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French Restaurants in Chicago

2012-01-25T16:31:00.002-06:00

French Restaurants in Chicago: A 50 year Retrospective

Part 3. 1970-1979: The Fantastic Decade.

It was during that period that most of the greatest French restaurants ever in Chicago were launched. But only a few are still in operation in 2011.

Starting in the mid-70’s the new cooking concepts of ‘’Nouvelle Cuisine’’ became serious competitors to traditional “haute”, “bourgeoise” and bistro French cuisine in Chicago

When we arrived from Paris in January 1970, we had a few suitcases, a 6 month old child, no jobs, and only a temporary place to live in the house of my sister in law. And I did not speak more than 10 sentences of English. But after a couple of months I was lucky enough to find a good job in a large publishing and audio-visual production company on Michigan Avenue and we moved to a comfortable apartment in Evanston where we tried to organize our new American life on the model of what our life was in Paris. This is when, as a Frenchman married to an American woman who loved to eat and drink good stuff at home and in restaurants as much as I did, my problems to secure the same good products we were used to in France started. As far as food, wine, and small inexpensive bistros are concerned, I quickly discovered that Chicago in 1970 was not as resourceful as Paris.

Besides, with me working full-time and my wife taking care of a very young child, and our entertainment budget being very limited, we were not in a position to fully explore the restaurant scene in Chicago.

I was also progressively discovering the American way of eating lunch downtown, meaning lots of sandwiches, burgers, fries, pizza, hot dogs and bratwursts, fried chicken, chili con carne… the whole thing. And beer was the drink of choice for lunch. No wine.

Moreover for dinner my wife started to cook more often typical American recipes provided by her mother, sisters, and friends.

But after one year of this regimen I started to cry for more interesting lunches and dinners. So with a French-speaking Swiss colleague of mine and later some other French-speaking friends and colleagues we started to explore the world of small ethnic bistros, mainly Greek, German, Italian, Yugoslav, Chinese and Thai. First it was within walking distance from Michigan and the river where my office was located. Then when I learned from word of mouth or by reading the newspapers of new interesting places I would venture to other neighborhoods by way of public transportation.

At that time, I did not realize that several French bistros and restaurants existed in Chicago. There were very few reviews in the local press that I read (mostly the Chicago Daily News) and most of my American friends and acquaintances were more into steaks or ethnic food. The few French friends I had lived in Evanston and did not go to French restaurants in Chicago. Besides my wife started to cook French dishes at home, especially when Julia Child’s became one of her favorite TV shows. So I ignored the existence of most French restaurants such as La Cheminée, L’Auberge, Le Bordeaux, L’Escargot, or Le Bastille. Fancy places like Maxim’s or Jovan that I did not know anything about would have been out my reach anyway from a purely budget standpoint.

Everything changed when in early 1975 when I was hired by the Midwest regional office of the French Trade Commission, a branch of the French Embassy. Suddenly I was in a completely French environment, surrounded by French colleagues and American business contacts who liked to eat French food. So I started to patronize French restaurants very frequently, especially since we had to take visiting business executives, or were invited by them, to lunch or dinner quite often.

Also in 1973 I discovered the resourceful Chicago Guide Book edited by Allen Kelson and its very good extensive listing of very diverse restaurants in all kinds of neighborhoods. This guide which was first published in 1972, revised in 1973 then again in 1983, was going to expand my gastronomic hunting territory considerably over the next 10 years.

Last but not least, within the framework of my new job I had the opportunity to establish good connections with a large number of chefs, restaurateurs, and hotels managers during functions, receptions, luncheon-seminars, or when I had to plan and organize parties or receptions during trade shows for visiting French exhibitors and officials. I continued to have this kind of contacts when I managed my own small consulting company between 1993 and 2008 that assisted French businesses and trade organizations.

During the whole 70’s decade I often traveled back to France, either on frequent business trips or for vacations, and it allowed me to dine in a very large number of restaurants both in Paris and in major French cities, and to observe the evolution of French cuisine from traditional to ‘’Nouvelle’’. And it was fascinating to be able to compare that movement over there with the slower but quite evident same pattern of changes, starting in the mid-seventies, back here on the Chicago dining scene.

“Nouvelle Cuisine” was an expression defining a new culinary movement that was invented around 1973 by Henri Gault and Christian Millau, two prominent food and restaurant writers and critics who created the famous Gault et Millau Restaurant Guide in 1975. But long before that time, in 1962, they were already the co-authors of the Guide Julliard De Paris, who helped me a lot to get familiarized with the food shops and restaurants of the French capital when I moved there in 1963.

It is difficult to decide who really started that new cooking approach in French restaurants called “gastronomiques”. Many professional critics and chefs would say that its real precursor was Fernand Point at his La Pyramide restaurant in Vienne.

But some of the well-recognized early representatives of this movement were Paul Bocuse in Collonges au Mont d’Or, Les Frères Troisgros in Roanne, Alain Senderens in Paris, Alain Chapel in Mionnay, Roger Vergé in Mougins, and Michel Guérard in Eugénie Les Bains.

The bases of this mini-revolution were:

No more sauces, meats, old-fashioned dishes, cooked for hours and reheated before serving.

Priority to seasonal and if possible regional vegetables, fruits, herbs, fish, poultry and meat chosen by the chef himself.

All dishes should be minimally cooked.

No more use of flour as binder in sauces that should be light and based on broth, natural jus, and spices. Smaller portions.

Artistic presentation on the plate. Fewer garnishes.

Cooking techniques more often involve steaming (sometimes in ‘’papillote’’), light poaching, double-boiling, grilling, short roasting, than stewing or slow braising. Generally speaking cooking times are greatly reduced.

Different cooking utensils are commonly used such as steamers, non-stick pans and pots, plastic poaches, freezers, mixers and robots, micro-wave and later vacuum cookers and ovens.

It took a few years, towards the end of the 70’s, for these new trends to become more popular in Chicago restaurants kitchens.

Nowadays, many American chefs who have been trained either in France, or by French chefs here in Chicago are commonly using techniques often indirectly inherited from the Nouvelle Cuisine.

Chronology of some of the most noticeable French restaurants of the 70’s in Chicago

For this period, contrary to what I did in the precedent chapter, I will consider as French any restaurant serving real French food and preferably employing some French people in the kitchen and (or) the dining-room. But these restaurants were not necessarily owned by a French person.

Such places will be mentioned in Notes and the name of the restaurant will be in italics and underlined.

1970:

THE NINETY- FIFTH

Curiously the first French restaurant to be opened at the beginning of this new decade during the summer of 1970 was not owned by French people but by the Philadelphia-based company Davre, the restaurant subsidiary of the Automatic Retail Association.

The 95^th owed its name to the fact that it was located on the 95^th floor of the John Hancock center, a skyscraper that had just been completed in early 1970 at 975 N. Michigan Avenue. But to access the restaurant you had to take a superfast (a 39 second ride) dedicated elevator that was located at a special entrance of the building on Chestnut. On sunny days, the view from tables located near the windows was spectacular. I remember that once I had lunch at one of these tables on a very snowy day and all you can see down below was a sea of clouds. But the vast and beautifully appointed dining room was bathed in sunlight.

The first 3 years this restaurant was un-mistakenly French with a very good rather classic French menu, a kitchen where the head chef, and most sous-chefs were French, and the management and service in the dining-room were French. The number of staff members was over 100. It was a really big operation.

The first chef Michel Grobon was young and gifted, was trained in such famous Paris restaurants as La Tour d’Argent, Lasserre, and Maxim’s, and had already worked at Chicago’s Maxim’s.

In the early 1970’s you could have a complete à la carte dinner for $ 15 to $18 per person without wine and tip. For that time it was quite expensive. But the quality of food and service was generally very good.

Grobon was replaced in 71 by equally talented Pierre Orsi who stayed there until 1974 when he went back to Lyon, France to take over the kitchen at his family`s eponymous restaurant.

He was replaced by a tall Belgian chef, Willy Maes, who was coming from the Hotel Bonaventure in Montreal.

Also at that time the banquet manager was Louis Retailleau who eventually would have his own successful French restaurant, Louis’ Bon Appétit, in Crown Point Indiana between 1976 and 2003.

The first General Manager was Louis Laulhère assisted by Room Manager Pierre Schmied, a French-speaking affable Swiss who was already well known in Chicago, and some of the Maître D’s such as Jean-Claude Berger (Les Champs-Elysées, La Grenouille) were also veterans of the Chicago restaurant scene.

I will keep fond memories of their very tasty ’’duck terrines’’ and ‘’ saumon à l’oseille’’.

I also loved their fruit ‘’tartes’’.

There wine list was very extensive and included some quite good Bourgognes.

A funny little-known fact: The wine cellar was kept at ground level so that wines would not be affected by the wind-caused swaying movements that you could actually feel sometimes in this higher part of the building.

Unfortunately, the quality of the food and the service decreased considerably in the late 70’s. At that time I would not consider the 95^th as a French restaurant anymore.

LA CHAMPAGNE

Opened in October at 3172 N. Sheridan in what was at the time called the Belmont Hotel, this relatively large and well-appointed restaurant was launched by Georges “Kiki” Cuisance from Le Bordeaux and 3 other partners including the chef Michel Laurent.

Once again it was a perfect mix of traditional French fare such as brains in black butter, veal kidneys, rack of lamb with tomates provençales and pommes dauphine, or coq au vin, and dishes made to please a more American client base. I am thinking about trout in a champagne and cream sauce, minestrone, cheese cake or the fact that a salad with Roquefort dressing would be served before the main course. And most entrees came with soup and salad.

Both décor and service were more comfortable and elaborate than at Le Bordeaux, but the prices remained modest. You could have a complete lunch including a small carafe of house wine for $ 8.50 or $ 9.00. Unfortunately, La Champagne never found a solid base of regular customers to sustain financial stability and closed after one year.

LE BISTRO

In November, 7 years after she opened Maxim’s Nancy Goldberg decided to launch this much more modest French restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Gus, an Italian restaurant at 420 N. Dearborn. Managed by André Portal, a French alumnus from Maxim`s, it was a typical French bistro, at the same time spacious and intimate, relaxed but sophisticated, traditional and very contemporary in its décor and very eclectic furniture. The fare was typical for this kind of eatery: Quiche Loraine, Cassoulet, Rognons (kidneys), filet of sole, Coq au vin, Daube (Provencal beef stew), Steak au poivre, and crème caramel. . You could also enjoy freshly opened oysters and have a sandwich in the bar. A dinner would cost you about 10 dollars including a glass of wine.

I do not know when this restaurant closed and who was its chef, but I believe he was French.

LE BASTILLE

Also opened in November at 21 W. Superior was Le Bastille, a delightful bistro that at the beginning was partially owned by Raymond Soubrier who had been very successful at La Chaumière until it closed, and René Martin, who had been involved in various French restaurants in Chicago. This charming restaurant was comprised of 2 separate, attractive in their simple and almost rustic elegance, dining rooms, the first one with a very welcoming bar. The Prix-fixe dinners at under 10 dollars were quite popular in 1972.The place became even more popular and attractive when George Badonsky (Tango, The Brewery, George) bought it in the mid-seventies. It was always packed with regulars, including many French locals, as well as out- of- town visitors. On Bastille Day Badonsky would organize very lively parties on a lot in front of the restaurant that lasted until the closing of the restaurant in the mid-eighties. I will never forget the fantastic French fries served in paper cones, and the simple but well-sauced standard bistro dishes such as duck terrine, steak au poivre, rabbit stew, frog legs Provençale, or coq au vin. The Beaujolais and young Bourgognes were always coming from good producers and decently priced. I remember that around 1976 we were able to have great lunches with some house wine for

$ 15.00 or $16.00

Service by either young and enthusiasts American, or older professional French waiters, was almost always very pleasant, especially when they knew you. I remember that François would bring me my Morgon at the right temperature, slightly chilled, without my even having to ask. But many occasional patrons complained of slow and indifferent service.

The problem with that restaurant was that it was plagued by a major flaw: Inconsistency. One day the meal could be spectacular. One month later, perhaps because of a change in the cooking line in the kitchen, the whole experience could be borderline disastrous. It happened to me a couple of times in the late seventies or early eighties.

But nevertheless I will never forget how eating at Le Bastille most of the time was really a comforting and relaxing event that allowed you to leave the place in a very optimist mood after a good lunch or dinner.

I also would like to mention that in November of the same year THE FLYING FRENCHMAN at 25 East Chestnut, which since its opening in 1969 by Bill Contos, had been better-known for its crepes, quiches, and sandwiches, became a full-fledge, and quite good, French restaurant under the astute management of Jean-Paul Weber, in 1970 when a young and talented French chef named Jean Banchet took over, for a few months, the control of the kitchen.

I also want to say that the French Inn in the Country Club Hotel on South Shore Drive (and 70^th St.) was for a while a popular French restaurant that was employing several French nationals both in the kitchen and the dining room.

1971

Le PAPILLON

Opened at 5978 N. Lincoln Avenue by a French couple, Raymond Maistri a chef from Nice and his wife Régine, this small unpretentious bistro was nevertheless the first authentic French restaurant to take the risk of offering real French dishes in a simple décor so far north from the Loop and the Gold Coast. In those days the area around Lincoln and Peterson was a culinary desert. It worked and the place became rapidly well-known for its omelets for lunch, and its relatively sophisticated dishes on the dinner menu, such as Veal Cordon Bleu or Veal Provençale, filets of Sole Mornay, great soups and fresh vegetables, and a rich dark chocolate mousse.

Régine Maistri had also a serious fan club for her cheese cake.

It was also nice to be able to order very decent French wines in small carafes.

In 1972 you could have a complete dinner there for less than 10 dollars.

The Maistri sold the place to another French couple in 1978, but its business slowly declined and the place closed in the late seventies.

I do not think that I could name another French establishment born that same year. But I would like to mention Le Gourmet a French carry-out and catering operation started in the early part of summer that year in Glencoe by Jacques Grelley and Edmond Peyre that was designed to provide good take-out dinners to Ravinia concert goers. They already had a gourmet shop with the same name at 659 N. State Street.

1972

LA CREPERIE

Crepes in France are often associated with the region of Brittany. No wonder then that a young man from that area, a “Breton”, named Germain Roignant, along with his Joliet-born wife Sara whom she met in Germany where he was waiting on tables, opened that intimate storefront bistro at 2845 N. Clark on June first. The big specialty of course were crepes, thin and very well made both in traditional sweet wheat version with fruit, or preserves, chocolate, or flavored with Grand Marnier, and topped with whipped cream, and in savory buckwheat mode with filling of ham, cheese, spinach, and seafood or chicken. The place which was very cozy and rustic, with a few antiques and posters on the wall became rapidly popular and attracted a crowd of young people who enjoyed the romantic feeling on dates, and regular patrons who loved the very attractive prices. In the early seventies you could have a complete dinner there for 8 dollars, or eat a couple of delicious crepes for 2 dollars. Years later the place offered more complex traditional Bistro dishes such as Coq au Vin, or Boeuf Bourguignon, but remained BYOB. Nowadays this bistro has expanded a bit, but is still very popular at the same address. It serves a full bistro menu with very moderate prices and has a nice wine list with inexpensive well-chosen French wines.

LE TITI DE PARIS

Also in June Christian Zeiger, a former Maitre D’ at Chez Paul, and his wife Agnès opened this small but really charming and nicely decorated restaurant at the improbable address of 2275 Rand Road in Palatine, many in the trade had doubts about its success. They were wrong. Zeiger was a great professional and a very friendly host and manager. This place became one of the most durable and successful French restaurant in the whole Chicago area. His first chef, Jean-Pierre Pellet was very good but his cooking was quite traditional. With the arrival in 1974 of Pierre Pollin, a very gifted and creative chef native of Normandy, who had a fantastic “tour de main” with sole and other types of seafood including scallops and lobster, the restaurant that was open for lunch and dinner, acquired rapidly a national reputation. Pollin who did stints in some of the best kitchens of Europe, including Lucas-Carton in Paris, had a very classical training and a great respect for the quality and integrity of good products. He also used cream, mushrooms and Calvados in a very inspired and delicate way. And he had a knack to create inventive and delicately spiced sauces and use lesser known small vegetables as garnishes. In fact he trained himself many young apprentices who are in 2011 well-recognized on the Chicago Restaurant scene, such as Bill Kim.

Dominique Lejeai, who eventually launched D&J Bistro and Retro Bistro was a waiter and a Maitre D’ there for a while in the mid-seventies. If I remember correctly he was wearing a very colorful plaid vest over his white shirt.

In 1978 Pierre Pollin and his wife bought Le Titi from Christian Zeiger, and in 1987 purchased, and moved to, a larger and fancier place in Arlington Heights with the help then of another French chef, Jean-Marc Loustaunau, where it is still successful in 2011 under Michael Maddox, his chef de cuisine for many years, who bought the restaurant in 2004 upon Pollin’s retirement.

I have very good memories of lunches in Palatine, and later on even better ones from dinners in Arlington Heights, especially of marvelous duck and lamb dishes.

It is interesting to note that a couple of months before Zeiger opened the first Titi on Rand Road in Palatine, Pierre Dousson, who was before the chef and co-owner of The Champs-Elysées, also opened LE GOURMET on Rand Road in Arlington Heights. I have no information about what happened with this restaurant. But I think it had no connections with the GOURMET carry-out operation in Glencoe mentioned above.

LA GARE SAINT LAZARE

Many Chicagoans, like me, are still having moments of warm nostalgia when they remember that rustic and slightly “bohemian” bistro, especially after it was acquired by the very competent and pleasant chef Francis Leroux in early 1975. But it was initially opened at 858 W. Armitage by David Gevercer and in those days, that section of Armitage, West of Halsted, was not the fancy shopping hotspot it became in the late 80’s. In fact it was a relatively poorly maintained, under developed and certainly not gentrified, neighborhood. Very few restaurants dared to open in this gastronomic desert at that time.

I discovered it in 1975 when Leroux took over the place after having cooked there for quite a while and I was seduced by the simplicity and refreshing lack of pretension of some of the French comfort food served there at very reasonable prices, such as very flavorful pâtés, great fluffy omelets, poulet aux fines herbes, rabbit, or boudin au pommes.

Leroux could also be quite creative with fresh fish preparations that were often the ‘’Plat du Jour’’. The ambiance was very relaxed with candles and fireplace; the French wines were simple and cheap.

And you could finish your meal with very good crepes.

Unfortunately the restaurant was destroyed by fire in November of 1987. Leroux did not try to rebuild it and instead opened CAFÉ DU MIDI on Damen in 1989. (See later).

In October 1980 he had also opened a slightly funky bistro called CHEZ CHOSE on Diversey Pkwy.

LE PERROQUET

So many articles have been published about this quasi mythical restaurant and his no less iconic owner-manager, Jovan Trboyevic, since it opened its doors in November of 1972 at 70 East Walton St. that what I am about to write on this place and its creator and soul will probably sound redundant.

To learn a little more about his life go back to what I wrote about him in my piece on JOVAN in the precedent piece on the sixties on that same blog.

Anyway, no other French restaurant in the U.S. has ever left such an unforgettable imprint in my memory. And when Jovan passed away in January 2010, here is what I wrote about him in the LTH forum:

“I'm sad that we have lost such a great man and at the same time a bit disappointed that so many stories written in both the press and on the web have been focusing too much on his rare expressions of reject towards some customers who had not the faintest clue about what the standards of this very stylish, and perfectionist, restaurateur were all about.

He was neither arrogant, snobbish, or haughty, but simply in a permanent search of precision, innovation, and perfection. To summarize he hated anything mediocre, vulgar, or phony, both in his personal and professional life…./…. In fact I would say that Jovan was the first restaurateur to bring and even improve the ways of cooking and presenting food of La Nouvelle Cuisine in France to Chicago. In some ways he played as important a role in renovating French cuisine in the Midwest as Henri Soulé did in New York in the late 40's. James Villas mentioned that comparison in a very vibrant tribute to Jovan in his book Villas At Table.

It is true that Jovan was very attached to certain European traditions, both having an important impact on the behavior of people working in the kitchen and in the dining room, as well as of the customers. He was very demanding as far as respecting them was concerned. After all, even though he loved this country, he remained all his life a European himself, who had an incredible rich portfolio of personal contacts with so many important and "real" celebrities of the high society in most European capitals. He also had been trained in one the best Cooking and Hotel Management schools of Europe in Lausanne, Switzerland, and worked in some very classy establishments.

No wonder that the idea of running a mediocre place for the average Joe, just to make a few bucks, was not exactly his American dream.

And it is true that, for the same reason that he was always very demanding of himself, he was expecting a lot from his staff, to the point of being sometimes considered by them as being a tough boss. But he was in fact at the same time a very tolerant and generous human being. And many cooks, some of them quite famous in this town, and waiters who worked in one of his restaurants could testify that they learned a lot from him at Le Perroquet.

I remember the pleasure I had, in the mid- seventies, when I was sitting at a table on the South side of the room at Le Perroquet, and therefore facing the entrance of the restaurant where he stood and managed everything from there, to observe his very minimal facial expressions and gestures to direct a busboy, waiter, or Jean-Pierre Nespoux the Maitre D’ and his brother Gérard a very competent sommelier, to a table where he had noticed that a customer looked either perplexed, or missing something. He reminded me of Pierre Boulez directing a French piece.

And his most gracious way to welcome you was unique.

What a marvelous memory I will keep of that extraordinary man who led an extraordinary life.”

Everybody will remember forever the rituals observed in this temple of gastronomy and elegance: The slow ascension to the third floor restaurant via a tiny elevator, after being checked in the lobby by some man, who could have been an off duty policeman. The bottle of mineral water from Mountain Valley that was on every table and was poured in your glass as soon as you were seated.

I felt very at ease in the incredibly peaceful environment of the dining room, and the restrained elegance of the settings and décor created by Jovan’s wife, Maggie Abbott. It included of course many parrot-themed pictures, murals, vases, lamps and other artifacts. They contributed to make you feel every time as if you were a special guest invited to participate to a world of distinction and pleasure. Everything was at the right place on the table, and the routine of the presentation of the dishes, as well as the pouring of wine was perfectly orchestrated.

Between my first meal there in 1975 and my last lunch in May of 1984 when Jovan sold the place to Jean-Pierre Nespoux, I never noticed a single service error. In 1974 you could have a complete prix fixe dinner there for $ 17.50 which could include one of their famous mousses, especially the salmon one, Poulet au Vinaigre or rack of lamb, and of course the marvelous soufflé au chocolat or au Grand Marnier. I have marvelous memories of great terrines of duck with pistachios, the caneton in a sauce poivre, the unique grilled Blue fish that I have never seen before in any other restaurant outside of Boston, the Quenelles de Brochet Nantua. Once I was served the very tasty Truffe en Feuilleté that I am not ready to forget. And of course all vegetables were treated with lots of respect. The sauces were very light and delicate but their aromatic personality was powerful.

In fact it is at Le Perroquet that Chicagoans experienced in the early seventies the best new approaches that the French Nouvelle Cuisine had to offer: lighter sauces, vegetables freshly picked at the market cooked just enough, first quality seasonal fish and meats that were not overcooked or killed by an excessive amount of starchy sauces, clean and pretty presentation on the plate.

Jovan Trboyevic loved to remind his good customers of his commitment to the principle that “less is more”.

But sometimes we could not resist having more and more of the good stuff at this place.

I had an incredible experience there once when we went there for a long and beautiful lunch with some French visitors, and they enjoyed the experience so much, with the help of a few bottles of Pape Clément, an excellent Graves, that they decided that we should stay for an early dinner. And that is exactly what we did.

When Jovan Trboyevic was still the owner the Perroquet, a very large number of cooks and chefs worked in its kitchen either officiating at the piano or working at the prep counters. Among them Gabino Sotelino who was the executive chef there for 3 and ½ years , Michael Foley, Michel Beck, Alain Sailhac, Pierre Poubelle, Carrie Nahabedian, Elaine Sikorski, Hans RockenWagner, Mary Sue Milliken, Frank Lee, and many others.

The restaurant closed its doors in January 1991; 6 years after Jovan sold it to the Nespoux.

It was reopened in 1992 by Michael Foley, who had been very successful for many years at Printers Row and had worked previously at the Perroquet. The menu was still attractive and less expensive and a good chef, Didier Durand (formerly chef at La Bohème), was in charge of the kitchen. I had some very good meals there during that period, and the place was still quite elegant and refined.

But the spirit had sort of been different since Jovan had left, and the old customers had found new avenues serving more adventurous styles of fine cuisine in Chicago. Le Perroquet closed its doors forever in 1994.

