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Happy 2008, everyone!

We had a great time on New Year's Eve, and we hope all of our guests did too. We were lucky with the weather. After snowing heavily the night before, it stopped in the morning and gave everyone a chance to clear the roads. Chef Paul and Souschef Mark's food came out exceptionally well. Paul can't stop talking about his cheese soufflés, which came out of the oven looking like they were wearing chef's toques.

We also got several things right this year after learning from two problems during our first New Year's Eve in the new space last year.
The hotel placed two guards at the entrances to the parking lot to preserve spaces for reserved guests of Chez Sophie and The Saratoga, and three valets worked parking cars. It seems to have solved the problem, making it easy for all our guests to get in an out past the big First Night crowds.
Second, we did not release helium balloon randomly in the dining room, having learned last year that they explode when they hit the lights. We'll put a few pictures of the festivities on our newsletter later today at http://www.chezsophie.com/newsletter.htm

We also had a great time on the Saturday before New Year's Eve helping Mollie Schwartz and her family celebrate her Bat Mitzvah. The event was fun for us partly because the family allowed us to prepare really interesting food: mountains of smoked and cured fish, (sturgeon, salmon and sable), two North African dishes: braised lamb with dried plums and almonds and rice pilaf and chicken with almonds and Israeli cous cous, plus haricots verts vinaigrette, celery remoulade, braised leeks with a shallot vinaigrette, mango and plum ice cream, white chocolate and raspberry mousse in dark chocolate shells and apple tarts. We also enjoyed the Kleine Klezmer Orchestra's playing, and it was fun to watch the dancing in front of the fireplace.
Mazel Tov, Mollie.

The Pink Plate Special for this coming week will be bouillabaisse, the French dish most likely to eliminate a contender from a spelling bee. (Even the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have been known to leave out the penultimate "s," and you'll also frequently see it spelled with an extra "i" cuddling the "a" between the bouil and the baise.

This traditional Provençal fish stew dates back at least to 600 B.C.
when the Phoenicians founded the city of Marseilles. They called their simple fish stew "kakavia" in Greek. The French name comes from bouiller (to boil), and abaisser (to reduce). It is the soup that Venus was said to have fed to Vulcan to lure him to sleep, so she could cavort with Mars.

Bouillabaisse is a luscious, soupy seafood stew with a rich fish broth flavored with onions, garlic, tomatoes, parsley, leeks, orange peel, basil, thyme, bay leaf, potatoes and wild fennel. It's unpretentious, rough and hearty, having come into the world as a simple dish assembled by hungry fisherman as a way to use the parts of the day's catch that were either two small or two scrapped up by the nets to be salable. They tossed hunks of stale bread in the broth to stretch the meal.

As Marseille expanded commercially in the 19th century, fancy hotel restaurants took up the dish and gilded it. Some tossed in saffron, a costly golden spice, and referred to their bouillabaise as "soupe d'or." Eminent travelers such as Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola fell in love with the local specialty and carried word of it to Italy, North Africa, the Near East and Paris.

The soup is now such a matter of culinary pride that a group of restaurateurs in Marseilles have actually banded together to write a "bouillabaisse charter" to protect the reputation and integrity of the dish. Restaurants serving the "authentic" version of this soup must agree to standards of freshness and must use at least four varieties of fish and shellfish.

The very word has become synonymous with a wild mixture as in "literary bouillabaisse" or "bipolar bouillabaisse. Authentic bouillabaisse varies according to the catch of the day, or, as the fishmongers are fond of saying, ''whatever happened to wander into the net.''

The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we offer on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Pink Plate is a $32 per person three-course special, including your choice of soup or salad, the featured entree, two selections from our cheese board or one of a couple of featured desserts and coffee, tea or espresso.

We offer a fun and elegant à la carte brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
Our artist-in-residence, jazz pianist Cole Broderick, plays the baby grand piano from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday

The brunch menu this Saturday and Sunday will feature pan-seared salmon filet with a Thai ginger sauce ($16); blanquette de veau ($15); pan-roasted center-cut pork chop with caramelized onion and spicy peanut sauce ($15) and chicken ragout over chestnut tagliatelle ($15). Appetizer specials include a crabcake with lemon caper mayonnaise ($16); a salad of mixed baby greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7); Rhode Island Littleneck clams steam in white wine with herbs ($13) and soup of the day ($8).

The brunch specials run from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The complete menu,
offered from 7 to 2 p.m., includes a Continental assortment of
muffins, pastries, fruit, yogurt, frittata etcetera for $9;
omelettes ($10 to $12); pancakes du jour ($10); the All in One, which includes 2 eggs any style, homefries, toast and sausage or bacon ($10); waffles with sweet cream butter and local maple syrup ($10); and Irish steel-cut oatmeal ($8).

