When I called recently to make a reservation, I was told the restaurant was booked for the next three weeks. One way to get around this is to dine at the ungodly early hour of 7 p.m. When I proposed ...

In 1996, when the French restaurateur Jean-Paul Bucher announced he was buying the great Parisian brasserie Bofinger, in a narrow lane just off the Place de la Bastille, the regular customers reacted ...