Les Halles NYC restaurant
 

my hubby and I love 'Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and travel food shows - i know this is where he used to work
and was featured in his first season of travel shows - is it worth dining here during our trip to NYC - any good reviews?

I haven't eaten here in about 3 years. I used to love the Rossini burger (topped with foie gras) and frites. The sauteed calamari with bacon and onions was also fantastic.

Thin

Didn't he sell his interest in the restaurants?

I like the hangar steak with fries.

I'm pretty sure that he did sell his interest in the restaurant. He talks a lot about hanging up his "chef hat" in the book, "The Nasty Bits", which is fantastic reading.

yes he doesnt work in restaurants anymore but they did show quite a bit of it in Season 1 of his travel show...ive also read his books and his recipe book "Les Halles'...might try it...we're there for 2wks

doesn't matter, Les Halles is great. packed little joint with great frites, great pate de compagne, great vibe

ok -its on the list 'to try' for sure! thanks guys!

I ate there a while back - loved the food and the atmosphere!!! Will definitely go back

do you think we need reservations for a place like 'Les Halles'??

Always just walked in on Park South but needed one for lunch for the one on John Street.

oh so there are 2 locations - which one is the original? which one is better atmosphere?

Park South is the original and has the atmosphere you are seeking. The one on John Street takes on the feel of a men's club at lunch. I have never had dinner there.

For those interested: The correct pronunciation of this place is: Lay Ahl not: Lays Ahl. The s is not pronounced. Go figure French.

great -thanks for the info!!
and also for the tip of pronouncing correctly - i get nervous going to French restaurants as I cant pronounce half the things on the menu haha - I feel like a ditz!!

Do not be intimidated. It is a bistro rather than a haute establishment. And especially downtown the dinners are business people who 95% of which would not know frites from frats.

my fav restaurant, you must try the braised lamb shank with a salade frise avec lardons, just scrumtious

oh and FYI the correct pronunciation is layzhalles when a word starts with a vowel " halles " or a silent " h" you connect the words. even bourdain , whose family comes from france doesn't pronounce it correctly

But, lululemongirl, isn't the h in Les Halles un h aspire, and, therefore, there would be no elision?

Since Les Halles is in NYC, it makes little difference how it is pronounced. But to get the correct French pronunciation rather than an approximation, go to http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

I do not wish to belabor the point - as they will serve you at Les Halles no matter how you pronounce it - but: the restaurant is named after the famed old market area of Paris - and Parisians (and French) pronounce it: Lay Halles. Last time I was in the restaurant I also asked how they pronounced it - and they do: Lay Halles.

<i>and they do: Lay Halles.</i> They must be Americans, so where are their overstayed visa French waiters.

just got back from france, great trip, boy do i have oeuf on my face, yes, for those of you who pointed out the "h " is aspire, well you are 100% correct, sorry for my ignorance. food was superb, locals were okay, weather was fine, hotels sucked. i want to live in st.paul de vance or Eze.one can only dream

Americans, obtain a little bit more self-esteem when it comes to food!

American food can be fabulous - says a European who lives at the French border. Some of the most fantastic meals of my life I have enjoyed in Atlanta, San Diego and Los Angeles. Even the best French restaurants have started to serve Guacamole and tomato purrée with lobster (I had it twice, last year in Normandy and last month in Bourgogne).

But, please, please, please do not try to speak French. Of course you pronounce the "s" of Les Halles - it connects both words. The ATT machine is wrong in this case - the programmers missed the point. Better listen to Maria Callas singing Carmen.

And, please, do not try to emulate French cuisine. You will find no restaurant in France with a menu like Les Halles, NYC. It combines dishes from Bourgogne, Alsace, Languedoc, Provence, Noramandie, Auvergne, Paris and New York. Nobody in France would mix dishes from different regions. And: the dishes are pre-war cuisine - rustic, heavy, outdated.

I know understand why so many Americans despise French cooking - they take Anthony Bourdain's cooking for real. (He is not French, he is 100% American and never disguised it in his books.)

A "Hamburger Rossini" is ridiculous. A Hamburger is a pure American dish (with German roots).

On my next trip to NYC, I am looking forward to wonderful American dishes, but I will certainly bypass mocking French Les Halles whose personnel cannot even pronouce the restaurant's name properly.

Sorry for many typos in my post. Too much French wine.

Sorry traveler1959, but the H is aspirated, which means that there is no liaison and no Z sound between the article and the noun, like with <i>haricots</i>.