1973

LA FONTAINE

This elegant but unpretentious multi-room restaurant was opened in January in a very nice looking 3 story brownstone building at 2442 N. Clark St. by a very dynamic trio of French men. The leader of the group was Jean-Claude Poilevey, who was one of the 6 French “cuisiniers” recruited in France to work in the kitchen of the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva. He had a solid experience of traditional French “Lyonnais” cooking style and had been an apprentice at the legendary Greuze restaurant in Tournus. His 2 partners were the chef, Daniel Gautier, and Eric Krohmer. I will never forget Eric and his impressive mustache who always greeted you with a sort of mischievous smile. But it was obviously Jean-Claude Poilevey. who was in charge of operations.

In the very beginning the restaurant was only opened for dinner. But starting in 1975 I remember many delicious business lunches that we had there, at our favorite table near a window on the lower floor. I have great memories of their savory mousses, rack of lamb, salmon in champagne cream sauce with mushrooms, delicious steak with a great shallot reduced sauce, sauté de veau à la Normande, and an extra light trout soufflé.

I remembered that the presentation of the main dishes was also quite sophisticated, like a very fragrant kind of Boeuf Bourguignon that was served in a copper sauce pot.

I do not have any memory of what the desserts tasted like but I remember that once one my regular dining partners raved about a very good strawberry cake.

The wine list was rich in good Burgundies and Beaujolais, where Jean-Claude knew many producers personally.

The prices were not cheap but considering the quality of both the cooking and the service, they were totally justified. For a long time they also had very attractive prix-fixe menus for around 13 dollars...

It was certainly one of the best French restaurants of that decade.

Everybody loved the elegant but somewhat fancy-rustic décor, with its brick walls and fireplaces and its tiny fountain, which reminded me of a chic modern provincial French restaurant.

Jean-Claude, who was an active member of the new Vatel Club of the Midwest, an association of French chefs, since it was launched in 1986, bought the shares of his 2 partners in 88 and went solo, as chef-owner from 1989 to 1993 with JEAN-CLAUDE after extensive renovations at the same location. At one point he also tried in the same building a simpler bistro formula that was called CAFÉ DU PARC.

LA FONTAINE was sold in 1993 and a little bit later Poilevey opened a very good bistro, LE BOUCHON on Damen. A few years later he opened another one, LA SARDINE, on Carpenter.

Both are still very successful nowadays. We will talk about them in the 90`s chapter.

LE FRANCAIS

When Jean Banchet and Henri Coudrier, two authentic French chefs with already solid professional references in their resume, along with their respective wives Doris and Danielle, opened this marvelous place in March in an old German tavern at 269 South Milwaukee avenue in Wheeling, a few miles North of O’Hare airport, they probably had no idea that this place would rapidly become a Mecca for gastronomes from all over the United States. Nobody could have guessed that so many diners would drive so far away from the city to eat. It was very unusual in the early seventies to open such an opulent gastronomic restaurant in a distant and not really fancy suburb. In fact, 3 years later, rich Texans would fly there for dinner, landing their private jets at the nearby Palwaukee airport. Probably no French haute cuisine restaurant in the U.S, outside of New York City, since the days of Le Pavillon, La Côte Basque, Lutèce or La Grenouille, had reached such a national and even, later on, international notoriety so rapidly. Except of course Le Perroquet mentioned earlier, but at a very different level.

At his zenith, in the early 80’s Le Français would be named ‘’Best restaurant in America’’ by Bon Appétit, and get 5 stars from the Mobil Guide.

Henri Coudrier who was a chef at Chez Paul in Chicago before joining Banchet unfortunately was forced to give up his partnership there after a few months due to illness.

Jean Banchet was not exactly a newcomer tom Chicago. In 1968 Arnie Morton had recruited him, along with some other chefs and cooks from France, to work in the kitchen of the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He would work there for 16 months and become the executive chef. But he decided that this kind of mass-production type of cooking was not what he liked to do and was too far away from the traditional French haute cuisine that he had been trained to do. So he moved to Chicago and for a while worked in restaurants such as the Gaslight Club, Les Champs-Elysées, and the Flying Frenchman. Later he opened Le Français, perhaps according to a French newspaper article with some financial help from his friend Pierre Orsi, an also well-known French chef from Lyon who had worked in Chicago for a while.

Born in 1941 in Roanne, a city proud of being home to Troisgros, one of the most famous restaurants in Europe for many years, Banchet started its apprenticeship at age 13, not with the famous brothers that he knew personally but they did not have a job for him at the time, but at the more modest Terminus.

I believe that he also had a brief stint at Troisgros. Then in 1955 he got the chance of his life: to continue his training at the famous La Pyramide, the restaurant of the legendary Fernand Point who had just died. His stint there marked his destiny as a great chef. He also developed a strong friendship with Paul Bocuse, another great chef from the Lyon area, who played a major role in the evolution of the new French cuisine, and with whom he learned a few techniques.

Bocuse never failed, when he came to the U.S to spend some time with Jean Banchet and dine at Le Français that he listed as one of the 3 best restaurants in the U.S. the 2 others being Le Perroquet where Bocuse would also have meals while here, and Lutèce in New York.

In fact when Banchet celebrated his 50^th birthday in 1991 in Chicago, Paul Bocuse, Pierre Orsi, and André Soltner came along for a series of glorious breakfast, lunch, and dinner, prepared by Roland Liccioni and Fernand Gutierez (Ritz Carlton).

He then worked at the Eden Roc and at the Hotel De Paris in Monte Carlo, and later was lucky to do his military service in Algeria for 28 months, not fighting, but cooking for a general. Next stage was opening a new restaurant in a big casino in London, The Sporting Club. He met his German wife Doris in London. So when this already quite experienced chef became executive chef at the Playboy Club, he was only 27 year old but had a cooking experience that many old pros could have envied.

It is strange but I never had an opportunity to eat at Le Français when Jean Banchet, whom I have met many times since the mid-Seventies, was there. I had to wait until 1992 or 93 when the restaurant was leased to another great French chef, Roland Liccioni, and his then wife Mary Beth. I had two great dinners there but Liccioni’s style, all in finesse and discrete creativity, was very different from Banchet’s almost flamboyant mastering of spectacular eating events. I am saying that based on the descriptions that many friends and colleagues who ate many times at Le Français in the seventies gave me of their experiences there. And of course from what I read in the press, the place was richly decorated and settings were extra-comfortable.

As I said earlier success came very rapidly. But in 1975 the restaurant burned and while Banchet was waiting for the place to get rebuilt, which took a whole year, he accepted some consulting assignments with Arnie Morton and the newly opened Ritz Carlton.

In1989 he needed a change and after leasing Le Français to the Liccionis in August , he went down to Atlanta and opened Ciboulette in 1992 and La Riviera 4 years later.

But eventually, when the lease was over, Banchet came back to Wheeling in 1999 and after renovating and modernizing the kitchen and the dining room reclaimed his job as owner-chef of Le Français, with the help of David Sanders. He remained at his post until his retirement in 2001, when he sold the place to restaurateur Phil Mott (North Pond café) and Chef Don Yamauchi (Gordon). The restaurant, for a while got good reviews for its more contemporary type of cuisine. Then it suffered from bad post 9-11economic times and closed in June 2003. It was purchased and reopened in November 2003 by a former regular customer, Michael Moran, who had a trucking company.

He called first Michael Lachowicz, and later Roland Liccioni back to manage the kitchen and try to boost a failing customer base. It worked well for a while and the ratings and reviews for the restaurant were getting back to a high level. But eventually Moran found out that he was losing money in this venture and closed the place without warning in late May of 2007.

What will remain in culinary history books is that Jean Banchet’s Le Français was arguably one of the most impressive French restaurants ever to gain so many raves from both critics and diners outside of New York. Jean Banchet was an incredibly gifted, inspired, and demanding professional chef de cuisine who was lucky to have the perfect partner to manage the front of the house: his wife Doris.

I heard so many stories from regular customers, as well as from other French chefs and waiters who either worked under him or had him as a friend, and I read so many articles about his creativity, his way of managing a brigade and of taking care of his favorite clients, that sometimes I wonder what part of all this is authentic and what part is mythical.

It does not matter. All I know is that this perfectionist workhorse always had one obsession: To get the best products anywhere he could source them, and to create gastronomic fireworks out of them that no one could forget.

During his first 10 years in Wheeling, he very often complained about the difficulty to find many typically French ingredients in the U.S marketplace, such as the fresh extra-small haricot vert, the real raw truffle or cèpe, good-textured Bresse-style poultry, good quality fresh goose liver, the perfect sea urchin, mussel or snail, French nutty butter, the right herb or spice that he needed for a specific preparation. Finding locally-produced sophisticated high quality meat, seafood, dairy products and vegetables was obviously an often frustrating task and that was the main thing that he regretted from his cooking days in France. Since he traveled often back to France he managed many times to bring back some of these special components, either in his suitcase, or hidden somewhere, or through other channels, not necessarily approved by U.S authorities.

When he opened the restaurant his cooking was rather classic, and the prices, though not cheap, were relatively reasonable considering the quality that he offered.

Similar dishes to those offered on his 1973 menu could have been found in any good restaurant of ‘’cuisine bourgeoise’’ in Lyon:

Bisque de Homard $ 1.95

Les Terrines et Pâtés $ 3.50

Escalope de truite à l’oseille $ 8.75

Quenelles de homards Nantua $ 8.50

Côtes d’agneau Vert-Pré $ 11.00

Chateaubriand Bouquetière $ 23.00

Caneton Bigarade $ 8.50

Soufflé Glaçé aux fraises $ 3.00

And of course you could ask for a plateau de fromages de France

It is after the fire that damaged the restaurant in 1975, once it was re-opened in more opulent settings, that Banchet jumped forward to a much more elaborate and creative cuisine, and to a more theatrical and luxurious way to present the food and to seduce the customers. Every dish and specials of the day were presented in beautiful porcelain plates or mini copper pots on a serving cart rolled to your table, and each preparation was explained by the waiters. The elaborate decoration on each large plate was in itself a work of art with its ribbons of sauces, reductions, jus, aspics, truffle shavings, etc.

The sommelier would help you to choose wines from what was perhaps, at the end of the seventies, one of the most expansive wine cellar in a U.S. restaurant. I was told that at one point in the early 80`s the content of that cellar was worth perhaps close to $ 800,000.00.

Many of the ‘’signature dishes’’ of the great period from the late 70’s to the mid 80’s, are still capable to bring tears of nostalgia and gratitude to the eyes of old customers who were regulars there at the time:

Double duck consommé Bocuse, Saucisse de Lyon en croûte aux pistaches, Mussel soup with saffran, Quenelles, Mousses of salmon, frog legs, lobster, or Saint-Jacques, Poularde de Bresse with quenelles in shrimp sauce, Foie gras d’oie, Lamb Wellington, Lobster raviolis with truffles, Rabbbit saddle, Sweetbreads Fernand Point, Endive and watercress salad with bacon, Ice cream Soufflé au grand Marnier. And all those incredibly rich and complex sauces: Champagne, Périgourdine, with tarragon.

But in 1999, when a much thinner Banchet came back to Le Français, his style had evolved a lot. Its cooking had become much lighter, but it was still as creative and perfect as ever.

Unfortunately some of the old customers did not like that new style it as much. A page had been turned.

It is very unlikely that such a grand symbol of “haute cuisine francaise” will ever be recreated in Chicago. So let’s keep Le Français`s memory alive for future generations of gastronomes.

CAFÉ BERNARD

When my wife and I discovered this marvelous cozy restaurant in 1974 at 2100 N. Halsted St. we were so happy to have found a place that reminded us of the small bistros we frequented in our Paris neighborhood of Saint- Germain Des Prés until our departure for Chicago in January of 1970. Everything we loved in this kind of eating establishments was there. The big bar counter with high stools, the small wooden tables and banquettes with their red and white checked ``toiles cirées``(oil-cloth table covers), the individual lights with their funnel-shaped shades hanging low above your table from the high ceiling creating an intimate and quasi romantic atmosphere, the daily menu chalk- handwritten on a big black board. And as we soon discovered the very warm welcome extended to regular patrons by the very ‘’sympathique’’ chef-owner Bernard LeCoq. After dinner we would sit at the bar and drink good Calvados (apple brandy from Normandy) and have lively talks with either Bernard himself and a great bartender whose name I forgot, or many French waiters or cooks who would show up to have a beer after work.

Bernard was from Brittany, and even though he had been in the U.S and worked all over the country in other restaurants, he still had the typical accent of his native province. He was an avid biker and loved nature. I remember that once, back from a trip to Wisconsin, he had picked some wild watercress still covered with spring snow and had made us a beautiful salad with a great vinaigrette.

When he opened the restaurant in May 1973 that part of town was a very unattractive neighborhood with ugly and often boarded small wooden houses. Many shady characters were roaming the street and there was no apparent sign of the upcoming gentrification that would start in the late seventies and bring a huge number of fancy shops, bars and restaurants between North Avenue and Fullerton.

So it was a bold move by former “Playboy bunny”, Sue Ling Gin, and Bernard to buy the attractive but a bit shabby 3 story corner building with a lovely turret at the corner of Dickens, and to transform the street level, that used to be a saloon, into a French restaurant. But Sue Gin was also an astute real estate agent with a vision of what this neighborhood could become, and she eventually acquired a substantial portion of buildings in that area.

And she loved food and France. Her father used to have a restaurant in Aurora when she was young. So, along with another partner, Marty Shuster, they launched themselves in that risky bet that proved to be successful over the last 38 years of the restaurant`s existence. Eventually Marty Shuster and Bernard opened another Café Bernard in 77 in Northbrook with Willy Maes and later Yves Schmidt as chefs de cuisine. Finally in the 1990’s he created a smaller but locally popular wine-bar and café, the Red Rooster, around the corner from the main restaurant on Dickens. In that same neighborhood Sue Gin and Bernard Lecoq also started a bakery on Armitage and a café-fishmarket on Halsted. Both have been closed for several years.

Bernard Lecoq was an experienced chef who had been cooking in some other French restaurants in Chicago before, such as the prestigious dining room of the Whitehall hotel, and the more rustic La Chaumière.

Bernard in the early 70`s did most of the prep, including some of the butchering, and the actual cooking himself. Eventually he hired chefs and some commis. Some of these chefs sometimes impacted a few specific ethnic touches to the overall French bistro menus. Such was the case with the Haitian cuisine of chef Marc Delphonse in 1978. Or when 10 years later Bernard Lecoq recruited Mohamed Mchabcheb, who stayed there 3 years and who brought North African touches to some of the dishes. He eventually opened his own Morrocan restaurant, L’Olive, on North Sheridan, that was popular for several years.

During the early years of the café, the cuisine of Bernard was simple, unpretentious, and traditional.

We really enjoyed such classics as a flavorful house veal and pork pâté, a good steak Bordelaise with shallots, a decent Boeuf Bourguignon, and I loved the Poulet à la moutarde. If I remember correctly, it is there that I found for the first time in Chicago a good veal scallop with a creamy Calvados sauce. Many regulars though came for the baby-beef liver. His crème caramel was deliciously addictive..

The wine list was limited but nicely priced. It offered a small but perfectly drinkable petit Saint Emilion for less than 5 dollars a bottle. And on lean days you could buy cheap wines in half liter carafes.

I think that around 1975 you could have a good complete dinner with some wine for 12 dollars.

Our only complaint was that he refused adamantly to serve French fries….But I do not remember the reason.

Nevertheless we still have very pleasant memories of many comforting dinners in winter there.

Note: TANGO,

That beautiful restaurant, launched in the summer of 1973 by George Badonsky in the Belmont Hotel on North Sheridan, was more a very contemporary and often one of the most audacious American seafood restaurants ever in Chicago, than a French restaurant. But during its 13 years of existence it had many serious accents of French cuisine. For some time in the late 70’s its kitchen also benefited from the experience of the very good French chef Henri Coudrier (Le Francais, La Reserve).

I loved its exciting décor, atmosphere and vitality. And I will never forget some memorable evening shows by the magnificent BRICKTOP who was brought in Chicago by Badonsky to sing there. In spite of being 80 years old she made the whole beautifully appointed dining room (with art from Andy Warhol and Peter Max on the walls) vibrate.

The restaurant closed in 1986

1974

LE FOND DE LA TOUR

The name of this small (70 seats) but elegant restaurant means in French “The Bottom of the Tower”. And that is exactly where it was located, at street level of the Oakbrook Apartments Towers building at the junction of Butterfield Road and Meyers in Oakbrook, a 18 miles ride west of Downtown Chicago. Owned by ANVAN, a hotel management company, its nicely appointed formal dining room and charming cocktail lounge was originally nicely managed by Herb Smith, a good restaurant professional, formerly at the 95^th... The very polished service was under the watchful eye of another good professional, Maitre D’ Hans Lautenbacher, who stayed for a while at the French Room and at the 95^th. In spite of his German name I believe that he was French, probably from Alsace,

The first year the chef was Jean Regnier, a Haitian trained in French restaurant in Montreal. But in 1975 he was replaced by a French chef, Bernard Dervieux, who I understand prepared very good classic French dishes such as Velouté Vychissois, Red Snapper in tarragon sauce, Breast of capon stuffed with goose liver pate, Sweetbreads Provençale, Rack of Lamb with small vegetables, Tournedos au poivre, Chateaubriand Bordelaise, and Mousse au chocolat. At that time they had really managed to create a decent French classy bistro ambiance.

For years the quality of both food and service of the restaurant was affected by many changes in ownership and in the kitchen. I remember of a terribly mediocre lunch I had there in the early 80`s.

But its popularity among local businessmen, especially at lunch time remained pretty high for several years...

I ignore when this restaurant closed.

CLAUDE’S

Opened in June in a condo building at 1 East Scott this small intimate and rather fancy dining-room, turning after 9:00 PM into a private club, was occupying the space left open by the departure of its 2 predecessors, Don Roth and Barcelona, a Spanish restaurant. The new restaurateur, Jean-Claude Berger, formerly at Les Champs-Elysées and La Grenouille, kept most of the décor but added elegant settings including nice crystal glassware, silverware, and china, white table cloth, chandeliers, and fresh flowers on the tables. But since Berger was doubling as manager and chef de cuisine, the service and the food were definitely classy French. A review in the Tribune at the time mentioned that, the à la carte menu included Moules (mussels) à la crème, Quenelles de Brochet (pike dumplings) sauce aux écrevisses (crayfish), Poularde en croûte, Escalopes de veau à la crème et au Calvados (veal in a cream and apple brandy sauce), Cœur de rumsteak sauce Choron, and brochettes de rognons de veau ( veal kidneys). A soufflé au Grand Marnier was the star desserts. And they served espresso coffee. At the time a complete dinner without wine would cost around 15 dollars which was not cheap.

I believe that the ‘’club’’ at night was a very popular discotheque with frequent sightings of celebrities.

I am not too sure but I think that the restaurant did not survive more than 18 months.

LA RESERVE

When Henri Coudrier left Le Français in 1973, he did not stay inactive for too long.

In the fall of 1974 he rented the space formerly occupied by an Italian restaurant at 6474 N. Milwaukee Avenue, just north of Devon that faced the Northern branch of the Chicago River in the Billy Caldwell Reserve.

I suppose that is where he got the idea for naming the restaurant, even though many celebrated French restaurants also bear that name… I have been there only once for an early dinner at sunset and I have a good memory of the space itself, spacious, with comfortable tables with fresh flowers, leather banquettes, and relatively elegant settings , including white table cloth and nice silver. But the service was a bit disorganized in the early days. Coudrier was particularly proud of his aquarium full of live trout’s that he would serve ‘’ au bleu’’ with a nice beurre blanc au Riesling. Veal was always prominent on the menu that had a few dishes bearing an apparent ‘’Banchet’’ style.

I think that I had a filet of venison in a mushroom sauce that was fine. My wife had a decent Coquelet à la moutarde. And perhaps a chocolate caked and apple tart for dessert.

Nice but not spectacular wine list.

At the time I thought that the prices were a bit high considering for an Ok but not spectacular meal.

Not an unpleasant dining experience but not exciting enough to drive back again to such a far-away place and we never went back. I think that the restaurant closed in 1977 or 1978.

Note: LE BON VIVANT

I am a bit reluctant to include this restaurant in my list of ‘’French’’ restaurants since as far as I know no French person ever worked there.

But when it opened in the fall at 222 N. Greenwood Avenue in Glenview, this elegant and cozy place had obviously the ambition to become a fancy French restaurant. I do not know who actually was the owner but I know he was Greek, and I also know that the chef at that time was not French either. But that restaurant is the place where one of the best Chicago chefs known for its mastering of French bistro cuisine, John Hogan, held its first cooking job as Garde-manger in 1980.

John told me that there was no French cook there but that the dishes they served there were definitely French.

The restaurant was still alive and well in 1982, after receiving 4 stars from the Mobil guide. I never ate there or met anybody who ate there, but in its early days it got good reviews in the Tribune. They first called themselves a `’French gourmet restaurant’’ and some years later switched to ‘’Continental-French’’. That appellation from what I read in articles and review published in the Tribune in 1974, seemed closer to their real style that had no resemblance to “la nouvelle cuisine”. Huitres Florentine, Duckling in orange sauce, Marmite Henry IV, Crepes Royales, Fruits de mer Monte-Carlo, Supreme de Volaille Diane, Strawberries Romanoff, were the kind of dishes that you would had better chances to be able to order at Le Café de Paris than at Le Perroquet. In 1974 most entrees were under 12 dollars.

In 1979 one of the owners, Jovan Pajich, opened a second Bon Vivant in Elmhurst, with a French chef by the name of Daniel Secur.

I have no idea of what happened to these 2 possibly “French” restaurants.

Note: THE FRENCH KITCHEN

I hesitate to list this restaurant here that did not have any French owner, cook or waiter.

Besides, I never met somebody who actually ate at this BYOB place at 3137 W, 63^rd St, on the Southwest side of the city by Lorraine Hooker, an American chef. But from what I read in a mini review published in the Tribune in 1976, it was more a Continental-French restaurant than a real French one. But according to the author of that little piece, Gloria Cohen, the menu was limited but the quality of the food was very good and some dishes, such as Crab in sauce Mornay, Coq au vin, Sole en sac, Mousse au chocolat, were definitively having a French touch.

1975

LA BOUILLABAISSE

Opened in the fall by Charles Ortu, a real Marseillais, it was another case of a French restaurant opening in a not too attractive neighborhood at 1418 W. Fullerton. The house specialty was perhaps one of the best attempts to recreate a real Bouillabaisse de Marseille, the famous aromatic seafood soup that put this lively Provençal port-city on the culinary map of France that you ever found in Chicago. I said attempt because it is impossible to find in American fish markets the same type of components that are specifically found in the Mediterranean Sea, such as Rascasse, Saint-Pierre, Chapon, Pageot, Murène, Rouget Grondin, Vive, and others. So, Chef Ortu had to compose with the freshest fish available in Chicago such as Whiting, Sea Bass, Red Snapper, White Fish, Rockfish, Shrimps and Mussels. But his Bouillabaisse was very flavorful thanks to the olive oil, saffron, herbs, and tomato. And I understand that his aioli, a fragrant garlic mayonnaise, and the pieces of toast that customers would use to sponge some of the broth were quite good. Besides he properly served the fish and the broth in separate plates and bowl. You could also order various fish and shellfish dishes as well as a good Steak au Poivre. And the restaurant`s wine list include a good rosé from Tavel, a rare treat at the time. In 1975 the cost of an order of Bouillabaisse for 2 people was around $ 13.00.

The rustic but comfortable settings were jazzed up by all kinds of strange objects that were probably found in a flea-market. Service was pleasant and efficient. I do not remember when the restaurant closed. Probably around 1978.Eventually the space was taken over by Stefani’s.

THE DINING ROOM- RITZ CARLTON

Opened in December behind the main lobby of the hotel in the Water Tower Place, this large room was as far as the décor and the food were concerned the exact opposite of places like Le Perroquet, or La Fontaine. By that I mean that the elegant wood panels, mirrors, chandeliers, fine linen, pricey sterling, and traditionally dressed waiters provided an impression of almost over done. And the food, cooked by a competent French chef, Daniel Vigier, and later Jacques Abadie, was almost too classical French for my taste. The management of the restaurant was under the control of another very professional Frenchman, the very good Food and Beverage director, Dominique Beauchard, formerly at the 95^th, who would stay at the Ritz until 1979, when he left to open La Mirabelle in Evanston.

Prices were not cheap (about $ for dinner in 76) but that did not stop the clientele of visiting executives, many of them staying at the hotel, and local matrons, who seemed to love such specialties as Oysters and caviar, Artichoke Hearts with Morels in a Mornay sauce, Ballotine of Pheasant, Stuffed breast of Duckling, Rack of Lamb, Trout stuffed with salmon mousse, Vol au Vent with a champagne sauce, and Crèpes flambées sauce chocolat. The wine list was one of the most extensive in the US. I read in a Tribune article that the cellar in Chicago in 1985 was rich of 450,000 bottles, including some Chateau Lafite-Rothschild dating back to 1882 and 1928 Chateau Latour.