Cole also plays the baby grand Tuesday and Friday night (barring special events that preclude live music.) Cole, who won a Billboard Critic's Choice Award for his 4-CD set of jazz compositions: "Seasons in Saratoga," recently released his seventh CD "Chez Sophie Jazz."
This is the first time he's recorded with a vocalist. (The singer is Cheryl Clark, co-owner of Chez Sophie, wife of Chef Paul, mother of the adorable Nico and Léo.) Some of the cuts of the CD can be heard at http://www.chezsophie.com/.
Copies are for sale for $16 at Chez Sophie and through Cole's secure PayPal-friendly website at http://www.colebroderick.com/sound-7.htm
We can also mail-order the CD's for an additional $4 shipping and handling.

Tasting menus
Chef's Choice seven-course tasting menu available each night. The
menus are designed based on the best and most creative dishes Chef Paul K. Parker is serving each evening. We will pair wines for you at an additional charge or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $80 to $200 per person for seven courses, plus tax and tip.
Everyone at the table must partake in the tasting menu.
If you're feeling less impromptu, you can call ahead to arrange a
special tasting menu with the number of courses and wine pairings
designed to suit your capacity, dietary restrictions and budget.
Tasting menus arranged in advance will be printed on commemorative vellum scrolls personalized with the name of the host or the reason for the event.
Cost: Depends on the number of courses and the wines selected; available for two to 75 guests. Call Cheryl to make arrangements at
518.583.3538

The Pink Plate Special
offered monday, January 7, Tuesday, January 8, Wednesday, January 9 and Thursday, January 10

$32 per person
includes your choice of soup or salad, a special entree, selected desserts or a cheese course and coffee, tea or espresso.

This week's special entree:
bouillabaisse

Notes on Nico and Léo:
Nico has suddenly become patriotic and Léo has gotten cagey.

We took a couple of days off after New Year's Eve to visit Paul's sister Ellen in Chichester. Nico napped for the first part of the trip, then woke up and spied a post office. "It's the American flag!"
he shouted, startling his road-lulled parents. Then he noticed that LOTS of houses and businesses in the Catskill Mountains fly the stars and stripes, and he made sure to point it out every single time he passed one. Today, he was watching a video of story about a zebra that races against thoroughbreds and again shrieked in excitement when he saw Old Glory flying.

Cheryl asked Nico why he gets so excited when he sees a flag. The answer is interesting, considering that he doesn't go to preschool and hasn't started kindergarten yet, so we're not sure how he got his ideas of the symbolism. "It's very important," Nico said sagely.
"Why is that?" Mom asked. "Well, it means we're Americans."

Léo, who will be two in two weeks, has been pretty well-behaved in Aunt Ellen's country house, especially since it was so cold that the children couldn't go outside for more than a few minutes at a time to blow off steam. Léo became fascinated with an open cabinet in the kitchen that was artfully stocked with delicate little glasses and containers of jam and other mysterious and intriguing items. Because the cabinet cannot be closed, Cheryl kept a close eye on Léo, and when her tiny hand was drawn inexorably toward the pretties, she quickly said "Arrêt, Léo! Ne touche pas."
Léo turned wide-eyed to her Mama, but didn't pull herself away from the cabinet. She turned back to stare longingly at the interesting artefacts, and eventually her little digits began to stretch toward the shelf.
"Léocadie!" Cheryl said warningly. Léo's hand dropped gracefully to her side and she turned with a winning grin: "Just looking, Mommy."

The Parker family
at Chez Sophie
518.583.3538

Chez Sophie was founded in 1969 by sculptor Joseph Parker and his French-born wife, the late Sophie. The business moved to a vintage stainless steel diner in Malta Ridge, New York, in 1995. It is owned today by Sophie and Joseph's son, Paul Parker, and his wife, Cheryl Clark. In June of 2006, they moved the restaurant into their current location in The Saratoga Hotel on Broadway..

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P.S. Each month we draw a name at random from our database of customers and send them a $50 gift certificate to Chez Sophie. If you would like to be added to this promotions database, which is owned by Chez Sophie, please send us an email with your name, address, telephone number, birthday and anniversary. People on the list will also receive a gift certificate by mail or email for a free glass of champagne or dessert on their birthdays or anniversaries. (You only need to enter once to be eligible every month.) If you think you are on the list but have not received gift certificates on your special holidays, please contact us with an updated email address. We find that many of the email addresses we have collected over the past few years are no longer valid.

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