French can be quirky - there are the standard pronunciation "rules" and then there are the exceptions to those rules. Why? who knows? French, after all. But Les Halles looks like you should pronounce that s (as a z) in the "les" - but the s is silent so it's Lay Halles. Another one: fleur de lis. That "s" is pronounced although the final s is generally silent. And you may very well find some English dictionaries telling you to keep that s silent. If you still need to be convinced pick up the audio guide at the Metropolitan Museum for the Sir George Clifford suit of armor - narrated by Phillipe de Montebello - M. de Montebello knows his French - the s is silent in this one. I once asked a Frenchman about this pronunciation and told him how many Americans keep the s silent. He burst out laughing. He says: Do you know what that means? - flower of the bed ( i.e. sounds like fleur de lit).

Sorry for the typo in previous post - M. de Montebello pronounces the "s" in fleur de lis - it is not silent. He - as the French do - pronounces the "s" in fleur de lis.

Thanks. I've always pronounced the 'lis' like 'lee.' My french teacher must be turning in his grave!

Every idiot knows that there are different regional pronunciations of French just as there are regional pronunciations of English.

(Do you say water or wooder? Do you think caught and cot sound the same?)

Get a few Frenchman in a room and I bet no two pronounce Les Halles alike.

Thin

Thin - I think it seems more like an exception to a rule rather than a regional thing. We certainly have plenty exceptions in English which makes learning it for non-natives quite difficult.
And after a few glasses of Bordeaux, who cares how it sounds!

Thin,

There are a variety of pronunciations in French, which would emphasize the quality of certain sounds to the detriment of others. People from the Midi cannot distinguish between a closed and open O (<i>porte</i> and <i>hôte</i>), but an aspirated H is an aspirated H. I even heard an Alsatian in Mulhouse say <i>en haut</i> with a clear exhalation for the H. Certain rules are rarely violated, so while a child might make a liaison with <i>les haricots</i>, an adult would not. <i>Les Halles</i> does not have a liaison, no matter how else the rest of the word is pronounced. The Petit Robert gives the following example: <i>une sorte d<b>e</b> halle ...</i>. That lack of elision which would otherwise be represented by an apostrophe (<i>d'halle</i>) indicates an aspirated H.

And to pursue a previous example (not yours, Thin), I would not use Maria Callas' French pronunciation in Carmen to indicate how words should be pronounced in French anymore than I would use her pronunciation in Die Zauberflöte, or better yet Die Dreigroschenoper, to tell me how to pronounce German.

Oh, well, I was really just trying to point out the differences of pronunciation.

So many people in the US come to blows over how to pronounce "bruschetta."

Is it Bru-Sket-a?

or

Bru-Shet-a?

I say Bru-sket-a, but my best friend, who is an Italian-American from South Philly, INSISTS that it is Bru-shet-a.

Italians from South Philly also say, "Pasta Fazul," for Pasta Fagioli soup.

What is the proper pronunciation? Is there a proper pronunciation? Does it really matter?

Thin

No it doesn't.

Just say, 'Mangia!'

WIKI summarizes neatly--
...an h aspiré ("aspirated h"): For example in le homard ("the lobster") the article le remains unelided, and may be separated from the noun with a bit of a glottal stop. Most words that begin with an h muet come from Latin (honneur, homme) or from Greek through Latin (hécatombe), whereas most words beginning with an h aspiré come from Germanic (harpe, hareng) or non-Indo-European languages (harem, hamac, haricot).

If you prefer le Petit Larousse--
Si l'h est muet,il y a elision ou liaison: l'homme; les hommes
Si l'h est aspire, il n'y a ni elision ni liaison: le heros; les heros

Cries - Yes there are regional pronunciations and you need not be an idiot nor a non-idiot to be aware of this. But Les Halles? That is a neighborhood in Paris (once home to the huge city market) - and the folks there call it Lay Halles. That has nothing to do with a regional pronunciation - that's the way the French say it.

kmbp,

Yes, but to complicate things, it's <i>le héros</i> but <i>l'héroïne</i>.

Yes. I just remember that if it were an h muet in les heros the sound would be identical to les zeros. (Sorry. I haven't taken the time to learn to add accents...)

well all i can see i loved my meal at Les Halles...the atmosphere was great, we had to wait to get a table but worth it!

Sorry to add to the pronunciation debate, but the Metro announcer in Paris says "lay al", I.e. no liason.

Geesh - my one year of high school French leaves me behind many of you - but when in France or in a French restaurant - I find they appreciate it if you at leasst try a little French - and then they politely switch back to English.

As for Les Halles - we had one of our group (from another travel blog - Oh - the Horror :) ) go by to check it out and he found it ok, but not outstanding.

If you want a great - authentic and inexensive Bistro atmosphere - under the New York page - check out my review of Tout Va Bien - on W 51st.

And if you other Bistro recommendations - perhaps more upscale - check out Zagat's or other writers reviewing French Bistro's in NY. IMO - there are a number of them better than Les Halles - which has seen better days.