6 (for me) 2 (for my charming ex-co-host.) Rosa Bonheur, in the Buttes Chaumont (forget the published address, it's useless, it's in the building at the top of the Buttes, North side of the Park, centered between the Botzaris and Buttes Chaumont Metro stations), 01 42 00 00 45, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, is a happening place whose "tapas" and booze bar has been packed at night with young ones since it opened a year ago and where we ate outside a month ago at lunch in brilliant sunshine.
Well today it was rainy and cold and the full resto had been open exactly a week; its menu was overseen by some famous guy from Arles whose name I picked up on the buzz but forgot. Anyway, it's where my charming ex-co-host walks her dog and she's been spying its progress for some time.
The place as you can see from my pix above, is still rather spare, like your adolescent camp cantine in Maine but the welcome was warm, even though Madame had laryngitis which stupidly, I probably picked up leaning over to hear her. It features rotisserie meats, always a half a coquelet and:
Free-range chicken Wednesdays
Rabbit Thursdays
Seche Fridays
Pork ribs Saturdays
Gigot d'agneau Sundays
For (8 E) firsts we were supposed to share a fabulous bisque of ecrivisses with Pastis (no taste of that) with a Camargian version of rouille on toasts and a banal and a tasteless cabbage and shrimp salad that my formerly agreeable pal insisted we take only a bite of each others' which was really unfair because mine was fab.
The scene repeated on the mains; I had the ribs with a spicy sauce the likes of which I've never had in France with a puree of sweet potatoes and she had the ordinary, banal 1/2 coquelet with fabulous cooked fennel; again she wouldn't take half of my meat, just some potato and I got her fennel.
For desserts (the menu was 29 E) we had the chocolate mousse and rice pudding; both quite OK.
Now it's time to leave so we use the bathrooms: funky eh?
On the way tho' there's a great sculpture rising out of the floor, which if you read on, far exceeds those chosen by the organizers of the sculpture part of FIAC in the Tuilleries:
The bill (we were celebrating; what? hummmm, United Nations Day? and had more wine than Barry Sears PhD advises) but with 3 courses, 1 bottle of bio/natural/unfiltered/etc. wine (yah, they're into all that) that was very good, 2 coffees (with great nummies) and no bottled water, the bill would be 73 E. Pretty good eh?
Go? I certainly would, especially in summer with the sun, but even though she says she'll go again, I wouldn't touch the chicken (now the seche is another matter).
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