1.02 Petit Pamphlet {I do these numbers just to drive John Whiting nutz}, 15, rue Saint Gilles in the 3rd, 01.42.71.22.21, closed Saturday and Monday lunch and all day Sunday, was described to me by my most trusted Parisian food critic as “not fun;” now, what does that mean? Oh I know, Bernard Loiseau (The Perfectionist,) is reputed to have said it’s all about providing pleasure, but not fun?
Well, my friend/colleague was right, but not completely right. It was pathetic and pretentious too. You enter, not bad, nice space, nice table coverings, nice bullfight poster (like you had in college in 1953, except not Manolete in Madrid but nobodies in Bayonne), nice rillettes and olives with three kinds of nice bread), nice wait-staff, nobody smoking except the proprietress, nice wine list all at 20 € - right?, you’ve stumbled on a find, despite the fact that you hated the mother ship Le Pamphlet.
Ok, so it’s in the heart of the touristy Marais, half the patrons are either Anglo-Saxons making notes or persons speaking English as their common tongue and the menu is terribly limited (4 starters at 9 €, 3 mains at 15 €, 4 desserts at 7 € and 2 specials, and they all have a Latinate, e.g. Italo-Spanish, spin to them). Soldier on, stout fellow!
Order the pasta with coquillagey stuff like paella (an homage to the Fables of Fontaine, I presume); the faux filet with potatoes and tiny girolles (seasonal) and roasted figs with caramel ice cream – how can one go wrong?
Well, the figs and chocolate mignardise were great, the rest barely acceptable, plus the plates, except for the figs, arrived with such astonishing rapidity that either they have a brigade of 40 all set to prepare your food or it’s all flash-prepared.
This meal caused me to reflect on why it was so different from that at the Grande Ourse. OK, it’s the 3rd vs the 15th, an annex vs an original. But I thot they weren’t really trying, as the Grande Ourse was, they were coasting - where they were, they didn’t need to hustle.
The bill = 54 €, clearly the worst price-quality of the rentrée.
*Originally published in September 2006
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