Astair in Paris: A New Brasserie/Bistrot in an Atmospheric Old Setting

When the central Paris food market, Les Halles, was razed in 1971 and replaced by a grim shopping mall, it became that much harder to find places that evoke the everyday side of the city as it used to be. Curiously, some of the most evocative of those places are in fact shopping malls: the “passages” and “galeries” built for all-weather shopping, mostly in the nineteenth century. Those that escaped Baron Haussmann’s rethinking of the city’s plan and survived subsequent development schemes are a mixed bag of chic and slightly shabby: You find a jumble of businesses such as second-hand bookshops, stamp dealers, cafés and upmarket and downmarket clothes merchants. The passages themselves vary in impressiveness too: The aisles of, say, the Galerie Colbert and the nearby Galerie Vivienne are broad and ornate, while others remain pleasantly ramshackle.

The Gallerie des Panoramas on a cold, rainy night. Photograph by Edward Schneider

The oldest of the genre is the Passage des Panoramas, built in 1799 or 1800. Its long (133 meters / 435 feet) aisle and its few cross-passages are narrow and the night-time lighting low. It has charm - and, with a number of popular and well-regarded restaurants, it has become something of a gastronomic destination, as Paris resident Alexander Lobrano has written. Indeed, it was on Mr. Lobrano’s blog that I first read of Astair, a new modern brasserie (or is it a bistrot?) that proved to be just the ticket for the evening before the big-deal dinner of the trip (an exquisite meal at Eric Frechon’s three-Michelin-star Epicure in the hotel Le Bristol). Astair provided the easy-going contrast we needed, serving mostly classic brasserie/bistrot dishes with canny twists of innovation, careful cooking and high-quality ingredients in a comfortable, stylish but not especially luxurious environment.

(I take the terms "modern bistrot" and "modern brasserie" to mean restaurants whose menus have a solid basis in the cooking of old-fashioned bistrots and brasseries but which, first, dare to buck entrenched practice in small and less-small ways and, secondly, take greater care in their choice of ingredients and the way they are cooked. For it is a sad fact that it's pretty easy to eat tedious, disappointing food in an unreconstructed restaurant in Paris and elsewhere in France.)

The inviting façade of Astair. Photograph by Vincent Leroux

Astair was established in 2018 by three young and successful restaurateurs - Jean Valfort, Charles Drouhaut and Jean-François Monfort - with Gilles Goujon as consulting executive chef. Mr. Goujon is the chef-proprietor of the three-Michelin-star Auberge du Vieux Puits in southern France, and some dishes on the diverse and appealing menu are identified as his, though he is involved in all that emerges from the kitchen.

Astair. Photograph by Vincent Leroux

The night we were there, the clientele was diverse as well: A couple of grown-up couples like us; a young pair with a little baby (I love seeing kids exposed to dining out so long as they are reasonably well behaved, as this one was); a guy on his own eating a steak; a big table of, mostly, men in their twenties or thirties. We weren’t the only foreigners, but it was a mostly French crowd, which made us irrationally feel as though we were in on some sort of Parisians-only secret. There were comfortable red banquettes and a circular bar with red stools. There were big windows looking out into the Passage. There was music, but it wasn’t loud enough to annoy us. (Our annoyance threshold is pretty low, so it can’t have been too intrusive.)

Our plan had been to start with a dish of squid fritters, but appalling weather had affected seafood deliveries (not just at Astair), so there were none. It wasn’t hard to find alternatives, and we ordered two of the Gilles Goujon starters (not because of the “Gilles” label, but because they sounded so good): a “carpaccio” of calf’s head with a lightened, brightened sauce gribiche. The gelatinous calf’s head slices were well seasoned and, happily, were served just below room temperature, so they did not get rubbery with cold; coarsely chopped hazelnuts added toastiness and textural interest, something often lacking in dishes of this kind. An “oeuf parfait” was indeed perfectly cooked (at low temperature for a long time); the egg was set on a base of brioche and was surrounded by a true-flavored, slightly frothed mushroom soup/sauce strewn with wild mushrooms. This was all about the mutual support of the inherently complex flavor of mushrooms and the richness of soft-cooked egg - especially the yolk. Both were gently and successfully tweaked brasserie/bistrot standbys.

Oeuf parfait de poule fermière aux champignons des bois. Photograph by Edward Schneider

Grilled main courses at Astair include steaks - rib eye for two or strip loin for one, both from Galician cattle aged for six weeks (right on trend, but no less promising for that) - and charcoal grilled sole. Sauces for these, if you want one (for me, salt is the best sauce), are chosen separately. If I’d been eating a steak and had been forced at gunpoint to pick one, I’d have plumped for the confit shallot sauce.

The main dishes we ordered, however, required no extra sauces: Jackie had been tempted by seared calf’s liver with a vinegar-based pan sauce, but a greater temptation was boudin noir from the south-west French producer Christian Parra, beautifully served on just-right potato purée (very but not ludicrously buttery) and topped with picture-perfect lightly caramelized apple wedges. The casing-less (and hence easy to eat) mixture was uncommonly complex, with a well rounded spice blend setting off multiple organ meats, blood and not-too-finely chopped pork. If you needed to convince a timid dining companion to eat blood sausage, this might be just the version to help you make your case.

