What makes the ideal paella?
    To listen to Lolo Manso, owner of Socarrat, “The quintessence of the perfect paella and for which the restaurant is named is the delectable, sensuous crust that forms on the bottom of the paella pan when the liquid is rendered and the rice reaches its peak of succulence.”

Indeed, that  brown-black crust is the most desirable part of paella, the festive dish of Valencian rice and other ingredients cooked in a wide circular paella pan over an open fire. My first reaction to the dish, in the highly regarded paella restaurant La Pepica in Valencia, was that the drama of the cooking and serving and the scraping up of the socarrat outweighed my impression of its flavor, which was a bit bland. But at Socarrat, with locations in Chelsea and Nolita, I loved what I ate of the steamy, softened rice, chicken, shrimp, mussels and more, all of it fully flavorful right down to the last crunchy, smoky morsel of the socarrat itself.

         There was much more that I liked at the NoLita branch Socarrat (there is also one in Chelsea and midtown), which on Tuesday nights at 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30, provides the added pleasure of fiery flamenco music and dancing. The room and bar are rustic, largely fashioned in wood, with a communal table that somehow manages to maintain a comfortable noise level, even when the two guitarists are flailing away and the sharp crack of the beautifully costumed dancer’s heels and staccato click of her castanets are in  full flourish.

         The menu is large, with an array of tapas, though they come in larger portions than the bite-sized pintxos you find in Spain. I can never resist gambas aj ajillo of fat shrimp sizzling in a ceramic dish with olive oil and the aroma of garlic, or the creamy croquetas (left) with their golden outer crust. Socarrat also serves grilled Spanish octopus Galician style with cubed potatoes and a lashing of paprika oil. Pan con tomate is the simplest of dishes––country toast rubbed with fresh tomato, olive oil, and garlic. Very much true to form was a dish of sauteed oyster mushrooms, cremini, shimeji, maitake and shredded Manchego cheese and a celery root puree.

         I recommend your table share the wooden board of campero––a selection of Serrano ham, chorizo and salchichón along with Manchego, Idiazabél and Mahón cheeses with almonds and olives.

         There are seven paellas, including the thin noodles variant called fideuá de Mar y Montaña with Brussels sprouts, squid shrimp, and a mushroom sofrito.

The house paella is called “Socarrat,” made with an abundance of meaty chicken, chorizo, shrimp, white fish, squid mussels and fava beans peppers and tomato. I liked even more the carne of pork chop chunks simmered in the juices with chicken chorizo, snow peas and mushroom whose socarrat perfectly crispy and nutty.

         Six deserts end off the meal with delectable renderings of classic Basque cheesecake with strawberry sauce; caramelized brioche soaked in milk with lemon curd (right); a rich, velvety flan; and my favorite, fried churros fritters to be dunked in hot chocolate sauce.

        Socarrat has an admirable wine list of Spanish bottlings, but I took a chance on a pitcher of sangria, which I loved because it was neither too sweet nor boozy.

         Meanwhile, not ten feet away, the flamenco dancer was stamping her feet in syncopation, flourishing her ruffled dress and flinging her arms above her head while the two guitarists provided the Spanish soul music. Good reasons to pound he tables in appreciation.

         New York has far fewer true Spanish restaurants than it should, and many years ago “Spanish” really meant more Cuban because of where the chefs came from. But no one can dispute the seriousness with which Lolo Manso takes what he  believes is his mission. You can tell by the smile on his face that is returned in kind as he goes from table to table.

Open for lunch Mon.-Fri., dinner nightly; brunch Sat. & Sun.

