By Barbra Austin

Provence in Paris: stuffed tomato, peeled and filled with
slow-cooked oxtail threaded with pesto.

Le Comptoir du Relais
9, Carrefour de l’Odéon, in the 6th Arrondissement.
01 43 29 12 05. Open daily, reservations only for dinner Mon–Fri.

This address has been packed since Yves Camdeborde left the beloved La Régalade, in the 14th Arrondissement, to set up shop in the decidedly more visitor-friendly 6th. He runs the hotel upstairs, as well, and if you really want a dinner reservation at the restaurant, you’d be wise to book a room; guests have priority in the booking process.

But you won’t feel like you’re missing out if you go for the no-reservations lunch (extended to dinner on the weekends and every night in August) and order from the broad brasserie menu.

First courses include some lovely salads, but meat lovers will appreciate the range of terrines, hams and saucissons. Foie gras shows up in five places. My favorite starter is a carpaccio of tête de veau (unpoetically called headcheese in English), thin slices of rich and gelatinous matter put on a very hot plate so that it melts in your mouth. A crisp salad dressed with pungent sauce gribiche is a worthy match for the unctuous meat.

Carpaccio of tête de veau.

For a main course I often get the brandade, piping hot with a crisp top. In cooler weather I also like the beef shoulder braised in red wine. The other day, though, I chose a stuffed tomato, peeled and filled with slow-cooked oxtail threaded with pesto: Provence in Paris. My friend ordered the lamb chops with sweet red peppers. I told him to use his hands to get at the best bits of meat, right off the bone, but he was too shy. I wasn’t.

Desserts are simple but well executed. The coffee crème brûlée works, as does a classic riz au lait. A chilled soup of red fruits, studded with fresh berries and melon, garnished with a soup of sheep’s milk ice cream, hit the spot on a warm day. Less straightforward was an oversized macaroon with mascarpone cream, raspberries and piquillo pepper sorbet, more savory than sweet, with a touch of piment d’Espelette, if I’m not mistaken.

Locals and tourists fill the place every day, the queue for a table stretching out on the sidewalk. You can feel like you’re in a mill sometimes, rushed when you’d like a little more time. The service can seem lax when you’re pressed, but it is generally good, which I attribute to Camdeborde’s being there almost all the time, working as hard as everyone else.

In a nutshell: Le Comptoir du Relais is where to have lunch in the 6th, and everyone knows it.

Price check: First courses, 5–26 euros; mains, 12–24 euros; desserts, 6–11 euros.

If you’d rather stand than sit, belly up to the counter at L’Avant Comptoir, Camdeborde’s wine and tapas bar next door.

L’Avant Comptoir
9, Carrefour de l'Odéon, in the 6th Arrondissement.
No reservations. Open daily, all day.

Editor's note: For a gourmet walking tour, check out our DIY downloadable tours.

By Barbra Austin

Milk-fed veal, wild salmon, chorizo and anchovies.

Chez l’Ami Jean
27, rue Malar, in the 7th Arrondissement.
Tues–Sat, noon to 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. to midnight.
01 47 05 86 89.

At first Chez l’Ami Jean feels like an old-fashioned bistro. Open since 1931, with tables packed tightly in, the space features hams and peppers hanging from the ceiling, and rugby jerseys and family photos on the walls. But since Yves Camdeborde protégé Stéphane Jego took over in 2003, L'Ami Jean has become a destination for Parisians and visitors alike. A classic? Yes. A modern one.

There is a 35 euro formule offered at lunch and dinner. I have always found the copious printed menu here a little hard to navigate, to be honest, so I look to what’s written on the ardoise to help narrow things down.

But I will confess that my favorite way to eat at this Basque-inflected bistro is to order the 60 euro “carte blanche” menu, a series of (usually) six surprises from the kitchen.

We started with a crawfish soup, intense in aroma but a little light in taste, flecked with tiny croutons, peas and chives. Next was a fillet of cod doused with a parsley purée that conjured Dr. Seuss, served with duck foie gras, fava beans and the ribbon of chorizo that comes with many dishes here. Though it certainly adds a splash of color, the chorizo is more than a garnish; a bit of it on your fork adds salt and a touch of heat.

The mixing of meat and fish on the same plate is a recurring theme in Jego’s cooking. Following the cod, for example, was a tender morsel of milk-fed veal sitting atop a translucent sheet of wild salmon, topped in turn with anchovies and more of that chorizo. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

Lobster with boudin noir (blood pudding).

After that was an even more unlikely (to me, anyway) and even more delicious marriage of lobster and boudin noir, a buttery rich claw keeping company with dark and ferrous blood pudding and paper-thin strips of lard. The last savory course was sweetbreads with summer’s girolle mushrooms. These two elements alone would have made a fine dish, but Jego added a briny and herbaceous seafood salad.

