6.0 Le Clocher de Montmartre, 10 rue Lamarck in the 18th (No Metro but either the funicular and Montmartre bus will get you there), 01.42.64.90.23, open 7/7, is Antoine Heerah’s third place (after Le Chamarre & Moulin de la Galette, [neither of which I liked much]) and will become, I predict, the only restaurant over 100 meters on the Mont worth visiting in short order. Everyone knows the water tower next to Sacre Coeur but nobody knows what they're putting in it these days to trickle down to the new superb places like Le Clocher, Sens Uniques and Lui... L'insolent.
I went with my favorite downstairs' French neighbor, who knew the place from its prior owner who was, with her, a member of either the Polish-French underground or the conductor of a group of elderly women singing songs either celebrating Montmartre's independance from Paris and France in 1871 or Montmartre's silly wine harvests. In any case, she said its interior had been totally redone but they had preserved the La Boheme view of the city below.
On reading the first review of it I'd seen I was wary of mixing hamburgers and langoustines, salads and eggs, tarts and soups, but in fact, while eclectic, the carte is pretty comprehensive. My friend started with a salad with what was called fish from the ends of the world. We had quite a discussion of where exactly drilling straight down from Montmartre would land you, Heerah hails from the l'île Maurice, but her dish had salmon, smoky halibut, eel, tuna and two kinds of fish eggs, so maybe it was just descriptive. Oh yah, it was also terrific. And I had wonderfully sauteed langoustines with a salad of great greens, both with a sweetish dressing but a very tart kumquat much beloved by my photo-frenzied friends David and Julot, to squeeze on top.
Then she had a thin slice of veal's liver with pickled onions, apples (harvested a few months ago) and mashies, pretty damn good - and I had Roscoff onions from Brittany (harvested in late summer - hummm) stuffed with minced ox tail, accompanied by a dish of absolutely first class rice with an intriguing sauce - jasmine maybe?
I tempted fate by having the Paris-Brest again, afraid that after yesterday's this would be a let-down, but no, it held up the standard high.
With a bottle of Bordeaux, two coffees, decent but not great bread and nice little cookies, our bill without bottled water was 92 E.
Go? A must for those climbing the hill.
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