New Year, Old Friends.

2009! Wow! Who thought it would ever come after the campaign that seemed to last forever and the plunge in the economy and the news that French restos were 20% less booked than last year. But this economic disaster doesn’t stop new places from opening, by my and Figaroscope’s count, five a week for the working year and it doesn’t stop the old places from chugging along. Just this first month of this New Year, Colette and I did a tour of old faves that brought to my attention how one treats old friends differently than new acquaintances. Then, my chum Atar and I were chatting a while back and he asked me if I’d changed my rating standards from before because he detected a difference. Thinking about where we’d eaten recently: specifically, Agapes, Clocher Pereire, Vieil Ami, l’Epigramme, Lao Lane Xang 2, Goumard and Bistro 121, I realized that not everything about every dish had been perfect. But I’d cut each some slack; more slack the sixth or tenth time than when I go to a place just once. And that holds for relatively new “old friends” such as Jadis, La Table d’Eugene, Minoir, l’Assiette, Le Gaigne and l’Idee. Perhaps only Spring and Ze Kitchen Galerie were flawless and Spring, as we all know, is closing February 26th to reappear who knows when. Such a cutting slack of old friends vs new finds is unfair, inconsistent and unjust. Guilty as charged! But these old friends still please again and again and new acquaintances are often jarringly rough, uneven and inept even with the simplest of ingredients. So I’ll stay consistently inconsistent and enjoy myself. Blog: John Talbott’s Paris ©by John Talbott 2008