Robert V. Camuto

Gourmet bistros cater to the young and hungry

By Robert V. Camuto -Special to The Washington Post

Bertrand Bluy doesn't fit the image of a pastry chef. A towering man with a shiny shaved head and a frame as solid as a brick oven, he speaks with a guttural southwestern French accent that conjures a rugby forward rather than someone who has studied the art of mille-feuille.

Yet for more than a decade, Bluy worked as a chef patissier in some of France's elite kitchens, including Troisgros in Roanne and Paris's legendary Michelin three-star restaurant Taillevent.

His world changed in 2003, after a friend found a wine store, or cave, for sale in Paris's 5th arrondissement, and Bluy decided to open his own place. He quit the precious, pressured world of Michelin stars and transformed the space into the kind of bistro that he'd want to hang out in with his rugby pals.

Les Papilles (30 Rue Gay-Lussac, 33 (0)1 43 25 20 79. Reservations. Open Monday through Saturday for lunch and dinner) is a long storefront with a zinc bar along one wall and, lining the opposite wall, shelves filled with gourmet products and more than 350 French wines ranging from a modest Gaillac red for about $12 to such high-priced Bordeaux as a 1997 Lafite Rothschild (about $485).

During a recent lunch, all 15 wood-and-iron bistro tables were occupied mostly by Parisians stimulating their papilles (taste buds) with the delicately seasoned specials of the day -- gazpacho of fresh mushrooms followed by slow-simmered duck flank in a sweet and pungent sauce with new potatoes and vegetables -- as well as farm-made cheeses and Bluy's inventive desserts. It was a sensory experience worthy of a great gastronomic restaurant but at prices that probably will keep most of us coming back, and served family-style by Bluy and a small bluejeans-clad staff. (About $24 for the plat du jour; about $46 for a full four-course meal.)

To sweeten the deal, those bottles on the wall can be purchased for carryout at retail prices or can be opened during lunch or dinner for a corkage fee of about $10, instead of the usual restaurant markup of up to 400 percent. That seemed to delight a trio of diners so much that they felt like sharing. They offered their neighbor -- moi -- pours from a bottle of smooth Grenache-based red from Collioure, on the French-Spanish Mediterranean border, that sells for about $30.

As a singular experience, Les Papilles would be worth writing home about. But it's more than that: a symbol of a long and steady trend that has accelerated in recent years. Even before the current global recession, as the rest of the world was getting fancier and embracing French-inspired gastronomy and luxury, new generations in Paris have gone more casual, insisting on good comfort food and wines at a fraction of the cost of traditional restaurant fare. Among the new-style eateries are caves à manger, wine shops that double as wine bars or bistros and serve a variety of dishes, from plates of charcuterie and cheese to a meal that creates lasting impressions.

"People are looking for a place that is convivial, where everything is fresh, where the wine is good and it's not expensive," says Bluy, who adds that he uses many of the same fresh-food suppliers as Taillevent.

For wine lovers accustomed to paying high restaurant prices, Paris's caves offer a chance to taste a variety of wines from across France -- from the Loire to the Rhone and from Alsace to Languedoc and Provence -- at prices not much higher than those in a wine store. Selections of wines by the glass rarely top $9.

Jacques Dupont, the influential wine critic for France's Le Point magazine, calls the trend of caves à mangers a "reaction to high wine prices." But he says there are other factors at work as well: The popularity of caves is a reaction to a politically correct climate in the current French workplace that frowns on afternoon wine drinking. These relaxed settings are particularly popular with a younger clientele and usually specialize in small wine producers and "natural wines," made from non-chemically farmed grapes and produced with little or no sulfur, added yeasts or filtering.

The caves also offer something even more valuable to visitors: a glimpse of Paris that is more authentic -- at times more rustic -- than at the bistros and restaurants on the city's main boulevards.

On a series of recent cave crawls, I ate and drank with friends, relatives and fellow bons vivants from both sides of the Atlantic. Here is a list of other places I'll go back to.

Le Baron Rouge, 1 Rue Théophile-Roussel, 12th arrondissement, 33 (0)1 43 43 14 32. No reservations. Open Tuesday through Sunday, lunch and dinner hours.

A precursor to current trends, the Baron, in a lively neighborhood not far from the Bastille, opened in 1969 and doesn't seem to have changed a lick, though now business suits are mixed with the T-shirts. Smokers congregate around a few sidewalk bar tables out front. In the entry of the bright Basque-red interior is something rarely seen in France these days: stacked oak wine barrels from which the Baron sells wine in bulk. John Coltrane plays over the sound system, providing a groove for the two managers behind the zinc bar.

Depending on the crowd or the time of your arrival, table service can be occasional or nonexistent, meaning that you'll probably have to walk up to the bar and order from the jungle of blackboards on the walls. The place serves about 50 wines from across France at reasonable prices of about $2 to $6 a glass and about $19 to $31 a bottle. The food is classic wine bar fare: plates of charcuterie (about $18), a cheese selection (about $21) and small plates of rillettes (pork or goose-based spread similar to pâté), andouille (smoked chitterling sausage) and goat cheese (all about $7 to $9).

