Tim Zagat, co-founder and CEO of the influential Zagat restaurant guide, says when he eats with a tie on he feels like a foie gras goose being force-fed.
It's a little extreme, but you get his point. Like many of us, he loves good French food, but he'd just as soon do without the formality that traditionally surrounds haute cuisine palaces.
He would be happy at Baltimore's new Brasserie Tatin, which opened last week near the Johns Hopkins University, or Petit Louis or Timothy Dean or Limoges, to name four of the city's informal French restaurants.
Roddy Domacasse, executive chef of Brasserie Tatin, plans to keep the food "nice and simple," while being inventive in small ways. There's a perception of French food as heavy and rich, he says, and not everyone can eat that way.
"People conceive of haute cuisine as having to dress up," he says. "That's when you struggle. You're only busy Friday and Saturday nights for special occasions."
While the food at the new place includes traditional bistro fare like cassoulet and steak frites, Domacasse says the owners don't want to be too traditional, either in the decor (which is colorful and contemporary) or the food. A classic rack of lamb preparation, for instance, will come with Moroccan couscous.
"We want to have our own identity," says Domacasse. "We don't want to copy from Petit Louis." (One of the owners, Marc Dettori, was maitre d' at the other Gallic-inspired place in the neighborhood.)
This year, three important fine-dining restaurants featuring French and Continental food closed their doors: Jeannier's, Rudys' 2900 and Maison Marconi. Ostensibly we didn't lose them because of a lack of customers. Roland Jeannier retired. Rudy Speckamp and Rudi Paul closed their place rather than rework the menu to something more contemporary; the two owners also wanted to spend more time with their families. Maison Marconi was supposed to reopen in another location, but so far nothing has happened.
No white-tablecloth establishment has rushed in to replace them.
The reasons are various, but one of the most important ones is that Baltimoreans are like Tim Zagat -- they don't want to eat their duck confit with a tie on. They don't want to spend hours on a meal unless it's a very special occasion. They don't want to be intimidated by a sommelier, and they don't want to wonder if they're using the right fork for the fish.