Boudin noir Christian Parra. Photograph by Edward Schneider

I ate fish. Or rather I ate glazed root vegetables (légumes de couleur as the menu had it), such as carrots and beets with perfectly sautéed monkfish cheeks. The fish was delicious - tender but with considerable structure - but I’d have been no less happy with just the glistening vegetables in their short, intense tarragon-scented sauce.

Sauté de joue de lotte aux légumes de couleur. Photograph by Edward Schneider

Our desserts were two that we cannot refrain from ordering: a rum baba with citrus; and floating island. The first did not please: the citrus-rum syrup was strangely bitter and strangely un-rummy. But the floating island ranked with the best: in addition to the usual drizzle of caramel, around the meringue “island” were little slabs of crunchy almond nougatine. A clever addition.

Île flottante et nougatine. Photograph Edward Schneider

The night was cold, and it was pouring rain. So imagine how nice it was to emerge from Astair not into the wet chill of the Boulevard Montmartre but into the atmospheric low light of the Passage des Panoramas and to stroll along, window-shopping and looking at other people finishing their dinners. The magic was short-lived: to get into the Metro there was no way to avoid the rain above and the puddles below. Such a pity, but that was not Astair’s fault.

Astair. 19 Passage des Panoramas, 75002 Paris; Metro Richelieu-Drouot or Grands Boulevards; +33 (0) 9 81 29 50 95; www.astair.paris. Open every day from mid-morning (for late breakfast) till after midnight (11:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday); our dinner for two with a bottle of nice wine cost €140 ($160) including tax and service but not optional tip. Lunch prix-fixe from €15 to €25.

Cooking Off the Cuff: What To Do With Leftover Leftover Shepherd’s Pie

Leftover leftover shepherd's pie makes terrific patties/rissoles. Photo by Edward Schneider

When Jackie or I order shepherd’s pie in a restaurant - as we occasionally do at London’s The Ivy - we get a nicely composed portion with neat tiers of well-sauced meat filling and potato topping, sometimes in an individual baking dish. When I make it at home for several people, it is baked in a large oven pan or gratin dish and scooped out onto each diner’s plate, making something of a mess. I don’t care much about the way it looks; what has long annoyed me is that once you broach the pie the under-layer - the meat, vegetables and sauce - oozes out from under the potatoes, undermining the whole construction. Eventually, especially after a second meal of leftovers, this leaves Jackie and me to face a collapsing stratum of mashed potatoes with a little bit of under-gravied filling clinging to its nether surface.

We would usually shove this into the refrigerator or freezer half-hoping that we’d forget about it. But the other day I made a nice shepherd’s pie using Felicity Cloake’s good recipe and another mushroom one for a non-meat-eating guest. We served and enjoyed them with our friends, and served and enjoyed them again the next day with a different friend, then finally were confronted with a tub of mashed potatoes enriched with chopped lamb, vegetables and mushrooms. Staring at this unpromising mass, I realized that if potato croquettes could be made from old mashed potatoes bound with eggs and cheese, then something even more flavorful could be made of this lamb-and-mushroom-enhanced mishmash.

Something like a patty or rissole that would make a fine dinner for two.

It was a cinch: Using one hand (the other I kept as clean as I could), I gently kneaded the leftovers (which measured about 2-1/2 cups - 600 ml - by volume) into an almost homogeneous mixture, leaving occasional pockets of potato and of pie filling. I incorporated a big egg (a double-yolker, as it happened) and a fistful of plain breadcrumbs from the freezer. Of this I made four patties almost an inch (2.5 cm) thick, which I refrigerated until it was time to cook them.

I suppose I could have simply fried them as they were, but as the remaining lamb and mushroom sauce heated through it would liquefy and I’d have had a hard time keeping the four patties from merging into one. So I breaded them using the same breadcrumbs I’d used as a binder (no egg wash was needed; they adhered to the patties perfectly well). This would not prevent the patties from getting very soft as they warmed, but it would provide a crisp surface I’d be able to slide my spatula under to turn the discs.

I pan fried them in a good 1/4 inch (7 mm) of neutral oil, starting with medium heat, and turning it down to medium-low immediately to slowly crisp the coating while warming the patties through. After about 6 minutes, I carefully turned them, fried for another 4 or 5 minutes, then turned them again for just another minute. I drained them on a rack then served them on warmed plates, to be adorned with a little sauce. Many sauces would do (ketchup, steak sauce / brown sauce, tonkatsu sauce), but we used our favorite Momofuku Ssäm sauce, which had the sweet-tart virtues of those other sauces plus sufficient chili to keep us on our toes.

This wasn’t merely better than hiding the leftovers in the freezer; it was a fine lightish dinner on its own terms, with just enough lamb and mushroom flavor to remind us where it had come from.

