Rico will go, any time

Mark Bittman has an article in The New York Times about one of Rico's favorite things, the Parisian bistro:

Whether the Parisian bistro is dead depends largely on how you define “bistro". If you need pigeonholes for your napkins, no wine choices because the owner’s brother-in-law makes Beaujolais, a dependable blanquette de veau every Tuesday, and the neighborhood plumber sitting in the corner, you’re out of luck. But if you want a small, cozy place, reasonably comfortable, with reliable and affordable food, it may be that the choices are better than they have been in years.
That’s my experience, anyway. The food in the places discussed here is often inventive but never silly, with the occasional deconstructed classic making an appearance, but a sound one. The atmosphere is friendly enough. You don’t sit shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors as you do in the ostensibly old-fashioned bistros (no one really likes that, do they?), and the places are often quiet enough for people actually to hear one another. The service varies, as it always does in Paris, from indifferent to efficiently friendly. And, at as little as thirty euros, the prices are impressively reined in.

Rico says there are reviews of half a dozen bistros in Paris, so click the post title and go drool...