3.0 Jaja, 3 rue Ste-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie in the 4th, 01.42.74.71.52, open 7/7 (Metro: Hotel de Ville), is on a cool street with cool shops (one of which advertised a sex-toy rechargeable once, hummmm) and is located in the back of the courtyard of a cool building - I loved walking there.
The interior is also very cool, with a cool latticed ceiling covering, cool wood tables and, oh-you-get-the-picture, everything really cool - no kidding. They have a comprehensive multi-continental wine list of reasonably-priced stuff (from the low 20's to Chat. d'Yquem and a "menu" for lunch at 16 E for 2 and 21 E for 3 courses but the terrine, raie and crumble appealed to none of the three of us.
Madame, an inhabitant of the quartier, had a soup of chestnuts with an "emulsion" of smoked bacon and "poitrine crispy" [sic], which I thought was quite pleasant; Monsieur, a dude from several-blocks-away, had the heart of crapaudine beet with mimolette and sage sauce that he deemed deserving of a more assertive sagy taste and perhaps sage leaves but I thought was rather OK; and I had microtomed scallops with a not terribly citric sauce that were standard, no better, no worse - so far so good - no fireworks, but interesting stuff.
For our mains, he had the "Croque Monsieur" which I thought was less than boring, she had what was advertised as a wok'd chicken but rather seemed croq'd not wok'd, with a timbale of rice (we both thought this was really boring) and I had a croustillante of pigs' feet which is one of my alltime favorite dishes that was beyond boring - summary: none of us finished our portions.
But since our mothers were not there, we ordered dessert; Madame the cafe gourmand and M., the tiramisu; they both were a bit better than average, OK, much better but no more.
The bill: As readers may have noted, I usually disguise the identities of my dining partners to the blogosphere - for the most part to keep them from the shame associated with eating out with the likes of me, but today their identities were well-known to the house, for which we got special treatment (it was nice, but doesn't stop me, a non-entity, from expresssing my opinion). On the other hand, we were comp'd some wine and "offered" some digestifs (really unusual and great ones) and our bill, counting one bottle of wine (which was less than M. thought) and no bottled water, was 166 E, thus about 110 E a couple before the treats.
Go: Oh my, I assiduously avoided looking at my February 2009 review of the mothership Glou so as not to prejudice my opinion after reading all the glowing reports of it's new off-shoot Jaja, but when I got home I couldn't help myself - there it was - 2.5 and a clear piece of self-advice - "Go back? No way....." Oh, John, listen to your inner self.
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