Hungry for Paris

1st and 2nd ARRONDISSEMENTS . TUILERIES, LES HALLES, BOURSE Chez Georges chez georges is the gastronomic equivalent of the little black dressunfailingly correct, politely coquettish, and impeccably Parisian. This is why it was no surprise to find ourselves seated next to the affable and slightly owlish Didier Ludot on a balmy summer night. A self-described antiquaire de mode (antiques dealer specializing in fashion), Ludot runs La Petite Robe Noire (The Little Black Dress) and another boutique specializing in vintage fashion in the Palais-Royal. Since he was entertaining a customer, a stylish Park Avenue blonde who gamely insisted that they speak French so that she "might mend the wreckage of what I half learned in college"much to her credit, her French was good, and much to his credit, his patience didn't fail once during a two-and-a-half-hour mealLudot's choice of a restaurant was perfect. Chez Georges is exactly what most foreigners want a bistro to be, which is basically a place where time has stood still on a very French clock (Parisians like it, too, but find it expensive). Here, the menu is still written out by hand daily and then mimeographed in lilac-colored ink. Brown banquettes upholstered in what the French euphemistically call moleskin but North Americans know as leatherette line both walls of the long, narrow railroad-car-like dining room, and there's a little bar just inside the front door where your bill is tallied and taxis are called. The decor, such as it is, dates back to its founding in the early 1900s and doesn't add up to much more than mirrors interspersed with Gothic columns and a pale tiled floor. The older waitresses who have ruled the roost for decades are gradually retiring, but the younger staff perpetuate a delightful house serving style based on smiles and solicitude. And most important of all, the menu hasn't changed an iota during the twenty years that I've been coming here. This place remains an unfailingly good address for a trencherman's feed of impeccably prepared bistro classics. On a warm night, Alice, Bruno, and I raced through a bottle of the good house Chablis and the plate of sausages and radishes that came with a little pot of butter as soon as we'd ordered. Though everyone and his great-aunt is staking a claim to Julia Child these days, I couldn't resist telling them about how she'd taught me to butter my radishes on my first visit to Chez Georges. Invited to dinner by the late Gregory Usher, an American who founded the cooking school at the Hotel Ritz and a close friend of Julia's, I arrived uncharacteristically early and found Child already seated and alone. I introduced myself and watched in fascination as she buttered a radish and chomped away. Then, after a swig of Sancerre, she said, "The radish is one of nature's most underrated creations." I smiled, and she added, "It's a good thing no one overheard me. When you're my age, a remark like that could land you in an old folk's home. Still, a nicely buttered radish is just the thing to remind any cook to stay humble and simple in the kitchen. Most foods don't really need any improving." I suspect Child loved Chez Georges for the same reasons I do. Not only is the food delicious, but it's a good spot in which to channel frivolous, flirtatious postwar Paris, the wondrous city that not only made Julia Child into Julia Child but Audrey Hepburn into Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron into Leslie Caron, etc. Bruno, good Frenchman that he is, ordered a salade de museau de boeufthin slices of beef muzzle, a curious crunchy mix of meat and cartilage, which Alice gamely tried, and I went for a saute of girolles, tinyLobrano, Alexander is the author of 'Hungry for Paris', published 2008 under ISBN 9780812976830 and ISBN 0812976835.