I have to admit that I was invited to have business lunches at this restaurant only twice between 1977 and 1982.

I was not that impressed. But my point of view changed completely in 1983 when Fernand Gutierez came from the Ritz in Boston to become Executive chef of the Chicago restaurant. Fernand was not only a great man with a sunny personality, and a bon vivant, but also a great creative French chef. I have a marvelous memory of a lunch we had with him in the kitchen. He completely modernized the kitchen and created a very attractive menu. He mentored many young American Chicago chefs, such as Carrie Nahabedian and Sarah Stegner, and founded a Midwest chapter of The Vatel Club, that allows French professionals in the restaurant industry to get together and share ideas and experiences.

CAFÉ DU LOUVRE

I regret that I never had the opportunity to dine at this restaurant that was opened in the summer of that year by two French professional chefs, Pierre Cabuzel, a former chef patissier, who managed the dining room and Denis Floch who was the chef, But its location, on East Main Street in Dundee, in the Northwest suburbs, was a little bit out my regular driving paths in these days. But I understand that this charming but unpretentious place, with its bright yellow walls and sunny orange and yellow checkered table cloth, remained very popular in that area for many years.

The 2 partners did not pretend to offer fancy dishes but rather simply, well prepared traditional ‘’cuisine bourgeoise’’ classique that you would find in provincial inns in France. And they were very proud of the freshness and quality of the ingredients, especially fruits, vegetables and seafood; they selected themselves in Chicago markets. And they paid attention to the aesthetics of their arrangements on the plate. Their seafood crepes, pâtés, quiche Lorraine onion soup as well as main dishes such as filet of sole poached in wine and presented in a crepe with a mushroom and Champagne sauce, duck with apples flamed in calvados, coq au vin, beef stew ‘Bordelaise’ ’seemed to have satisfied many of the regulars. Their fresh fruit tarts and cakes were also praised. But the queen of the menu was the Crèpe, in all kinds of fashions.

Prices were very modest: in 1978 most appetizers were around $ 2.00 or $3.00, and main dishes rarely over $ 8 or $9. The famous ‘’ Crèpe du Louvre’’ stuffed with apples cooked in Calvados, and covered with a Grand Marnier flavored sabayon was only $1.75

Cabuzel, who is a member of the Vattel Club of the Midwest, is very attached to French traditions and always celebrated both Bastille Day and the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau at the Café du Louvre.

Cabuzel came to the US in 1968 when he was 26 year old and for a while worked as a patissier at the famous Lutèce restaurant in Manhattan.

Now at the age of 70 he is back at making all kinds of savory and sweet Crèpes Bretonnes in a picturesque small, but very popular restaurant called Chez Pierre Crèperie in Crystal Lake, IL.

1976

LOUIS BON APPETIT

When Louis Retailleau completely refurbished and redecorated an old but elegant Victorian frame house on Main Street, downtown Crown Point, Indiana, an hour drive from Chicago, to live there with his family and have a French restaurant on the main floor, he was far from being a newcomer in the Chicago area dining scene. Between 1970 and 1971 this native of Gascony, a Southwestern French region, famous for its foie gras, where good eating is a religion, had worked at the 95^th during its first year of operation. And 1971, he moved to Calumet City to open his first own restaurant also called Bon Appétit. He would stay there until 1976 when he found the house in Crown Point, a non- descript small city where the locals were more used to eat fried chicken, chili, and burgers than gastronomic French dishes such as Duck in a Peppercorn sauce or Veal tournedos with wild Mushrooms and Wine sauce or Confit of Goose with Truffles.

The early years were difficult but he was adopted by people living within a 30 miles radius and managed to acquire a small but loyal customer base until he retired and closed the restaurant after a last celebration of Bastille Day in July of 2003.

Once in the late 70`s, I had to visit a manufacturing plant around Merryville, Indiana. And when it was time to drive back to Chicago it was lunch time. So I asked in a gas station if there was any good restaurant not too far away and a local motorist buying gas there suggested I go to Louis, as he called the place. I was a bit skeptical about the quality of was I was going to find in my plate there. But I rapidly changed my prefabricated opinion after I was seated in a quite interesting dining room with high ceilings, antique furniture, nice white table cloth, fresh flowers, French art on the walls, and crystal chandeliers. The bread and goose liver pâté with truffles was quite good, and the stew of locally raised rabbit very tasty. I was quite surprised to be served a Belgian endive salad and some decent French cheeses, a not to frequent occurrence in this kind of town in these days. The chocolate cake was quite rich and well prepared. Added to that the pleasure of drinking a good Beaujolais and I was in relative heaven at the end of the meal. Service, under the diligent attention of his wife, was attentive. But you had to wait a bit too long between dishes. And the check was not cheap. Louis himself was quite a pleasant fellow, who was very talkative and obviously happy to have a countryman coming from Chicago to enjoy his cuisine. His cooking and saucing could not be more traditional French. Obviously Nouvelle Cuisine had not reached Crown Point, and from what I read and heard later on, some of his dishes were sometimes a bit heavy handed and the cooking time occasionally lacked precision. But Louis loved his trade and his products were, long before it became a trend, most of the time locally produced.

The place was quite charming and for a couple of hours made you believe that you were in a French country inn, very far from Chicago. Years later unfortunately I did not find the same simple qualities when he opened Cocorico on Clybourn. We will talk about this strange place in the next part, the 80’s.

LE FESTIVAL

Early that year Pierre Wimmer, an Austrian who was the flamboyant owner of Punchinello’s on Rush Street, bought the space occupied since 1974 by the Mayfair Club, and before that by the Red Carpet in a charming 3 story old brownstone at 28 W. Elm Street. In fact at one point there were 3 different dining rooms.

It almost instantly won raves, not only for modernizing the décor (while keeping a few remnants of the Red Carpet, including oriental carpets, velvety drapes, and marble fireplaces etc.,) of the cozy dining rooms, mixing up contemporary and old style elegance, but also for comfortable settings, very polished service and above all good French food at more reasonable prices than you would find in other quality oriented eating establishments of the Gold Coast. Wimmer for a while kept the talented chef, a Japanese guy by the name of Kanji Nonaka, who had been trained in Switzerland and a completed his mastering of traditional French cooking at Maxim’s in Paris. They created prix fixe menus that offered good value and very nicely prepared dishes. In 1978 you could have a complete 4 course dinner for $ 14.50 that include changing specialties such as oysters baked in saffron, roasted pheasant with truffles, Coq au Chambertin, Veal Normande, or Truite Grenobloise and Squab in cream sauce.

I am not sure of the date of this restaurant definitive closing; I would say that it was either in 1980 or 1981.

At the end a very good French chef, Yves Schhmidt, was in charge of the kitchen

But I know of many former patrons, including some French colleagues who loved that place.

Note: MELLOW YELLOW

I must mention rapidly a very popular so called ‘’ French Creperie’’ that opened the same year at 1508 E. 53rd Street at Harper in Hyde Park.

This creperie was owned and managed by a very nice man, Ken Pelletier, who in spite of his French name, was in fact the son of a commercial fisherman from Door County. He loved French quiches and crepes and made sure that his crepes, both savory, and sweets were cooked the right way like in Brittany with the correct ingredients. The description of the components of his savory crepes was using the right French words: Champignons, Fromage, Soufflé aux épinards, Ratatouille, Poulet à la Béchamel, and even a crèpe au Boeuf Bourguignon. The dessert Crèpes could be aux Fraises, à la sauce au Chocolat Suisse, or à la glace à la Praline. They even served bacon and eggs crèpes for Breakfast.

And you also could order Soupe à l’oignon, and salads.

The restaurant became very popular and expanded its menu considerably in the 80’s.

Ken Pelletier passed away in 2005, but his restaurant is still operating at the same address

FRERE JACQUES

When Frenchman Jacques Grelley, an old acquaintance of mine, opened this charming restaurant at 1825 Clark St. late in 1976, he has in fact been in Chicago since 1962, after a short stay in Macon, GA, where he had landed coming from Paris the year before. In 62 he started waiting tables in various restaurants of the Chicago area, many of them French, and continued for several years. But his real passion was driving sports and racing cars and collecting miniature ones. Between the 60’s and the 80’s he competed in all kinds of professional car races in Europe including the famous 24 hours at Le Mans in his DB Panhard. He also managed over the last 50 years to put together the largest collection in the world of close to 5,000 car racing posters, photos, and other memorabilia. Nowadays Jacques Grelley at 75 is more active than ever and travels to all parts of the 5 continents from his base in Texas to exhibit and sell his posters and photos, organize classic racing cars exhibits, meet with former champions, and drive 2CV Citroen cars all over China and India, including Tibet.

Anyway when you entered the restaurant the walls of the very comfortable bar, with its fireplace and nice banquettes and armchairs, were covered with some of these beautiful vintage posters, and in special display cases you could admire some of his miniature cars.

I remember that on occasions when on week-ends we would go to have dinner there, he would give one of these small cars to my son who was an avid collector himself.

The main dining room was very cozy, with high beamed-ceilings that, with some imagination, would make you think that you were in a country inn in Normandy, the native province of Jacques.

The food was simple but typical French bistro styled: Mini Bouillabaisse, Duck Paté with green peppercorn, Snails en Croûte, Steak-frites (the frites were among the best in town), Lamb and bean stew, and the traditional Poulet au Vinaigre (chicken in a vinegar sauce) that very few French restaurants served at the time, Salmon with sorrel sauce, and of course Cheese, including Camembert. Among desserts they had one of the best Chocolate Mousse. Prices were very reasonable and they offered cheap French wines such as a red called ‘’ Frère Jacques`` that was quite drinkable.

The restaurant closed in 1980.

LE VICHYSSOIS

The Vichy native Bernard Cretier and his American wife Priscilla opened this lovely, discretely elegant but unpretentious restaurant in the far away Northwest village of Lakemoor, in Mc Henry county, a 70 minute drive from Chicago in September of 76.

The white brick stylish building looked a bit like a French country ‘’Auberge’’’such as those that you would find in Normandy or in Burgundy.

The large windows of the two spacious dining rooms with well- spaced tables covered with white linen cloth and furnished with antiques, and traditional copper pots, opened on a pleasant small patio. Fresh flowers were always in evidence, and the silver, porcelain plates and pretty glasses were nicely arranged and classy. Art work decorated the walls, and the bar in the lobby where an impressive antique desk was serving as a hostess stand, was a very welcoming place.

Cretier and his family lived upstairs when they opened the place, as it was the case in many traditional provincial restaurants in France in the good old days. Before opening Le Vichyssois, Cretier, who was trained in the kitchens of such iconic French chefs as the Frères Troisgros and Paul Bocuse, was the executive chef at Maxim’s in Chicago for 6 years.

I am sad that I never had an opportunity to eat at Le Vichyssois since from what I read and heard from other French chefs as well as from friends in Chicago, I am sure that I would have loved his traditional French cuisine, that is prepared with great care and precision.

Cretier was not an adept of the Nouvelle Cuisine and did not make a mystery of his convictions.

His repertoire was, and still is since the restaurant is still doing well in 2012, classic French.

His pâtés and terrines, such as quail with juniper berries, brandy-flavored duck, venison, or a simple pork country pâté were very popular. And so were of course his Vichyssoise soup, that all American tourists used to order at Maxim`s Rue Royale in Paris, and an oyster and lobster bisque. Favorite main courses were veal in a morel cream sauce, duck in red wine and vinegar sauce, rack of lamb with a tarragon sauce, scallops in a lobster sauce or in puff pastry, or lake trout in a Champagne sauce. Vegetables were served in small copper pans or pots, and the salad often was a mix of French endive, mâche, and haricots verts fins in raspberry vinaigrette.

Women raved about his dark chocolate and almond base desserts. And according to a 1984 review in the Tribune, Cretier would serve a very good grapefruit-Champagne sorbet between appetizer and entrée.

And the best was that nothing was very expensive, even the daily specials that changed often.

According to a review published in 84, the average cost of a dinner for two would average $ 60.00.

It was a modest price to pay for such quality.

Note: LA RIVE GAUCHE

In November a “French” restaurant called LA RIVE GAUCHE, but later its name morphed into the English translation of THE LEFT BANK, opened in an old long-closed bank building, on Governors Highway in Matteson, a small town about 20 miles south of Downtown Chicago.

The owner, one Ron Stillman, according to a mini review published in the Trib in 1977, always wanted to own a French gourmet restaurant in that town.

So the name of the restaurant refers to the famous Rive Gauche in Paris, as well as the abandoned bank.

According to that review the vault was used as a wine cellar.

Mr. Stillman recruited a young manager from the CIA in Hyde Park, NY, who gathered a team of energetic young cooks and waiters.

From what I read, the waiting staff was trying to project a French image and the chef was attempting to emulate the Nouvelle Cuisine by undercooking the vegetables.

At the same time however they insisted on flaming several dishes and desserts, which was more a continental cuisine tradition.

But altogether I understand that the cooking was rather good.

Appetizers included traditional pâtés and jambon persillé, as well as soupe à l’oignon gratinée, and main dishes were classic French Steak au Poivre Vert, and Veal Scaloppini in a cream and mushroom sauce, trio of Duck, and stuffed Quail in a Perigourdine sauce.

In 1977 you could have complete prix-fixe dinners between $7.00 and $14.00

The restaurant closed in 1980.

1977

ILE DE FRANCE

One of my most bizarre dining experiences in the last 41 years in Chicago

This “exotic” restaurant located on Elston Avenue at the corner of Division, could have been one of the most romantic eating place in Chicago if…. Next to a boat repair yard its dining room was overlooking the, at the time rather dirty and smelly, North branch of the Chicago River. There even was an outdoor porch from where you could see boaters while drinking a cocktail. The dining room itself was relatively rustic but well appointed. Problem was, once you entered that small poorly maintained wood-cabin type of building, you were facing a mess and could see the entrance of the kitchen that was not a model of cleanliness or organization. The only time we went there for lunch with some colleagues in early 1977, there was nobody at the hostess station, and in fact nobody in the dining room either. We called “Hello” and out of the kitchen came this French guy, unshaved, wearing a stained open shirt, and holding a dirty piece of towel in his hand. He turned out to be the chef and the owner of this rather grubby place. I do not even remember his name. After inquiring about what we wanted he told us to seat anywhere we wanted. He grumbled a few words of welcome in our common language and disappeared back in his kitchen. Eventually after waiting for quite a while a young woman came to bring us menus and some water. We had to call for her to return so that we could place our orders. She did not seem to be a professional waitress, seem totally uninterested in us, and could not answer our questions about the way some food items were served. While we were waiting for our appetizers, munching on some not too fresh French baguette, we saw a big rat trotting from the entrance to the other side of the room.

As a matter of fact it turned out to our surprise that the food was quite good and classical French. Good country Pâté, decent Mussels Marinière, very tasty Veal Scaloppini in a cream and Calvados sauce, well prepared Belgian endive salad, and a good Apple tart. The wine list was not very extensive but nevertheless included a few good, but expensive Bordeaux and Burgundies. We ordered a reasonably-priced Côtes du Rhône.

Anyway, it was obvious that the man was in control of his French cooking but did not seem to care about his own or his restaurant`s look. Perhaps they had more customers and a professional staff for dinner.

The dinner menu offered surprising sophisticated main courses such as Turbot Dugléré, Dover sole Normande, Côte de Veau, Tournedos Périgourdine, or Bouillabaisse. These dishes contrasted very boldly with the lack of style and polish of both the chef and the premises.

No need to say I never went back there. But the restaurant stayed in operation at least 5 or 6 more years.

LE RENDEZ-VOUS

What a pity that this very sophisticated and elegant restaurant, opened in May 1977 at 160 East Ontario by the very young (barely 25) but hyper-dynamic entrepreneur Roger Greenfield, burned a few months later in January of 1978. It was one its way to become one of the best and most popular French restaurants in the whole city of Chicago.

I loved not only the modern but very harmonious exterior as well as interior architecture of this 2 story restaurant designed by Spiros Zakas, the decorator of Bastille and the Pump Room, but also the comfortable settings of the two dining rooms, especially the one upstairs with great blue velvet banquettes, and if I remember correctly beautiful brown, a beautiful carpet, and very interesting art by French surrealist painter André Masson on the white walls. The entrance was also impressive with its white tile floor, mini garden, fireplace and a bird cage.

But I was the most impressed with was the cooking of Yves Schmidt, a young 26 year old at the time executive chef who had already an impressive French cuisine formal training started when he was only 15 at Troisgros, in Roanne. He stayed there for 3 years, then spent15 months in the kitchens of Maxim’s in Paris. Then after a few more stints in French restaurants, he was sent to Chicago where he worked for Maxim’s here for 4 years before starting at Le Rendez-Vous. What was great with his cooking was his perfect blend of classic and Nouvelle Cuisine styles and techniques. After all, this man had learned to cook with his mother in his native Forez region. So his basic knowledge was of a traditional cuisine bourgeoise with a rural touch. But he knew right away how to adjust to the taste of new consumers for lighter sauces, locally grown fresh produce and meat. At le Rendez-Vous he managed to adapt what he had learned at Troisgros to the realities of American ingredients and at the same time saving the integrity of his French country cooking roots.

My wife and I had only one dinner at Le Rendez-Vous in late 1977. It will keep in my memory as one of my most enjoyable dining experience of the 70’s. But unfortunately the only I remember we ate that night were some beautiful scallops, a duck terrine, a steak au poivre, and some veal scaloppini in a mushroom and cream sauce. I believed that we had a flourless chocolate cake for dessert. What I remember clearly is the impressive but expensive wine list. We had a very decent Listrac that night, if I remember correctly.

At the time you had to spend about 20 dollars per person without wine and tip. But it was worth it.

I know that Schmidt later on, after a brief stint at the Celtic Room in Evanston, worked at Le Festival, and at Café Bernard in Northbrook, but I do not know what happened to this talented chef since.

CAFÉ PROVENCAL

Located at street level of a 1928 Georgia style building that housed a retirement apartment hotel at 1625 Hinman in downtown Evanston, this delightful dining room was one of the most authentic and charming temple of modern French cuisine with strong provincial “Bourgeoise” roots that you could find in the Chicago area. But surprisingly enough it was opened in July of 77 by two American women, Leslee Reis, and Lizann Bradshaw, whose respective initial backgrounds did not predispose them to become restaurateurs. Lizann, who left the restaurant after a couple of years, was a graduate of Harvard Business School, and since she had some business and management experience, and had been a wine director for a local big retailer, she became the managing part of the team and took charge of the front of the house. Leslee, a bio-chemist by training who got a PHD in microbiology from Harvard at age 23, was promised a bright future in that field. When she was a new bride in Cambridge, Mass, where she had met her husband himself a Harvard graduate, she became friendly with her butcher who gave her a copy of Julia Child’s famous book. She was a regular customer of this butcher, and that’s the way she met Julia Child, who lived one block away from her, in 1963, and even managed to wash dishes as a volunteer on her first TV shows that were produced in Boston. She started to cook for her new husband and their friends. Then she had an opportunity to travel to France, and more particularly to Provence where she fell in love with the food. In Paris she went to The Cordon Bleu School to learn the basics of French cooking. Back to Boston a chef there, himself an alumni of Cordon Bleu completed her education. She also came back from France with an extensive practical knowledge of ingredients, components, and tools used in French and Provençal cooking acquired during numerous visits to open markets, food shops, and restaurants. Therefore, I considered her as a French chef by training.

She moved to Evanston in 1967 with her husband where until 1970 she had two children, then worked as a researcher at Children memorial Hospital, and later taught biochemistry at Northwestern University. Eventually she decided to abandon her 2 careers in research and teaching and started a food catering business and a cooking school in Evanston that became rapidly popular. When her 2 sons got older she decided to take the risk of becoming a full time chef and restaurateur.

Café Provençal was an immediate success. She rapidly benefited from a local client base that was well educated and traveled, and loved the type of authentic simple but well prepared country French cuisine using good quality fresh ingredients, most of them grown in the Midwest, that was so similar to the one they may have tasted in a provincial inn in France.

The dining room, capable to host more than 70 customers, was large, sunny through high windows dressed with lovely curtains, but the nicely dressed tables with their French pink tablecloth and quality silver, often graced with fresh flowers, were well spaced. The high beamed ceiling, the wood paneled walls on one side and covered with pretty fabric on the other, the beautiful fireplace, the ‘’dressoirs’’ with French porcelain decorative plates and small objects, contributed to make the place very comfortable and cozy. The back of the room also had windows facing a courtyard patio where you could eat under a canopy in the summer and a mini garden where herbs used in the kitchen were grown.

The first years, Leslee Reis kept the menu relatively short and simple but so appetizing: Creamy leek and potato soup, Salmon or pike mousse, Artichokes stuffed with ham and mini vegetables, Pâtés and terrines Lamb chops with a garlic sauce, Roast duck in green peppercorn sauce, Terrine of whitefish and vegetables, grilled Red Snapper, Poulet Provençal, And always the marvelous ‘’pommes Dauphine’’ that so few American restaurants managed to make properly. You could even order a nice cheese platter. And, besides a very tasty dark Chocolate Mousse Cake, and a good Tarte Tatin. The wine list offered some of the best Fruit Sorbets that you could find in Chicago. Prices were very reasonable and could have a 3 course dinner in 1979 for less than 20 dollars. The wine list, mostly French, also offered reasonably priced French wines, including some half-bottles and you could limit the expenses with a bottle of decent House French red wine costing less than 5 dollars.

Later, in the early to mid- 80’s the menu became much more creative, sophisticated, and expensive. It also lost a little bit of its original tasty country French simplicity when Leslee Reis became less actively involved in the actual cooking when she started other bistros in Evanston, Leslee’s in 1982 and Bodega Bay in 1987. Both were closed in 1988.

Leslee Reis died of a heart attack in 1990. Her husband Andy took over the management of the restaurant, but following with a lease disagreement in the owner of the Homestead, he closed it for good in 1993.

The two executive chefs who ran the kitchen of the Café until its closing were Philip Stocks and Kevin Schrimmer.

Leslee Reis was the co-founder of Les Dames d’Escoffier, an association of women involved in the restaurant and fancy food industry.

PATRICE

The same month this tiny (no more than 40 customers could be served in one seating) but very sophisticated and glamorous restaurant opened at 914 N. Ernst Court, a minuscule street parallel to Rush between Chestnut and Walton, in the space formerly occupied by Sasha’s . The target clientele of this place, designed by Janet Schirn, was the young affluent money-spending swinging and well-dressed yuppies that loved to go out at night, eat, drink, and socialize and essentially liked places to see and be seen.

This restaurant, with its visually impressive décor full of sexy lights and mirrors, leather sofas, hyper-design chairs, walls covered with exotic fabrics, acrylic paintings, and gigantic vertical wine rack, was a masterpiece of faux-semblants. A spectacular screen of micro-lights separated the dining room from the bar. A bronze mirror in the dining room gave the impression that it was more spacious that it actually was.

Patrice was the first name of the co-owner, Patrice Aldington, a nice-looking French guy who had been working in several fancy Chicago restaurants and was a former captain at chez Paul.

The young chef that he had recruited, Gérard Reuther, was also a French man from Lyon, with an already impressive resume from various cooking assignments in very good French restaurants, and also a stint in New York. His dishes were not classic haute French cuisine but rather contemporary French: Pheasant terrines, Sorrel soup, marinated scallops, and lemon tart.

Some dishes were successful some not and the quality of some ingredient was not always consistent from what I read.

But this chef decided at the beginning of 78 to quit. He was replaced by another Frenchman, George Maillot, who was also a Chez Paul alumnus, who built a more conventional menu with ham and mushroom quiche, sea bass with spinach, or veal in a brandy flavored cream sauce. Many desserts, like fruit tarts, were prepared by Patrice himself.

Most dishes were served in oversized plates, with small vegetables.

The restaurant was very popular for a while. Some rumors said that it was in part for the availability and wide use there of a white kind of powder that did not come from the corn starch pot in the kitchen. But for some reason that I ignore Patrice sold very abruptly his parts of the business to his partner Ed Gentry and left Chicago in 1979.

That year the restaurant got a new French chef named Victor Tambourin who had worked in the kitchen of Le Perroquet.

The restaurant was taken over by a Cuban in early 1980 who completely changed the formula. That was not a very bright idea since the new restaurant did not work too well without Patrice, and closed for good later that year.

1978

ALOUETTE

Another success story from Christian Zeiger, the very astute entrepreneur-restaurateur who had opened Le Titi De Paris in Palatine in 72

After selling it to his chef Pierre Pollin he opened Alouette in the spring of 78, at 440 GreenBay Road in Highwood, that little town just North of Highland Park that until now was better known for its Italian restaurants and food shops than as a bastion of French gastronomy.

Alouette, and later on Froggy’s, and Carlos on the other side of the train tracks in Highland Park, definitively put Highwood on the map of destination places for good eating in the far Northern suburbs of Chicago.

