John Talbott's Paris

Breizh Cafe in the 3rd: An upscale crepe or the revenge on Wolfgang Puck: an archival* review

4.1 Breizh Café, 109, Rue Vieille du Temple in the 3rd, 01.42.72.13.77, closed Sundays and Mondays is a really different kind of place than I and I daresay most French eaters have ever experienced and therefore is really unrateable.

Why? Because it does to crepes what Wolfgang Puck did with pizza; it turns them on their head; is the third branch of a Japanese outfit; and has two Japanese cooks who turn everything out effortlessly. The décor is what might charitably be called Breton-dock-ferry terminal waiting room modern, that is, strips of unfinished wood. The tables are functional and the menu huge.

There must be 20 crepe varieties divided into simple (such as one with one of three Bordier butters), complex (that start with an egg and usually have cheese, a meal/fish and something else) and the daily chalkboard specials (with provincial names like Auvergnate, Cancaloise, etc. that are also composed of a regional cheese, fish or meat and other items.)

We started off with 6 Tzarskaya oysters (apparently a favorite of the Tsar/Tzar) that were great with a “simple” crepe schmeared with smoked (correct) butter and not over-chilled (my friend and I simultaneously agreed).

Then we shared a platter of four different kinds of pig sausage/meat; quite good. Then to two fancy crepes: one with herring, warm potatoes and herring caviar; the other with egg, ham, cheese and confited onion; both again quite good. With them, of course we had two different “bio” ciders (but NB, they also have unique beers and some wine by the glass and bottle).

Dessert was another crepe with gariguette strawberries and what was called Chantilly but was firm not saucy and an ice-creamy yogurt.

Our bill = I have no idea. My buddy owed me a meal and settled up for us and was out the door while I was in the men’s so I never saw it. But Rubin says to count on 20-30 € per person without liquid.

Should one go? Well if you’re staying in the Marais, you’ll eat at a place of which there are only two others in the world and they’re in Cancale and Tokyo.

*Originally published in May 2007

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Update in March 2009 when Colette and I ate with our two 10-year old grandkids:

The Breizh Café was our choice the first day because I thought it would break them into the French resto scene easily. Unfortunately, they were really jet-lagged and sleepy, having watched movies all night on the plane, so one had just a green salad (which portion was most generous but whose dressing had no character) and the other a crepe with Valrhona chocolate, which was quite good.

Colette didn’t rave about her galette with Forme d’Ambert, pine nuts, grapes, honey and salad but I loved mine with raclette and pork poitrine and an egg.

We finished with a crepe with caramel sauce and ice cream that was yummy.

The bill with wine and coffee = 70 €.

 

Merci in the 3rd: Restaurant of the Year?

 

6.0 The Cantine Merci, 111Blvd Beaumarchais in the 3rd, 01.42.77.79.93, closed Sundays, is located in a "concept store" of the same name and was named by some critic or other a contender for Restaurant of the Year.

(I must digress: I've never quite understood the concept of a concept store and I've read the wikipedia entree a few times; "a shop [with] a lifestyle theme," Huh?  "Lifestyle theme?" This place has everything from flowers to clothing, from used books on warfare in English to baskets, from tableware to furniture - what lifestyle is that, the living one?  Versus a funeral home, maybe.  Anyway, my conclusion after wandering throughout all of Merci, is that a "concept store" is like Crate and Barrel only three times as expensive.)

In any case I was wandering about because I couldn't find the cantine; I did find the cafe in the used book store but that didn't offer much for lunch except fancy-schmancy ice cream.  But I asked myself "What would Colette do?" Ask someone of course, so I was directed downstairs where a veritable theater was taking place.  It's where the glass, plastic and cloth table items are displayed and sold and the 50 burly men and breastless anorexic girl/women employees were busily unpacking cases, boxes, etc., and putting them on tables, 6-8 items to a table and a designer-type straight out of central casting was moving this item 1 cm to the left and that one 1 cm to the right and then 10 minutes later reversing the order - it was dizzying.  I guess that in designer school they taught him how to maximize sales centimeter by centimeter.  All of this, plus the cantine, was overseen by a Miranda Priestlyish woman who saw the "Devil Wears Prada" too many times.  What a show.

OK the cantine.  It's between the sales area and an herb garden in the courtyard, has a very brief, very bio, very veggie, very protein and booze-avoidant, very salady, very trendy, very dietetic carte and is entirely occupied by women.  Plus everyone (but me) was having the very healthy, very fresh, very natural, very repugnant looking carrot and orange juice.  What's there not to hate about this place?

Actually it was quite good.  After wrestling with the menu and asking lots of questions:

"The risotto is made with what?"

"A rare herb"

"Oh"

"The soup?"

"Gaspacho of watermelon."

"The chicken comes how?"

"In kofta balls with corn and eggplant and rocket." 

