5.0 L'ArchiToque, 11, rue de la Grande-Chaumiere in the 6th, 01.43.26.19.43, closed Saturday lunch, Sundays and Mondays (no matter what the reviews say) (Metro: Vavin/etc.) has been open 3 months and barely made a ripple in the Paris pond. You'll see why later.
The front-room host/waiter/high class dogsbody is as pleasant and charming as one can be; a true pleasure/treasure from telephoning in my rez to finishing the meal with a Calva*. I had a sense I knew him from elsewhere and also that I had been in this spot before but it had been a dreadful Cameroonaise place (he indicated) until it was revived by this team, the chef having been one of the contenders in Cyril Lignac's reality TV thing - "Top Chef."
The prices were right - 13.50 E for 2 courses and coffee for lunch and 23 E for 3 at dinner; wines of every size fro 3-30 E.
I started with cured country ham carved off the bone as an amuse gueule then it again on rock-hard melon (which the waiter warned everyone about). Now I don't mind hard melon if it's tasty, which this was, but someone should have sliced the melon so customers don't risk stabbing themselves (you'll notice a few knife cuts in the photo). Not a great start.
Then I had the lamb's knuckle, which knowing the French, means that even in Spring it's aged mutton, so again I was forewarned but couldn't finish it.
My topper was some goat cheese and a Brillat-Savarin which the friendly front-room guy dusted with finely ground pepper, which made it sing.
Now my grade of 5.0. The food was generously a 4.5, the rest a 5.5, so 5.0 seems fair.
As for why the food was so average; could it have to do withe the chef's palate dulled by too much nicotine? One wonders.
The bill, with a half of wine, decent bread, a supportable coffee is 32.5 E.
*Ah, the calva; yes, I got comp'd but so did everyone else who had finished their coffees.
Go? I suppose there are lots of third basemen who play beautifully on the field but can't hit their weight, but frankly I'd trade them and this team in for the crew at the Repaire de Cartouche where the cooking is great but the service snarly.
Now a bonus pix: what would a week in Paris be without a manif from one or another bunch en colere: this is the nurse-anesthetists, who bless them stopped for a while here so hungry marchers could grab a sandwich.
OK, I had a nice lunch and all the good intentions in the world at spending the afternoon scoping the pix of Bettina Rheims,
whose intriguing poster I didn't get permission to reproduce but which is at Jed Root's blog. So instead I decided to walk thru the Gardens of the Palais Royal and see what was up:
and some sculpture
5.5 Le Cafe des Antiquaires, 12, rue de la Grange-Bateliere in the 9th (Metro: Richelieu-Drouot), 01.48.00.99.92, closed Saturday dinner and Sundays is a place that crept onto the scene in February but only caught my attention when Rubin gave it a 5.5 in his Spring roundup.
It seems as old as time, has that dark, red velvet decor and that certain ancient bar/cafe look we all love and is running a live video cam picturing rooms at Drouot over the bar. Pretty cool. And it has the feel of the Cafe Tournon, except rather than clean-cut, eager-beaver, elegantly-suited young legislative aides, here the clientele are all long-haired, scruffy, unshaven boys who know their rugs/furniture/jewelry/etc., and make their money buying junk for pennies at Drouot and selling it to antique dealers who sell it to rich Anglos for millions.
As my first, I ordered the carpaccio of scallops with sliced Tonka (tonco) beans and lime, divine. Really, really good.
My main was a filet of Salers beef that was cooked very well to my liking with fries. I realized as I approached it that as opposed to oysters where my routine is to have the first one unadorned, the second with lemon and the third with mignonette sauce, with beef I taste it first also unadorned, then with the sauce provided (here OK not great) and third with pepper ground from a mill - the best.
The frites were surprisingly good - why do I say this? - for several reasons - but uppermost is that my good friend told me that her's at Ralph (Lauren)'s were really bad. These, especially the small slices, were crisp and beautiful, the thicker ones less tasty. Ditto the diced veggies, OK, but not great except for a fine roasted eggplant strip.
(Side question: why haven't I been to Ralph's? Plain and simple, if I want Danny Meyer's food, I'll go there not some out-a-sight priced Paris knock-off.)
My dessert and coffee was/were the new "in" thing in Paris, the cafe gourmand; a coffee with a dollop of pretty much all they had on the carte.
My bill after a pot of wine, pathetic bread and house water = 57.50 E.
Go? Well if you're at Drouot, I think it's better than the famous Grange-Bateliere. Why not?
Let me start with a confession/tribute. I love photography, I think it is, at its best, art at its best, and I love the Maison Europeene de la Photographie 85% of the time.
