Thursday, October 18, 2012

La Dame de Pic


You may not see any woman in this kitchen and though this brand new restaurant (it opened only one month ago) is owned and managed by a woman (which is still pretty rare in the haute cuisine trade). Her name is Anne-Sophie Pic (hence the name of the place which is also a play on words - Dame de pique means queen of spades in French) and she is not exactly a newcomer in the business; she already has a 3 star restaurant in Valence (near Lyon) - there are only 26 of those in France out of a zillion places, so you can imagine how hard it is to get these stars... La Dame de pic has not been rated yet, but it already has excellent reviews. I'm not big on spending a fortune on one meal, but this one looks really tempting (I love that you can see the kitchen from the outside). I may try it on a special occasion! 

12 comments:

  1. Anne-Sophie is a lovely name ... just sayin' ...

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  2. When I win the lottery, Eric . . . I love that you can see the kitchen too—I could stand there and watch them for hours (if I didn't get chased away)!

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  3. Oh God! I am already hungry. ;)

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  4. Good for Anne-Sophie. I wish her lots of luck and hope she makes it in a very difficult and competitive business!

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  5. It's right up the street from our picnic spot. Ok, so we can have lunch at the picnic, drink many bottles of wine and say hello to all our friends who flew in from all over the world (which will take many hours), and then walk up the street to La Dame de Pic and have dinner! Great plan, jeff! Maybe you should make the reservations now. If you tell them about PDP and the picnic, surely they will love us as a way to advertise the restaurant to an international market. Sound crazy? It's a new restaurant. Try it. Give them a call.

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  6. I think I'd be outside staring in too!
    I love how you've framed all the chefs as they work. very nice Eric.

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  7. It is good to see and learn about someone 'new' in the restaurant biz, other then Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver. Thanks Eric.

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  8. I'm with Jeff, give them a call! What could it hurt? A 3 star restaurant for lunch? Sure, I'll tell everyone about it! :) It does look amazing, but I wonder why there are so few women in the kitchen. I love to cook, but wouldn't want to work in a commercial kitchen. Too much time there, not enough for really enjoying what I do there. I'm SO blessed to have the job I do!

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  9. @Christie. "It does look amazing, but I wonder why there are so few women in the kitchen." A simple expression of male chauvinism... Everyday cooking is OK for women, but when it comes to haute cuisine, it gets too serious to be left to a woman...

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  10. On the other side of the coin from up-scale dining prices, I ate at La Boulange. The French food industry is booming in San Francisco. Bay Bread Group's La Boulange bakery/bistro, the San Francisco bake shop known for its French pastries, soup and sandwich menu, and macaroons, was sold in June 2012 for $100 million to Starbucks Coffee Co. La Boulange's founder, Pascal Rigo, (who I met at cafe Florio in 1998 or 1999 while he was promoting his new business venture, "Chez Nous" on Fillmore in San Francisco) will remain general manager of both Bay Bread and La Boulange. Rigo founded the company in 1999 with La Boulangerie - a bakery with an oven in the back of the store on Pine Street (he lived above the bakery). Starbucks plans to take the fast-casual bistro chain national and fill Starbucks coffee shops with breads and pastries produced by the Bay Bread Group bakery. There are 17,000 Starbucks worldwide. BTW Pascal Rigo is not from Boulange, France -- he's from Bordeaux, France.

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  11. Ah,yes, she is a third generation chef who was catapulted into the business when her father died. She was only 23 at the time... It is a great story and would make a delightful book. Too bad that there are no women in that wonderful shot of yours!

    Bises
    Genie

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