Food writer Alex Lobrano met the late, great Julia Child at a Paris bistro. She was eating sliced radishes with butter and sea salt flakes. JC remarked to Lobrano that a radish always reminded her how wonderful a very simple thing can be. HG agrees. HG also loves sliced red radishes from Santa Fe’s Farmer Market. Stronger black radishes from the Farmers Market are another HG fave. The red radishes are good with butter but HG prefers to smear the black guys with some duck fat. Icy vodka with the blacks. Red or white wine with the reds. BSK delights HG with a special salad of sliced red radishes, sliced baby white turnips, chopped fennel and chopped red onions. A savory accompaniment to fish dishes.
HG rarely waves the flag, believing, to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, that patriotism is the last refuge of fools and knaves. However, when it comes to steak, HG is a red-blooded, Yankee Doodle boy. Nothing compares to American steak (prime,of course). HG never had a good steak in Paris. Much lauded steak frites in a Paris bistro would get thumbs down from discerning New Yorkers (men and women who learned to eat steak on Steak Row and at Peter Luger’s). Alec Lobrano, the most informed and fair minded of Paris food writers, likes the steak at Le Severo in that city. HG and BSK sampled the steak there and found it only passable. However, steak tartare at Severo and at Le Stella and many other Paris eateries is exemplary. German restaurants in New York prepared great steak tartare in years gone by (Luchow’s covered its steak tartare with a generous layer of black beluga caviar). The great raw beef dish disappeared along with New York’s most fabled German restaurants.
If you rent an apartment in Paris, visit the Hugo Desnoyer butcher shop in the 14th and buy a rump steak (Lobrano’s suggestion) and grill it at home. And, if you’re renting a New York apartment, pick up a New York strip at Lobel’s on Madison Avenue. One pound strip: $47.98. (Hey, you only live once).
