Temps Perdu - Howard's Style

"Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French
always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else.
Dinner is the evening."
~ Art Buchwald

This morning as I sit here in my sunny Beverly Hills office, my thoughts turn to ,oh, so many, many years ago, when I first visited Paris on a lovely crisp Autumn day and immediately feel in love with the city and the country. On that day, I had lunch at the Le Dome Restaurant on Montparnasse Blvd.
On my first day, I made a beeline for the legendary seafood restaurant, Le Dome, whose Art Deco traditional atmosphere with overstuffed booths and large floral arrangements filling every nook and cranny was my kind of place. No fusion, no foam, no pan-something, cuisine was to be found here, but good, honest, straightforward French traditional dishes were to be found.
I was told that Le Dome had the best sole à la meunière – a simple and sublime panfried fish embellished with nothing more than its buttery cooking juices, a sprinkling of parsley, and a shower of lemon juice. Le Dômes prized fish came, I was told, from the Ile d’Yeu on the Brittany coast and had and still is a staple at this marvelous Art deco restaurant for decades.
The advice I was given was spot on and the restaurant, low these many years later, has become one that I always go to when I am in Paris. Its like going home!