Europe’s ‘In’-Crowd Hangout

It’s all a question of degrees, sort of the snowball effect applied to restaurants.

If, for example, the current “in” restaurant were any further out on the city’s edge, it would qualify for country inn status. Instead, Maison Blanche, a small, casual 5-year-old operation that long lingered as a quiet, out-of-the-way place in an industrial neighborhood, is suddenly the present rage. In a big way.

W named it one of the two new Paris “ins” just weeks before it earned its first (and most people think, long-overdue) Michelin star. And with only 85 place settings and an 18-person staff, the restaurant averages 200 to 250 customers per evening--and turns away nearly that many reservation requests per night. Even better, its name has achieved equal namedrop value to that of its celebrity customers. As in: “I sat next to fill-in-a-superstar at Maison Blanche last night!” The response: “Really? What’d you have?”

But the element that signifies Maison Blanche’s ultimate arrival in the city of the blase is what in France is known as “The Yanou Connection.”

Beguiling, Belgian-born Yanou Collart is one of Europe’s leading public relations specialists. Her specialite ? Bringing far-reaching international contacts in entertainment, literary, art and business circles to the tables of the chefs she’s discovered. Her select list of Hollywood actors, directors and producers--including Eastwood, Connery, Spielberg, McCartney, Baryshnikov--provides the means to create the immeasurable press needed to firmly establish a chef’s “overnight” reputation. Collart’s pioneering efforts with Paul Bocuse, Roger Verge and others, beginning in 1972, propelled each in turn out of the kitchen heat and into the glare of media celebrity.

Her latest campaign of gastronomic hyperbole centers around Maison Blanche’s Jose Lampreia. In person, the Portuguese-born, Paris-bred chef is warm and self-effacing. (Friends say that he steadfastly refused to campaign for an award from Michelin’s review committee.) But to Collart, “Jose’s the hottest!”

“An irresistible mix of the pure and perverse,” one tough American critic cooed of the 35-year-old, self-trained Lampreia.

The pure comes from his passion for simple ingredients and seafood, the perverse from his touches of the curious (“the tastes of my childhood,” he says).

“For me,” Lampreia says, sampling a white sole breaded with crushed walnuts and pistachios served over spinach, “fare should be spontaneity with repetition. Reason, reflection and work should show at the table.”

“He’s made a lot of noise being a chef’s chef,” Collart says.

Often, he’ll challenge conventional wisdom and accepted tastes by championing certain “lower” elements into haute status. His own mashed potatoes with olive oil and chopped black olive threaten to become a staple of Paris restaurants. And this spring he made a spectacular cream soup out of the lowly lima bean. Some critics decry his pronounced affection for deep-fat frying, yet they gobble up his tempura nests of balsamic vinegar-seasoned carrots, fried scallops and seafood without a murmur of protest.

A meneuse (leader of the chorus) is how Jacqueline Saulnier, food editor for Marie Claire magazine, gushingly describes him.

“It’s happening very quickly for Jose already,” Collart reflects, dropping the fact that Kathleen Turner and Nino Cerruti recently canceled dinner reservations at Maxim’s to eat here on word-of-mouth from Milos Forman. “He’s already at the next-to-top tier in the public mind--where, say, Bocuse was in ’72 . . . but Bocuse is a bulldozer. Jose is a butterfly.”

Lampreia prefers to leave the labels to others. He excuses himself from an interview four hours before the first dinner setting to enter the restaurant’s glassed-in kitchen and labor alone for an hour on simple preparation (“Like always,” he explains) while nine assistants eat lunch in the emptied restaurant.

By 9:30 p.m., an employee says: “ Tout le monde is here!” Lampreia is ready, but as always, relaxed. Much of Maison Blanche’s success can be attributed to its easy feel. A planked wood-and-mirror decor with scatter rugs encourages a convivial atmosphere more reminiscent of a crowded bistro than its haute competition. Arriving guests inevitably encounter Clovis, Lampreia’s large white Lab retriever, napping by the kitchen door.

Menu items emphasize seasonal freshness (including daily market specials and monthly wine selections meant “to introduce new wines to customers”). Considering the restaurant’s size, the breadth of its cellar is exceptional, numbering more than 225 choices in a 40-3,000 franc range, meant to enhance the unhurried pace.

This spring’s menu featured ox-tails (suddenly a Parisian rage) and a consomme of beef containing oysters wrapped in leeks. But it is dessert that Lampreia admits he has “a weakness for.” Consider rhubarb over feuilletage pastry with creme fraiche and drizzled caramel. Or thin, brittle panes of sugar layering grapefruit and sorbet. Wine-flavored pears draped with cinnamon and homemade ginger ice cream (“made with eggs from my mother’s 12 chickens”). And before dessert even arrives there will be a plate of tiny butter Madeleines, candied orange peel, rich chocolate truffles and small puff pastries.

Meanwhile, the hype goes on. Endorsement offers constantly pour in (so far, Lampreia has only lent his name to one project, a longstanding bread wrapper/recipe arrangement that was recently renewed). But Collart’s future plans for Lampreia involve a series of cookbooks she’s preparing that will match designer chefs with celebrity writers. The first pairing--Collart client Alain Ducasse (of Monaco’s Louis XV) with Craig Claiborne--is set. And then Collart intends to team Lampreia with Tom Wolfe. “I know there’ll be chemistry between the two.”

Maison Blanche, 82 Blvd. Lefebvre, Paris 15. 48.28.38.83. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday-Friday. Lunch only on Saturday.