I've decided that it's something of a failing in me that my innate conservatism takes over a little when it comes to restaurants. To be entirely clear, it's not meat and potatoes conservatism; I'll eat almost anything when I dine out, hakarl aside. What I mean, rather, is that the acme of good cooking for me is to reproduce traditional cuisine perfectly. To the extent I'm of any use to readers and to friends, thus, it's in the limited sphere of identifying restaurants that reach that level of technical perfection. Of course, I happen to think that such technical perfection, through which one achieves the preservation of the culinary patrimony, is more or less the point of top restaurants. But I realize others don't necessarily agree.

All that is by way of explaining why I was so enthralled by Le Relais Louis XIII, a restaurant that would perhaps be laughed out of New York for its lack of pretence and its hard bitten conservatism. After all, the restaurant is set in a sixteenth century house, and the decor is period as well, the strangely opulent furniture of the style Louis XIII adorning all three, intimate rooms. Portraits of the last French King to have lived in the Louvre are up on the walls, and Henry IV appears several times for good measure too. Silver abounds. And yet, the cooking at Le Relais is so perfect, so flawless, that even if one finds the surroundings stuffy (although I do not), one cannot but be carried away by the food and the friendly welcome. To those who claim that the Michelin stars have suffered no inflation by being applied to New York, I say come dine at Le Relais Louis XIII, and see what two stars are supposed to taste like.

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What makes Le Relais especially startling, in the context of my one visit, is a certain generosity of spirit. For 45 euros, and at lunch, they were nonetheless determined to feed me properly. There was no pulling back of the menu, no crippling the chef to make up for the low price, or to punish me for daring to come to such a restaurant alone. At almost any other restaurant, for example, the pre-amuses geueles tarts, a mix of cheese and pizza like tomato, would require considerable description, because they would probably be a first course in a 4 course lunch menu. Certainly, I encountered things like that in New York, during my summer of eating out on the firm. But here, those were just a prelude to the prelude, and they were shortly followed by a almost full bowl of soupe de creme de cepes. The fleshy, earthy mushrooms that are the main ingredient have only just come into season, and the soup's simplicity was a perfect way for somone who doesn't know much about cepes to begin to appreciate why they occupy such a high place in French cuisine, and why the French were so palpably excited when they began to arrive in the market. They're like morels, but better, in my opinion. Fleshier, and perhaps even better friends with butter.

The real meal, post amuse geueles, was signalled by a fresh delivery of crusty french bread, obviously straight from the baker, and a new pyramid of unpasteurized country butter. I had chosen an entree of white tuna served atop a warm heart of lettuce salad., and when it arrived, and I cut into it, I was shocked, at first. The tuna was cooked well done - straight through ! No one cooks tuna straight through! But whether it was the kind of tuna, or the cut the chef had chosen, the tuna was soft, unctuous, and flavorful, topped with a fruity olive oil, and surrounded by a sauce of fines herbes, adding another delicate, though important, flavor to the mix.

I had no such preconceptions about the turbot that followed. But then, in my opinion at least, turbot is a fish best left to restaurants, who inevitably know better than the home cook how to handle the relatively rare, expensive fish. Le Relais's way with it was to served the sauted turbot, crisp and yet done to perfect flakiness inside, atop a mound of sauteed cepes with butter sauce. It was this accompaniment, in truth, that made my day. Served so hot they must have only come out of the pan seconds before they found their way to my table, the chef had somehow gotten the mushrooms to a perfect, fleshy, and yet not quite meaty texture. They were incredible. Truly incredible, and I don' t think I'm likely to forget them anytime soon. I almost wonder, though, whether I should now stay away from cepes in the future, in an effort not to ruin my perfect memory of what they can be.

The cheese course was, as expected, magnificent, and I feasted on the soft, fresh Livarot and the Cheddar like Mimalotte, along with a fresh brioche shaped delivered as a little loaf on exquisite china. One might expect, then, that with so much effort devoted to the savoury courses, dessert would suffer. But if the fig compote, with hints of orange, or its accompanying vanilla ice cream, were doing any suffering, then I was not aware of it. It is surprising to think that something as simple as compotted fig could possibly be so good; so subtle. But there it was - a couple of scoops of what looked like jam, and yet I was finding new hints of flavor in it right to the last bite. And if all that was not enough, I mopped up the remaining compote with some of the post dessert petits fours - three pairs of two desserts, including what almost seemed like a pistachio financier, the dense nut rich butter cookie, lemon tarts, and a sort of tall chimney shaped cakes, would have been good enough for dessert almost anywhere else.

All of this is to say, in other words, that Relais Louis XIII passes every possible test anyone could set. In doing so, my meal there was a stern rebuke to the purveyers of edible printed paper, and foams, and ices, and sryinges containing tesanne de sage, so prevalent back home. This was food, not fashion, and it was perfect.