5.8 Dans Les Landes, 119 bis (not 119, as some have reported it) Rue Monge, 01.45.87.06.00, (Metro: Censier-Daubenton), closed Sundays and Mondays; open the rest of the week 12 noon to 11 PM non-stop is described as a cafe a tapas, which is true but incomplete.
It does have a long chalkboard of tapas, which I stopped counting after 10, but also:
daily specials and a chalkboard they set on your table with another two items (not pictured, of which one is a fish dish) and:
and an awesome list of desserts.
I arrived ahead of my famous guest, who lives nearby and thus took longer to get there than I (old joke); so I ordered the house Pastis of Landes (3 E, my) and an order of rillettes of sardines to have as our amuse gueule while I waited. In she came, all apolgetic; "no problem" said I.
Then she looked at the chalkboards too and had the same question I did - "what to do - have just tapas or a bit of tapas and the special, which today was confited duck?"; hummmm. She asked how big the tapas were; "you should order three per person,"we were advised. Easy.
We ordered (I thought) 5 more tapas, getting up to the 6 she suggested (chiperons, pigs' feet, boudin and quail) but somehow didn't get all, which was just fine because
near the end she "offered" us two rice-papered rolls of Salade Landaise and then,
we got the filets of quail; my goodness, we couldn't have handled any more. So we looked at the dessert chalkboard, looked at each other and agreed "nope, but maybe we should share the Pastis Landais?"
How could we not? It was terrific, as was everything else, by the way.
With all the above, plus a bottle and glass of wine, terrific bread, two coffees, no bottled water (alto' I spied some self-bottled water a la KGB) and two small comp'd raspberry armagnacs, our bill was 84 E.
Go? Indeed, but you need only order two tapas per person, if you're hungry afterwards, they can roll the stuff out quickly.
That would be 119 bis what???
Posted by: Laidback | February 03, 2011 at 03:49 AM
Whoops Rue Monge
Posted by: John Talbott | February 03, 2011 at 09:25 AM