SpiceLines

E. Dehillerin's signature copper rooster stands proudly in the window of this
venerable cookware store. Parisians have been buying their copper pots and
pans, pastry molds and other kitchen tools here for almost two centuries.

Making bouillabaisse for your 50 closest friends? That heavy-duty 50-liter traditional copper stockpot would look just great simmering away on the back burner of your sleek Viking cooktop.

Or maybe you only want to braise a single lamb shank for your supper. Wouldn’t a chic black Staub cocotte be perfect on a table for one?

And do the warm madeleinettes at Café Daniel in New York make your heart flutter with remembrance of things past? Here’s the very mold you need to make 20 equally tender little memories.

Ah, Dehillerin. Everywhere I turn, there are pots, pans and tools that I never knew I needed. Certainly you can find some of what Dehillerin sells in Paris at home in the U.S. And what you can’t locate—say, that handsome copper turbot kettle--the store will be happy to ship to you for a monstrous price. The downloadable catalogue on its website is chock full of knives, pastry molds and copper kitchenware in enough sizes and shapes to set any cook’s imagination spinning.

But then you wouldn’t have the pleasure of strolling down la rue Coquilliere on a sunny spring day for a personal visit to Paris’s famed temple of cookware, family-owned since 1820. You would entirely miss the store’s emblematic copper coq, perched proudly on a golden orb, beak in the air. (Definitely not for sale.) And you would certainly not have the fun of dealing with the persnickety smock-clad middle-aged clerks. One of them has just burst into an aria of his own invention, and is now hovering at my elbow, breathing wine fumes at 10:42 A.M.

I love to go to Dehillerin for the sheer pleasure of trawling its dusty shelves for the odd and unexpected kitchen tool. I’ll never need an expandable five-wheeled pastry cutter, but I am sorely tempted by the hatelets, or decorative skewers (even at 23 euros each). I especially like the silvery ones with the leaping hare and the scaly fish. A copper paella pan for 100 is probably not in my future, but down in the dimly lit basement, I’ve found those black single-serving Staub cocottes (45 euros each). I’m imagining a dinner party, six of us simultaneously lifting the self-basting lids to reveal perfectly braised lamb shanks with cinnamon and preserved lemon peel…

But what I’d really love is a beautiful copper tarte tatin pan—no doubt, inspired by the delectable, caramelized upside down apple tart Odile served at dinner the other night. Just as I’m reaching for my Visa card, I remember her husband’s comment: “Ce n’est pas la poele, madame, c’est la technique…” ("It’s not the pan, but the technique…")

OK, I’m settling for an Inox whisk. Not exactly the stuff of dreams, but very, very practical.

E. Dehillerin, 18 and 20, rue Coquillière - 51, rue Jean- Jacques Rousseau - 75001 Paris. Télephone : 01 42 36 53 13. Fax : 01 42 36 54 80. Website: www.dehillerin.com

It’s Friday afternoon and there’s a light mist dampening the sidewalk along Boulevard St. Germain. I’m heading towards the Carrefour de l'Odeon and the brasserie of the moment: Yves Camdeborde’s Le Comptoir du Relais. Global buzz has made this Left Bank hot spot the toughest dinner reservation in town, when Camdeborde, formerly the chef at La Regalade, serves everyone the same sublime 42 euro prix fixe menu.

But it’s lunchtime and I’m in luck. At a few minutes to one, every inside table in the 20-seat restaurant is jammed, but there are a few spots still open on the sidewalk. A harried middle-aged waitress seats me next to a pair of 20-something BCBG types, catching up on old times over a bottle of beaujolais, clearly not headed back to the office this afternoon. Soon two blond German fashionistas d’un certain age commandeer the table to my left. One, with her back to the street, complains of a chill and the waitress obligingly tosses a red plaid blanket over her all-black ensemble.

When you’re a food writer and you’re dining alone, you can trick yourself into some fairly bizarre meals. This was one of those days. After a quick look at the menu (at lunch it tends toward classic bistro dishes), I decide to start with La Planche du Cochonnaille. This, to put it bluntly, is a pork lover’s dream of a final repast before heading off to the great sty in the sky. Imagine a thick slab of wood, two jagged edges artfully left asunder, topped with delicious homemade charcuterie from the Camdeborde family’s larder. I dive right into the unctuous boudin noir, a lightly spiced blood sausage so soft and velvety that it almost melts in my mouth. I love the paper-thin, fatty slices of sweet ham and the salami studded with big black peppercorns, but most of all, I adore the graillons de porc, chunks of pork fat fried until crisp and golden—junk food of the gods. To go with it all, there are tangy cornichons, bread from Eric Kayser and sweet butter. I eat every bite.