Le Verre Volé, 67 Rue de Lancry, 10th arrondissement, 33 (0)1 48 03 17 34. Reservations. Open daily for lunch and dinner.

Since 2000, when Cyril Bordarier opened this small cave-bar-bistro a few steps from the Canal St. Martin, it has become a hip address for discovering some of France's best natural wines from organic and biodynamic producers. Le Verre Volé attracts a youngish international crowd. Twenty-three chairs are packed tightly around small tables below shelves loaded with more than 300 wines.

Excellent charcuterie, pâtés and French comfort food are brought in from other restaurants and caterers and assembled on the premises. Prices are reasonable: a corkage fee of about $10 on bottles of wine that sell from around $15 to over $449 and a rotating list of 10 wines by the glass from around $5 to $9. Main courses such as a grilled Toulouse sausage and caillette (a pork pâté-like preparation from the Ardeche region) are about $18; appetizers such as fresh mozzarella and basil in olive oil or grilled Brittany shrimp are about $10 to $16.

Racines, 8 Passage des Panoramas, 2nd arrondissement, 33 (0)1 40 13 06 41. Reservations. Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner.

Just off the popular-meets-trashy Boulevard Montmartre, the Passage des Panoramas is Paris's oldest covered street arcade, an oasis of class and calm from the early 19th century. Here, between an art framer's studio and a stamp collectors shop, this casual outpost for "natural wine and natural food" with Italian touches opened in late 2007.

The fresh food at Racines is some of the most painstakingly sourced anywhere: vegetables are grown on a biodynamic farm outside the capital, meats are provided by Paris's elite butcher Desnoyer, charcuterie is imported from Tuscany, and the coffee (the best espresso I've drunk in France) comes from a roaster in Modena, Italy.

Dining here is not cheap: a starter and entree selected from a short list of blackboard specials will cost about $60, but what arrives on the plate is irreproachable. The chef and staff, who work from an open kitchen in the back, may look like a rock band, but they cook like a gaggle of French grandmas. Roast suckling pig from Bigorre was a tasty and tender pork dish, accompanied by a puree of potatoes so creamy it bordered on a revelation.

Racines' walls are stacked with about 50 small production wines from France and Italy (all of them made from organic or biodynamically grown grapes and much of them made with no added sulfur) that can be opened on the premises with a corkage fee of around $12. Glasses of wine start at around $7.

Juveniles, 47 Rue de Richelieu, 1st arrondissement, 33 (0)1 42 97 46 49. Reservations. Closed Sunday and for lunch Monday.

Surviving more than two decades in Paris and maintaining a loyal following is no mean feat for any Paris wine bar. When the owner is an eccentric Scotsman who provocatively puts such foreign touches on the menu as haggis and "fromage anglais" (Stilton and cheddar), the prospects might seem near-suicidal. Nevertheless, wine-loving bon vivant Tim Johnston keeps a loyal following of Anglophones and French alike at this cozy wine shop-bistro near the Paris stock exchange.

On a recent visit, Johnston merrily went from table to table pouring tastes of a recent wine find (an Australian chardonnay in a screw-cap bottle). For 23 years, he has scoured the vineyards of France and beyond for small-production wines that please him, and together with celebrated Rhone Valley winemaker Marcel Richaud, he blends a red table wine called Elevenzes. Table prices for wines are about $21 to $105 a bottle.

Juveniles' menu includes starters such as homemade duck foie gras and crostini of prosciutto, tomato confit and sliced parmesan. Hearty main dishes include well-grilled-to-order tuna steak, duck flank and rib steak. Desserts include artisanal ice creams, roasted figs in red wine and "Donald's chocolate cake." Figure about $45 for a three-course dinner.

Fish La Boissonnerie, 69 Rue de Seine, 6th arrondissement, 33 (0)1 43 54 34 69. Reservations. Open daily lunch and dinner.

The fanciful and beautiful fish-theme mosaics that decorate the front and interior were left over from the antique Poissonerie, converted to a wine bar by Drew Harre, another Brit-in-Paris. Fish is not technically a wine shop; Harre's cave, called La Derniere Goutte, is around the corner. Still, it deserves to be on any visitor's list because it focuses on good-quality food and wines at reasonable prices as it swims in a sea of Saint-Germain tourist haunts.

A casual place in which you can reserve a wood- or zinc-topped table or walk in and sit at the bar, Fish does not limit its cuisine to seafood. Chef Matthew Ong uses fresh seasonal ingredients and combines French, Mediterranean and Asian influences for a delicious, inventive result. The monthly changing menu on our visit included main dishes of fresh ultra-rare tuna steaks, linguini with clams and dried tomatoes, and a mille-feuille of rabbit. Starters included fresh goat cheese and olives and foie gras with chutney.

Figure about $19 to $38 for lunch, or about $47 to $52 for a two- or three-course dinner. A wine list of about 300 selections covers all of France except Bordeaux (viewed as too stodgy). A list of about 10 wines by the glass changes weekly and starts at around $7.

Camuto is a freelance writer based in France and the author of "Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country."