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Shortly after the steak frites at L’Entrecôte was set down in front of us, our friend la française summoned the waitress, who was uniformed in a black dress with a starched white apron to match the retro bistro décor.

“Is there not a lot of sauce tonight?” la française said in French, sounding concerned.

But of course there was, our waitress responded, and immediately ladled more of the secret sauce that makes L’Entrecôte so famous onto our plates.

After the waitress left, la française said, “That’s how you ask for things in Paris: indirectly. If you ask them, ‘Can I have more sauce on this?’ they get all huffy.”

Good advice for a restaurant that attracts more and more foreigners each season as word of its fabulous steak frites spreads. There is no real menu at L’Entrecôte; the waitress simply appears at your table and scribbles the number and doneness of your steak orders on the tablecloth.

Not many places could get away with serving just one thing – though there is this perfectly good mesclun salad with walnuts to start. But no one can get enough of L’Entrecôte’s special butter sauce, first introduced to Paris in 1959 by Paul Gineste de Saurs. Since there are no reservations taken at L’Entrecôte, people line up around the corner and wait. Even on a Monday night, the place was packed, though the line moved quickly. We arrived at 8:30 pm and were seated in 30 or 40 minutes.

So what is the secret to this mystery sauce? Since the restaurant’s inception the sauce recipe has been a closely guarded secret, handed down over the generations even as the family has branched out. Daughter Hélène Godillot took over the original 17th arrondissement restaurant, the Relais de Venice L’Entrecôte, her sister Marie-Paule Burrus started the rival Le Relais de l’Entrecôte, where we dined that night, and their brother Henri Gineste de Saurs opened a L’Entrecôte in Toulouse.

The intergenerational multiplication of L’Entrecôte doesn’t seem to have affected the family in the same way as, say, the Manganaros of New York. Fortunately for diners everywhere, all the restaurants share the same recipe for a butter sauce from Geneva’s Café de Paris in the 1940’s.

As I tasted and retasted the sauce, trying to decode the delicious layers of flavor of herbs, cream, mustard, butter, and a perhaps a dash of white wine, I had no idea that we had arrived at L’Entrecôte amid a storm of controversy. Just weeks before, Jean-Claude Ribaut, restaurant critic for Le Monde, outed L’Entrecôte by publishing a recipe for the sauce. The secret, he said, is chicken livers. Not so, rebutted L’Entrecôte’s Hélène Godillot in the London Independent. Make Le Monde’s recipe and you will not have L’Entrecôte’s sauce.

As for this copycat chef, I would concur with Jean-Claude Ribaut’s guess at chicken livers, which certainly would explain the richness of the sauce and the odd greenish color. But I might also throw some sage and bay leaves, a grating of nutmeg, and a little white wine into the mix.

When dessert arrived – ultra-rich vanilla crème brulée scalloped to look like tarte tatin, scoops of freshly made sorbet – we were still puzzling over the secret to the secret sauce. But if any of us in the restaurant that night really knew the answer to this mystery, there would be no one waiting in line, and there has been a line outside of the various L’Entrecôtes in Paris day and night for 20 years now.

It seems there’s only one way to get closer to the heart of the riddle: Go to Paris. Often.

L’Entrecôte
i.e., Le Relais de l’Entrecôte
15, rue Marbeuf
8eme
Paris, France
49-52-07-17

If you can’t afford Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée, there’s only one place to go: another Alain Ducasse restaurant. Fortunately for Ducasse fans, in the last few years the superchef has quietly amassed a mini empire of restaurants all over the world, not just by franchising his existing restaurants, but by gently taking over the classics and reinvigorating them.

One rainy Friday night in Paris, High Maintenance, Knucklehead, and I headed over to Benoît, a classic French bistro near the Centre Pompidou. Founded in 1912 by butcher Benoît Matray then handed down to his grandson, it was bought in 2005 by the Ducasse group, which installed chef David Rathgeber in the kitchen. Benoît still serves the kind of traditional French dishes that might even give Julia Child the heebie jeebies. Craving a head of veal? Look no further than Benoît.

After a brief foray into the tourist room, where we refused to sit down, the maître’d led us into the more acceptable side room with a sigh. Still, there was to be no sitting in the front room, which seemed to be reserved for regulars and was absolument complet, he said, using a phrase I’d already grown weary of.

Nevertheless, the ambiance here was perfect. Knucklehead and High Maintenance, who are regulars at Raoul’s in Soho, requested a classic bistro, and here was a bistro that reminded me of Raoul’s: a lively neighborhood place with a cool but casual atmosphere and good food.

Make that great food. If you want to go anywhere in Paris to get schooled in the classics, Benoît is the place to go. When all the riffs on French cuisine are whisked away, the standards that remain are excellent in their own right. Why do we have sear foie gras or put it on burgers when it can be an other-worldly experience on its own? With a texture like whipped butter, perfumed with a touch of shallot and a hint of champagne, Benoît’s foie gras was supremely rich yet airy.

