THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
Lucas Carton, La Tour D’ Argent, L’Ambroisie, Louis XV, Le Restaurant, L’Orangerie, Le Saint-Germain, Ma Maison, Citrus. My taste in fine food was centered on French restaurants in Paris and Los Angeles, my two main homes. Alas, French food became rare in Los Angeles as several of my favorite restaurants closed, Le Restaurant and Le Saint Germain. The only one left was L’Orangerie.
My palate has always veered to the French, food and wine. Back in the day there were few wine stores, the best being Greenblatt’s on Sunset where I replenished my stash of DRC Grand Echezeaux regularly. One day, the seller asked why I didn’t try more California wines, so I asked him to do several pairings and he did and I took them home and I trie them and I still preferred the French. It was around the time of the infamous JUDGMENT OF PARIS, where the New World wines outscored the French in blind tastings. In my Judgment of Paris, the French won and by a large margin.
I began to collect and then became obsessive and in an absurd way. When Tony Bill closed his Venice restaurant, 72 Market Street, I found myself with nowhere to eat. A friend once taunted me for drinking a Chateau Margaux at lunch while eating sausages and spinach there. He asked about food and wine pairing and did Margaux go with sausage. I just said that I treated the wine as another food course.
I considered buying Tony’s place but the chef that I wanted said that Venice was an evil place to have a restaurant, especially with the wine list I would have.
The best place?
West Hollywood.