Alouette, which remained popular with North Shore regular diners until it closed in 1994, was another comfortable “French Country Inn” type of restaurant, but on the sophisticated side.

It was even pleasant to wait for your table sitting on plush sofas surrounded by antique furniture and big vases of fresh flowers. The whole décor had been designed by Christian Zeiger and his wife, Agnes.

The dining room with its beamed ceiling, elegant chairs and white clothed tables decorated with porcelain birds on little bells, very expensive looking china and sterling silver, oil paintings and tapestries on the walls, was much fancier than its usual less formal French Bistro counterparts.

The menu also was rather elegant. It followed the seasons and changed very often. It was rich in fresh fish in all kinds of styles, as well as shellfish, sometimes in form of delicate mousses, or accompanied by very tasty light sauces influenced by the Nouvelle Cuisine trends. Crawfish, lobster and scallops were particularly well prepared.

High quality veal, lamb, and duck dishes once again were frequently offered in specials and graced by brandy or peppercorn flavored sauces with a light cream or raspberry vinegar base.

The rack of lamb and loin of lamb “en croute” were very popular specials.

Great attention was brought to the precise cooking of the vegetables accompaniments such as asparagus, haricots verts, cabbage, artichokes, mushrooms, Belgian endive, or broccoli.

Thierry Lefeuvre, a very gifted young chef from Brittany, who had already built solid references in hotels and restaurants in Europe and in North-America, was the opening chef. Roland Liccioni, before crossing the tracks to become the executive chef at Carlos, worked for 6 months in that kitchen in 1979. But is probably Michel Coatrieux who was hired by Zeiger while he was on vacation in Chicago, who had worked in glorious 3 stars French restaurants such as Lucas-Carton and Taillevent, who contributed to the reputation of this restaurant for the longest time from 1978 to 1987. In the mid 80’s he got the assistance of Michel Laurent, who cooked for Zeiger in his Parisian restaurant, and Charlie Socher, who eventually created his own bistro, Café Matou, in Chicago.

In 1980 you would expect to pay $25 for a full meal without the wine.

CHEZ ANTOINE

Located at 2920 N. Clark St, this restaurant that had perhaps the ambition of becoming one of the fanciest Haute Cuisine French eateries Chicago used some furniture and fixtures from the old Pump Room. I did not find any precise info on its cuisine and chefs, but I know that it closed the same year after a few months of operation. It probably overpriced itself from what I read.

50 EAST

A few months after the loss of his Le Rendez-Vous on Ontario, Roger Greenfield decided to open a new “New York style” restaurant at 50 East Oak Street, between Michigan and Rush, at the heart of the fashion and art dealers’ district. I think that this idea of creating a chic but relaxed bistro where the “beautiful people” of the neighborhood such as show business people, clothing shop owners and fashion designers, artists, lawyers, architects, politicians, would stop by to have a drink and something to eat and socialize with their friends and clients, and essentially have some fun..

So he asked the same inspired decorator, Spiros Zakas, who had designed Le Rendez-Vous, to create very contemporary environment on two floors with plenty of audacious geometric patterns and colors.

The two rooms would seat 200 people. The street level room was a bustling place with nice banquettes and small tables close to each other in circles and there was a piano bar. The busy and noisy crowd there would drink and graze for less than 20 dollars and do a lot of schmoozing and “See me” and “You look wonderful Darling” type of games.

The upper dining room was quieter, the tables nicely separated by glass partitions, and service a bit more formal even though the décor was again very stimulating with lots of mirrors and lights.

One again Greenfield had Yves Schmidt as chef, and besides some trendy appetizers like “caviar d’aubergines” (eggplant purée) or Mozzarella fritters with spicy tomato sauce, he also offered a few dishes that were successful at Le Rendez-Vous such as his famous White fish Grenobloise, Coquilles Saint Jacques, Magret de Canard, and Mousse au chocolat.

The food prices were much lower than at Le Rendez-Vous, but the wines were still quite expensive.

I would in fact say that this restaurant was more a blend of contemporary American and Continental cuisine rather than French..

But like many other future Greenfield ventures the place was poorly managed and in spite of an attempt to completely change the formula and rename it Le Rendez-Vous after 4 months, it was closed the same year and morphed into Le Relais under a Swiss-born Manager.

TOULOUSE

Bob Djahanguiri, an Iranian who came to Chicago in 1964 to study civil engineering. But in order to survive he had to work small jobs. As a bus boy, then waiter in some Chicago restaurants such as the Pump Room he got acquainted with well-established restaurateurs such as Dick Castro and Arnie Morton. They encouraged him allowed him to have access to more managerial positions in some of their restaurants. They also gave him the virus of restaurant management and entrepreneurship, so much so that Bob Djahanguiri in spite of getting a diploma in engineering decided that he preferred the restaurant business. That is how in December of 1978 he was about to open TOULOUSE, his first restaurant at 49 W. Division. In fact a big snow storm did not help the official launching of the place and it could well be that the restaurant started to actually operate only in the spring of 1979.

The name and the logo were an obvious reference to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec the famous French Painter of the Belle Epoque.

It was both a very classic restaurant and a sort of cabaret where singers and musicians entertained the diners. And it became rapidly a popular destination place for dining cum entertainment.

The cuisine was “continental-French” but with a very French overtone. In fact one of the first chefs, Daniel Sucur, was French.

I have been there only 2 times but I liked the room and the relatively sophisticated but unpretentious ambience. The food, without being spectacular, was very decently prepared. Some popular dishes were a Ballotine of Duck in green peppercorn sauce, Grilled breast of Goose in a port wine sauce, Saucisson en Croute, Veal Stew, Rack of lamb with ratatouille. Prices of both food and wine were very reasonable the first few years but the check became quite expensive in the late 80’s. In 1979 you could have a 3 course dinner for 18 dollars without the wine. The restaurant closed in 1993 at its original location, and Djahanguiri, who had opened 2 other restaurants just North of Division, Yvette and Turbot, created a new luxurious TOULOUSE ON THE PARK in Lincoln park in 1994. It closed for good in 1999.

Note: JIMMY’S PLACE

When Jimmy Rohr, in July 1978, opened this long and narrow, simple but sophisticated, dining room in a non-descript part of North Elston Avenue (3420 N.), not particularly a mecca of fancy dining for Chicago diners, some food pundits and critics thought that it was a mad idea, similar to Gordon Sinclair’s decision to open Gordon in 1976 in one of the worst parts of N. Clark. Street,

They were all wrong. First, the very social Jimmy Rohr had already a crowd of fans who knew him from his many years as a waiter at L’Escargot on Halsted, and then at La Reserve where he was a Maître D’, and immediately became enthusiast customers of his new venture. And secondly he hired a very talented Japanese-American chef, Yoshi Katsumura, who had some training in France, and also perfected some very good French cooking techniques under Jean Banchet at Le Français. Yoshi, only 29 years old at the time of Jimmy’s opening, who later on became Rohr’s partner in the restaurant to the point that it was renamed Jimmy and Yoshi`s, was a great cook with any type of seafood, and his sashimi and sushi types of raw fish such as marinated salmon, scallops in a very delicate cream sauce with ‘’petits légumes’’, a typical Nouvelle Cuisine dish that was really becoming very trendy at the time. He also served very well prepared veal scaloppini; duck with turnips or a duck sausage en croute au Madère (in puff pastry with a Madeira light cream sauce), very nicely seasoned lamb stew, pheasant, and occasionally some rabbit that I loved. The pastry chef whose name I forgot also baked marvelous fruit tarts in the Alsatian tradition. And prices were very reasonable considering what you got on your plate, the musical ambiance (Rohr was an opera fanatic), and the very knowledgeable waiters. Rohr was a very lively and gracious host.

In 78, on Sundays, lots of people showed up for the famous 4 course brunch for the very accessible price of $8.50.

Jimmy Rohr, who suffered from allergies discouraged fragrances and cologne wearing customers to come to his restaurant. Smoking was not in favor either.

Jimmy Rohr always insisted that his restaurant was not a French restaurant. It was I fact one of the first French–Asian fusion restaurants ever to exist in Chicago.

The white walls were decorated with beautiful posters, and programs, related to opera, music, dance and theater. No wonder that you were almost certain to see a couple of ‘’people’’ from the show business there.

Problem was, the tables were very close to each other and you were sometimes forced to listen to conversation of some of these “people” who deliberately told dining companions how important their lives were.

And the constant opera music was at times distracting.

Unfortunately, Yoshi left at some point to create his own restaurant on Halsted, that became also very popular and the subsequent replacement chefs were not as gifted, Kevin Shikami in the late 80`s being the exception. In fact Shikami had been trained by Yoshi. Later on prices went up, at a time when the quality went down.

Jimmy’s closed in 1995 and Rohr died in 99.

1979

LES NOMADES

A few weeks ago while I was sorting some old files, I found all my membership cards for Les Nomades starting with the first one dated 78-79. In fact when the restaurant opened in February at 222 East Ontario in a charming 3 story old brick house, the bistro’s client base was entirely made up of about 600 members, who had been selected, invited, or their application accepted by Jovan Trboyevic. I remember that when we had a conversation at the corner of Michigan and Ontario, and that he gave me my card; I did not have a dollar bill in my wallet to pay the membership fee, so I gave him 4 quarters which he accepted. We had a good laugh about it. This place was the product of his long-time dream to have his own bistro, making his own menus based on old French classics that he loved and could modify as he wished, and welcoming guests and some old friends, that he had enjoyed talking with for years since or before he had opened Jovan on Huron in 67 and Le Perroquet on Walton in late 1972. Jovan, who himself had been a “nomad” for half of his life, from his native Yugoslavia, to Switzerland, England, France, and many other places, felt comfortable with well-traveled people who like himself had interesting stories to tell, and enjoyed and appreciated the good life, including good food and good wine. Many “people” in Chicago felt offended or were very critical by this selective approach to “clubby” dining, especially those who were not allowed to become member of this quiet little piece of gastronomical paradise. But for me who had admired and loved the man for years, it was always a renewed pure moment of pleasure on each of my birthdays to sit at the same little table, just one step up from the marvelously decorated, like all the restaurant by his artist-wife Maggie Abbott, entrance where an authentic French “zinc covered bar” was the piece de resistance. But this bar, that he loved dearly, was too cumbersome and he was forced to sell it a few months after he opened the restaurant sold it to the more spacious “Bistrot Zinc” on Southport. The space settings were relatively simple, with its bare wood floor, simple bistro chairs and tables covered with a plain white cloth, and not too fancy silver or china, but Maggie’s decoration and the lighting, as it was the case with Le Perroquet’s and Jovan’s, was of a subdued but very seductive elegance, making the place at the same time very comfortable and intimate but as close as can be to what a fancy Parisian bistro in the 7^th arrondissement would feel like. In the winter the wood burning “cheminée’’ (fireplace) added to this good feeling.

I loved the authentic bistro food and have great gustatory memories of dishes such as the light cassoulet, the duck terrine, the rabbit in a ‘’Bonne Femme’’ or mustard sauce, the coq au vin, the pot au feu, and very delicious fine apple tarts. And at the end of our dinner, Jovan would bring me a good Calvados, sit down with us and we would talk about France.

I have never inquired about the name of the chef there.

It will always remain one of my top 3 or 4 favorite French restaurants in Chicago.

Jovan Trboyevic sold Les Nomades to Mary Beth and Roland Liccioni in 1993. It is still doing well in 2012.

LA BOHEME

When Frenchman (from Normandy) Jacques Barbier opened this charming French Country Inn style restaurant (yes… that was perhaps the 5^th one in this category that year) in the Laundry Mall at 566 Chestnut St. in Winnetka that elegant Northern suburb was still dry. So it was a BYOB place, something unusual for a French restaurant. But La Bohème became rapidly popular with the locals who loved the good traditional French cuisine and the BYOB formula.

The pretty large dining room was simply decorated capitalizing on the bricks and wood settings that were there

Menu was short and pretty standard. Escargots in garlic butter. Terrine du Chef, Beef Tenderloin au poivre in a cognac cream sauce. Veal Normande with salsifis. Whitefish in a lemon and caper sauce.

All dishes were garnished with fresh vegetables.

For dessert the Strawberries Romanoff were very popular.

Nothing there to suggest creative Nouvelle Cuisine. Just solid well prepared French fare.

The menu and the creativity of the cuisine vastly expanded when the restaurant kitchen was taken over by Didier Durand in the late eighties...

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

SPAGHETTI A LA PROVENCALE

2011-01-05T12:38:00.002-06:00

Hey Stéphane.
When you were in Chicago 10 days ago I made a spaghetti Bolognese that the whole family enjoyed.
But I told you while we were eating it that a month ago, when I was at J.P`s in Paris, his family asked me, as it is the case everytime I go there, to do my Spaghetti Provençale,which is much more interesting than the Bolognese. It is not very complicated but the prep requires a little more time than for the Bolognese.
Since I promised you to send that recipe, here it is.
I had published a slightly different version on this blog in 2006.
This version is the one I do everytime nowadays.
Let me know what you think once you have done it at home.
Dad

SPAGHETTI A LA PROVENCALE - QUICK RECIPE

Original recipe by Alain

I have been doing this recipe, that I modified a few times, for many years and my family and friends always ask me to do it again and again when they visit or I go to their place..

I do the tomato sauce from fresh plum tomatoes in the summer, and I add about 6 peeled canned whole plum tomatoes from the San Marzano region in Italy. (I use the Bella Terra brand from Racconto that I find at Fresh Farms International in Niles). In the winter I use peeled cannned whole plum tomatoes exclusively.
But when I am in a hurry a ready- to- use marinara spaghetti sauce in a jar (the Traditional Marinara Sauce from Trader Joe's) works fine too.
If you decide to use the canned peeled plum tomatoes, for 4 people use almost two 28 oz cans of them and make sure you cut the hard tip where the stem used to be, and seed them before coarsely chopping them.

Here is the simplified easy version of my recipe:

SPAGHETTI A LA PROVENCALE

For 4 people:

Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• One 1 Lb package and 1 quarter of (thin) Spaghetti (I prefer the Italian brand Racconto or Trader Joe’s Organic)

• 2 large peeled yellow onions, chopped

• 5 large cloves of garlic, American not Chinese, peeled and diced. Remove central greenish sprout if any before dicing.

• 5 sprigs of fresh tyme or 1 1/2 table spoon of dried thyme.

• 12 to 15 pitted Kalamata black olives, remove the brine by gently boiling them for 2 or 3 minutes.

• One 18 oz jar of Tomato Marinara sauce , with or without basil, (I buy Trader Joe’s cheap but good Traditional Marinara Sauce)

• 1/2 Lb of ground round beef (buy a little more if you have to feed hungry young men)

• 4 or 5 medium-size very fresh and clean white mushrooms (sliced)

• 2 tablespoon of Italian tomato paste. I like the imported Italian paste in aluminum soft tubes, but any canned Italian import will do.

• 1/2 a cup of extra-Virgin olive oil (I use the Martini`s Greek 100% Kalamata from Trader Joe's )

• Half a bottle (about 2 cups) of a dry rosé wine with some fruit like a ''Vieille Ferme'' rosé ($ 6.99), or Ferme Julien Rosé from T J's ($ 5.99). If you want to go a little fancier, get a bottle of Costières de Nimes rosé like Grande Cassagne (about $ 9.00) .

• 1 large bay leaf

• Salt and pepper

• 1/2 a teaspoon of Cayene pepper

Cooking the sauce:

Chop onions and dice garlic, then gently sauté them together with a teaspoon of thyme in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, in an 12 inches ''Calphalon'' or other good quality non-stick pan for about 12 to 14 minutes at relatively low heat. They should not get brown, but become soft and translucent.

If mushrooms are clean and very young, lightly brush them to remove any leftover dirt, cut the stem halfay and slice them. If they are not clean, have some dirt, and the stem is brownish and getting spongeous, cut 80% of the stem and gently peel the outer skin of the cap with a sharp small knife starting from underneath , close to the stem. Then slice them. Save them on a plate for later.

Sauté the ground beef in a small pan in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, stir it all the time with a wooden spoon to transform the beef chunks in tiny little balls. Remove the oil and water left over after cooking is completed. The ground beef should be gray and not red anymore. Save on a plate but do not refrigerate.

Pour the tomato sauce from the jar into the pan where the onion and garlic has been cooked, add the bay leaf, stir and bring to a gentle simmer. Add 2 cups of rose wine and stir well . Add 2 tablespoons of the tomato paste, stir well. Cook uncovered over low heat for about 8 minutes, then add the sliced mushrooms. Cook for 5 more minutes then add the meat and the olives. Then season with 4 rounds of the pepper mill and 2 pinches of salt. Add the cayenne pepper. stir. Cook uncovered very gently for 10 more minutes.

Cooking the pasta:

While preparing the sauce, boil 5 quarts of water in a high stainless-steel pot, like a pasta cooker. When water is boiling add one tablespoon of olive oil and one teaspoon of sea salt in the water. Add the spaghetti (I cut them in half) and immediately stir the pasta with a big spaghetti special-dented spoon so that the pasta does not stick together. When the spaghetti are all separated bring back to a boil and count about 10 to 11 minutes for '' al dente'' .

Pour the pasta in a colander and then in a big round bowl, add a table spoon of olive oil and stir well. Add the sauce on top of the pasta and stir well.

And that's it.

Bon appetit

Lunch in Paris for 10 to 25 dollars?

2010-12-21T22:40:00.025-06:00

Lunch in Paris for 10 to 25 dollars? Yes you can.

Some practical advice on how to have lunch in Paris without breaking the piggy bank.

Last month on the flight that was bringing me back home after 2 fine weeks in Paris, I could not help listening to an American couple in their fifties seated just behind me who exchanged impressions on their own trip to Paris with the young lady who was a student there and was heading home for Thanksgiving.

They were very excited about everything they had seen, but not to happy about the constant grey and often rainy weather they had endured. But their top recurrent complaint was about how restaurants, even Mc Donald’s, were expensive and that it was impossible to have a simple lunch without ruining their tight budget. They asked the girl I she managed to eat properly in Paris with a limited amount of money. Did she know cheap little places?

All the student could answer was that she had lunch everyday at the “restaurant universitaire “(university cafeteria) and that it was quite cheap. She mostly ate soups and sandwiches or carry-out Chinese food or pizza at night in her room while studying or watching TV with friends. And that too was affordable. Obviously she knew where to shop and was not a restaurant goer.

I was tempted to intervene in the conversation, remembering how many times Americans friends, or simple acquaintances had told me about their expensive lunches in Paris and how they wish they had received my advice on that topic before leaving for Paris. But I was tired and did not feel motivated enough to talk to these people.

Here are some comments I would have made and what I would have suggested, should they decide to return to Paris one of these days.

Never choose a restaurant that is recommended by your hotel concierge or reception desk employee. Rather ask a local shopkeeper like a butcher, a baker, or a waiter in a café if they can suggest a decent and cheap restaurant for lunch that they patronize themselves.
If you stay or visit in a district or neighborhood where there are lots of tourists, do not choose a restaurant on one of its main streets. Walk a few hundred yards in a back street and choose a small café-restaurant or a ‘’brasserie’’ where people who work nearby eat, and that has a menu posted on its window, that specify that they offer a ‘’plat du jour’’ or even better a ‘’formule’’ or a ‘’prix fixe menu special déjeuner’’. I’ll get back to that later.
If you are intending to get back to your hotel after a busy morning visiting museums to take a short nap, stop by one of the many ‘’traiteurs’’ offering ‘’plats à emporter’’ (carry-out dishes) and buy yourself some nicely prepared French, Italian, North-African, or Asian dishes, or some cheese and charcuterie, a bottle of wine or of mineral water and have lunch in your room. You find such traiteurs, often also charcuteries, in most commercial and residential streets of Paris

If you go to a small bistro or café-restaurant or a large popular brasserie, remember 3 things before deciding that having lunch in Paris is expensive:

In Paris taxes (VAT: Value Added Taxes) are always included in the total written on your check. This is already a saving of 11% compared to what you pay in a restaurant in Chicago.

In Paris the tip is already included in the check. This also represents a saving of 18 to 20 % compared to what you would pay in a restaurant in Chicago.

All together when you compare the cost of your lunch in Paris and in Chicago you have to mentally calculate that 31% of that total cost should be deducted in Paris before translating Euros in dollars.

And wine, if you do not buy an expensive bottle but share a half-liter carafe of decent regional wine that most eateries in this category have on the menu, or a glass, is cheaper in Paris than in Chicago.

Avoid buying bottled brand-name mineral water. Restaurants make lots of profits out of this kind of water. Order a simple carafe of tap water that every restaurant is supposed to supply on request.

Lunching habits have changed a lot in Paris over the last 10 years

When I was in my teens, in the 50’s, everybody would go home for lunch. In those days, especially in provincial cities and small rural towns, families would share that most important meal of the day cooked all morning by the mother, often assisted by the grandma, and in richer more bourgeois families by the maid

I remember that when I lived in Paris in the sixties, and during my frequent trips on business or vacation there in the 70’s and 80’s, lunch was still the most important meal of the day. We took at least 1 hour break from work and went to a neighborhood café-restaurant or brasserie to have a relaxing lunch with co-workers. Or if I was on a business trip there lunch with managers or owners of companies I was having things to discuss would take a good 2 hours in a restaurant.

If I was going to meet with friends on a more social occasion we would go to a comfortable traditional bistro with good regional food and wines.

In any case, even employees in downtown Paris, unless they had a “cantine” (cafeteria) in their company or government building, would take a long break for lunch.

Only people who were always on the run, or short of money, would eat a sandwich or eat a quick omelet washed down with a beer or a glass of wine standing at the “comptoir” of a café.

When you got home at night dinner was simpler that it used to be in provincial or rural families. A simple soup, cold ham and charcuterie platter or perhaps a small grilled steak, a salad, a piece of cheese with baguette bought freshly baked in the afternoon on the way home, and a fruit.

But nowadays people, especially the younger generation of Parisians, have a busy life and are less interested in spending too much time and money for lunch in a restaurant. Also they do not have time to wait for a table since they want to spend their lunch break time to do errands or walk or just read a book sitting on a bench in a park

In fact a study released not too long ago by France 5, a TV station, said that 22% of French active people skipped lunch regularly, and 40% of the French active population under age 24 (42% in Paris) did not have any kind of lunch.

The same study said that 35 minutes was the average time a Parisian spent at the table for lunch.

22% of active French people preferred buying a sandwich. That explains the growing success of “sandwicheries” ( sandwich shops) and “croissanteries” where you can order, or sit down and eat it on site, tasty cold and hot sandwiches, elaborate salads, soups, and pastries, fresh juices, coffee, and even beer and sometimes wine.

Only 9% of active Parisians had lunch in a restaurant.

20% brought a home-prepared lunch and ate it at their desk.

The average cost of a quick lunch for a Parisian is around 13 dollars.

Besides many Parisians still smoke and since it is now forbidden to smoke in public places, including restaurants, they prefer café-restaurants that have a ‘’terrasse’’ (terrace or sidewalk seating).

So now a majority of restaurants in various districts of Paris, especially those frequented by local workers, shoppers and tourists, offer sidewalk dining all year long since this terraces are often partially covered with an awning and equipped with heaters.

Last month in Paris in the street (Rue du Commerce in the 15^th arrondissement) where I always stay when in Paris, the weather was grey, rainy, and not too warm, But the terraces of the 2 major café-restaurants in my section of the street, ‘’A La Tour Eiffel’’ and ‘’ le Commerce Café’’ (not to be mistaken for the Café du Commerce up the street) were totally full of people enjoying their lunch and smoking from Noon to 3:00 PM.

The restaurateurs have found this astute trick to compensate for the loss of smoking customers since January 2008 when the new law banning smoking in public places started to be strictly enforced. In restaurants smoking is allowed on sidewalk terraces if they are totally open.

Also the recession that hit

France

over the last 2 years and the fact that many shop keepers and restaurants owners used the occasion of the passage of the French Franc to the Euro to increase their prices some years back, have greatly affected the lunching habits of Parisians.

They started to limit themselves for lunch to a single ‘’ plat du jour’’ (special dish of the day) , or a grilled sandwich like a croque-monsieur, or a hamburger, a special salad, or an omelet, and a dessert paired with water, a beer or a coke, and an espresso coffee.

Nowadays however in more fancy restaurants patronized by business people, tourists, or people who want to have a special lunch with friends, or family, or to celebrate a special occasion, you would still find customers having a long leisurely 3 or 4 course lunch with wine.

And in specialized bistros and ethnic restaurants, regulars from the neighborhood, usually older than 45, still enjoy a traditional complete lunch pretty regularly. I belong to that category.

Also in most café-restaurants and brasseries you would be surprised by the fact that most people do not drink wine with their lunch anymore. Some though still drink beer, mostly à la pression

(On tap), and the majority drink half bottles of mineral water or tap water from a carafe. Young people love to drink pop (essentially cola) with their salads, sandwiches, Paninis, or Chinese dishes.

