First Meals

My wife Colette and I put a lot of stock in first meals off the airplane.  For some reason, these experiences, when one eats lunch the first day in Paris after some time away, are intense.  Sometimes it’s for the better and sometimes for the worse.

As I look back in time, I think of our “first meals” at the Bistro d’Hubert, Lucas-Carton, Chez les Anges, Aux Lyonnais and Ze Kitchen Galerie as being typical examples.  So that there’s no misunderstanding, when I speak of Lucas-Carton, Chez les Anges and Aux Lyonnais, I’m speaking of their prior incarnations; that is pre Senderens, pre Lacipière and pre Ducasse.

Getting off the plane and tucking into the salad frisée at Aux Lyonnais or the thick, oh so thick, almost raw, chunk of calf’s liver at Chez les Anges was heaven, as were the desserts at the Bistro d’Hubert.  And remember the tiny becasse roasted over the equally tiny chemist’s flame and sauced with a barrel of reduced red wine at Lucas-Carton?  Or the fresh tangy zip of Ledeuil’s sashimied raw fish at Ze?  The memories of the intensity of flavors in his dishes still remains in the gustatory cortex.  Why?

One day, as we were just about to embark on a three-week trip to Eastern Europe, just after the Czech and Slovak Republics had gotten an amicable divorce, we went to Alain Passard’s freshly renovated (to get his stars up to the top) Arpege and had a great meal from his signature quail egg to his signature caramel sauce.  A great meal I said.  We immediately made a reservation for the day we arrived back from Hungary.  And wouldn’t you know, it wasn’t great, it was spectacular.  Why?

Then we had another one of those terrific first meals, this with Fredy Giradet in Cressier, outside Lausanne, again en route, this time to Austria.  Again, it was great; but on returning a few weeks later found it much better.  Why?

But then, and you knew there was a but, there were the opposite experiences, all at places now either thankfully closed or mercifully forgotten: the inedible over-cooked chicken with gloppy, fatty, thoroughly disgusting white sauce on the Quai de l’Hotel de Ville, the horrid foie gras on the Avenue Michelet in Saint-Ouen and the awful, rubbery (and prohibitively expensive) lobster in Madrid.  Why?

I do have a theory about this.  I think it’s a combination of the anticipation of different and probably better food where you’re going compare to where you’ve been, coupled with the desiccation, dehydration and jet-lag engendered by airplane travel.  Thus, you’re primed for a new or improved experience from what you’ve been eating, plus your taste buds, nose and throat as well as brain have been beaten up and are raw, et voila, it’s either great or disastrous, but rarely average.
 

As usual, here’s what’s left of the great firsts:

Ze Kitchen Galerie

4, rue des Grands Augustins, 6th (Metro: Saint Michel)

T: 01 44 32 00 32

Closed Sundays.

A la carte 30 €.
 

©2006 John A. Talbott