An American in Paris
Stephanie Curtis
Posted: August 1, 2007
Paris—The restaurant is called Spring, and it is this season's confidential insiders' tip, passed discreetly among Parisian food lovers hoping to keep the address under wraps long enough to successfully reserve one of its four or five tables for an atypical dining experience. In fact, it's not so confidential any more. Shortly after opening Spring in the late fall of 2006, Chicago born chef/owner Daniel Rose received a very favorable review in the weekly Figaroscope magazine and has since been cited on enough foodie blogs to make his modest venture located on a nebulous street near Pigalle a true destination.
His story is that of a young American in Paris who, like so many others, came to the City of Light at a young age to study art and philosophy. Call it destiny or hasard, but the student lived just above chef Christian Constant's Michelin-starred Violon d'Ingres restaurant, and it seems that the mere music and cadence of Constant's kitchen, from the chef's bellowed orders to the tica-tic-tac of knives stirred some inner calling in Rose. He enrolled in a culinary school in Lyons (a memorably bad experience, he recalls), then apprenticed with several notable chefs from Brittany to Brussels before opening his own little restaurant.
Restaurant is perhaps not the appropriate word. Dining here feels more like being invited to a chef friend's studio apartment. Spring consists of four white walls, a handful of unfinished white maple tables, and black leather stools and chairs. Half of the space is taken up by an open kitchen—nothing like those sleek glassed-in theaters of action peopled by scurrying white-toqued chefs in trendy restaurants but, instead, the most basic bare-bones kitchenette with just a waist-high counter separating diners from the tall dark-haired chef.
Dinner is at 9 p.m., no earlier, no later. There is no menu, not even a simple posting of the night's offerings, just a scrawled notice outside of the glass facade announcing "Menu du Marché, €36, selon l'humeur du chef" (Market Menu, U.S.$49, according to the chef's whim). On one recent evening, the chef's humeur included a fragrant steaming bouillon ladled into shallow bowls of bright fava beans, carrot and radish slices, spring onions, and fresh herbs, all bridged by a foie gras–topped toast.
Suspense mounted as the black-shirted chef, calm and concentrated, alone in his kitchenette, aided only by his diminutive waitress/sommelier, dressed the next 16 plates in full view of expectant diners: three sea shells per person on a bed of course salt were filled respectively with a tartare of ginger-scented daurade (sea bream), a plump mussel on a bed of potato and chorizo brunoise, and shrimp in a tomato/basil sauce. The main course, a crisp, juicy thigh of guinea hen with grilled white asparagus and a clear flavorful jus, epitomized Rose's style, a contemporary interpretation of traditional French cuisine—with an emphasis on fresh products, precision, and presentation.