Since Parisians do not want to eat elaborate lunches on a regular basis anymore, cafés and restaurant owners had to find ways to keep them coming at lunch time. The ‘’plat du jour’’ and the ‘’ formules’’ became the new popular lunch items which allow them to compete with the ubiquitous sandwich shops, and with the bakeries, charcuteries-traiteurs, which sell lots of carry-out dishes nowadays.

Once again, within the framework of the following series of advice and tips to find cheap ways to have lunch in Paris I will limit myself to small café-restaurants, ethnic restaurants, and brasseries. I’m not referring to relatively fancy bistros or full-menus restaurants.

For indications of prices I will use an arbitrary exchange rate of $1.30 for 1 Euro

1. Select a plat du jour, a drink, and an espresso.

The Plat du Jour has always existed in Paris restaurants since the mid-sixties. Sometimes I wondered if it was not invented for American tourists who have always resisted to the idea of eating a complete 3 course meal at lunch time and who were often upset when they went to a restaurant and wanted to order a simple salad or sandwich and a coke or a coffee by the negative and sometimes arrogant reaction of the waiter.

Nowadays, you would never find such a lack of interest to fulfill such a simple order in any Parisian neighborhood café or brasserie.

As I said earlier, in most cafés-restaurants located in working or popular districts you will find a posting for that Plat du Jour either painted in white on the windows, or written on a piece of cardboard or paper and affixed somewhere near the entrance.

It can be a regional traditional dish such as ‘’Parmentier’’ (baked mashed potatoes with meat), a ‘’Poulet basquaise’’ (chicken cooked in as sauce with peppers), Pavé de rumsteak–frites ( steak with French fries), Epaule d’agneau aux flageolets (roasted lamb shoulder with beans), Choucroute Garnie (Cooked sauerkraut with ham, pork belly and various types of sausage, Haddock pommes purée ( Filet of cod and mashed potatoes), or Petit Salé aux lentilles ( braised salt pork with baked lentils).

Or it can be a Pasta dish, or a Pizza, or a Meat dish in some kind of sauce such as a Boeuf Bourguignon, Veau Marengo, or Blanquette de Veau (2 types of veal stews)

These plats du jour always include a garnish of vegetable or starch and sometimes are served with a small plate of simple green lettuce on the side.

The price can vary from 11 to 15 euros ($14.30 to $19.50).

If you add 1 glass of wine or half bottle of mineral water ($ 3.20)

Examples of Plats du jour I’ve noticed while strolling the streets of Paris in November 2010:

Salmon à la Plancha 10.50 euros, Confit de Canard 11.00 euros, Entrecôte ( rib steak) in a black peppercorn and cream sauce 13.00 euros, Organic rotisserie chicken 11.50 euros in a bistro in the Passage des Panoramas , in the 2nd arrondissement. Near ‘’Les Grands Boulevards’’ and Opéra

Sauté de Veau beignets d’aubergines (Sautéed Veal with eggplant fritters) 8.50 euros in another small ethnic bistro in the same passage

Scaloppini à la crème avec pâtes fraiches (Veal Scaloppini in a cream sauce served with fresh pasta) 13.00 euros at Le Petit Mabillon in the 6th near Saint Germain des Prés

Carré d’agneau persillé Pommes grenaille, haricots verts ( Loin of lamb with new small potatoes and French green beans) 13.50 euros, Chicken Milanese Scaloppini with pasta 10.00 euros, at the Commerce Café, Rue du Commerce in the 15^th

Hachis Parmentier and salade (Baked mashed potatoes with ground meat, with a green salad

11.00 euros at A La Tour Eiffel, Rue du Commerce in the 15^th

Usually count 3.00 euros for a draft beer or half a liter of mineral water. And 1.80 euros for an espresso.

It brings the total check for a plat du jour+ a drink and a coffee to 17.30 euros = $ 22.50

2. Select a ‘’ Formule Déjeuner’’ a drink and a coffee (sometimes included in the price)

The Formule Déjeuner includes a main dish (plat du jour) + either an appetizer (hors d’oeuvre) or a dessert and most often a cup of espresso at the end of the meal.

You will find them in most cafés-restaurants and brasseries.

They are my favorite choice for lunch.

Some examples of formulas

In the very old-fashioned décor of Le Bistrot Victoires 6 rue la Vrillière in the 1st arrondissement near Place des Victoires a major hub for clothes designers, you can enjoy a complete meal, based on traditional dishes, for around 14 euros.

Near the Chatelet, Au Vieux Comptoir, 17 Rue des Lavandières Sainte Opportune in the 1^st, a charming simple bistro you can enjoy nicely prepared typical bistro dishes from a formule de déjeuner at 13 euros.

At the Bar des Variétés 12 Passage des Panoramas in the 2^nd there is a very attractive formula at 9.90 euros that offers a small salad and a very good hamburger made of beef from Salers with potatoes sautéed in goose fat, or a Plat du jour. They serve very pleasant regional wines in small carafes.

After a visit at Beaubourg enjoy a traditional but creative choice of great meat-based (very good Parmentier de canard) dishes in the charming Tire Bouchon 22 Rue Tiquetonne in the 2nd. Very tasty formule at 11 euros...

In the 5th, not too far from Notre-Dame, at 8 Rue Thénard, Le Pré Verre this funny bistro’s chef is very creative with exotic spices. The formule at 13.50 euros includes a glass of wine and an espresso.

Also in the 5th at the heart of the Latin Quarter, near Boulevard Saint Michel, great formule at 15 euros including all you can eat salad, an d a delicious cheese or meat fondue , and a ‘’sucette’’ (lolypop) for dessert at Heureux Comme Alexandre. 24 Rue de la Parcheminerie in the 5th. Nice little wines in small carafes.

In the 6^th at 5 Rue Princesse,near St Germain des Prés I found a very original and tasty formula at Bar à Soupes et Quenelles, where you can have a very tasty bowl (350 ml) of freshly made soup for 6.50 euros and a quenelle de brochet (pike dumpling) for 2.50 euros. Everything is made with top quality ingredients under the supervision of the famous Lyonnais traiteur Giraudet.

Also in the 6^th, Fish La Boissonnerie, 69 Rue de Seine, a very lively English-speaking bistro, they offer very good dishes inspired by the cuisine of Languedoc and Southern France in their 12.50 euros formula. Their wine list offers Languedoc and Rhône wines by the glass.

At Au Pied de Fouet, 45 Rue de Babylon in the 7^th, not far from the elegant clothing shops of the Rue de Sèvres, you can have a very satisfying lunch for less than 16 euros in this totally charming bistro that has been a constant favorite of several generations of Parisians.

In the 9th, I think it was in a small trattoria rue Condorcet, I spotted a mini-menu for 12.90 euros that included Mortadella or marinated mushrooms, then an Osso Bucco, and then a mousse au chocolat or a tarte du jour.

If you walk along the delightful Canal Saint Martin, stop for lunch at La Cantine de Quentin 52 Rue Bichat in the 10^th where their formule at 15 euros includes good regional traditional dishes and great desserts.

In the 11th near La Bastille, the great wine bar Les Domaines qui Montent 136 Boulevard Voltaire has a 300 wines list and they sell them by the glass for a very modest price. But you can try them with very well prepared traditional comfort food dishes, charcuterie platters, and great regional cheeses. The formule costs 14.50 euros

In fact the 11th arrondissement, between Bastille and République is one of the richest, and one of my all-time favorites districts for traditional French bistros.

Among them a few have interesting ‘’formule du déjeuner’’ and good wines by the glass:

L’Ami Pierre 5 rue de la Main d’or with its formule at 14 Euros

Le Bar à Soupes 33 Rue de Charonne, Great soups around 10 euros

Le Clown Bar 114 Rue Amelot, Great murals and décor on an old circus theme. French country comfort food. Good wines. 14.00 euros

L’Estaminet, 116 Rue Oberkampf, Spectacular salads. !2.50 Euros

Le Repaire de Cartouche 8 Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire. Rustic decor and ambiance. Very good traditional country fare and great wine list.

In the 12^th, I love Les Zygomates, a very cheerful bistro located in a former charcuterie. The lunch menu at 15 euros including café attracts a loyal crowd of regulars.

Near Montparnasse, 21 Rue d’Odessa, in the 14^th at Les Produits du Sud-Ouest try a few samples of such tasty treats as pâté de canard, confit, and cassoulet. The formule is at 12.50 euros at lunchtime.

For 14.00 euros ($18.20) at Le Café du Commerce 74 Rue du Commerce in the 15th you have a choice of several main dish such as a Duck Leg with mild spices with parsleyed potatoes, or Fresh Raviolis stuffed with ricotta cheese and a mesclun of greens, or a beef steak with fresh cut fries and a sauce, and a selection of desserts such as a small profiterole, or petit pot de crème with dark chocolate, or a salad of fresh citrus fruits + an espresso coffee. The quality of their beef is quite good.

And do not forget the many good Vietnamese and North-African family-owned neighborhood restaurants where you can enjoy traditional specialties such as nems and lemongrass chicken or Couscous and Tajines for about 15 euros.

Examples:

Paris-Hanoi 74 Rue de Charonne in the 11th Formule around 9.00 euros

Bonjour Vietnam , 6 Rue Thouin in the 5^th. Menu at 12.00 Euros

Le Lotus Blanc, 45 Rue de Bourgogne in the 7th. Formule at 12.00 euros

L’Escale à Saigon, 41 Rue de la Tombe Issoire in the 14th Menu at 14.50 Euros

Chouchou, 63 Rue Rambuteau in the 4^th. Complete menu, including a decent Moroccan chicken Tajine for 13.50 euros. Go very early to secure a table.

Founti Agadir. 117 Rue Monge in the fun Mouffetard district in the 5^th. Another good place to try Moroccan specialties (Couscous, Tajines, Pastilla etc.) Formule at 12.50 Euros

L’Oasis 162 Rue de Grenelle in the 7^th. Good Algerian family-style food. Around 12.00 Euros

La Baraka, 70 Rue Daguerre in the 14^th. Another Algerian family-owned restaurant. Charming décor. Couscous. Formule 8.50 euros

And if you want to eat a complete à la carte meal 20 euros including wine and coffee, do not bypass good old Bouillon Chartier, 7 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre in the 9^th. This big old-style brasserie is practically an historical monument and truly a unique experience. The décor is the same since the 19^th century. Waiters still do not write down your order but write your check on a corner of your table white paper cover. You will probably be seated with other people if you are a party of only 2 people.

Anyway expect to pay 3.50 or 3.70 euros for an appetizer of frisée salad with warm bacon, or country pate, 8.70 Euros for roasted chicken with home-made fries, and 3.90 euros for a chocolate cake with cream sauce. A small carafe of red wine will cost you 2.50 euros and an espresso coffee 1.70 euros. Total for such a lunch: around 20 euros or 26 dollars. Do not expect high level cuisine, but you will feed yourself with traditional French dishes in a very lively and popular environment.

I was there in November for the first time since 1967 and it did not have changed a bit.

Walking around Paris, you will find dozens of similar deals in practically every neighborhood of Paris except perhaps in the 8^th arrondissement near the Champs-Elysées and in most of the 16^th

3. Find good sandwiches or ‘’tartines’’ in ‘’sandwicheries’’, bakeries, and sometimes charcuteries.

It is a Parisian tradition when you do not have time for a sit-down lunch to go to your neighborhood café and order a sandwich, a beer, and a coffee.

Most of the time it will be a ‘’jambon-beurre’’ meaning a quarter of a fresh baguette sliced length-wise , buttered, and garnished with a couple of slices of Jambon de Paris ( a mild pale pink-colored ham), or country pate, or cold sliced roast beef.

Or you may want to order an ‘’assiette anglaise’’, a plate of pâté, ham, roast beef, cornichons, perhaps half a boiled egg and a garnish of a few leaves of lettuce and tomatoes. A Croque-Monsieur , a grilled ham and cheese sandwich of soft bread with béchamel, is also a popular lunch dish.

You usually eat these standing at the ‘’comptoir’’...

The cost of such a lunch will usually be around 10 to 12 euros.

Some wine bars are well-known for the quality of their ‘’tartines’’, (open-face sandwiches made from country or rye bread). Their main ingredients can be artisan charcuterie items like country or raw hams, ‘’rillettes’’, terrines, pâtés, or dry sausage. It can also include good cheese such as Cantal, goat cheese, Comté, or Camembert au lait cru.

Usually the owners of such cafés are also well-known for their excellent regional wines coming from small wine makers.

Two of my favorites are:

La Taverne Henri IV, 13 place du Pont Neuf (on the Pont Neuf), at the tip of Ile de La Cité in the 1st

Average price per person for a plate of good ham and camembert with a glass of wine: 20 Euros

Try some ‘’tartines’’ and plates (planches) of good quality country and artisan hams, dry sausage, cheese etc. They also serve good Escargots (12 euros for a dozen). The Tartine Chaude des Alpilles (with basil, confit of tomatoes, eggplant, and grilled goat cheese) is a real delight at 9.00 euros

But you go there for fantastic regional wines from the Beaujolais or Loire Valley that you drink by the glass or in small carafes.

Au Sauvignon, 80 Rue des Saints-Pères in the 7th near Saint-Germain des Prés

Average price per person with a glass of wine: 18 Euros They also have formules at 15 euros.

Very good ‘’ tartines’’ made with Pain Poilane, a well-known baker located one block away, and very tasty Cantal cheese, dry cured or raw ham, mountain air cured dry sausage, rillettes, country pâtés, etc. Excellent selection of white wines from the Loire Valley (Quincy, Sancerre), and reds from Bourgueil or Mennetou-Salon.

Cosi, 54 Rue de Seine, in the 6^th

This cute little bar, where good opera music is always playing in the background, bakes its own bread and offers spectacular sandwiches, often in the Italian style. Good salads.

The owners also own Fish, across the street. Great wines by the glass and good Tiramisu. There is another room on the second floor.

Sandwiches around 7 or 8 euros.

Try also some good ‘’sandwicheries’’. They usually offer all kinds of grilled and cold sandwiches, salads, and a few simple hot dishes, such as ‘’ tartiflette’’, desserts and drinks...

One of my favorite chains is La Croissanterie.

Created in 1977 in Paris as a purveyor of croissants and brioches, they expanded a lot in the 90`s and now offer complete dishes on one plate made of freshly ingredients prepared every day. They have now 180 restaurants all over Europe.

The one I go to is next to the Eglise Saint Germain des Prés on Blvd Saint Germain in the 6^th.

It is a very attractive and clean operation with confortable tables and chairs inside and on the sidewalk terrace.

Good cold and hot sandwiches, pasta dishes, risotto, cold salmon plates, quiches, pastries. They offer mini-menus including a drink and a dessert priced between 5 and 9 euros.

Bon appétit à Paris.

All photos By Alain Maes

French Restaurants In Chicago: 1959-2009 - A 50 year Retrospective

2010-12-05T10:16:00.029-06:00

French Restaurants in Chicago, a 50 year retrospective

Part 2: 1959-1969

A new beginning for French restaurants in Chicago

The period of the 60’s was marked first by a continuation of the all-American style of cooking in American families, particularly those living in the rapidly expanding suburbs, as it had been the case between the post WWII era and the end of the 50’s.

But then Americans started to travel again, particularly to Europe, and got familiarized with its great restaurants and chefs.

In the early part of the decade, the influence of the Kennedy White House and the well-known taste of the its First Lady, whose ancestors, the Bouvier family, were French, for French cooking, was evident.

But the real kick to this new taste for French cuisine was the publication in 1961 of Julia Child’s book, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, and even more the launching in February of 1963 of her TV series ‘’The French Chef’’ at WGBH in Boston. That program, broadcast in Chicago by WTTW, Channel 11, really motivated American housewives who had a chance to travel to

France

, like your own mother, Stéphane, who came to Aix- en-Provence in 1961, to expand their own cooking universe, sharpen their skills, and develop a taste for French cuisine.

They pushed their husbands and friends to go downtown to eat in ‘’ French restaurants’’ and to order good French wines, that in the mid-sixties were not easy to locate in the Chicago area liquor stores.

At the same time, many Chicago Francophiles, most of them from the upper-middle class and socialites having spent vacations in France, or even owning properties there, were pushing to create real French restaurants in Chicago, and some of them were ready to invest in such establishments.

Such was the case of Nancy Goldberg wife of the famous local architect Bertrand Goldberg, who recreated in Chicago a replica of the famous Parisian restaurant MAXIM’S .

MAXIM’S de PARIS opened at 1300 N. Astor street in December of 1963, with the help of Louis Vaudable, the owner of the original restaurant on Rue Royale, near La Madeleine church in Paris.

With the local assistance of Mrs. Goldberg, Mr. Vaudable managed to bring to Chicago several French professional waiters, captains, cooks and sommeliers who all worked at Maxim’s in Paris.

That was only the beginning of a new ‘’ French’’ trend, and a mini exodus from France to Chicago, that was going to expand until the mid-eighties.

After a couple of years there several alumni from MAXIM’S eventually left to start their own restaurants in Chicago and its suburbs. We will talk about them later.

That decade was also marked by the arrival in the Chicago restaurant landscape of 2 major professionals from the food preparation and hospitality fields who would become nationally recognized stars:

JOVAN TRBOYEVIC, who opened his first restaurant JOVAN on Huron street in 1967 and JEAN BANCHET, who was recruited by Arnie Morton to work as an assistant-chef at the restaurant of the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, in 1968.

(Jovan Trboyevic would later launch LE PERROQUET on East Walton in 1972, a temple of ‘’French nouvelle cuisine’’ that reached international fame, and in 1979 his own private bistro-private club LES NOMADES on East Ontario.

And in 1973 Jean Banchet started one of the most celebrated French restaurants in the U.S. of the post-WWII period, LE FRANCAIS, in Wheeling, in 1973. We will talk about these two landmarks in the next chapter).

It was also the decade when several authentic French Bistros and restaurants were launched by Frenchmen, or by people who lived and worked for many years in France, and were immediate successes. But some of them did not last very long. Among the most popular of them we will remember:

LA CHAUMIERE (opened in March 1965 by René Martin on N. Dearborn)

LES CHAMPS ELYSEES (opened in June 1967 on East Chestnut St.
by Jean-Claude Berger and Pierre Dousson)

JOVAN opened in late 1967 on East Huron by Jovan Trboyevic

L’ESCARGOT (opened on N. Halsted St.
in October 1968 by Alan Tutzer and Lucien Vergé)

LE BORDEAUX (opened in March of 1969 on W. Madison in the Loop by Georges ‘’Kiki’’ Cuisance, and 3 other partners)

LA CHEMINEE opened by Burton Kallick in April of 1969 at the site of what used to be La Chaumière

L’AUBERGE (opened in October 1969 on N. Clark St.by Yvan Wiedmer and Jean-Paul Vassas)

LA GRENOUILLE (opened in December 1969 in Hyde Park by René Borderie and Jean-Claude Berger)

Several other French restaurants were opened or were morphed from existing eateries during that period, and we will say a few words about all of them later in this article.

The arrival of these real French restaurants constituted a very pleasant and refreshing “new wave” after a long period of domination of this city by:

The mini empire of Ray Castro and Edison Dick.

Most of their restaurants were more French in name than in authenticity of their cuisine.

But to be honest we should add that they partially contributed to the beginning of that revival of the public’s interest for a French-style cuisine that was no longer popular in Chicago restaurants since the early 30’s.

Café de Paris that we mentioned in the first segment of this retrospective was eventually acquired by Ray Castro and his financial partner Edison Dick in 1952 who over the next few years was about to create an important group of “Continental restaurants” in Chicago, most of them with French names.

In spite of the commercial success of that enterprise, many serious critics and cognoscenti, while recognizing that it launched a renewal of the taste for “French” style dining in the 50’s in Chicago, admit that the Castro Group restaurants were more pretending to be French than authentically French. In spite of their French names, type of menus, décor and service, today we would rather call that type of cuisine Continental” cuisine.

Personally I do not call them French restaurants because most chefs, cooks, and managers who worked for them were not French, or even French-trained.

But nevertheless several of these places became very popular. Over the last few years I have been talking with many Chicagoans who are still nostalgic about dates, anniversaries, graduation celebrations, or business dinners with out-of- town guests during trade shows, they had in of Ray Castro’s restaurants

Ray Castro was a young Cuban immigrant who arrived in Chicago in 1930. After various jobs, he eventually ended up working as a busboy at the famous Pump Room in the Ambassador East hotel when it was launched by Ernie Byfield in 1938.

He climbed many steps of the hierarchy in that restaurant to become Captain then Maitre D’ in the Beau Nash Room. In this capacity he met one of their well-to-do clients Edison Dick, the heir of the copying and office machines manufacturing company AB Dick.

In 1951, Castro asked him to help him financially to buy the Café de Paris on Dearborn from the previous owners Edna and Frank Giesel who knew Edison Dick well. Edison Dick accepted and in 1952 it became the beginning of a long partnership that ended at the end of 1969 when they sold their group to ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph) a New-York-based company.

At one point they owned and managed 16 restaurants, including a few specializing in Latin-American, Seafood, or American cuisine based on steaks, such as the Kinzie Steak House on West Kinzie Street, The Terrace in Lake Point Tower, or the Sea Gull, also in Lake Point Tower.

Edison Dick loved to eat but did not know anything about cooking and food preparation. He was mainly the investor and financial manager. Ray Castro with his strong experience in restaurants was the actual manager of operations.

The Vice President of the Group was a Frenchman by the name of Henri Glattard

who became the manager of Le Mignon, once it was sold to ITT and re-opened in 1973.

I will simply list some of the most well known “French” restaurants in the Castro Restaurants Group and provide their date of opening.

Except for my one-time experience at Jacques, I have never eaten in any of them, since when I moved for good to Chicago in January of 1970, I was more interested in discovering small cheap and unpretentious ethnic bistros (Greek, German, Italian, Serbian, etc.), and the very few authentic small French bistros that existed at the time, than spending money in not always authentic so-called “French” restaurants.

CAFE DE PARIS, 1260 N. Dearborn Parkway. Opened in 1941 and restarted in 1952 by Edison Dick and Ray Castro.
The famous French chef Henri Charpentier was the first chef de cuisine in 1941-42. In the early sixties the chef was an Italian, Pat Nutti, who also worked at the famous Chez Paree, a night-club and supper club that was not French at all. Café de Paris famous signature dish was the ‘’duckling à la Belasco’’.

JAQUES FRENCH RESTAURANT at 900 N. Michigan Avenue . Opened in 1935 at this address. But started at 180 East Delaware in 1928 then purchased by Castro in 1954.

MAISON LAFITE in the Churchill Hotel at 1255 North Parkway opened in 1959

LA MAISONETTE 3445 Dempster in Skokie, opened in 1959

L’EPUISETTE , 21 W. Goethe, opened in 1963, was a very popular seafood restaurant for several years

CAFE LA TOUR at 400 East Randolph in Lake Point Tower opened in 1964

BIGGS at 1150 N. Dearborn opened in 1954 then was acquired and renovated by Ray Castro in 1964 .

Very elegant, it was considered by many as the best continental restaurant n Chicago. Jovan Trboyevic was Maitre D’ there in 1964.

MON PETIT , 1255 N. State in 1964

LE MIGNON, 712 N. Rush
It never really started its operations before the group was sold to ITT but was about to be launched in 1969. It was reopened in 1973 by Edison Dick and Henri Glattard.

LA COQUILLE, like Le Mignon it seems that it was not included in the sale of the group to ITT since it was still managed by Ray Castro in late 1970 on 3200 N. Lake Shore Drive
Opened in 1970,

None of these restaurants still exist in 2010.

Several of these restaurants were decorated in a very old-fashioned style that would pretend either to look like a provincial country inn, or a faux “ urban de luxe” fancy restaurant, complete with drapes, candelabras, golden mirrors, wood trimmings, crystal glasses, elegant silver and tableware, etc.

The staff would wear traditional “French garcon de café’’ outfits, and the cooks sported the traditional “toques”.

The menus would propose the classics that most Americans think they would find in any French restaurants: snails, stuffed mushrooms, frog legs, lobster bisque, stuffed crepes with crab meat in a cream and mushroom sauce, tournedos forestière, steak Diane, veal Prince Orloff, rack of lamb, duck à l’orange, or in a sweet cherry sauce, truite meunière, Dover sole, omelette flambée, cherries jubilee, souflé au Grand Marnier, etc.

But it would be quite difficult to find a simple faux-filet au poivre with real pommes frites, a veal Marengo, a navarin d’agneau, a skate wing in a brown butter and caper sauce, a tarte Tatin or a sorbet au cassis made from fresh fruit.

Most waiters would push you to order cocktails or champagne but rarely would they suggest to pair the food with a good bottle of Bordeaux, because very few of them had any solid knowledge of French wines.