        After the interview with Dr. Baer, David said, “Did you get a slight sense that she warmed up to us?” then, arching his eyebrow, “I thought the handshake was a big step forward.”
         Katie said, “Who knows. I think she’s a scientist through and through and except that finding the perpetrators might lead her to track the virus, I doubt she cares if we have a story or not. We’re not the police and we’re not French and we’re not American scientists. What’s in it for her?”
         “Fame? Glory? Nobel Prize? ‘The woman who unlocked the key to the hotel pandemic!’”
         “I don’t think infecting three hotels qualifies as an all-out pandemic, David, and she almost made it sound routine that she was able to trace the DNA to Russia so easily.”
         “Ain’t science amazing in the 21^st century?”
        “Actually, I’m impressed they could come up with the DNA info so quickly,” said Katie. “But unless it’s forensic science, it’s not going to help us too much.”
         “Well, in that case, I should get back to Borel and let him know we know some of what he knows. It sure as shit sounds like there’s a criminal case in all this.”
         “Alan will be thrilled.”
         “Not with what we’ve got so far. Nobody died. . .”
         “Yet.”
         “Yet. It’s seems more like an embarrassment to these fancy Paris hotels than a devious plot at this point, unless the police can find three guys who checked into those hotels, spread the virus through the air ducts and got out before it took effect.”
         “Or, if they had that protective gear with them, they could have locked themselves in their rooms, waited till the next day and just exited with everyone else. No one was searched, no one was carrying suitcases and not everyone became sick.”
         “Okay,” said David. “So, if the intent was to embarrass the hotels—each of which has a different owner.”
         “All of them Arabs,” said Katie.
         “Yes, all of them Arabs, who would want to completely disrupt the operation of the three hotels and why? Assuming, for the moment, the virus was stolen from a Russian lab, was it a Russian lab worker who gave it to three Russians to do the job or might some other nationals have obtained it, bought it maybe, to use. And maybe those nationals got it to three operatives in Paris to do the job.”
         “Doesn’t sound so complicated, does it?” said Katie, frowning. “So, all we have to do is scour Paris for three people who checked into the hotels one day, sprayed the stuff around and left the next morning.”
         “Unless they checked in two or three days before so as to not seem part of a pattern. Or they might have sprayed the stuff in the ducts, taken a nice hot shower and gone out to dinner, maybe never to return to the hotel.”
         “Do you think the police are thinking along the same lines?
         David said, “If they’re any good, they should. I’ll have to speak to Borel and feel him out or fill him in. He’s a good detective, but the police here are even more under a political thumb than in New York.”
         David was thinking of how he had once happily worked under Rudolph Giuliani when he was a federal prosecutor who became famous for putting Mafia mobsters in jail, but after becoming Mayor of New York, became headstrong with power and brought political pressure to bear on the NYPD. It got so bad that it was the reason David finally retired from the force.
         “First thing I’d do would be to look at all the guest logs,” said David, “cross out all those who came down with the disease, make assessments of the rest on the basis of which guests  were regulars or well known to the hotel, then winnow it down  from there. Probably put the American guests in one category and any Russians in another category. Somehow I think the perpetrators are not going to be Russian nationals, even if the job was run out of Russia.”
         That all made sense to Katie, who added, “So the most likely guests to be suspicious were the least likely ever to have stayed at the hotel before.”
         “That sounds right, although it’s possible that this operation had been planned far in advance in order to allow the perpetrators to become semi-regulars over many week or even months. Check in over a period of time, get to know the concierge, y’know, ‘So good to have you back in our hotel, Monsieur so-and-so,’ eat in the restaurant, tip the waiters well. . . “
         “You don’t tip waiters here,” Katie reminded him. “Service is included in the bill.”
         “Right, and tipping would mark them as exceptional, which they would not want.”
         “Or,” said Katie, “be free-spending Americans who cannot bear not to tip in case the waiter thinks he’s a cheapskate.”
         “Okay, but the likelihood of these three—even one of them—might be American is probably remote.”
         “Do you think they’d pay their bills with a credit card or in cash?” she asked.
         “I’d say cash, which these big deal hotels are very familiar with. Lots of nefarious and not so nefarious people carry around wads of cash for all sorts of reasons—especially if they’re having a little romantic fling they don’t want showing up on their credit cards. They also usually carry along a bodyguard or two.”
         “Now, that would make them stand out a tad, wouldn’t it?”
         “Very much so. Still, you pay cash, there’s no plastic trail.”
         The two Americans stopped for coffee at a café along the way.
“Okay,” said Katie. “So, we’re looking for three people somewhere in Paris who stayed at three hotels on the night of the hotel but may or may not have been in the hotel when the virus hit. And there’s no record of their identification.”
        "Well, we had to give them our passports when we’ve traveled over here. They take a picture or something and give them back later.”
         “I’m not sure about that. I mean, yes, with us because we’re foreigners, but I don’t know if they’d ask for I.D. if we were French or even members of the E.U. I’ll have to ask Catherine or our own concierge.”
         “Probably, if they do,” said David, “they may not with regular guests, which could come off as kind of embarrassing.”
         “Good point. I’m sure your detective friend Borel will know.”
         They headed back to the hotel and did indeed ask the concierge about the policy of asking guests for identification. The man said, “Oui, Madame, it is the usual procedure. In the old days we had to keep the cards and passports overnight so the local police could check them over. The guest would get them back the next morning.”
         David remembered that arduous system was a big part of the plot in the 1973 movie The Day of the Jackal, about a professional assassin hired to kill President Charles De Gaulle, which was based on a true story in which the right-wing OAS militant group had attempted such an assassination in 1962. In the movie there was a scene of police officials frantically riffling through the hotel cards from all over Europe to try to find a pattern of the assassin’s movements. Now, all that would be done by computer.
         Katie asked, “And you follow this procedure with everyone, not just foreigners?”
        The concierge waved his head slightly and said, “Well, Madame, we are sometimes a little. . . flexible with our regular clientele. Discretion is a very French virtue, you know.”
         The two Americans thanked him for his information and went up to their separate rooms to make calls.