  Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsburg, Germaine Greer and Chloe Sevigny are also among Jim’s staggering number of guests. Some call him the city’s unofficial mayor.   Over the years over 130,000 people have come to his Sunday dinners.

I ask if there’s any downside.  “I guess the cleaning up, but I have someone who comes in every Monday morning and by one o’clock, suddenly it’s like there was never any party at all.”

Jim Haynes’ dinners aren’t just for out-of-towners.  He’s got a huge local following.  Pierre has been coming for 25 years.  I ask him if Jim’s dinners can be considered part of the Parisienne salon culture.  “No, it’s very different.  The French soirees are more cosmopolitan, but also with more protocols, and the food is better.  And closed, very closed.” 

Which do you prefer, I ask,  Il est tres diplomatique.  “Both. I like different culture,” Pierre says.

Dispensing with protocol is exactly the way Jim wants his dinners, and it could help explain why they’re so popular.

I ask Jim about the current state of the salon culture in Paris.  “The salon classic culture was very aristocratic and very undemocratic and very limited to 15-20 people maximum.   One of the most famous, of course, was Gertrude Stein’s.  You were terribly privileged to be invited.  I take whoever comes, literally the first person who calls, and so we get the world.”

Schmoozing the salon...Guests mingle and meet at Haynes's apartment

On this evening, it includes Marcus from Hamburg.  “We know it from the internet and it was a little bit of adventure.  You can meet many people if you’re not too shy, like me, but it’s fantastic I think.”

But even the shy ones have a chance.  In case it wasn’t obvious, Jim loves people, and knows how to work a room.  He says, “I love the fact that people come who don’t know each other, that many people come who are totally terrified and leave very happy and ask if they can come again.  I like it when people enjoy themselves and if they meet someone else who they later see as a friend or lover, that’s nice, too.”

Sometimes they wind up more than friends and lovers. Jim’s had a few success stories.  “My classic story is a French woman sitting on the couch, shy, alone and didn’t know anybody and I introduced her to a guy who was also shy and alone and now they’re married, they have three kids, they’re not shy anymore and they speak three languages.  So I say these dinners manufacture Europeans.”

Jim’s left a few legacies in his time.  I only have time to ask him one more question.  What would you like it to say on your tombstone?  "He came, he saw, he entertained.”

Jim Haynes
Reservations required
www.jim-haynes.com

A 30-year-old chef is at the heart of a new restaurant trend in Paris, which flies in the face of classic French tradition. There are few ingredients, no menus, and the dress code is come as you are. 

“I called the chef and he can have a table for you at 10 o'clock, yeah, it's possible. Can I confirm this table? With pleasure sir, bye-bye.”

That's a recent call from one of the hottest new restaurants in Paris…only it wasn't the Maitre'd.  It was chef, and owner of Agape Substance, David Toutain.  He's 30 years old and turning heads for his cuisine, and his class. He's probably the only chef who helps guests snag tables at competing restaurants, and calls them to deliver the news.  Toutain was calling in a favour for a customer who drooled over his cooking at lunchtime, and was desperate to try another trendy restaurant that night.  Toutain was only too happy to help.

“You realise that this defies the stereotypical image we have of the arrogant French chefs? “ I ask him.  “You know this is exactly, ok great, thank you so much.  I think it’s very important to work together.  It’s not war; it’s just pleasure of food. When I called I think about that, and I say, why I don’t ask Alejandro to do that. I was very happy and you know, sometimes you just need very good energy and this is very good energy.”

But David Toutain hardly needs good energy.  His restaurant has been open just four months, and it's been full every single night.  Yet it hasn't gone to his head.

Toutain says, “Yes, it’s very good, but, we need to work, you know?  We need to be, how do you say umble, humble and cool.”

He is, without doubt, both of those things.  Agape Substance is part of a new trend in Paris restaurants where the produce inspires the menu, rather than the chef.   But David takes things a few steps further. 

Guests are presented with a board listing 12 ingredients.  They advise which ones they can’t, or won’t eat and the rest is up to David and his team. 

In a small, rectangular room, people perch on bar stools along a narrow, communal table which extends into the kitchen, to become the workspace, creating a seamless transition from dining room to open kitchen.   Mirrored ceilings aren't meant to be kinky; they're also devised to connect diners to the kitchen. 