Coffee was still the choice beverage during dinner (‘’coffee now or after’’ was the ritual question at the beginning of the meal), along with the cocktails and whiskies that people continued to drink with their main course.

But of course, no real expresso machine could be seen in any of these restaurants.

Now, I will differentiate 2 categories of “French” restaurants launched in that 1959-1969 period:

Restaurants that were actually owned and/or managed by French people, and where the kitchen was operated by French chefs and cooks.

This list which constitutes the main focus of this article will be elaborate.

Restaurants that sometimes served decent “French” food but were not owned or managed by French people. A few employed French chefs and cooks though .

This list will be less detailed. I would call most of the restaurants in that category as

“continental with a touch of French"…

What can be remembered about this period is that you could have a complete 3 course dinner in these establishments for a very reasonable price: from $ 2.75 in the early sixties to 8 or 9 dollars at the end of the decade

1. Restaurants that were actually owned and/or managed by French people, and/or where the kitchen was in the hands of French chefs and cooks.

I think that the first one of this type to be opened in the early 60’s was:

CAFÉ FRENCH MARKET Located in the Ascott House Hotel, 1100 S. Michigan Avenue.

It opened its doors in July of 1962 under the management of a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Guillaume, a former food and beverage manager at both Ambassador and Sherman hotels. That man knew his business quite well and insisted to import almost everything from France, including the chef, according to Jacques Grelley, the former owner of the French restaurant Frère Jacques on N. Clark street , who worked there for a while as a busboy when he arrived in Chicago from France in 62. That “fancy” French restaurant was in fact more American in décor than French and the menu was obviously concocted to please Midwest palates: lobster bisque, soupe à l’oignon, vegetables in a chicken broth en croûte, bouillabaisse, and bizarre dishes like that beef roll stuffed with rice with a paprika cream sauce. The place closed in late 1964.

I do not know what ever happened to J.M Guillaume.

MAXIM`S DE PARIS opened in the basement of the Astor Towers hotel , at 1300 N. Astor in December of 1963.

Nancy Goldberg’s creation was quite an impressive restaurant with its red and gold décor, shiny brass trims, dark wood furniture, mirrors on the walls, chandeliers, beautiful French sterling and serving carts, and above all typical French polished but discrete service . The whole place, that wanted to resemble as much as possible to the French original Maxim’s on Rue Royale in Paris was located in a building designed by her husband, famous local architect Bertrand Goldberg, but there was no stained glass dome over the dining room. It was initially operated under the management of Louis Vaudable, owner of Maxim’s in Paris, with the help of an efficient “Directeur” Raymond Bompart who had a solid professional background in traditional French and European hotels and restaurants. He was a maitre d’hotel at the Ambassador hotel in Chicago in 1960 before going back to Paris to Maxim’s.

The menu was a repertoire of French classics: From Cream of Mussels Soup, Sole Albert, Mousse de Foie Gras, Foie Gras sauce Périgourdine, Steak Diane, Filet de Boeuf en Croûte, Pommes soufflés, to Veal Orloff, and of course marvelous dessert soufflés. The wine list was probably the richest in Chicago at the time in Great Bordeaux and Bourgognes. All the celebrities who came to town and the local “beautiful people” would of course start their dinner with Champagne.

All the chefs and head waiters had been trained in Paris and were brought in, along with Monsieur Bompart, by Vaudable with the local help of Nancy Goldberg. Some of the notable chefs or cooks who worked in that famous kitchen were Pierre Monet, Michel Grobon, Pierre Orsi (from 1967 to 1969 before he went back to his native Lyon and took over the famous eponymous restaurant there), and later on, Bernard Cretier who started as sous-chef in 1970 and stayed as executive chef until the late seventies, when he created his own restaurant, Le Vichyssois in Lakemoor.
Michel Maloiseau also worked as chef there for 3 years in the late 70s.
29 year old Pierre Orsi marked his tenure at Maxim’s in 1967 with a great innovation: A prix fixe sumptuous buffet, complete from elaborate hors d’oeuvres to beautiful desserts, and including hot meat dishes served at the table from rolling carts for 5.00 dollars.

Maxim’s in its original format, had a glorious run for several years and totally eclipsed other Chicago fancy places such as the Pump Room as the ‘’place to see and be seen’’. But it had to close its doors in March of 1982. A very successful discothèque, The Metro, was launched there in the very early seventies. But it did not last long.

In 1984 Georges Badonski, one of the most creative entrepreneurs there ever was on the Chicago restaurant scene (Le Bastille, Tango, George’s) decided to buy Maxim`s space and to open it as a restaurant again. Louis Vaudable in the meantime had sold Maxim’s of Paris to Pierre Cardin in 1981 but did not want to have any connection with Maxim’s Chicago. On the recommendation of chef Hubert Keller in San Francisco, Badonski hired a young French cuisinier , Jean Joho, who was working at the famous Auberge de l’Ill in Alsace and had been trained by its owner, the legendary Paul Haeberlin.
But eventually, everything went wrong for various reasons, legal, financial, and conflicting personalities and interests. And the ‘’New Maxim’s’’ did not last very long.

But many of the former French employees of the original Maxim’s from the early sixties, such as Georges Cuisance, Christian Gaborit, Gérard Humilier, Michel Grobon, Michel Laurent, Jean-Paul Weber, René Borderie, Pierre Monet, Raymond Soubrier, or Jean-Claude Berger, stayed around and opened their own restaurants, or work for some others in Chicago.

A French manager Raymond Bonaparte, left in 1966 to open a restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin

We will talk about some of these people and what happened to them later in this segment.

LA CHAUMIERE opened at 1161 N. Dearborn in March of 1965

This small but charming and elegant place that could seat only 44 guests at a time was launched by René Martin, who waited on tables at Jacques for 8 years and was himself the son of a restaurateur in Paris, and his wife Josie

It became rapidly a hit since it was at the time the only restaurant in town with an almost exclusively French staff. The chef was Gérard Pin and the sous-chef, was Bernard Lecoq, who 7 years later would open his own restaurant, Café Bernard, that still exists in 2010. Both men, friends of Martin, came from

France

to work at La Chaumière.

One of the waiters was Jacques Grelley, future owner of Frère Jacques.
Opened for lunch and dinner, regular customers loved the relaxed bistro atmosphere and the poached turbot with hollandaise sauce.

The following year the restaurant doubled its seating capacity and added a wine bar.

But eventually it went from success to hard times and Bill Contos, owner of Chez Paul, bought the closed place in 1968 and reopened it a few months later with Henri Coudrier as chef de cuisine. A few months later, in April of 1969, it morphed into LA CHEMINEE.

DE PROVENCE- MAISON HENRI, 2820 N. Southport opened in the summer of 1965.

This tiny café was located above a pastry-deli-catering shop called Maison Henri.

Henri Naurath (born in Germany but a French resident for many years) had come to Chicago from Paris in 1960. He made quite a reputation with his sausages that Chicagoans discovered at a French Fair at Carson’s in1963. So 1965, with a French partner called Antoine Sorgia, they opened De Provence, since Saugia was

From Marseilles. They transformed the space where Henri made his sausages into a kitchen for their French chef, and served typical French fare such as Tournedos Rossini and Baba au Rhum. The place was BYOB. I do not know how long it operated but in 1966 the restaurant name was changed back to Maison Henri..

Antoine Sorgia, who before De Provence had worked as a waiter at La Chaumière, eventually opened his own restaurant Antoine Ambassador Supper Club in Aurora in early 1966. It was essentially an American restaurant but his chef-partner there, Marius Laura, would produce French dishes on demand.

One had to wait until 1967 to see another authentic French restaurant opening:

LES CHAMPS ELYSEES, at 260 East Chestnut Street

It was launched on June 1, 1967 by Pierre Dousson, a former chef at Maxim’s and now the chef here and his partner Jean-Claude Berger, an alumnus of the Royal Hunt at the Ambassador East hotel, who as Maitre d’ was in charge of the dining room. The launching of this charming and elegant restaurant benefited from the financial and managerial backing of Norman Kaplan and George Weingart. Seating was limited to 80 customers but the restaurant was open for lunch and dinner .

Most of the items on the menu were French classics: Tournedos Rossini, Dover Sole, Turbot hollandaise, Rack of Lamb.

In 1969 the restaurant would regularly welcome high school students with their French teachers for lunch. They would order in French, converse I French with Pierre Dousson, and learn about French cuisine. Jean-Claude Berger left the restaurant in 1969 to briefly join the staff at Jovan, then later that year he launched La Grenouille in Hyde Park with René Borderie, another former Maitre D’ at Maxim’s.

More later about this restaurant.

Champs-Elysées continued to be successful until the early 70’s. In 1970. Jean Banchet was the chef there for a brief period.

Later on the space was occupied for several years by Zaven and nowadays is the site of another French bistro: Le Petit Paris of Alain Sitbon.

LA BRASSERIE DE STRASBOURG at 1934 N. Clark also opened at about the same time in early June of 1967 in the North Park hotel.

The owners once again were René and Josie Martin, the couple who had opened La Chaumière 2 years before.
Gérard Humilier was also a chef there.

It was a much larger place than La Chaumière and after they had stopped serving regular lunch and dinner menus, intended to cater to the late evening diners coming out of the theater or a movie for à la carte typical brasserie fare like Soupe à l’oignon, Choucroute Garnie, Quiche Lorraine, and cheese plates. The full 7course dinner menu was priced around $ 8.00.The ambiance was relaxed and informal and many people enjoyed the late hour service.

They also opened a tiny 4 tables café adjoining the restaurant called Saint Honoré Pastry shop, where you could order a couple of simple bistro dishes and good French pastries, sorbets, and ice-cream, along with strong coffee.

Unfortunately, the whole operation went bankrupt and closed 14 months later.

Gene Sage, the famous Chicago restaurateur, bought the location in 1969 and intended to transform it into a ‘’French pub’’ serving small plates and bar food, a concept that was way ahead of its time in 1969. I do not know if that project was ever finalized.

JOVAN at 16 East Huron

The opening of this very chic restaurant by Jovan Trboyevic was really a turning point in the modern history of contemporary classy French cuisine in Chicago when it opened on November 10, 1967.

Located on the second floor of a charming old house, its 60 seats dining room was very elegant and beautifully decorated with dominant cream and red colors.

Some of the walls had murals depicting French markets. They were the work of Maggie (Meg) Abbott a very talented artist and decorator, who eventually became Trboyevic’s wife and later on decorated both Le Perroquet and Les Nomades from A to Z.

Every detail was perfect like it would be in a traditional place of haute cuisine in

France

This restaurant was about to launch the celebrated career of the man who personified a new breed of high-class restaurateurs in America, Jovan Trboyevic.

Jovan, (his name was pronounced Yovan) passed away some months ago and I will continue to miss him for many years to come, not only because he was a great human being and a friend, but also because he really changed the way to manage a great restaurant and forever the approach to high quality French food in that city that used to be called ‘’ a meat and potato town’’

His itinerary before the creation of Jovan had been, and that is the least we can say, unusual. He escaped Yugoslavia in 1941 in an old submarine taken over by a crew of fortune, men who like him detested the take over by the Nazis of most of Western Europe, to join the British forces in Egypt. After some commando and training missions in India and Palestine he ended up being parachuted back to his own country to re-establish links for the Brits with Yugoslavian partisans. He stayed in various fighting and support capacities in Yugoslavia until 1943. Then he was sent to Italy to spy for the British army. Then he went to Switzerland and to London to do political work. In 1944 he returned to Geneva and worked in restaurants to make a living and went to Lausanne to study at a good culinary restaurant and hotel management school. He learned all facets of that type of business and increased his already solid knowledge of food and wine inherited from his father. Then in 1954 he came to the

U.S.

He worked as captain at famous New York restaurants like the 21 Club and Sardi`s and even opened a fancy restaurant in Larchmont that he kept for several years.

His first professional contact with the restaurant scene in Chicago was in 1964 when the Castro-Dick organization asked him to come here to start a real restaurant in a beautiful mansion on Dearborn St.
It became BIGG’S where Jovan worked for a year as Maitre D’. But he had difficulties to adjust to Castro’s concept of what a successful restaurant should be.
Once again, the “nomad” that he always was hit the road.

After meeting with Burton Brown, the owner of the Gaslight Clubs, he worked for him as a Maitre d’ in the restaurants of the DC and NYC clubs. But B. Browne wanted to send him to L.A to work at the new club. Jovan preferred to stay in Chicago, a city he had learned to like and where he had made many friends. So in 67 with the blessing of Browne and the financial backing of 2 well-known Chicago businessmen and socialites, Potter Palmer and Gordon Bent, and two other minor partners, he became co-owner and General Manager of Jovan.

It became an immediate success helped by the talents of French chef Bernard Binder, who cooked, under Jovan’s direction, not only classic dishes such as escargots, sweetbreads, quenelles de brochet (pike mousse), rack of lamb with ratatouille, duck in a peppercorn sauce, and soufflé au Grand Marnier, but also offered more modern ways to prepare fish, fresh vegetables, and unusual (for America) typical French cuts of meat.

In 68, Binder was replaced as chef by Jean-Pierre Tournier, and some others.

But above all the unusual extensive European management experience of Jovan himself, who was a perfectionist, the excellent polished service provided by the dining room waiting staff, that included Gérard Humilier as Maitre D’, and the super wine list that included great Bordeaux and Bourgognes rarely found in French restaurants in Chicago in these days constituted a winning formula.

He also introduced with success the concept of “prix-fixe” dinner at around 9 dollars.

One interesting detail: Jovan was so attached to the high quality of the ingredients used in his kitchen that he supervised most of the buying, and quite often went himself to the market to select the exact fruits, vegetables, herbs or cheese, fish, or cut of meat that he wanted. And he also acquired the first expresso coffee machine ever used in a Chicago restaurant.

In fact I would say that Jovan really introduced to Chicago what was known in France as

“La Cuisine Du Marché’’. In other words the menu was composed every day based on the best products he could find at the market.
At Jovan there was no pre-printed menu.

JOVAN was awarded the Holiday magazine restaurant award in 1969

Jovan Trboyevic sold Jovan in 1977 to Dieter Ahrens, his Maitre D’,who later on became manager when Jovan was to busy with his new Le Perroquet,

The restaurant burned in 1982 and was relocated in 1983 at 1660 N. Lasalle Street

P.S Jovan was not French himself, but he was totally immersed in the French culture and

his kitchen and waiting staff was mostly French

In the Spring of 1968, a new flock of 7 French cooks arrived in Chicago. They had been hired to man the kitchens of the various new restaurants at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, WI

The head of that group was Michel Cipolla, who after a stint at the Playboy Club in London, took over as executive chef of the main dining room at the young age of 29. His sous-chef was Jean Banchet who came from Monte Carlo after an apprenticeship at the famous La Pyramide of Monsieur Point in Vienne. Other chefs who eventually would make a career in Chicago restaurants were Michel Maloiseau and Gérard Parrat.

Since the Playboy Club was not a French restaurant in Chicago we will not write about it at this time.

Only one major French restaurants opened in 1968, but it was perhaps the first one to bring traditional “cuisine bourgeoise provinciale” to a neighborhood a little far from downtown, and that was at the time unusual for a French restaurant .

L’ESCARGOT at 2925 N. Halsted opened its doors in October of 1968.

The owner Alan Tutzer was not a chef but had a precise idea of what he wanted: a traditional unpretentious French restaurant offering typical dishes representative of “cuisine bourgeoise” that you would find in typical restaurants of the “province”.

So he hired as chef and partner a Frenchman with an already solid experience in that field: Lucien Vergé, a native of Lyon, the capital of cuisine bourgeoise, who had apprenticed there with one of the ‘’mères’’ the famous women chef-owners of traditional restaurants in Lyon. He was a cook in the French army, and also had apprenticed in 4 stars Parisian hotels such as the Crillon and the Plaza-Aténée, and in 1956 at the young age of 23 had been hired at the Veau d’Or, a famous French restaurant in New York City where he worked as sous-chef until 1962.

Before starting at l’Escargot Vergé worked at the Mid-America Club and Chez Paul and he had a great sense of what hospitality should mean.

L’Escargot actually had the look and the feel of a real French ‘’restaurant de province’’ with the long wooden bar and its beautiful vases of fresh flowers, banquettes with wooden trimmings and coat hooks, comfortable booths, tables covered with white cloths and nice silverware , framed posters and Paris street signs on the walls. The quality of the welcome by the host and dining room staff and of the service was also very French , relaxed but professional. It was the opposite of a stuffy New-York style fancy French restaurant. Everybody, whatever clothes he or she was wearing, whether he ordered a salad and coffee for lunch or an expensive bottle of Burgundy with duck for dinner was always treated well. And Lucien himself walked around the dining room to greet regulars and newcomers.

And the food was real comfort food with some elegance.

I loved the marvelous pâtés, the artichaut vinaigrette, the typically lyonnais saucisson chaud en croûte, the cassoulet Toulousain, a rare find in Chicago in the early seventies, the French endives au gratin, the Cornish hen ‘’grand mère’’, the gigot d’agneau aux flageolets.

But some of his most popular dishes were based on organ meat: kidneys, veal liver soufflé, ris de veau (sweetbreads), cervelle (brains) en croûte, and fish such as stuffed trout and sole meunière.

The first years you could have a complete meal (without wine) for less than 10 dollars.

10 years later it was a bit more expensive but you still could eat very well for 20 dollars with wine. And the wine list was very attractive and nicely priced.

The restaurant was a non-stop popular place in spite of its relatively remote location from its opening until it burned in 1979. Then in 1980 Tutzer and Vergé opened a 2^ndL’ Escargot in the Allerton Hotel at Michigan and Huron that proved to be equally popular. Lucien Vergé died in 1985. He was only 52.

Without him the restaurants (they had rebuilt the original on Halsted in the early 80`s) we not the same anymore.

LE BORDEAUX at 3 W. Madison in the Loop opened in March of 1969

This restaurant, located in a basement of that building half a block west of busy State Street

, was at the time the only French restaurant in the Loop. Until its closing in 1989 it never stopped being packed for lunch with regulars, essentially businessmen, ladies who were going shopping, and a bunch of French compatriots who considered that restaurant as being almost their own “club”. There was also a limited “pre-theater” crowd. And then the restaurant closed early.

It was started by George Cuisance, better known as Kiki, and three other colleagues, Bernard Bounaud who became the first chef, Christian Finance, and Ramon Colom, who had all lost their jobs when La Chaumière went under in 1968.

They each contributed $ 5,000 to acquire the place which was an Italian restaurant called Pierre’s.

Kiki, one of the veteran French restaurateurs in Chicago whose Kiki’s Bistro has been a landmark at 900 N. Franklin since 1990, had come to Chicago in December of 1963 to work at MAXIM’s. But he already had a solid professional experience acquired, after he graduated from the Ecole Hotelière of Thonon in France in 1954, in French, British, German, and Spanish restaurants and hotels in various capacities.

He became relatively rapidly the sole owner of the business and an iconic figure in the French restaurant community.

The décor was typical of a French provincial country ‘’auberge’’ with its tables covered with red and white check table cloth, small intimate lamps, French posters and paintings on the walls, and empty wood wine barrels near the entrance. But the absence of windows and natural light was more evocative of a ‘’speakeasy’’.

In the early years Le Bordeaux was probably the only French restaurants in Downtown Chicago serving such typical brasserie dishes such as kidneys in a Dijon sauce, mussels marinière, sweetbreads, calf brains with capers , as well as steak-frites, boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, quiche lorraine, salade niçoise, and crème brulée. Their very tasty pommes frites were hand-cut every morning, and salads, such as the Neptune and the Surcouf with shrimps, crabmeat, and avocado, were always very fresh and nicely dressed and very popular with women shopping at nearby Marshall Field’s. In the early days, Bernard Bounaud, the first chef, had his own signature dish, a very tasty filet of sole in a white wine and cream sauce; It costed only $4.50 at dinner. In those days you could have a very decent lunch with a glass of wine for less than $ 3.00. Two other French “cuisiniers” (cooks) took charge of the small kitchen after Bernard Bounaud’s departure in 1970.

In the seventies and early eighties Le Bordeaux had a Japanese chef, Yasuo Mizuchi,

(I’m not too sure about the exact spelling of his name, but many people called him Yoshi) who would nevertheless continue to cook in the cuisine bourgeoise tradition.

In the first 10 years people ordered more cocktails, especially martinis, with their lunch, rather than wine. But from the middle 70`s French wine became very popular there.

The bar, separated from the main dining room, was populated by regulars. Several of my French friends and colleagues and I shared many great lunches there in one of the very intimate and comfortable booths.

Kiki was always a very cheerful and efficient host and never stopped joking and laughing. A lunch at Le Bordeaux was the best remedy against bleak depressing winter days in Chicago. When Le Bordeaux lost its lease,Kiki started a new restaurant Le Bordeaux North in 1989, also in a lower level a few blocks away at the corner of Michigan and Randolph. But it was not the same as the old place and Kiki closed it to move to Franklin St

Many French chefs, cooks and waiters would stop-by Le Bordeaux and share a glass and a gossip there.

LA CHEMINEE at 1161 N. Dearborn, also opened in April of 1969 in the space formerly occupied by La Chaumière.

This time the new owner was Burton Kallick, a Chicago businessman who had been pursuing the dream of owning a French restaurant for a long time, but the manager was no other than René Martin, the former owner. And once again the decoration of that intimate and charming place was the work of his wife Josie.

The food was more or less similar to La Chaumière’s with the addition of dishes like Quiche Lorraine. You could have a complete dinner for less than 10 dollars. But many of the favorites were more often ones found in ‘’ continental’’ restaurants: Beef Wellington, Duck à l’orange, Veal in a cream and Calvados sauce, etc. The wine list was quite extensive since Mr. Kallick was a wine connoisseur. , but later on in 1977 the menu was expanded by Chef Willy Maes, formerly at the 95^th and Jean-Claude Bridoux.

The restaurant, that benefited from a steady client base made of regulars and out-of-towners, was quite successful until it closed in1978 (or79)

L’AUBERGE at 2324 N. Clark St opened in the fall of 1969.

It was launched by 2 French alumni of La Chaumière and La Cheminée, Yvan Wiedmer and Jean-Paul Vassas and by a former chef of Chez Paul, André Bucher.

The very rustic décor, red brick walls, waxed hardwood parquet floor, along with its old pieces of furniture created a warm atmosphere similar to what you would find in an old French country inn. People loved it from the start.

The menu was rich in both typical comfort food dishes such as tasty patés, including good rillettes, and veal stew with tomatoes, mushrooms, and olives, and more sophisticated specialties such as Coquilles St. Jacques, lobster, Brook trout, and beignets of calf brains

The wine list was quite interesting and essentially French with good burgundies.

In 69 when it opened you could have quite a nice 3 course meal for 10 bucks.

The restaurant remained a popular spot until the end of 1982.

LA GRENOUILLE at 1345 East Hyde Park was the last authentic French restaurant to open in December of 1969.

Once again the owners were not newcomers in Chicago since they were Jean-Claude Berger, who had founded Les Champs-Elysées in 1967 and René Borderie had been a Maitre d’ at Maxim’s for 5 years.

Berger was in charge of the kitchen and Borderie was in charge of the dining-room and the bar. Food was traditional French fare and included of course frog legs served in the Provençal style. The dining room, in a building owned by The University of Chicago, was nicely appointed. Prices were quite reasonable and you could have a Table d’Hôte dinner for about 7 dollars.

Unfortunately Hyde Park was not at the time a Mecca for foodies, and professors and students were rather frugal as far as restaurant going is concerned, and the lack of regular customers forced the restaurant to close after a while.

2. Restaurants that pretended to be ‘’French’’ and sometimes served very decent “French” food but were not owned or managed by French people. I would call most of them ‘’Continental’’ with a French touch.

LES FONTAINES ROUGES at 1011 W. Irving Park was started by Georges Soulias in 1960

It wanted to look like a French restaurant as seen by an American eye. Its name derived from 2 mini-fountains in the walls of the original restaurant that dispensed red wine. Actually it had a decent wine list at its beginning, and a few classic French dishes , but was better known for its flaming deserts and the background music. I have no idea if any French people ever cooked or served meals there.

LE COQ AU VIN at 1400 N. Lake Shore Drive

Launched in the fall of 1960 by Dominick Trolli, an Italian chef who previously worked at Maison Lafite.

It was a charming bistro that at one time served a decent coq au vin.

It lasted until the mid 70`s.

RED CARPET at 28 W. Elm St.

Started in 1960, this rather fancy restaurant actually served some decent mix of Creole and French food like Lobster in Pernod sauce, Veal Marseillaise, or baked oysters in a shrimp and crab sauce. I believe that the original chef was from Jamaica or

Haiti

In any case the owners were also the proprietors of an hotel in Jamaica where later on they recruited a French chef, Jacques Chevalier, who came to cook in Chicago in another of their restaurants The Red Carpet in the early sixties offered a good wine list. You could have a complete dinner there for 4 dollars in 1964.