Tongue of veal turned out to be a lot like salami in texture, though not as strong in taste. Thinly sliced and sandwiched between layers of foie gras, it was interesting, but you might as well just get the foie gras on its own, or the escargots, which are reputed to be excellent.

Look at this brown mass of cassoulet and imagine it’s one of the best things you’ve ever eaten. Not easy, right? The blah appearance of so much of traditional French cuisine – compared to the bright colors and flavors of Asian-influenced fusion cuisine – is what has set it by the wayside in the past decade or so. Judging this cassoulet by its brown cover would be a shame, though, because the taste is incredibly heady and complex. The secret seems to be in the sausage, which lends the beans an herbal spiciness. Or is it in the meat, which gives it gravitas? Or is it the incredibly low heat and long time it must have taken to cook beans this flavorful without making them fall apart? As anyone who’s ever made a cassoulet knows, it ain’t as easy as it looks. Benoît’s was hands-down the best cassoulet I’ve ever come across.

High Maintenance and Knucklehead both got the steak, as at Raoul’s, but unlike at Raoul’s, this steak was topped with what seemed to be sweetbreads – if I didn’t get lost in translation. The best thing about the dish was the divine demi-glace that came with, and the side of macaroni and cheese. Give a chef like David Rathgeber something as simple as mac ‘n’ cheese to make and even this turns out to be a goumet dish.

Knucklehead actually knows a thing or two about wines, so he chose this very nice Chateau Fonbadet 2000 Paulliac in anticipation of a trip to Bordeaux.

Heading into yet more traditional territory, we had a very satisfying order of profiteroles and cake for dessert. Somehow these taste all the better when served on bone china with sterling silver utensils, as at many of the better restaurants in Paris.

I found Benoît through the international boards on Chowhound.com, where many readers recommended it as the best classic bistro in Paris. It’s also in the Michelin guide with one star, meaning “a very good restaurant in its category.”

Doing one thing but doing it very well? Benoît’s stardom is well deserved.

Benoît
20, rue St. Martin
4eme
Paris, France
01-42-72-25-76

Lunch can be a wonderfully long, drawn out affair in Paris, especially if an Englishman sits down at your table and orders a bottle of champagne.

“Where are you going to put that photo?” he asked, fiddling with his cell phone.

“On the internet.”

He shrugged it off. This was no shrinking violet. It wouldn’t pay to be at Le Comptoir, where the teeny cafe tables in this tiny place are set so close they’re literally touching. Time to get to know your neighbors.

Here was our neighbor on one side.

And our neighbor on the other.

It’s a very friendly place, especially after you’ve had half a bottle of champagne. And the café seating is great for people watching.

But onto the food. That’s why we’re here, right? There are lots of comptoirs in Paris – the name refers to the bar in a café – but this is the Comptoir, the renowned gastro brasserie run by chef Yves Camdeborde, who is to Paris what April Bloomfield is to New York.

The close proximity of other people’s food makes it easy to order dim-sum style by pointing and saying “I’ll have what she’s having.” So it was with the salad with foie gras, recommended by Monsieur the Englishman’s previous female dining companion, who had to leave while he lingered, killing time before the next train to a certain town in the French countryside.

“I must be as old as your father.” He sounded vaguely surprised by this fact.

“How old are you?”

“Sixty.”

“Nope. My father’s sixty-two.”

Hmmm.

Why have just a salad when you can have a salad topped with foie gras and sprinkled with bacon? That was my reasoning and a line of logic that worked well at Le Comptoir. When ordering here, go for the gutsiest food you can find. The buttery texture and rich taste of Le Comptoir’s foie gras was mitigated by the crunch of green beans and lettuce, though admittedly these were dressed with something creamy. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Don’t ask.

The daily special lasts all the way through the fancier dinner seating that begins at six, so it is a good bet to order this if you want to taste Camdeborde’s finest. That day’s special was tranche de gigot, sliced lamb leg, cooked medium-rare and infused with intense flavors of roasted garlic and fresh herbs, elements that appear in an accompanying sauce slick with lamb fat. As with the salad, don’t bemoan the fat: it is the conduit for all the excellent flavor at Le Comptoir.

By the time lunch drew to a close, the afternoon was nearly at an end. Though Yves Camdeborde’s restaurant, like the Spotted Pig, is insanely popular, it’s great for procrastinators who show up for lunch at 3pm. Not only are you more likely to get a table, you’ll actually be able to eat lunch when most of the cafés in Paris have stopped serving it.

Monsieur the Englishman scribbled down several numbers of various homes and left for the train, waving as he pulled his wheely bag towards the taxi stand.

Now the only thing left to do was get ready for dinner.

Le Comptoir
Hotel Le Relais Saint-Germain
9, carrefour de l’Odeon
6eme
Paris, France
01-44-27-07-97