After that, any sane person would go for a five-mile walk. But no, I’m just getting started. Hoping for something on the lighter side. I order Thon Roti a la Plancha. A perfectly pristine hunk of tuna, quickly pan-seared until it is golden on the outside, rosy on the inside, comes with a topping of luscious oven-roasted tomatoes, and sautéed haricot verts, snow peas and zucchini slivers. It’s all drizzled with a little olive oil and dollops of olivade (black olive puree). This is one of those rare dishes that reveals the virtues of utter simplicty, yet also allows the chef to play around with flavor and texture—sweet and salty, buttery soft and lightly crunchy—while reinventing a classic dish.

The BCBG guys on my right are on their second round of expressos, but I decide to take my caffeine in a Crème Brulee Café Arabica. Alas, it’s pallid and a little dull. Luckily for me, I have no trouble pushing it aside.

Le Comptoir du Relais, 9 Carrefour de L’Odeon, Paris 75006. Telephone: 01 43 29 12 05 For dinner reservations, call months ahead—or at 7:30 PM to check for last minute cancellations. No reservations for lunch, but after 1 PM, you’ll wait for a table.

To read about Yves Camdeborde, see “Yves Camdeborde: the Paris Chef of the Moment,” by Jane Sigal, Food & Wine, January 2007. Le Comptoir is part of the Relais St. German, which is also owned by M. Camdeborde.

An assortment of chocolate truffles from Jean Paul Hevin. In the foreground:
Gemme, bittersweet chocolate ganache infused with smoky black China tea.

Cecile said, “Oh, Jean Paul Hevin? It’s Wednesday. You must try his tartelette chocolat.” Her eyes narrowed to tiny slits of pleasure.

It’s wonderful when you have only to drift a block or two from your hotel to fall into chocolate heaven. I’m on the rue Vavin, ambling toward the Jardin du Luxembourg and its pink-flowering magnolias, when my head swivels to the right.

There at number 3 is master chocolatier Jean Paul Hevin’s glossy boutique. The door is ajar. A starchy vendeuse inclines her head graciously when I point to the tartlet, a three-inch round of very dark bittersweet chocolate in a thin golden sugar crust. She places it carefully, like a large jewel, in Hevin’s signature brown and blue box. Next come truffles scented with ginger, cinammon and smoky black china tea; a box of intriguing Chocolats Dynamiques; and since I’ve been invited to a dinner party tomorrow, 24 assorted truffles for my hosts.

It seems to me that Hevin’s chocolates are at once austere and utterly luxurious. The 50-year-old chocolatier, who won the prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France award in 1986, has an unusually precise and exacting palate. His 72-percent- cacao, single origin bar from the Maralumi plantation in Papua, New Guinea tastes authentically of itself: natural bitterness balanced with a touch of sweetness, mildly acidic both in taste and aroma, with hints of green banana and local spices. Like Plato’s ideal chair, the Maralumi bar is the quintessential expression of the cacao from that very particular terroir.

Hevin’s ganache, on the other hand, is pure, unadulterated luxury: a richly hedonistic blend of bittersweet chocolate with the finest butter and cream. The flavors he adds—passion fruit, coffee, or cinnamon, for instance—are delicious. Yet even here, there is a meticulous and refined process of selection. Truffles, like Costa Rica, flavored with three kinds of oranges, or Zenzero, infused with ginger, are sophisticated, but certainly not playful or experimental.

Later that afternoon Alexandra and I share the tartelette chocolat. We are rapturous over the silken-textured bittersweet ganache in its fragile sugar and almond crust. This, it seems to me, is the pinnacle of sheer luxury and purity of flavor. Gemme, a truffle perfumed with smoky black China tea, is lovely. And the double-layered box of Chocolats Dynamiques turns out to hold a surprise or two: I'm torn between the luscious, slightly spicy Barre de la Passion (passion fruit- and pepper-infused ganache) and the Barre du Paradis, in which that unctuous ganache gets a kick from fresh ginger, Szechuan peppercorns and grains of paradise.

And the box of assorted chocolates? From the way my hosts’ eyes lit up when they spied Hevin’s brown and blue signature bag, I’m guessing that it was the perfect choice.

Jean Paul Hevin, 3 rue Vavin, Paris 75006. Telephone: 01 43 54 09 85. For other locations in Paris and Tokyo, see his website: www.jphevin.com.