Le Dauphin

Posted on August 1, 2011 by aaron

I am not a morning person, and Le Dauphin is, perhaps, not an afternoon restaurant. Better to go at night, when the experience mimics that of a dinner party squeezed into a newly-renovated bathroom — all cacophony and clean white marble. You might end up, as we have, at a small table near the huge front windows. The challenge here is distinguishing between the nearby figures having a smoke to take a break from the meal and those having a meal to take a break from smoking. I am not French enough to discern the difference.

Our server, somehow, is the chef. I drag my finger along the menu, stopping ten times. Sadly, he speaks French far too well to understand what the hell I’m mumbling. He drops his notepad and a pen on the table, and walks away coolly. I like his style. Continue reading →

Posted in France | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Omnivore New York 2011

Posted on July 5, 2011 by aaron

“I am the most stupid cooker of eggs.”

A confession from the man in the red tee shirt. All morning, thick-framed eyeglasses slid down his Gallic nose as he spoke. With every punctuation mark, he’d scrunch his face to put them back in place. This time a hearty chuckle gave them an extra little push upwards. Our host was laughing at himself, and we giggled along with him.

“Just do new things, day after day. That is it.”

This French chef’s philosophizing might easily have created a motto for the event. It’s also French, and they call it Omnivore. Created back in 2003 as a forum for the “young, free, and open-minded” in the world of food, last month marked its third bite out of Big Apple.  That morning’s chef-led master classes shared the playbill with a series of collaborative dinners that paired New York toques with their counterparts from abroad. Continue reading →

Posted in Food Events | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Al Pont de Ferr

Posted on June 10, 2011 by aaron

I’ve missed many a plane, train and automobile in my day for reasons both significant and not. In matters both personal and work-related, I am a professional only at being late, a fact I was grimly reminded of last month when our train from Florence to Milan nearly scooted off into the sunset without us.

Thanks, of course, to me.  I bought a pair of Italian-made sneakers on the way to the station.  (Yes, I have a picture of them, and no, I’m not going to show you. We just met.) Because of my poor judgment — or because of my impeccable taste in footwear — we literally had to run to make a dinner reservation in Milan with my buddy from Genoa.

This man is approximately two and a half times my age, a father-figure, friend, and mentor in one. He’s also part of the reason that, though I’m not actually Italian, I’m awfully good at faking it.

He and I are a dangerous, demented duo. We sat down and got right to business.  No menus — just the chef’s choice on our plates and champagne in our glasses.

The first thing we ate at Al Pont de Ferr was not a chestnut. Continue reading →

Posted in Italy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments