L’Ami Jean is a very small, newish bistro in the residential 7th arrondissement, which happens to boast quite a number of fabulous bistros, including Maupertu, Florimond, Le P’tit Troquet, Cafe Constant, just to name a few.

So L’Ami Jean is in good company.  What makes it different and stand out from the rest?  Read this article from the New York Times and you’ll understand…

Bistronomy
By CHRISTINE MUHLKE
Published: January 28, 2007

If in Paris a friend tells you that he’s taking you to a Basque rugby pub in the opposite-of-bustling Seventh Arrondissement, don’t whimper about wanting to try somewhere on your list of Places to Go — Le Comptoir, say, or Le Sensing. He’s taking you to L’Ami Jean, and soon you will be grateful.

Ed Alcock for The New York Times
The four-year-old restaurant has a lot working against it: location, décor, a kitchen the size of a crèpe stand. Even the menu seems like a letdown, with its 30-euro prix fixe, seasonal additions — game in fall, stews in winter — and traditional plats that bring the daily dish tally to about 60. The wine list recently added a page of historical offerings from the dealer across the street. But who would want an 1,020-euro ’86 Pomerol to accompany her head cheese?

Once the first dish arrives, you’ll understand. Not just the smart presentation on stylish plates that don’t quite fit on the table but also the quality of detail: cream-of-cauliflower soup with horseradish — poured table side from an iron tea kettle — with microscopically precise rye croutons; a langoustine from Brittany under a translucent sheet of crisp pig skin (the world’s best potato chip) dotted with orange-infused oil; a rich gratiné of game with a timely puff of foam.

Basque rugby pub? What Basque rugby pub? The room hasn’t changed since the 1930s, but the food will silence those who claim that French cuisine has ossified and that the culinary torch took the Eurostar to Spain. Perhaps silence isn’t the right word: L’Ami Jean is boisterous. While in a starred environment this food would invite hushed attention, Stéphane Jégo, the 35-year-old chef, stokes a rollicking room where it’s common to exclaim loudly over a dish or be offered a spoonful of pork belly and lentils from a neighbor’s casserole; where tables of four order magnums, and there’s a wait for 11:30 p.m. reservations. Try that at Taillevent.

Jégo is part of the next wave of gastro-bistro chefs. The self-taught cook spent 12 years with Yves Camdeborde at La Régalade, one of the revolutionary “Why here?” bistros that brought excited diners to featureless locales. Camdeborde, who now owns the more accessibly located Le Comptoir, made his name with generous hospitality, democratic prices and reworkings of classic fare built on a base of quality ingredients and rigorous French technique — all lessons that Jégo absorbed. Along with Parisian restaurants like Chez Michel, L’Os à Moelle, L’Oursine and L’Acajou, L’Ami Jean serves food that is adventurous while sticking close to home, like an airy, deconstructed rice pudding that Tante Marie could have only dreamed of.

“We have different styles and personalities,” Jégo said of his “bistronome” confreres, “but we’re in the same esprit, the same osmosis. While other chefs say that they’re going to revolutionize gastronomy, we do one thing: we respect people. We don’t invert it and say that people should thank us because they were lucky to come to our restaurant. Those guys who catalog people like they catalog their food — it’s really stupid.”

Asked what Jégo is doing differently from his peers, Camdeborde replied via e-mail: “Nothing. He is different. He rejoices in what he’s doing, and you can feel it in the food.”

A glimpse in the kitchen window will silence any New Yorker who whines about his or her kitchen. At lunch and dinner, the wild-eyed Jégo and three cooks send out 60 entrees using just four burners, a grill, a salamander and a “piano” cook top. The menu is often tweaked and reprinted between seatings. The key, Jégo said, is the mise en place. “It’s an organized mess,” he said. “The mise en place started four years ago, and it never stops. If it does, we’re dead.”

On a November morning, the other side of the 12-foot-long cooking area featured metal organizers filled with endive, bread crumbs, almond butter, mushrooms, shallots, chorizo, chives, purée of purple potatoes, parsley pistou, chestnuts, dried tomatoes and other items that allow the chef to riff at high speed. A fish soup à l’ancienne simmered on a burner, while suckling pig braised its way toward tomorrow’s boudin, at which point it would top an apple slice spread with almond butter and be heated under the salamander. In another room, rabbits soaked in their blood, ducks underwent a 15-day preparation and live langoustines passed their final hours.

Any first-time diner will wonder how he does it. And why. He could be a star, but according to Jégo, most customers who see him in the kitchen say, “Is that L’Ami Jean?” That makes him happy.

“Hey, Néné,” he yelled to the regular drinking at the bar at 11 a.m. “Is what I do for fame or to please my friends and meet people?”

“Ah,” the old man said, putting down his slice of sausage. “The second answer!”