OK that sounds the most unhealthy.  It came with two "salads" which were bizarre looking but great tasting - I chose the combinations of their take on tabouli with great herbs and lentils and raw mushrooms with great herbs.

I was most impressed and so waded through the dessert menu past all the bio/healthy stuff to the chocolate mousse; again superior. 

A fault, my friend? - crappy bread and somewhat strange service leading to one couple walking out before they could order and others being served haphazardly.

With 2 glasses of house red in the most untrendy clunky glass and a double Illy coffee made ristretto to a tee, my bill was 37 E.

Go? Mais oui, but don't expect abats and Armagnac.  But do expect at least one person to knock over some glass items - "you break it, you own it" rules.

Glou in the 3rd: “The restaurant of the month?”

 

2.5 Glou, 101, rue Vieille du Temple in the 3rd, 01.42.74.44.32, closed provisionally Tuesdays, lunch formula 17 on weekdays, a la carte 25-48 €, has received rave reviews and been called “The restaurant of the month.”

Four of us went on a Sunday and so I have witnesses to the fact that I’m not just a grouch-puss this month; we consisted of one Americo-Franco, one Franco-Brit, one Americo-Brit and myself.

The place is nice, but you can’t eat nice, and stark, but not Philippe, and full of French bobo’s with kids. We had two outstanding wines (one a Table Wine from Languedoc, the other a St Nicolas de Bougeuil) that were both good and good price-quality, the water was good, the bread and coffee OK and then, ah, then, the food.

Well, I ordered the Utah Beaches which I was really looking forward to – 10 minutes passed (did I say we were on the second floor, far from the waitfolk?) and word came there were none. So I had the much written about sardinillas with nice lettuce, OK, nothing more, and the three others shared two platters of chorizo, good, but obtainable anywhere.

Then against my non-verbal discouragement, two (one American, one French) had 22 € hamburgers that whether medium rare or raw rare were dry as a bone and pretty tasteless and an affront to 22 €. My Brit pal and I each had 4 grilled wild shrimp from Madagascar that were OK, I suppose, for 5.50 € each, with a sweet potato puree that was pretty good.

As I implied the service was amateurish, slow as possible and uninformed. Our bill was 169.40 € for four.

Go back? No way to this disaster of the month.

The New Hot Quarters: the 3rd and 15th - An archival* essay and update.

The third arrondissement is an intriguing one for both the tourist and resident. It has been the historical center for both Jewish culture and gay life over the years has some of the most important and interesting buildings in the city. These include the Conservatoire and Museum of Arts & Metiers and the National Archives and it is home to several popular museums including the Carnavalet and Picasso.

Obviously, then, the third houses superb collections of art, in the case of the Picasso Museum, the donation to the state (to settle for estate taxes) of a huge number of his works which are displayed both in a permanent collection and in special themed-exhibitions; the Jewish Museum, which has a similar mixture of both permanent and special exhibitions; for the Carnavalet, the art relating to the history of Paris; and in the Cognac-Jay, one of Paris’s small gems of a museum.

As for walking, if all you do is make a circle tour of all the above, you’ll see some of the most well preserved architecture and streets there are in the city.

Americans know the restaurants of the third primarily from their long love affair with L’Ami Louis and L’Ambassade d’Auvergne which have been popular for decades. But for reasons unclear to me, despite its proximity to hotels, rental apartments and the lure of the Marais, except for Le Pamphlet, the third never saw the influx of new hot restaurants that occurred elsewhere in the city. Indeed, a food critic friend, after eating at Les Don Juan, commented that the area had finally gotten a restaurant worthy of its density. There is, however, one other newly-renovated place, aptly called Le Café des Musees, that merits one’s patronage.

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If the third represents one of the quarters the most replete with historic buildings, the 15th is its evil twin, with really only one interesting site - the relatively new European Hospital named for ex-President Georges Pompidou, which sits on the southwestern edge of the modern Andre Citroen Park (where the factory of the Citroen auto empire originally was located.) Readers may ask “what about the Montparnasse Tower, isn’t it in the 15th?” Well, while it is in the 15th, I consider it a blemish on the whole city, a shared horror and since you can see it from practically everywhere, let’s ignore it when discussing monuments.

There is precious little art here as well, except for the Montparnasse Musuem which tends to have second-rate art of artists who lived in the area in the 20th century, the Postal Museum, which can have interesting postal-related exhibitions, the Jean Moulin Museum, that celebrates the Resistance and Liberation of Paris (on an elevated platform above the Montparnasse Station itself) and the (Antoine) Bourdelle Museum, that has a mixture of his sculptures and temporary exhibitions.

The 15th is not a place I think of for strolls; although, the Andre Citroen Park is the best of the modern-type gardens and parks in the city and the George Brassens Park (named for the famed singer) has interesting sculptures and a nice belvedere.