Restaurant Review: Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, London

Tom Kerridge is one of those chefs who are famous in their home countries but not well known beyond their borders. So the arrival of his first London restaurant made a fair splash in the UK but hasn’t generated much ado elsewhere, except among travelers who follow the British dining scene – and who may have seen Mr. Kerridge on television or traveled 35 miles west of London to one of his Michelin-starred pub-restaurants in the town of Marlow.

Photo by Cristian Barnett

His new restaurant could hardly be less like a pub: Kerridge’s Bar & Grill is in the splendid Corinthia Hotel, in a grand vaulted space the breadth of half a city block, adorned with columns and pilasters. Within this imposing hall, the décor by David Collins Studio contrives to be simultaneously spacious, clubby and cozy, with a good use of leather banquettes to mark off discrete areas in the dining room. A view into the busy kitchen (led by head chef Nick Beardshaw) with its impressive rotisserie, helps define the restaurant. The rotisserie in turn defines quite a lot of the food and yields meats including beef rib, saddle of lamb, stuffed quail and seasonal game.

Glazed lobster Thermidor omelette. Photo by Cristian Barnett

The food at our late-September dinner was mostly terrific. A first course of Glazed Omelette “Lobster Thermidor” caught our eye, and I’m glad it did: Composed in layers, it arrived in a little skillet. The foundation was soft, still slightly runny eggs, which were topped with tender, ocean-flavorful chunks of lobster meat and a lightly cheesed béchamel-cum-hollandaise sauce, all glazed and brown. The lobster was barely cooked: a daring way to present lobster outside of a sushi restaurant. I asked whether customers send it back as underdone, and the able, enthusiastic waiter said they occasionally do, which pains her – and the cooks who have worked hard to get the doneness just right. This dish was perfectly balanced and perfectly delicious. It was also perfectly rich, and we were right to order just one for sharing. (It would make a luxurious main course with a side of excellent french fries and rotisserie vegetables.)

Those vegetables are worth mentioning, in part because they are not actually vegetarian-friendly: They hang around under the roasting meats and grow intense and savory with their juices. Come to think of it, the fries are worth mentioning also: They’re big (so they retain an earthy potato flavor) and are almost uncannily crisp after multiple fryings.

We had them as part of an order of fish and chips, here made with a superior flatfish unavailable on the left side of the Atlantic: brill. Its meaty white flesh is perfect for batter-frying, though it’s too costly to be used in everyday neighborhood fish-and-chips shops (depending on the neighborhood, of course). In a stylish restaurant like Kerridge’s, though, it’s ideal. Along with the fries, the enduringly crisp battered fish comes with three sauces that are references to non-fancy fish and chips: tartare, natch, as well as a fluid version of pease pudding (made with dried peas) and a subtly zesty variant on the curry sauce that’s so popular with takeout fried fish.

Savory pies have always been part of British cooking but have sometimes been undervalued in the more ambitious sort of restaurant. This has changed: Pies are now a Thing, and the pig’s cheek pie by Mr. Kerridge and his chef de cuisine Nick Beardshaw is a beautiful object, if not a perfect one. It is a hefty spheroid whose core is long-cooked pork cheek encased in sausage meat, wrapped in Savoy cabbage leaves and finally enrobed in crisp golden-brown pastry with a whimsical lid that recalls a pig’s snout. There’s a drizzle of well-seasoned sauce and a little pot of creamed potatoes topped with crisp crumbs of black pudding (blood sausage). Despite its diverse strata, the pie grows monotonous half-way through; it comes across as unrelentingly uniform, and there’s a lot of it. More and brighter sauce might add a little needed sparkle, but some of that sparkle belongs in the filling itself. Now, half a pie wouldn’t be monotonous at all, so consider swapping plates with your dining partner at mid point – a companionable act in any case.

Tom Kerridge and head chef Nick Beardshaw. Photo by Cristian Barnett

When it’s time for dessert, though, you will not want to share your blackcurrant soufflé if it’s on the menu and you’ve been wise enough to order it. The fruit is of an intensity rarely encountered in a soufflé. The accompanying cream (made of blackcurrant leaves, an ingredient you don’t see every day) makes the dish smoother and creamier. The deep berry flavor is lifted by a fine lemon sherbet. A perfect dessert.

It’s a fact of life that the dishes that sing out from Mr. Kerridge’s menu are the richest ones. If you’re determined to eat less overwhelmingly, there are a few first courses from which you could compose a satisfying meal, such as salmon with apple pancake and caviar or perhaps coronation chicken terrine with mango and celery. But, no: I wouldn’t have wanted to forgo that lobster omelette – or indeed the first half of that pig’s cheek pie.

Kerridge’s Bar and Grill, 10 Northumberland Avenue (Corinthia Hotel), London WC2N 5AE; +44 (0) 20 7321 3244; https://www.kerridgesbarandgrill.co.uk/. Open for lunch and dinner every day; bar open all day from noon. Dinner for two, including a nice bottle of wine, about £220 ($280)