Chez Napoleon

Recently a friend recommended that my beloved and I check out the small French restaurant Chez Napoleon on 50th street between 8th and 9th avenues. We've been looking for a place with old-fashioned, down home, classic French cooking for a while (not nouvelle cuisine) so we went. And it was great!

First, the decor and atmosphere are awesome. There are lots of historic maps of France on the walls along with pictures and kitch from French history. They also play classic French music but it is very much in the background, it doesn't overwhelm you, just adds to the mood.

Second, this is a family restaurant and the service was beyond good -- it was lovely. The waiters joked with us, kept supplying us with copious amounts of bread and water, and made us feel at home. It was only our first time there but they made us feel like old regulars.

Third, the food: FANTASTIC! Again, the menu is classic French so they have things like onion soup, coq au vin, frogs legs, etc. but they also have lots of other things I'd never heard of. Before we even ordered, they gave us a delicious homemade vinaigrette to dip our bread in. This helped excite the pallet and get the gastric juices flowing. We started our meal with a delicious pork and goose pate along with scallops in a cream sauce. Then, for the entrees, I had a veal sweatbreads (yes, that's brains) in mushroom sauce and my wife had quail wrapped in bacon. Both were succulent and delicious. Then we finished our meal with a miraculous Grand Marnier souffle and coffee. This was easily the best souffle I've ever had and it just makes love to your mouth. Some advice: you need to order your souffle when you order your meal because it takes some time to prepare it. Also, let the waiter put the cream into the center of the souffle (you can put in on yourself), trust me, it's better this way.

I cannot wait to go back to this place and urge you to go too. Just remember: this is not politically correct French food, this isn't the kind of stuff they serve in sleek, ultra-hip places where models and celebrities go and all the waiters are dressed in black. This is exactly the kind of tucked away, secret, super-great restaurant that only a real New Yorker-in-the-know knows about.

So go to Chez Napoleon and have a great dinner and wonderful French New York experience.

Definitely check out the website, for an old-fashioned restaurant they have a very cool, sophisticated site. Also, read this charming article about the place from The New York Times last year. We actually met Grand-mere, the matriarch of Chez Napoleon.

Simple Gifts

In these turbulent times, I’ve found refuge in the simple pleasures, the simple joys, the simple gifts of life: good food, good friends, and the beauties of nature and culture. The world is so much more than the horrors you see in the news, and it’s important to always remember this, even when it seems frivolous.

Recently I’ve found that my bread maker, my slow cooker, my vegetable garden, writing this blog, and just hanging out with friends have given me a joy that I never fully appreciated until now. These simple gifts lift my spirits, nourish my soul, and feed my sometimes starving optimism.

Out in LA a man named Jonathan Gold just died. He was the first food critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and he was an LA icon whose reviews were beautifully written and whose love for food and LA touched his many readers and fans. Sadly I had never heard of him until now but, in reading about his life and career, I’ve found him an inspiration: he was a man who found joy in the simple gifts of life and shared them with everybody.

I’m not a food critic but I’m a big foodie and love cooking and going to new restaurants. These days going out is a lot harder (kids, you know) but a few years ago I wrote about a wonderful restaurant called Chez Napoleon that’s the kind of intimate NYC place that’s vanishing. It’s the kind of place Jonathan Gold would have loved and, going there and to places like it, greatly lifts my spirits.

To be honest, I’ve never found much joy in pets. It’s one of my many emotional blindspots. But many people love them and they are another kind of simple gift. So you might be surprised to learn (unless, of course, you listen to him) that radio star Howard Stern’s wife Beth is big animal lover who rescues cats and finds them homes. She has a gorgeous Instagram page featuring her love of cats and it’s so great that the New Yorker has even written an article about it. It’s clear that, to Beth, pets give her joy and she’s committed her life to them and, in sharing with us, shares it with us.

Simple gifts, I’ve often found, are the best gifts, and the easiest to give. And in NYC, there are many to be found. 

And another simple gift: