{"id":1,"date":"2015-07-30T09:51:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T08:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/?p=1"},"modified":"2019-05-03T17:47:51","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T15:47:51","slug":"alexander-lobrano-french-cuisine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.book-a-flat.com\/magazine\/en\/alexander-lobrano-french-cuisine","title":{"rendered":"Secrets of a Paris food writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

American-born food writer Alexander Lobrano fell in love with Paris as a teenager, moved to the city in 1986, and thirty years later appears as smitten with the French capital as ever.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He currently lives with his partner, Bruno, in a rooftop apartment in the Nouvelle Ath\u00e8nes district of the 9th arrondissement<\/a> and doesn\u2019t seem likely to be returning to Connecticut, which is where he grew up, anytime soon.
\nAlec is the author of the useful, highly reliable, and very entertaining Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City\u2019s 109 Best Restaurants<\/em>, which is now in a well-deserved second edition. His award-winning journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, and more. His second book, Hungry for France: Adventures for the Cook & Food Lover<\/em>, was published last year.<\/p>\n

Alexander Lobrano and his Paris passion<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Why did you come to Paris?<\/h4>\n

I first visited Paris on a family trip to Europe when I was 15, and I was absolutely smitten by the elegance of the city, its food, the romance, the glamour. So as soon as I was offered a job here, I took it.<\/p>\n

What do you love most about Paris now that it\u2019s your home?<\/h4>\n

One of my great pleasures in Paris is walking in the city at night. I love walking, and I don\u2019t need a map, I always know where I am. And the relentless beauty of Paris for daily life never abates. I can be in a vile mood knowing I have to go out on the street and get window cleaner at Monoprix for example and I always find something beautiful here \u2013 a doorway, a handle, something different.<\/p>\n

You mentioned somewhere that you were attracted to French manners. What do you mean by that? A lot of people seem to think Parisians are rude.<\/h4>\n

There are different codes here and they\u2019re constructed differently. The English-speaking world puts enormous importance on friendliness. In France you win friendship and daily life is codified in a way so that you\u2019re always acknowledging one another, but, though there might be a pleasant exchange, there isn\u2019t the pretense that you\u2019re going to chat because as far as they\u2019re concerned you don\u2019t know each other, so why would you? It\u2019s reserved, not rude. I actually find it comfortable.<\/p>\n

To someone who has no idea what French cuisine is, how would you define it?<\/h4>\n

The real genius in French cuisine is making tough things tender, mostly meat and fish, and learning how to build flavor through sauces. A lot of the techniques here were perfected centuries ago; deglazing cooking juices with wine or vinegar or whatever, as the basis of a sauce, etc.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve always said that B\u0153uf Bourguignon is one of your favourite French dishes. Is it still?<\/h4>\n

Oui, aujourd\u2019hui et pour toujours !<\/em> It\u2019s so much the essence of what delicious French food is, a great example of extracting flavor and building sauces and layering flavor.<\/p>\n

A lot of people still think of French food as being heavy, unhealthy, drowning in sauce.<\/h4>\n

The past 40 years there has been a quiet, brilliant revolution in French kitchens to lighten the calorie content of the sauces by finding other ways to make them by using vegetable pur\u00e9es or herbal jus, keeping the flavor but losing the calories. That\u2019s what Nouvelle Cuisine was all about.<\/p>\n

So is French cuisine still the best in the world?<\/h4>\n

You eat well everywhere now, all over the world, that\u2019s what\u2019s changed. But France remains the ultimate gastronomic reference because of its history, its produce, the exigency of the French culinary education and the French general public having a huge body of knowledge that they bring to the table. People follow chefs here like we follow baseball players in America and this mad national passion for gastronomy is unique in the world.<\/p>\n

Yet a lot of visitors say they find French food bland.<\/h4>\n

The French are keener to subtlety than we are. We like things to be big flavor bombs; the French still like things really, really subtle. The French are geniuses at nuance and the whole society is nuanced; the kitchen is nuanced, the fashion is nuanced, the perfume is nuanced. I love that subtlety, and I\u2019ve learned to appreciate it.<\/p>\n

Are Paris restaurants better or worse than when you arrived?<\/h4>\n

I think the food is better than when I got here. There are so many different choices now and there\u2019s the passion for produce that didn\u2019t exist in the late 1980s. That said, the category of restaurants that has gone underwater is the brasserie. I loved the brasseries when I first moved to Paris because they were so glamorous. They were never cheap and the food was never brilliant, but they were lively and fun, with French comfort food. Now the food is industrialized and there\u2019s very little conviviality. The happy story is the old-fashioned bistros which were disappearing aren\u2019t disappearing anymore. Not only are young chefs cooking excellent, contemporary bistro food, now a bunch of them have decided to start cooking traditional bistro food, so we\u2019re spoiled for choice in Paris.<\/p>\n

Have you got a favourite local bistro to recommend?<\/h4>\n

There\u2019s a new place that\u2019s open near me called Le Bon Georges<\/strong>, on the Rue Saint-Georges. It\u2019s run by an utterly charming man named Beno\u00eet and it\u2019s become a neighborhood institution in like 15 minutes. He\u2019s a consummate host, bilingual, passionate about wine and good food, and the food is delicious.<\/p>\n

These days, since the arrival of the internet and Trip Advisor and Yelp, etc, everyone\u2019s a critic. What place is there left for a professional food critic like yourself?<\/h4>\n

The thing a professional critic is actually there to do is to transcend personal taste and be able to say, \u201cI don\u2019t particularly like whatever this dish might be, but I see that it was made with great art and beautiful produce.\u201d Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but the way criticism is done on the internet is indignant, it\u2019s not informed, and it\u2019s completely subjective and sort of self entitled and I feel sorry for the chefs. When I write I\u2019m really humble and think really carefully about what I\u2019m going to say before I criticize someone who has been on their feet 16 hours a day. Whether you\u2019re a butcher or a baker or a chocolate-maker or pastry chef, this is hard work! The education is really hard, the daily life is really hard, you\u2019re putting in a massive amount of hours. So I\u2019m always respectful towards the people and places I write about or review.<\/p>\n

Will you always live in Paris?<\/h4>\n

My mother is always asking me if I will ever go back to live in the United States! And I don\u2019t rule it out. But I have such feelings of tenderness and belonging here in Paris and there is always that flutter when I come back into the city from the airport and I see the Eiffel Tower on the horizon or the Sacr\u00e9 C\u0153ur and I have the thought, \u201cI\u2019m home.\u201d<\/p>\n

New to Paris?<\/h2>\n

Here are Alec\u2019s tips for making the most of your dining experience.<\/h3>\n