But there are times when I don't get it. And today was one of them. Starting from the top: Philippe Perrin: Who has the fun? It is always the guy with the gun." Comparing him to Caravaggio, as the curator(s) did, is a travesty, this guy has one trick and no pony; then Mimmo Jodice who either photoshopped (or the decade-ago moral-equivalent) weird stuff or shot coast-lines; and finally Antoine Poupel who will (according to my expert exprivate school headmistress) make adolecent girls swoon over his pix of horses - all came across as incredibly boring - not the way contemporary photography should be at all.
3.0** Le TresOr (like Le Transvзrsal, Le Tяuc + ArchiToque, Le TresOr fiddles with the letters), 5/7 Rue du Tresor in the 4th, 01.42.71.35.17, is open 7/7 (but after you read this it'll not matter).
*Context: I have two, no, three lives, beating out Alec Guinness's character Captain ('s Paradise) Henry St. James, by one; 1). one alone (sob) or with pals in Paris, eating at totally new or new to me, places; 2). the second with my wonderful wife of almost 50 years, Colette and 3). convincing the university auditors that my "professing" doesn't depend on what zip-code I'm in. So when I am in Paris alone or with buddies, I have to find a new lunch place every day, including holidays, Saturdays and Sundays and Mondays - not always an easy task).
Thus it is/was that I found myself in this rade (safe harbour/hang-out/dive, take your choice on the translation term) in the deepest, darkest Marais, the Brooklyn of Paris on a Sunday. Enough Dad, get on with it. OK.
The furniture/setting/decor/etc., inside reminded me of the Petrelle, Sauterelle, Les Chineurs, etc., homey, decadent, that certain "look" - plotz down, don't order the horribly expensive (25 E without a Bloody Mary) brunch which was really crappy French imitative stuff and relax. So, question, why do the French guys eat a club (BLT+) sandwich with toothpicks in it with a knife a fork? Ans: For the same reason x(name your ethnicity)-American princesses eat hard-shell Baltimore crabs from their husband's hands.
First course, a truly magnificent onion soup (which trend I declare to be a great return to the future). Crusty bread, soupy soup, crunchy onions, runny cheese - Les Halles 1953, oh my!
After that, I was so exhausted, I just finished my wine and an OK coffee and got out.
The bill = 35.80 E as if it matters.
Go? Are you kidding? There's a reason its subtitle is the Cafe Pizz.
** Rating explanation - The acceuil, setting and soup were a 5.0 and the bread and tagine a 1.0 to be generous =lling 3.0.
6.5 Le Comptoir des Mers, 1 rue de Turenne in the 4th, 01.42.72.66.51, closed Mondays, a fish store & take-out place in the heart of the Marais opened a tiny resto next door last year that (except for Le Fooding) went un-noticed. It's been on my "list" since then but only today (Ascension Day weekend) did I find that it alone was open.
Its decor is Starke, its bathroom the best of the year and its clientele non-English foreigners (with one young German woman shouting at her parents reminding me of Carl in Casablanca - "I have already given him the best, knowing he is German and would take it anyway.")
They do have a formula at 20 E (2 courses) but on it were largely forgetable things, and a 29 E all you can eat oyster feast Thursdays, but I headed for the ardoise of regular starters and ardoise of fish of the day (14, ranging from 18-28 E) and wine chalkboard (from 18 E a bottle and 3.50 a glass, on up).
My first was described as gambas en croute of pommes de terre, but they had to have had some poor underpaid guy julienne the potatoes into teeny tiny strips and wrap them around the shrimp and then fry them - oh my - every bit as good as Caroline Rostang's Bistro Cote Mer's shrimp beignets and the dipping sauce was a perfect accompaniment.
My chosen fish of the day was a bar a la plancha and I've cut it in half and flipped one half over so you can see that while the skin was correctly burned, the inside was cooked to perfection. There were adequate veggies and for the first meal in my life in France, a baked potato with sour cream - interesting.........
I probably didn't really "neeeed" (as my youngest grandson says) the ice cream, but I had it. Raino mango, citron and chocolate - quite nice.
With good bread, passable coffee and a bottle of cheapo wine, a couple can exit 119 Euros poorer.
Go? I'd say yes, although as Le Fooding warned "....freshness rhymes with dearness here." But being in the tourist-Central-pricy-rent Marais, it's a stretch for those on fixed incomes. More to the point, is it as good as Les Debats in the 16th where our last meal was an identical 119 Euros; well, I rated Les Debats a 6.8 and it's more 16th-ly elegant and this is more gutsily Marais-ish.
There are three shows now on at the Orsay.
The first is Crime & Punishment: from Goya to Picasso and it was absolutely packed. To me it was as if the curator(s) had Googled - Orsay Heads Hanging Heartless Hopeless and hung everything from the storage bins that met the search criteria. OK, nice art, famous artists, certainly was thematic, but.....
The second one was called Meijer De Haan: the hidden master and consisted of his early uninteresting representational stuff and then his later work when under the influence of Gauguin and this borders on the quite interesting.
However, no Wows today, folks.
I was surely born in France of a chef father and food critic mother.
Recent Comments