I said before that the menu "carte blanche" was all surprises, but that’s not entirely true: the last course is always L’Ami Jean’s famous riz au lait (rice pudding), plopped down in a huge bowl for self-service and impossible to refuse even after so many courses.

Not everyone will love L’Ami Jean, but plenty of people do, and at night the place is packed. If you have a low tolerance for what some call “bustling” and others call “brusque,” I suggest going for lunch, which feels downright tranquil in comparison. In any case, reserve.

In a nutshell: Stéphane Jego’s bold cooking makes Chez l’Ami Jean one of the best contemporary bistros in Paris.

Price check: 35 euro formules at lunch and dinner, or 40–50 euros à la carte. The menu “carte blanche” is 60 euros. A mostly southwestern wine list with both bargains and splurges.

If you like Basque-flavored bistros, you’ll also like Christian Etchebest’s Le Troquet:

Le Troquet
21, rue François Bonvin, in the 15th.
01 45 66 89 00.

Editor's note: For a gourmet walking tour, check out our DIY downloadable tours.

By Barbra Austin

Sablé aux fraises with mascarpone.

La Régalade Saint-Honoré
123, rue St.-Honoré, in the 1st Arrondissement.
01 42 21 92 40.
Lunch and dinner, Mon–Fri.

The original La Régalade became well known under the ownership of Yves Camdeborde, whose career was one of many ships launched by Christian Constant. Instead of continuing in the galleys of haute cuisine, Camdeborde took his formidable talent to the next-to-last stop on metro line 4 and opened a bistro serving seasonally minded, generous food at gentle prices. He sold it to chef Bruno Doucet in 2004, but La Régalade has never stopped drawing praise, and foodies have never stopped making the pilgrimage to this early bastion of bistronomy.

Now right-bankers have a La Régalade of their own: Doucet just opened on rue St.-Honoré in the 1st—good news for those who want to fill their bellies near the old belly of Paris.

The new space doesn’t quite have the soul of the oddly shaped, slightly cramped location in the 14th, but the food certainly does. Anyone who has ever been to La Régalade will remember the terrine maison and cornichons left at the table for the taking, and I’m happy to say that this is still standard practice. Eat it, but don’t eat too much: a three-course meal is obligatory here, and you’ll want the space.

To start, I considered the scallops marinated in olive oil with basil and Parmesan, but I decided on green asparagus dressed with zippy herbs and mingled with sweet prawns—delicious. Morels, looking more like a side dish at a family dinner than a first course, sat in creamy sauce and demanded another basket of bread. The delicate tart of mackerel, with its verticality and squeeze-bottled sauces, seemed overdressed for this party, but its flavor was as down to earth and satisfying as everything else.

Two different bottles of pinot blanc from Domaine Ostertag, one of my favorite Alsatian producers, washed all of this down nicely.

For the main course, I again thought about seafood: both the daurade with piment d’Espelette and the cod with herbed broth and young spinach sounded good on a warm spring night, but I caved and ordered the braised paleron (chuck) of veal, served well glazed in its own sauce, with Provençal touches of tomato and basil. I could have eaten it with a spoon, it was that tender. A perfectly saignant (rare) entrecôte pleased the men at the table. The star, though, was the poitrine de porc with lentils. I had this dish at my last meal at the original location and was glad to see it on the menu here. Not for the cholesterol conscious, this thick slab of pork belly with beautifully crisp skin was as delicious as I had remembered.

Poitrine de porc with lentils.

I love rice pudding, but riz au lait after so much food is tough to swallow even if it is in the style of someone’s grandmother or mother. A sablé (sugar cookie) with strawberries and mascarpone was excellent, if not much lighter, and seasonal fruit appeared again in a pain perdu with strawberry-rhubarb compote. Dueling pots-de-crème of vanilla and chocolate were a bit precious in their presentation but nonetheless delicious.

These new digs are in a decidedly more fashionable quartier than the original, and there are signs—from some funky-shaped plates to the bright-striped banquette—that La Régalade is trying to fit in with its newer, posher neighborhood. In spite of that, the price of a meal remains low: three courses are just 33 euros, with a few supplements here and there for special items.

That’s a bargain for food this good in any neighborhood.

In a nutshell: La Régalade Saint-Honoré brings its classic neo-bistro fare to the 1st Arrondissement while maintaining 14th Arrondissement value.

Price check: Entrée, plat and dessert for 33 euros, with a wide range of wine prices.

If you like the sound of La Régalade Saint-Honoré but prefer your neo-bistros with a little outer-arrondissement cred:

La Régalade
49, ave Jean-Moulin, in the 14th.
01 45 45 68 58.