Some years later it morphed into the very popular Le Festival.

MAISON MICHELE at 2118 N. Clark

Founded in November 1961 by Howard and Anne Drake.

Howard had a formal training acquired in a restaurant school in Michigan and Anne had learned how to cook from her French mother. Michèle was the name of their first–born daughter.

The bistro had a very warm and cozy atmosphere, red and white checked table cloths and candles in empty wine bottles brought by customers since it was a BYOB. The menu was hand written.

The food was typical country-French with Onion soup, beef Bourguignon, coq au vin, rognons sautés (kidneys), cheese and fruit tarts. At one point it might have had a French cook.

It remained very popular even after its original owners sold the place in 1979.

In 1963 the Drakes opened a second but more elaborate elegant and expensive French restaurant, CHATEAU CHANTAL, at 72 East Oak.

Chantal was the name of their second daughter. It featured a full bar and a good wine list, I do not know when its closed its doors but it did not last very long.

LE BALCON at 1646 N. Larrabee, was opened in 1963 by Guy Dubois, a Belgian.

It was a small BYOB café where the multi-tasking Dubois was at the same time the cook, the manager, the Maitre D’… and the dishwasher . Nevertheless this very simply decorated and not very fancy small place, in spite of its surprising location, had a relatively sophisticated menu including Coquilles Saint Jacques, sole, beef tenderloin Béarnaise, or squab. And also chocolate mousse and Baba au Rhum long before these desserts became popular.

CAFÉ DES ARTISTES ET MODELES at 1644 N. Wells.

Opened in late 1963, it tried to resemble a Left Bank Paris bistro.

The décor and furnishings were a bit primitive and definitely unsophisticated.

But the food was classic bistro fare: Onion Soup, Boeuf Bourguignon, cheese.

I have no information about its management or when it closed its doors.

CAFÉ LA CLOCHE opened in 1964 at 1533 N. Wells

Created and managed by JOHN SNOWDEN, one of the most talented and demanding professional chef in Chicago, it served real French dishes.

Unfortunately it lasted only a few months and Snowden moved to open a cooking school.
John Snowden, who had a solid cooking training in France, had been the chef and partner at Le Provençal in Hyde Park in the early 50`s.
Eventually he became one of the foremost French cooking instructor in the Midwest at his school Dumas Père.

CHEZ PAUL, the famous restaurant created by Paul Contos in the mid 40’s moved in 1964 from its original location at 180 East Delaware to the beautiful Mc Cormick Mansion at 660 N. Rush St.

It would stay in this building, for a long time under the management of Bill Contos, until it closed for good in the early 90’s.

This restaurant was the epitomy of the French-Continental tradition in Chicago. It really had a definite French flair, especially when the dining room was managed, among by Jean-Paul Weber.

It had many ups and downs during its long history but I have to admit that occasionally I enjoyed a nice ‘’French’’ lunch with visiting French business people there.

Several French cooks, such as Lucien Vergé, waiters, and managers worked there at different times of its long history.

CAFÉ BONAPARTE, in the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel at 636 South Michigan.

I do not know exactly when it opened, but for a few years in the early sixties it was one of the most elegant dining, dancing, and cabaret place in Chicago.

The décor was entirely dominated by Napoleon themes and the wait staff donned costumes from that era.

The cuisine was quite traditional, expensive, and continental: Beef Tournedos, Turbot in a cream sauce, Guinea hen in cherry sauce, etc. I do not know either in what year it closed. At one point it had a French chef and French Maitre D’

THE FINNERY, at the Hartford Plaza, 365 W. Monroe, was a sister seafood restaurant to the FRENCH ROOM was opened in May 1969 by Pierre Schmied, a French-speaking Swiss .

That nicely appointed eatery was essentially an upscale seafood restaurant, whose chef, Frenchman Pierre Poubelle, an alumnus from the famous French seafood restaurant Prunier in London, eventually worked in the kitchen of Le Perroquet. A novelty at the time was the fact that there was no menu. Customers would be presented the fish of the day, freshly delivered, and decided how they wanted it prepared for them.

THE FLYING FRENCHMAN 25 East Chestnut.

Located in an old brownstone this charming place was started in November of 1969 by Bill Contos, the owner of Chez Paul as a café specializing in stuffed crepes, quiche, onion soup and salads.
But when Jean Banchet who had come in 1968 from France to work at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, then quit to be briefly chef at Les Champs Elysées and at the Gaslight Club, came on board as a chef it turned into a very good French restaurant under the management of Jean-Paul Weber between 1970 and 1972.

I could also mention the CAFE CHABLIS at 6510 W, North avenue.
Unfortunately I was not able to find any precise info about that place.

In fact I'm quite sure that I missed a few French eateries from that period.

I hope that somebody will update my research on those missing pieces in my little jigsaw puzzle.

Also I apologize for all the people who worked in these restaurants that I either did not know or did not have enough space and time to mention. I arrived in Chicago in January of 1970. That implies that I did not have an opportunity to visit most of the places described in this segment of my retrospective.

To summarize that era, it was a period of transition when real traditional French cuisine became more popular in Chicago. The highlight of that decade was the introduction by Jovan Trboyevic in 1967 of a new contemporary approach in the use of fresh ingredients, vegetables and fish, and lighter sauces. He was really the first restaurateur to launch “ La cuisine du marché’’ here.

This article could not have been seriously researched without the precious assistance of a few co-contributors at LTH Forum, among them René G and Dicksond, as well as of several French friends who worked for many years on the Chicago restaurant business scene, among them Jacques Grelley, Gérard Humilier,and Georges Cuisance. And thanks to Jim Bonk for refreshing some of my memories of these places.

Also the many articles and reviews that I found in the archives of the Chicago Tribune (Kay Loring, Irv Kupcinet, and others) were very helpful

Next chapter: 1970-1979 The fantastic Decade.

Nouvelle Cuisine battles traditional French cuisine

FRENCH FILMS ON DVD

2010-09-20T10:44:00.017-05:00

60 INTERESTING FRENCH FILMS PRODUCED BETWEEN 1999 and 2009 available on DVD

I liked them, or at least found them interesting. My favorites are preceded by an asterik

All these films are available in DVD format in the U.S.

(NETFLIX is my regular source)

How many times friends and other people I meet in restaurants and theaters ask me when they find out that I have a strong interest for foreign films and know a few things about them if I can recommend a few French films. But they always add: " we want to see recent French films, not old classics in black and white". And most of the time they add: "films that we can rent in the U.S, not films that you have seen in obscure art theaters in Paris".

So, I went back to my notes in my calendars of the last 10 years since I write down the title, the name of the director, and the year of production of each film I see, either in a theater or from a DVD on my TV screen at home. And I made a selection of some French films I liked, or at least found interesting, essentially because of their artistic value, essentially from a directing standpoint, and also because they offer an unusual point of view on contemporary France.

In a couple of cases the directors are not French, like De Oiveira, or Raul Ruiz, but because they directed these films in French, with French actors, on French locations, I consider these French-produced films as French.

There is no chronological or preference order in this list. I tried to regroup films by the name of their director. My favorite films are preceded by an asterisk. If you want to read a short description of the storyline and of the cast, go to NETFLIX.com to find it. This is my essential rental source .Y ou can also find info on most of these films on IMDB.com.

Good viewing.

Alain

* PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES (COEURS) by ALAIN RESNAIS 2006

* HERBES FOLLES by ALAIN RESNAIS 2009 ( to be released in DVD in late fall 2010)

* THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS (NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE) by JACQUES RIVETTE 2007

* AROUND A SMALL MOUNTAIN (36 VUES DU PIC ST, LOUP) 2009 (released soon)

* SENTIMENTAL DESTINIES (LES DESTINEES SENTIMENTALES) by OLIVIER ASSAYAS 2000

* SUMMER HOURS (L`HEURE D’ ETE) by OLIVIER ASSAYAS 2008

BOARDING GATE by OLIVIER ASSAYAS 2007

* STRAYED ( LES EGARES) by ANDRE TECHINE 2004

* THE WITNESSES ( LES TEMOINS) by ANDRE TECHINE 2007

* THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN ( LA FILLE DU RER) by ANDRE TECHINE 2009

* BEAU TRAVAIL by CLAIRE DENIS 2002

35 SHOTS OF RUM ( 35 RHUMS) by CLAIRE DENIS 2007

THE INTRUDER ( L’INTRUS) by CLAIRE DENIS 2005

FRIDAY NIGHT ( VENDREDI SOIR) by CLAIRE DENIS 2008

* OUR MUSIC ( NOTRE MUSIQUE) by JEAN-LUC GODARD 2004

* IN PRAISE OF LOVE (ELOGE DE L'AMOUR) by JEAN-LUC GODARD 2001

* THE LADY AND THE DUKE ( L’ANGLAISE ET LE DUC) by ERIC ROHMER 2001

TRIPLE AGENT by ERIC ROHMER 2003

* THE BEACHES OF AGNES ( LES PLAGES D’AGNES) by AGNES VARDA 2008

THE GLEANERS AND I ( LES GLANEURS ET LA GLANEUSE) by AGNES VARDA 2000

* COMEDY OF POWER ( L’IVRESSE DU POUVOIR) by CLAUDE CHABROL 2006

* MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT by CLAUDE CHABROL 2000

REGRETS by CEDRIC KAHN 2009 (released soon)

THE LAST MISTRESS ( UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE) by CATHERINE BREILLAT 2007

* A CHRISTMAS TALE ( UN CONTE DE NOEL) by ARNAUD DESPLECHIN 2008

* KINGS AND QUEEN ( ROIS ET REINES) by ARNAUD DESPLECHIN 2004

* TOKYO EYES by JEAN-PIERRE LIMOSIN 1999

NOVO by JEAN PIERRE LIMOSIN 2002

THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT ( LE PETIT LIEUTENANT) by XAVIER BEAUVOIS 2005

* WHEN THE SEA RISES ( QUAND LA MER MONTE) by YOLANDE MOREAU 2004

* TOSCA by BENOIT JACQUOT 2001

RIGHT NOW (A TOUT DE SUITE) by BENOIT JACQUOT 2003

* LADY CHATTERLEY ( Uncut special edition) by PASCALE FERRAN 2006

READ MY LIPS (SUR MES LEVRES) by JAQUES AUDIARD 2001

* THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED ( DE BATTRE MON COEUR S’EST ARRETE) by JACQUES AUDIARD 2005

* A PROPHET ( UN PROPHETE) by JACQUES AUDIARD 2009

* THE PORNOGRAPH ( LE PORNOGRAPHE) by BERTRAND BONELLO 2001

* TIRESIA by BERTRAND BONELLO 2003

THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN (LA GRAINE ET LE MULET) by ABDEL KECHICHE 2007

UNDER THE SAND ( SOUS LE SABLE) by FRANCOIS OZON 2003

* TIME OUT ( L’EMPLOI DU TEMPS) by LAURENT CANTET 2001

* HUMAN RESSOURCES ( RESSOURCES HUMAINES) by LAURENT CANTET 2001

THE CLASS ( ENTRE LES MURS) by LAURENT CANTET 2007

DAYS OF GLORY (INDIGENES) by RACHID BOUCHAREB 2006

* IN THE ELECTRIC MIST by BERTRAND TAVERNIER 2009 ( In English)

IT ALL STARTS TODAY (CA COMMENCE AUJOURD’HUI) by BERTRAND TAVERNIER 2000

* HENRI LANGLOIS CINEMATHEQUE by VARIOUS DIRECTORS 2005

LA CAPTIVE by CHANTAL ACKERMAN 2000

REGULAR LOVERS (LES AMANTS REGULIERS) by PHILIPPE GARREL 2005

LA FRONTIERE DE L'AUBE by PHILIPPE GARREL 2009

* THE SON ( LE FILS) by JEAN-PIERRE DARDENNE 2002

WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY by DOMINICK MOLL 2000

* BELLE TOUJOURS by MANUEL DE OLIVEIRA 2006

I'M GOING HOME (JE RENTRE A LA MAISON) by MANUEL DE OLIVEIRA 2002

* TIME REGAINED ( LE TEMPS RETROUVE) by RAUL RUIZ 2000

* SABINE by SANDRINE BONNAIRE 2009

PERSEPOLIS by MARJANNE SATRAPI 2008

GABRIELLE by PATRICE CHEREAU 2005

LA FRANCE by Serge BOZON 2007

THE FATHER OF MY CHILDREN (LE PERE DE MES ENFANTS) by MIA HANSEN-LOVE 2008

COMPLICES by FREDERIC MERMOUD 2009 (released soon)

Côtes Du Rhône, Reds

2010-09-02T19:09:00.022-05:00

Côtes du Rhône : The reds from the Southern region are perfect companions to an end of summer barbecue or dinner in the back yard

Côtes du Rhône red are high up in my list of favorite French red wines. As you know Stéphane, I lived for a couple of years in Avignon and became at that time (between 1959 and 1962) much more familiar with this family of wines, that was rarely visible on my parents, grand parents, or aunt tables. As a matter of fact during my Parisian years (1963-1970) your mother and I practically never drank Côtes du Rhône. Don’t ask me why. In those days we were more into Bordeaux, Côtes de Provence, Languedoc wines like Corbières and Minervois, Sancerre, and sometimes Crus du Beaujolais. But since we moved to Chicago in 1970, we became addicted to good Côtes du Rhône. I have to say that the quality of Southern Rhône wines found in both retail stores and restaurants in Chicago increased in an exponential way over the last 15 years. And during my frequent trips to France since 1970, and particularly during our vacations in the ‘’Midi’’ I discovered lots of little gems from small winemakers of the Southern Rhône Valley. Many of them eventually came to Chicago to sell their wines to importers and restaurant owners

It is important to differentiate Côtes du Rhône wines and Rhône Valley wines.
The Rhône Valley follows the Rhône river, that starts in a Swiss glacier, crosses Lake Geneva before entering France, and runs all the way South before ending its course in a small delta in the beautiful and wild area of La Camargue on the shores of the Mediterranean sea. The vineyards of the Côtes du Rhône, côtes meaning hills, per se can be found on both banks of that river between the cities of Vienne, just South of Lyon, and Valence. These vineyards belong to the Northern Côtes du Rhône. Then farther South, the vineyards of the Southern Côtes du Rhône start South of Montélimar and can be found all the way on both left and right banks to Avignon. The Northern vineyards are often planted on hills. Most of the Southern vineyards are planted in flatter grounds. There are a few other AOC wine-producing areas which belong to the Rhône Valley wine group but are not considered as Côtes du Rhône.
They are the Côteaux du Tricastin East of Montélimar, The Côtes du Vivarais in Ardèche on the Right bank, the Côtes du Ventoux, near Carpentras, The Côtes du Lubéron, just South of Ventoux reaching East to the Haute-Provence, and my dear Costières de Nîmes located between Nîmes, Beaucaire and the Camargue. Costières de Nimes is officially part of the Rhône family of wines, but in fact it should be one of the Languedoc appellations (AOC). Way South-East of Valence, in the ‘’département’’ of Drôme , is another Rhône wine that can be quite charming with its slightly ‘’muscat’’ tones and refreshing in its sparkling version, La Clairette de Die.

A few facts and figures that you may want to know: The first Côtes du Rhône vineyards were planted by the Romans. But the development of these vineyards and the reputation of the wines were greatly enhanced in the 14th century when the Popes had moved their headquarters from Rome to Avignon. As you know one of the most celebrated CDR from the Southern area is the famous Chateauneuf-Du-Pape. Unfortunately, over the last 10 years prices of the best Chateauneufs have become quite exorbitant placing them out of reach to many average wine drinkers. I do not think yet that they will reach the extravagant prices of some of the best Northern Côtes du Rhône such as Côte Rotie, Hermitage, or Saint-Joseph. I also would like to mention that the CDR got their ‘’ Appellation d’origine Controllée’’ (AOC) certification from the French government in 1937. Nowadays CDR is the second largest AOC wine producing area in France after Languedoc. It covers 190,000 acres, counts 6,000 wine growers who sold 420 million bottles in 2008, according to INTER RHONE the Rhone Valley Professional Trade Organization.

The CDR production area is comprised of 171 villages or “communes” (townships). 95 of them carry the official appellation (AOC) of Côtes Du Rhône Villages and only 18 can add a specific geographical name to that appellation: 5 in the “département’’ of Drôme, 10 in the Vaucluse, and 3 in the Gard (my native département). But there are only 8 Crus des Côtes du Rhône in the North: Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Chateau- Grillet, Saint-Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage, Hermitage, Cornas , and Saint-Peray And 9 crus in the Southern region : Vinsobres, Gigondas, Vaqueiras, Beaumes de Venise, Chateauneuf-Du-Pape, Lirac, Tavel, Rasteau, and Muscat de Beaumes de Venise.

The Northern Côtes du Rhône I will not talk much today about the marvelous, and quite expensive, wines from the Northern Côtes du Rhône. Their main AOC crus, based essentially on Syrah for the reds and Viognier, Marsanne and Roussane for the whites are: Côte Rotie, Saint Joseph, Crozes-Hermitage, Hermitage, and Cornas. The very fragrant Condrieu and Chateau-Grillet are probably the best whites made from Viognier grapes that you will find in this world. At the most Southern tip of that Northern CDR Region another cru Saint Peray is also made exclusively from white grapes and is much more affordable than Chateau Grillet. . Cornas is the only cru that produces reds exclusively. The best Reds from the North are in my opinion in the Côte Rotie area of production Problem is they have become so expensive (close to $ 300.00 for a La Mouline from Guigal) that neither you and I can afford the best of them. If one day you really want to treat yourself to a very good Northern CDR buy a bottle of red Hermitage from Jean-Louis Chave, or a Saint-Joseph (my favorite affordable reds in that region) from Coursodon. But expect to pay close to $100.00 for each in a good year (1997, 2000, 2005, 2006,) The Southern Côtes du Rhône
The largest majority of these wines are red, and most of the times are blends of 2 or 3 types of grapes. The most common red grapes are Grenache Noir, Mourvède, Carignan, Cinsault, Syrah and some other lesser known varietals such as Counoise or Terret Noir. They can be medium or full bodied, rarely light for the reds in better sunny years. Their distinctive aromas, concentration, bouquet, fruit, acidity, vary from one area to the other according to their respective terroir parameters: nature of the soil that can be made of pebbles, limestone, granite, sandy clay, alluvions, chalk, etc. and from their exposure to sun and winds. But some of their secondary aromas and flavors can be sometimes related to the wild herbs that grow in the ‘’garrigues’’ such as thyme, rosemary, and way farther in the Southwestern part of the department of Vaucluse, lavender. They quite often have notes of prune, licorice, violet, or cassis. Most of the ‘’Côtes du Rhône’’ without additional apellation can be drunk young.

The best Côtes du Rhône Villages and Crus benefit from additional aging. Some Chateauneuf and Gigondas can age up to 15 to 20 years. Do not be confused by what some reviewers say and by their totally arbitrary ratings. Some lesser-known ordinary Côtes du Rhône made by small but very creative or traditional ‘’vignerons’’ (wine growers) are as good and much less expensive than their Crus or specific ‘’village geographic secondary appellation’’ better rated cousins. They are usually imported by smaller but very astute regional companies such as, in the Midwest, Fine Vines, Julienne, Wine Adventures, Michael Corso, H2Vino, or in other regions Robert Kacher in Washington, Kermit Lynch in Berkeley, CA, European Cellars (Eric Solomon) in Charlotte, Kysela in Virginia, or LouisDressner.

But some larger Wine makers and brand name owners such as Guigal, Paul Autard, Perrin, Jaboulet, Jaume, Delas, Michel Chapoutier, and others sell some very good and respectable CDR in the U.S.
There are also some regional French ''négociants-éleveurs'' most of the time wine makers themselves, essentially in Vaucluse, who buy wines from other small local ''vignerons'' from the CDR , give them advice about the vinification and aging process (élevage), assemble the wines, bottle them locally, and put them on the market. They sometimes choose a pretty label and a nice-sounding name for the wine, that occasionally can be a completely imaginary ''domaine name'', and market it most of times under an apellation of ''Vin de pays de...''.
These wines, most often found for under 10 dollars a bottle, are not as complex as real AOC's but can be very nicely vinified and very enjoyable. Such a company, Ravoire et Fils , produces a very juicy and fragrant Vin de Pays de la Principauté d'Orange, sold under the name of Le Grand Destré. It is imported by Wine Adventures in Iowa, a very good importer of nice Rhône, Provence, and Languedoc wines, such as the Château Beauchêne that you will find in my list of some of my favorite CDR below.
I already wrote about Grand Destré on this blog last year in a piece under the title ''Provençal lamb stew''. Côtes du Rhône Rosé can also be very good in the summer time. Some of the best Tavel, on the right bank, are delicious, but often overpriced. You might find better buys in good and cheaper rosés from Languedoc or the Southwest (Bergerac, Côtes de Saint Mont, Corbières, Minervois, Coteaux du Languedoc) Two delicious fragrant fruity and sweet AOC wines from Southern CDR, Muscat de Beaumes de Venise and Rasteau, can be enjoyed slightly chilled with a cold appetizer such as melon with prosciuto, foie gras, or salmon carpaccio or with fruit deserts. And they are good companions to Roquefort, Stilton or Gorgonzola with nut bread.

Food pairing with Southern Côtes du Rhône:
CDR wines are very versatile as far as food pairing is concerned. I always try to match them with dishes that are typical of the cuisine from the Northern area of Provence, such as: Any lamb dish like Leg of lamb with garlic and Tyme, Daube d’agneau ( a type of fragrant lamb stew cooked in wine), Lamb skewers, lamb chops coated with herbes de Provence , rack of lamb, either roasted or grilled on the barbecue. Meat-stuffed baked red peppers, zucchinis, eggplant, and of course tomatoes. Ratatouille Stewed wild mushrooms Provençal casseroles made of beef Or more generally-speaking, dishes from the Mediterranean or North-African regions such as: Tagines of lamb or chicken Couscous Royal Osso Bucco Grilled chicken coated with garlic powder, olive oil and herbes de Provence (delicious on an outdoor grill) Chicken wings or drumsticks in a barbecue sauce Any kind of pasta, cannelloni, ravioli, with a tasty tomato and meat or mushroom sauce. Duck breast in a peppercorn sauce Beef sirloin grilled Steak au poivre Any type of pork sausage grilled on the barbecue Grilled venison fillets Duck with olives Fresh Tuna steaks Braised ham And why not a good hamburger ? Several types of cheese can be enjoyed with CDR wines: Reblochon, Cantal, even ripe Camembert.

The dry white CDR AOC's are perfect with grilled fish such as salmon steaks, swordfish, or spicy grilled shrimps, as well as with spicy grilled chicken and plain grilled veal chops.

And now, as you asked me, a few suggestions of Southern CDR that you may want to try. Most of them are priced between 13 and 20 dollars: The 2007 vintage that you presently find in most wine stores is a very good year in red Southern CDR. The 2005 were also fantastic .

Domaine Alary Côtes du Rhône Villages 2007
Domaine André Brunel Cuvée Sabrine 2005\
Le Pont Du Rieu Vacqueiras 2007
Domaine de Piaugier Sablet 2007
Domaine de la Mordorée, Tavel rosé, 2009
Domaine Brusset, Le Grand Montmirail, 2007
Saint-Cosme Côtes du Rhône Red 2007 White 2009
Le Fond Du Vent, Signargues Notre passion 2007
Domaine Damien, Les Souteyrades Gigondas 2007
Domine Charvin CDR rosé 2008
Domaine de la Solitude CDR 2007
Domainde de Beaurenard Rasteau 2007
Damaine Alary Cairanne 2007
Domaine Grand Veneur Champauvins CDR Villages 2007
Domaine des Apillhantes Cairanne l’Ancestrale 2007
Laurence Feraud Seguret 2007 Duseigneur Lirac 2007

Chateau Beauchêne CDR Villages 2007 (this one is one of my recent favorites and is damn cheap for such a great wine) But I would strongly suggest that you spend 2 dollars more and buy the marvelous Chateau Beauchêne Premier Terroir 2007. This very luscious and rich but harmonious and well balanced win is labeled as a Côtes du Rhône Villages but in fact this particular vineyard is separated from their Chateauneuf Du Pape vineyard by a tiny dirt path. So when you drink that CDR you are sort of enjoying a Chateauneuf Du Pape '' déclassé''. And for $ 12.99 ( at Binny's in Chicago) it is probably the best value I have found in CDR over the last 2 years.