Cool ... Toutain

Agape Substance, not surprisingly, attracts a big foodie fan base.  Sarah Canet is among them: “Today we’ve had an extraordinary meal and it’s not that comfortable here!  We’re packed in, elbow to elbow; the waiters are pushing past you to get to the other people.  It’s noisy, there are lots of intense smells, but it’s exciting, isn’t it?”

It is exciting.  A slight lull in conversation, and one only needs to look up to see David and his team artfully assembling the next dish.

Investors think Agape substance is exciting, too.  I hint that perhaps David will be wooed to expand, but the humble chef is keeping his cool and refuses to plan too far ahead.

“I plan to make service for 24 guests tonight.  This is my plan.  We need to be very focussed, but we need to enjoy this moment too, you know.”

And I enjoyed the moment, too.  16 small courses later, with wine paired to match, I was converted to David’s fresh, no-menu approach.

Agape Substance

www.agapesubstance.com

66 rue Mazarine

St. Germain de Pres

+33 1 43 29 33 83

I love Paris.  I could easily walk the streets from morning til night, so long as there are a few cafe au lait’s consumed throughout the day. 

Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been, absorbing the local culture never seems to get old.

Though I’ve stayed in some nice places, I’ve never been tempted to have a lie-in in Paris … until now. 

I was staying on the outer edge of Montparnasse, in a great, residential neighbourhood, down a small, quiet passageway.  The decor was that perfect French combination – lots of greys and neutrals, with a heavy, but not over-the-top dose of contemporary style … chocolate cashmere throws on the beds, low lighting (everybody looks better in low lighting, don’t they?), Diptyque candles, and Kiehl’s toiletries.    

There were tall ceilings, and open spaces bathed in light.  And it was better than any hotel I could have stayed in. This was the home of French ad exec, Stephanie Behaeghel.  She rents her home to tourists on weekends (and at other periods) through Housetrip, an internet-based property lending site. 

Living like a local when travelling is a fantasy for many, and renting a flat or apartment in a foreign city isn’t a new concept, but take a look around, and you’ll find there aren’t dozens of companies doing it.  

There are the obvious places which have the highest saturation; Paris, London and New York are the most popular.  But ever tried to rent a place in the Ukraine?  How about Indonesia?  Housetrip has 55,000 properties in over seven-thousand locations. Travel to any continent in the world, and you’ll find a Housetrip property to hire. 

Security systems are in place to protect owners and renters from any problems, which means if a renter arrives and a property isn’t as described, support is provided by Housetrip staff who speak 14 different languages and can help find alternative housing. Hosts don’t get paid until two days into a trip, to ensure there are no problems.

Properties run the gamut, from a 1-bedroom shared flat in Athens for £12 ($20USD), to a 4-bedroom home in London’s Chelsea, for £3000 ($US4600) a night and everything in between.  

On my trip to Paris, our home for the weekend was a 4-bedroom townhouse/maisonette with room to sleep 7 people and a dream kitchen, which we took full advantage of. 

Like so many other foodies, I have always wanted to stay in a Parisian flat, tour a market and then come home and whip up a delicious meal.  I’m not sure whether Stephanie Behaeghel cooks, but her kitchen was well-equipped.   We spent Sunday morning on a local tour organised by Context Travel.  Food writer and cooking teacher Camille Labro met us at an organic market in nearby St Germain. 

As we weaved through the cheese and charcuterie stalls, she explained how to tell male from female fennel (who knew?), and that the male one is more tender.  After selecting our favourite ingredients, and plotting out a menu for lunch, we hit the kitchen and turned on the gas. 

I thought I was pretty good in the kitchen, until then.  Apparently, I have no knife skills whatsoever, apart from being able to chop in the most rudimentary way.  But, I learned that the best method for cooking aubergine without it absorbing too much oil, is to dry-fry in a pan with a thin layer of salt. The light feast was wonderful and even better, was the chance to ask a local about the food culture, trends, etc.

Ours, at approximately £500 ($800) a night, was just one of 2000 properties available in Paris, including a houseboat where the owner is a Michelin starred chef and will cook for you, on request.  

Properties are added every week, and Housetrip is actively looking for more owners.  The average home rents for £105 ($170) per night, with Housetrip taking 10-20% on top of what the owner receives.   It costs nothing to post on the site, and stays can be any duration. The shortest is one night, and the longest, so far has been 74 days.  

Whether you’re looking for an authentic experience, have a large group, or simply want to take your pet along, Housetrip makes a great hotel alternative.  The only problem, as was the case for me, is that you may find yourself in such luscious surroundings you never want to leave.   

www.housetrip.com