Ralph’s Rive Gauche Resto

From: Godfrey Deeny

1. Ralph and Ricky Lauren on the staircase in the company′s new St.Germain store

2. The reigning king of fashionable Americana has another piece of Stars and Stripe action that visitors in Paris really ought to check out. It’s called Ralph’s and it’s a restaurant. Located in his spanking new flagship in St. Germain, it’s so American, even the beef comes from Lauren’s own ranch in Colorado.
   
   “I wanted to bring the best of American cooking, in the most beautiful neighborhood in Paris,” Ralph told Zeitgeist as he sauntered, arm-in-arm with wife Ricky down the cut stone staircase of his five-story mansion boutique to the courtyard in which Ralph’s is located. And don’t think that Ralph’s is just a steak house; from Maryland style lump crab cake to crispy fried Southern organic cooking there are plenty of options on the menu for folks who don’t barbecue.
   
   Laurent celebrated his new eatery at the black-tie gala opening of his hyper luxurious Left Bank flagship, where folks are already queuing outside at the weekend, it’s become such a tony tourist destination.
   
   “This is a properly historic building, so it deserves a lot of respect. It’s so old we keep finding things here. We actually dug down six feet into the foundations, and started finding relics. Relics! Can you imagine that?” Ralph told me, seconds after posing for photos at the black tie event with guests such as, Gerard Depardieu, Michelle Yeoh, Marisa Berenson, Isabelle Huppert and Kevin Spacey, who came by late and wore a blue suit.
   
   Ralph’s store includes his signature runway Collection, sophisticated Black Label and more bohemian Blue Label. Guys get to shop the classy tailoring of Purple Label, the newer high-tech Black Label, preppy Polo essentials and the rugged RRL denim line, in a charmingly funky attic. And, the store offers vintage accessories, fine jewelry and a watch salon.
   
   But our favorite spot is the courtyard where the silver haired septuagenarian designer has created a restaurant that looks, well, like it’s been there for a very long time. Boasting a cunning mix of Provencal garden and baronial castle, with rose climbers and olive trees. The interior part of Ralph’s is housed in original stables of the 17th century building, the dining room’s finished with hefty wooden beams, leather chairs, and more classically Laurent like hunting images. There’s a huge interior chimney and a paneled gentleman’s bar that looked like it had been flown in from Chicago. The staff is French but trained in that customer-is-always-right American way. Plus Ralph flew over several chefs, all French, to New York for a week for a detailed course in how to make classic items like burgers and fried chicken.
   
   Plus we loved the fact that one gets pre-eminently American fare on boulevard St. Germain, located across the street from Café Flore, the legendary meeting point of the French intelligentsia.
   
   Being Lauren, the menu is not cheap. Every French paper highlighted his $24 Colorado ranch hamburgers. Nor is it Lauren first resto, as the Frogs call them. He already has a similarly named restaurant in Chicago, but one suspects it will be the template for future dining rooms. Ralph got Danny Meyer’s Union Square Group to teach Ralph’s all-French staff how to correctly craft such American classics as fried chicken. But its star-spangled cuisine with proper Gallic touch, the manager is also French – the charming Olivier Maury, who just happens to be part owner of L’Ami Louis, judged by many as the best classic bistro n Paris.
   
   I got to sit beside Australian super model and star of Lauren’s campaigns, Abbey Lee, who showed off her remarkable collection of rings as we dined. She tucked into Santa Barbara salad and salmon. Me, I dined on Ralph’s seared Angus steak – from his own herd of cattle - and several glasses of deliciously hearty Rubicon Estate 1995, a suitable mix of glamour, earthiness and tannin, from the estate of winemaker Francis Ford Coppola.
   
   “Ralph is so great. Who else could open a store like this? And, let you smoke at his dinners,” giggled Lee, as she kindly rolled me a cigarette of her Bali Shag tobacco pouch in the garden.
   
   I know, I know, the darnedest, dirty job, but one of us had to do it partner….

3. Abbey Lee Kershaw, modeling′s current superstar and clearly a "ring and roll" fan

4. Ralph′s Steak Frites, not Charolais or Salers but Black Angus