The 15th has an old bistro tradition, however, indeed, some of my fondest memories from the 1960’s are coming in from the airport and going straight to lunch at the Bistro 121 or the Bistrot d’Hubert. That was food we just didn’t have back then in New York and the settings were like those one saw in French films. A touristy place that still serves up good food, probably well known by BP readers, is the Ciel de Paris in the Tour Montparnasse, which, as I’ve noted above, is much-hated by inhabitants and visitors alike, but from which you cannot see the Tour M. itself, but do have a spectacular view of the Tour Eiffel, all aglow, etc. Another place with a spectacular inside court, crusty wait-staff and decent food, if you stick to beef, is the Café de Commerce.

But we’re concentrating in this series on hot, new places. So let’s deal with them. Within the past few years, so many small, great little eateries have opened here, that the 15th seems the prime example of Olivier Morteau’s (Food Business: La face cachée de la gastronomie francaise, 2004) formula for a successful small neo-bistros – e.g.: find a reasonably priced building in a gastronomically underserved area, be nice and friendly, and get a chef who is talented and can prepare dishes that are reasonably priced. Such gems include: Autour de Mont, Beurre Noisette, Dix Vins, Grand Rue and Le Troquet. Thierry Burlot, who originally opened a wonderful place in the 15th several years ago as part of this new wave, slowly hiked his prices and reduced his “menu” choices so that the price-quality ratio was unfriendly, but within the past year has changed course and is once more offering great food at reasonable prices in his eponymous restaurant - Thierry Burlot. And finally, just in the past year or so, two other new places have opened, both following the successful formula given by Morteau: to whit l’Ami Marcel and La Cave de l’Os a Moelle.

So, as usual, here are my favorites in the 3nd and 15th:

Les Don Juan
19 Rue de Picardie, 3rd (Metro: Filles du Calvaire, Temple)
T: 01.42.71.31.71
Closed Saturday lunch and Sundays
Lunch Formulas and Menus: 11.50-14 €, a la carte 30 €.

Le Café des Musées
49 rue de Turenne, 3rd (Metro: Saint Paul, Arts et Metiers, Chemin Vert)
T: 01.42.72.96.17
Open everyday
Menus 19-20 €, a la carte 40 €.

Beurre Noisette
68 rue Vasco de Gama, 15th (Metro: Lourmel)
T: 01.48.56.82.49
Closed Sunday and Monday.
Menus: 15 & 20 € lunch, 29 € dinner.

Dix Vins
57 Rue Falguiere, 15th (Metro: Pasteur)
T: 01.43.20.91.77
Closed Saturday and Sunday
Menus: 20 € lunch, 24 € dinner, a la carte 30 €

Grand Rue
117 Rue de Vaugirard, 15th (Metro: Falguiere)
T: 01.47.34.96.12
Closed Sunday, Monday and August
Menus: 18 € lunch (with wine included), 25 € dinner. A la carte 35 €.

Le Troquet
21 Rue Francois Bonvin, 15th (Metro: Volontaires)
T; 01.45.66.89.00
Closed Sunday and Monday
Menus: 23 € lunch, 30 € dinner, 37 €. A la carte 45-55 €.

Thierry Burlot
8 Rue Nicolas Charlet, 15th (Metro: Pasteur)
T: 01.42.19.08.59
Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday.
Formula 26 €, menu-carte 32 €, degustation menu 52 €.
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*Since this was written, in March 2006, much has happened. In the 3rd we’ve seen the opening of the fine Pramil, Carré des Vosges + Les Chineurs and the reopening under new auspices of Au Bascou.

In the 15th, it’s been even more dazzling, with the opening of Afaria, Comperes, Grand Pan, Opus Vins, Passage Gourmet, Petit Casier + Veraison – all interesting, but the disappointing Cristal de Sel + Vingt 2, the sad closure of Grand Rue and the turning to his old tricks of Thierry Burlot.

The Marais: Is it the Jewish or American quarter? An archival* review of Le Carré des Vosges.

4.0 NNN* Le Carré des Vosges, 15, rue St-Gilles in the 3rd, 01.42.71.22.21, closed Sundays and Mondays, where the 3-course menu is 27 and 2-course one is 21 Euros (3 firsts, mains and desserts).

The day I visited was the day after it was reviewed in Figaroscope but although I passed many folk carrying their sukkot plants, the quarter seemed more American than Jewish and the restaurant even more so. I started with a nice tapenade with not so nice bread.

Then I had an equally nice langoustine bisque with croutons and cheese that seemed pretty industrial: OK but not surprising. The daurade with piperade was also OK but not mind-exploding.

Finally I terminated with a tarte tatin with a firm cookie underneath and splashes of caramel in the corner of the plate and supposedly something made with calvados but I couldn’t taste it.

Lunch plus 2 glasses of a fine Gard wine (which came with too long a lecture on it from Madame) but no bottled water or coffee ran 37 €. I do believe English is spoken since there were plenty of them there.

Should one go? If you live nearby but there’ll be no fireworks.

*Originally published in October 2007.