And of course do not forget 2 of my favorite bargain-priced CDR from Trader Joe's: The very flavorful Valreas Cuvée Prestige from the Vignerons de l’Enclave des Papes at $ 6.49
And the always reliable and Juicy Perrin CDR Réserve 2007 at $9.99
A ta santé and Bonne fin d’été

Cote de Rhone

2010-07-15T02:55:00.002-05:00

Hi Dad, We just enjoyed the bottle of Unti Petit Frere Cote de Rhone style blend from Dry Creek you bought us! Given it's made by a french wine maker it truely has characterstics similar to a french Rhone. Given it was Bastille day we wondered what French Rhones we could buy that were similar but for a lower price. Can youu reccomend a few ones commonly found in the US as we now have a craving to have some real Rhones! Joyeux 14th Juillet! Stephane

French Restaurants In Chicago 1959-2009 : A 50 Year Retrospective

2010-03-01T17:53:00.040-06:00

FRENCH RESTAURANTS IN CHICAGO:

1959-2009 - A 50 Year Retrospective

Part 1: The situation before 1959

Prologue: Me and Jacques French Restaurant in 1968

When I came to Chicago for the first time in August of 1968 to visit my wife’s relatives, everything was hot, hot, hot here: The weather, with temperatures shooting up to the mid 90s’, and the political atmosphere that was dominated by the very tense Democratic Convention and the riots in the streets.

From what I could observe during the 3 weeks I spent in Racine, Wisconsin, and Evanston, IL, the local food landscape did not appear very hot and exciting to me. Lots of meat, roasted, grilled, or barbecued, usually much more tender and juicier than what I was used to in Paris though, hot dogs and bratwursts, fried chicken, good corn on the cob, potatoes in all kind of shapes and cooking styles, iceberg lettuce, and cherry pie. This gastronomic environment seemed a bit limited to me. The few restaurants where I was invited were essentially steak houses, hamburger joints, and pizza parlors.

Of course not speaking English at that time, having no car at my disposal, and staying at my sister in law’s house in Evanston during the week I spent here, I did not have any opportunity to visit Chicago’s neighborhoods and even fewer chances to explore the local restaurant scene.

But I was told that Chicago was basically a “meat and potato” kind of town. And the idea of drinking ice tea, cofee, or a Pabst Blue Ribon beer with my meal was not a comforting element.

I sort of puzzled my in laws when I explained after a few days that we were used to drinking wine with our meal. So my mother-in-law took me to the local pharmacy in Racine to explain my problem to her buddy the pharmacist who had 6 remedies to suggest: Paul Masson’s Burgundy or Gamay Beaujolais, Christian Brothers Chablis or Chardonnay, a Cabernet Sauvignon from a vintner’s who’s name I forgot, and the terrible Portuguese Lancers rose..

I first tried to adjust to the fruitiness of the so called Burgundy. Eventually I found out that the Cabernet Sauvignon was a bit dryer and I switched to it.

When I arrived to Evanston I found a “tap” that also sold some mediocre Italian Chianti, and it proved to be a better choice.

At the time I ignored the existence of Schaefer’s in Skokie, but very close to where I was staying, which actually was a very good wine shop that I discovered only 3 years later.

Anyway, back to 1968. One day, after the convention was over and the streets were returning to a more peaceful status, I took the El to go to downtown Chicago and met my sister-in-law’s husband at his office on Michigan Avenue. When lunch time came he told me that he was taking me to a French restaurant. I felt very excited at this idea.

We went to Jacques French Restaurant, a popular eatery that was at the time located at street level in the marvelous old-fashioned building at 900 N. Michigan Avenue. That building was demolished in the 80s’.

We were seated in a very charming room that was separated from the inner garden by high French windows. I was impressed by the environment and the apparent elegance of the décor and the customers.

Things started to go bad when the headwaiter who was speaking with a phony French accent came to take our order. My brother in law insisted on telling him that I was a Frenchman from Paris and that I was an expert on food.

Oui, Oui, Très Bien… that was all that the poor man could mutter.

I had an hyper-refrigerated avocado with shrimps topped by a pink, sweet sort of vinaigrette sauce, a ham omelette that was overcooked and almost compact, with soggy fries, and I believe a very sweet, gooey lime sherbet for dessert.

The worst part was when the waiter asked what kind of dressing I wanted on my salad, made of course of shredded iceberg lettuce with some filament of carrots and slivers of tired red radish. He suggested the “French” dressing of course. I could not swallow that sweet and creamy stuff that was anything but French.

I had a glass of a very jammy California Cabernet-Sauvignon. It was so bad that I switched to a Michelob beer.

I asked for an expresso, but the waiter told us that the machine was not working. I think that there was, in fact, no real expresso machine.

That was my first “French” restaurant experience in Chicago.

I became suddenly very aware that I needed rapidly a fix of real French cuisine and started to count mentally the days that separated me from my return to Paris: Only 3.

What I did not know at that time, and that I discovered while doing a lot of research for this piece on French restaurants in Chicago, was that, in fact, there were some French restaurants in Chicago in August 1968, but very few were authentically French.

Forv the time being, let’s just mention a few of these authentic French places that obviously none of my local contacts had ever visited at the time I was there: La Chaumière, Les Champs-Elysées, La Brasserie de Strasbourg, and of course Maxim’s de Paris and Jovan.

I will not mention all the so-called French restaurants of the Ray Castro and Edison Dick mini empire, of which Jacques was one of the flag bearers, that existed in 1968. We will say a few words about them later on.

The interesting itinerary of Jacques Fumagally: From the Ritz in Paris to Chicago.

To get back to the origins of that phony French restaurant, Jacques French Restaurant which was actually started by a French man named Jacques Fumagally. I suspect that when he arrived in the

U.S.

, his name probably ended with an I, rather than a Y.

To be more exact, Jacques Fumagally was born in 1879 in Monte-Carlo, in the Principalty of Monaco on the French Riviera close to the Italian border. His father was a restaurateur in Monte Carlo.

Early in his career Jacques Fumagally did stints in prestigious establishments like the Ritz, Place Vendôme in Paris, and the Sevilla Biltmore in Havana, Cuba.

John Drury, in his marvelous book Dining In Chicago, (published by John Day Books in 1931) tells us that in the late 20’s Fumagally was the very stylish Maitre d’Hôtel at the 180 EAST DELAWARE, a very classy restaurant just half a block east off Michigan Avenue, across from what is today the John Hancock Center.

The chef at that time was also French, one Julliard Medou according to John Drury. A complete table d’hôte dinner would cost at the time around $1.50. Jacques Fumagally morphed that restaurant into Jacques French Restaurant in 1928 and it would remain at that location on Delaware until 1935.

The new occupant of the space at 180 East Delaware was a new French restaurant, Chez Emile. The restaurant would keep that name until 1945 when a Chicagoan born in Greece, Paul Contos, would lease that same place and start another French-Continental restaurant called Chez Paul.

Chez Paul would stay there until 1965 when it moved to 660 N. Rush in the old Mc Cormick mansion.

At that time Jacques Fumagally decided to lease the space occupied by the ‘’900 restaurant’’ at 900 N. Michigan. He invested lots of money in that new place, including creating the soon to be famous summer terrace in the inner open yard of the building, 3 dining rooms, a cocktail lounge with a very modernistic bar. Everyting was air-conditioned. The new Jaques French Restaurant opened on June 1, 1935.

Problem is, I could not find any information on what kind of French cuisine they served in the thirties at Jacques French Restaurant. I do not even know who was the chef then. But I’m pretty sure that it was at the time a real French restaurant. In fact in 1939 they served bouillabaisse at the restaurant.

What is interesting is that the restaurant on Delaware was taken over first by an Italian American restaurateur named Gino Ritenutti. Then in 1945 (or perhaps even 44), that same place was acquired by Paul Contos who transformed it into Chez Paul.

Jacques French Restaurant was acquired by Ray Castro, a Cuban immigrant that had arrived in Chicago in 1930 and worked as a bus boy, then waiter, and eventually captain at the celebrated Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel, with his partner Edison Dick, the heir to the copying machines company, in 1953. It is probably at that time that the restaurant lost its original French identity and became more ‘’continental’’ in style and cuisine.

Jacques Fumagally retired in Florida in 1953, and died in 1969 . He was 90 years old and at that time very few people in Chicago remembered the important role he had played on the scene of French restaurants in the city.

Very few French restaurants in Chicago before the end of WW I

I had wrongly assumed for a long time that the first real French restaurants in Chicago had started to exist after WW II.

I had done some brief research trying to find out if at the time of the World Columbian Exposition of 1893, some French restaurants might have opened in the city after France was part of the “food scene “ at the expo. But I could not find any.

In fact even though there was a big French Pavilion at the fair, and several French-inspired exhibits, pieces of architecture, and even streets modeled after the exotic venues at the Paris Fair a few years earlier, I could not find a single French eatery there.

The French chocolate company Menier had a big booth, there was a cider press in the French pavilion, and a French chef in…. the German pavilion, but that was about it.

In fact, I could hardly find any substantial evidence of a strong French presence on the Chicago restaurant scene before and after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

I found a mention of a French restaurant called Doussang, that seems to have been very successful around 1807. Located at 35 W. Adams St. it occupied 5 floors and offered many private rooms.

Much later, in 1882, there was another French restaurant at 77 N. Clark St. simply named The French Restaurant.

And of course the famous DeJonghe restaurant, located on Monroe Street, that is in fact better known for its introduction of French snails than for its eponymous shrimps.

The owner of the restaurant Barbara DeJonghe, a Belgian woman who arrived from Europe in 1891 and started the restaurant just before the World Columbian Exposition had a hard time at first selling her snails, imported live from Burgundy in 1894.

But according to an article published in the Chicago Daily Tribune in November 1901, the World Columbian Exposition, and the exposure to all kind of different food products from different counries that it generated, modified the eating habits of many Chicago diners who developped a strong taste for snails.

DeJonghe restaurant started to sell a lot of French ‘’escargots’’ in exponential numbers: from 1,000 snails in 1896, to 24,000 in 1898, 500,000 in 1900, and in 1901 they were expecting to import, serve, and resell to other restaurants in N.Y and San Francisco, 5 million of them.

According to this Trib article, at that time it took 10 hours to process, cook, and put the escargots back in their shells for serving.

A similar new craving for clams and oysters occurred in the late 1800’s.

Similarly, a Loop restaurateur told the Tribune that when he tried in 1891 to offer a free pint of French Claret wine with its $ 1.00 dinner, customers did not want the wine.

10 years later the Tribune said, 9 out of 10 guests dining in fancy restaurants in the Loop were ordering wine with their meal.

But there must have been some French chefs working in Chicago in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. I read that a French chef named Jean Bonnet was doing cooking demonstations to wealthy housewives at Mrs. Cotton’s Cooking School establised in the Athenaeum Building in 1894. He would prepare, and help them cook traditional French recipes such as Coq au Vin or Veal Stew.

The experience of Le Restaurant du Pavillon de France at the New York World Fair of 1939 that stimulated the creation of French restaurants in New York in the early 40’s and 50’s.

My reason for thinking that the World Columbian Exposition and its French influence might have had a stimulating effect on the creation of French restaurants in Chicago was that such a phenomenon happened in New York at the end of the World Fair in 1939.

Et this huge event, the French Restaurant Owners Association had put together an incredibly popular beautiful 350 seats restaurant called Le Restaurant Du Pavillon de France. Its “brigade” of 24 chefs and cooks introduced a very large variety of dishes representing all aspects of traditional French cuisine to their American guests who never in their lives had ever had an opportunity to taste so beautifully executed and served food in a spectacular décor.

At the end of 1939, the war was already raging in Europe. Henri Soulé, the Maitre D’ and some of his staff members returned to France, but then decided to return to New York to work at the Restaurant du Pavillon for the new season 39-40. With the aggravation of the situation worlwide and

France

being now occupied, the World Fair collapsed and so did its famous French restaurant. Soulé, who was already in his early 40`s decided to stay in the U.S. as did some other staffers. In 1941, he opened his own restaurant Le Pavillon in Manhatan with the help of a great French chef, Pierre Franey, who a few years later would become a star in his own right. It was an instant success, and it rapidly became, in spite of the restrictions caused by the war, the most popular French restaurant in the U.S until the mid 60’s when Soulé’s health declined and he could no longer impose his very strict ‘’quality control’’ principles on the resturant`s operations . It not only imposed high quality French cuisine and service but also inspired a whole generation of young chefs and restaurateurs all over the country, many opening competing French restaurants in N.Y.C in the 1950’s and 60’s, such as La Grenouille, Le Périgord, or La Caravelle .

Flashback 1: Chicago must have been quite a city to eat French food in the 1920’s

I discovered by reading the marvelous book ‘’Dining In Chicago’’ written by John Drury, a journalist who after starting his career in N.Y.C joined the Chicago Daily News in 1927, and published by John Day in New York City 1931, that there were several very interesting French restaurants in this town between 1925 and the end of the Prohibition in 1933.

This book is easy to find and to download on the web.

Speaking of Prohibition, John Drury who besides being a writer, poet, painter, was also a pipe-smoking bon vivant who once took a trip to Canada to have a few drinks, describes early in the book the various French wines you should pair with French food. He amusingly recalls that in spite of the application of the 18^th amendment, you can find wine in the city’s establishments, but of course he refuses to tell the readers which ones have the best wine lists.

It is interesting that, according to John Mariani’s America Eats Out, ‘’ De luxe dining rooms fared poorly in Chicago under Prohibition and the owner of the defunct Richelieu restaurant once cried: I lost a million dollars trying to make Chicago eat with a fork’’.

It is true that you had to wait until 1938, when famous Chicago restaurateur Ernest Byfield opened the Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel, to find a restaurant in Chicago that could become a pole of attraction for celebrities nationwide and even attain world-wide fame.

In fact the evolution of the restaurant industry in the

United States

during the 1918-1938 period was dominated by the progressive but massive creation of cafeterias, drive-ins, soda fountains, ice-cream parlors, hamburger stands, diners, and lunch rooms. Names like Thompson, Howard Johnson, or White Castle, became much more familiar during the Prohibition and Depression years, than “21 Club”.

Americans needed to feed themselves and their families as cheaply and conveniently as possible. The idea of dining out was more focused on hamburger and soda than on fancy French food, especially in small towns and rural areas. Obviously in large cities like New York, L.A and Chicago, fancy supper-clubs, especially with dancing and entertainement, as well as speakeasies, never complained about a lack of clients.

Besides there were also some strong reactions in the restaurant and hospitality industry in the

U.S.

towards anything too French. The International Association of Hotel Stewards in 1922 was eager to endorse “the elimination of French terms on menus”, according to the blog Victualling.wordpress.com’s “taste of a decade”.

So it was quite a surprise to me, when I read Drury’s book, to discover the existence of the following French restaurants in Chicago which obviously opened sometimes between 1918 and 1928. Some of them seem to have continued their operations way into the thirties, and one of them, L’Aiglon, into the fifties.

The locations of these French restaurants were not necessarily concentrated in the Loop, especially around the Randolph Street Theater district called “The Rialto”. You could find French restaurants around Rush Street, around N. Michigan Avenue, and in the Northwest suburbs.

All the following notes are directly inspired by Drury’s book.

JULIEN’S . 1009 Rush Street.

Nowadays it could almost be called a family-owned bistro and would certainly have been my favorite. Started after WW I by Mr. Alex Julien, a former chef at various major hotels in town, this restaurant was the oldest French establishement in Chicago around 1931. Before he died the owner-chef transferred to his wife his recipes for the famous frog legs that he introduced for the first time in Chicago. He also had created a garlicky salad dressing that the giant food company Armour tried to buy from him for 15,000 dollars. But Julien refused to sell his ‘’secret formula’’. The small dining room, very simply decorated and furnished with long communal tables covered with oil-cloth, could not seat more than 99 people who were waited on by the 2 Julien daughters. This very successful restaurant (you needed to reserve) attracted local politicians, judges, millionaires, and French Consuls. Full Table d’Hote dinners were priced

$ 1.50 and $ 2.00 in 1931. Lunches were even cheaper: 65 cents.

CHEZ LOUIS 120 East Pearson

The owner, Louis Stefifen, a French-speaking gentleman from

Switzerland

opened that fancy place in a old townhouse off Michigan Avenue in 1930. A very consumate operator he knew through his European personal flair, how to please his guests and rapidly managed to attract a well-to do client base from the Gold Coast. The room was very elegantly and tastefully appointed and the Bordeaux-born French chef who had trained in good kitchens in Paris, provided a blend of French and good quality Continental cuisine that was not overpriced or pretentious. Table d’Hote dinners were $ 2.50.

180 EAST DELAWARE RESTAURANT 180 East Delaware Place

For Drury, it was the “most charming and interesting French restaurant in Chicago”.

For the time it’s décor was quite fancy: beamed ceiling, tiled floors, draperies, fireplace, candles on tables, And of course, as mentioned earlier, the sophistication and charm of the host, Maitre d’hotel Jacques Fumagally, with his experience at the Ritz in Paris, was a big asset. The traditional French specialties by chef Julliard Medou, could be enjoyed for 75 cents during the Table d’Hote luncheon and $ 1.00 and $ 1.50 at dinner.

BON VIVANT 4167 Lake Park Avenue in Hyde Park

Opened in the early 1920’s, this modest red brick house had become a bastion of French seafood cuisine that attracted the more wealthy locals who lived in mansions, luxury apartment buildings and hotels in the University of Chicago, Hyde Park and Woodland area.

Two specialties were very popular: The fresh “homards” (lobsters) that came twice a week from Boston and Maine and the oysters, and soft-shell crabs, and a salad that was served with a special French dresing that people raved about. The chef-owner, Henri Delaloye, was also a very considerate Maitre D’ who provided personalized attention to his regulars. He also had “invented a special butter that permeated the oysters during the cooking process which made them the talk of the town” according to Drury who said that that place felt like a little café in Paris.

Table d’Hote dinner was $ 1.50 and a lobster dinner only 25 cents more.

L’AIGLON 22 East Ontario

Filet Mignon Béarnaise, Moules Marinières, Escargots à la Bourguignonne, Poulet Meunière, Cuisses de Grenouilles (frog Legs) , Côtes d’Agneau Maison d’Or (lamb chops), Pâté de Foie Gras, Sole Marguery (in a sauce created at the famous Petit Marguery restaurant in Paris) those were only a few of the traditional dishes that you could find described in French on the menu.

By the way they had their fresh sole shipped from

France

on ice.

The French waiters would politely explain these specialties and even put together a sample French menu for you.

The atmosphere was very Parisian. And its wine list was probably one of the most extensive you could find east of New York City and included some rare Bordeaux.

Since the owner and General Manager Teddy Majerus, a native from Luxembourg, had been working at La Louisiane restaurant in New Orleans, there were also Creole dishes on the menu.

But also had an extensive professional experience in French cuisine having worked as a caterer in some of the best places in Paris and London.

The restaurant, that was located in an old mansion that resulted from the junction of 2 old brownstone houses belonging to a millionaire, had a client base made up of essentially wealthy and well-dressed business people from the Loop and celebrities from the Gold Coast, New York or L.A. All the rooms of the former mansion had been transformed into dining rooms, public and private, ballrooms and banquet halls.

I believe that prices were among the highest in town.

Opened By Teddy Majerus and his brother Alphonse in 1926, it was sold by Teddy in July of 1962.

MAILLARD’S 301 South Michigan Avenue

Opened around 1926 , this branch of a popular New York restaurant started in 1850 by Henri Maillard, a French caterer who was in charge of Lincoln’s inaugural banquet, was perhaps the largest restaurant in Chicago. It was comprised of several rooms, located at the street and lower level of the Straus Building,and could serve up to 1,200 diners.

It was very well furnished and elegantly decorated and the food was very well prepared. Many high society women loved the Afternoon Tea on the top floor of the building tower that was open in the summer time and where the view of Chicago was beautiful. Many fashionable opera-goers as well as local celebrities from the art and entertainment fields enjoyed post theater dinners there.

Other Restaurants that either served French food or had French chefs:

NEW COLLEGE INN in the Sherman Hotel at Randolph and Clark

The head chef in this famous hotel owned by the Byfield Brothers, was a Monsieur Jean Gazebat, who had worked at Chez Prunier and at Café de Paris, in Paris.

He was one of the most renowned seafood chefs in Chicago and his specialty was a Bouillabaisse à la Marseillaise, that Drury says was as good as the one you could eat at the original Prunier in Paris

CAFÉ FRANCAIS 1922 Calumet Avenue

Drury says that this elegant mansion transplanted from the Gold Coast, that catered to a clietele of publishers, offered an excellent French cuisne with the best filet mignon in town.

CHEZ DORE 212 East Erie Street

It had a very good French chef and catered to employees of businesses, art studios, and office buildings of that neighborhood .

The cost of luncheon and dinner was $ 1.50

VILLA VENICE Milwaukee Road and Desplaines River Road in Northbrook near Wheeling

This was perhaps the only Theatre-Restaurant in the

United States

, It had a fantastic architecture and decoration with fountains, high trees, a river with gondolas, colored lights and terraces where you could dine and dance. It included a casino and a ballroom where millionaires from the North Shore loved to dance after a good French dinner made of very elaborate and special dishes created by French chef Pierre, a veteran of the Tour D’Argent in Paris.

In the Casino and Main dining room you could dine while watching a show or listening to musicians from Havana, Cuba or European singers.

The owner of this Monte-Carlo like ‘’pleasure palace’’, as Drury describes it, , was also a Frenchman, Albert Bouche who also owned a similar Villa Venice in Miami Beach

The bills were quite high for the time: from $ 3.50 to $5.50 for Table d’hote dinner + $ 3.00 cover charge on week-ends.

This place, that had the reputation of attracting both patrons and entertainers who might have had mob connections, burned and was re-opened many years later in the sixties.

Flashback 2 : From 1939 to 1959

Not much happened in terms of creations of authentic French restaurants in Chicago between 1939 and 1959

Even though a record number of restaurants were created between 1939 and 1945, the war and its restrictions, the amplification of the ‘’cooking at home’’ movement or eating out in casual restaurants did not stimulate the arrival of new French chefs in our town.

Besides, other immigrants like the Chinese, Eastern-Europeans, Russians, and Germans, as well as Greeks and Italians started modest Mom and Pop ethnic family-oriented eateries that better corresponded to the needs and palates of that era.

There was also an exodus to the suburbs of young families who were not naturally inclined to go out and eat French food .

And generally speaking this period was marked by a strong return, as it had been the case in the early 20’s after WW I, to a sort of ‘’eat American’’ tradition, partially facilitated by the expansion of frozen foods, fast food, TV dinners, etc.

The Korean war reinforced this return to American values and a certain isolationism in eating habits that did not stimulate the popularity of fancy French food or restaurants.

The restaurants that really attracted a lot of new customers where fancy places patronized by celebrities like the new Pump Room in 1938, and restaurants, or supper-clubs with entertainment, like Chez Paree, or ballrooms like th ones in large downtown hotels.

Several of these places offered steaks and lobster as well as exotic cocktails rather than Coq au Vin and Bordeaux wines.

One of the rare exceptions was the launching in 1941 of Café De Paris in the Park Dearborn Hotel at 1260 N. Dearborn Parkway, where famous French chef Henri Charpentier created his signature dish ‘’Duckling Belasco’’ flavored with a Grand Marnier or Cointreau sauce. For years Charpentier claimed to have invented by chance the ‘’crepe Suzettte’’ when he was working at another much more celebrated Café de Paris in Monte-Carlo, as an apprentice waiter in the late 1880’s.

Charpentier had solid references. He worked for celebrities such as Escoffier and Cesar Ritz.

The restaurant was acqured by Edison Dick and Ray Castro in June 1952.

That same team (Dick-Castro) also started in 1959 Maison Lafite, in the Churchill Hotel at 1255 North State, a very French provincial looking restaurant that remained successful until the early seventies. Its menu looked very traditional French (Coq au vin, Veal scallopini, Dover sole, Chateaubriand Bearnaise, etc). But my impression is that it was, like many of the Castro restaurants, probably more French in appearance than in authenticity.

One interesting case: John Snowden, who would become better known in the late 60's and early 70's with his cooking school and catering services, Dumas Pere, opened a French Restaurant, Le Provencal, in Hyde Park in 1951. He had a very solid knowledge of classic French cooking that he acquired during a 6 year stay in France and 3 years of studying at the Ecole d'Hotellerie of Lausanne in Switzerland. But, in spite of the backing of some investors linked to the University of Chicago, Le Provencal failed, in part due to the difficulty to find adequately trained staff , and probably a lack of a local client base, in that part of town. In a Tribune article published in 1979, the very good Chicago chef John Terczak (Biggs, Gordon,) who studied under John Snowden, said that in spite of the fact that he was a very tough teacher, Snowden was "probably the best chef in the city".

In 1964 he would try again with his Cafe L a Cloche in Old Town.

I believe that L’Aiglon, Jacques French Restaurant and Le Café de Paris are the only 3 major French restaurants that survived that difficult period.

Most photos are coming from John Chuckman's marvelous collection of vintage postcards that can be found on his website Chuckmanchicagonostalgia.worldpress.com

Next Episode: 1959-1969