0.50 Le Minzingue, 5 pl Etienne Pernet in the 15th, 01.45.32.48.54, closed Sundays and Mon-Weds for dinner, located where used to sit the great old bouillabaisse palace Le Quinson, is a horror. Let me count the ways!
It’s got classic bistrot posters and food, from terrines to tartares, from herring to onglet and chocolate desserts. Me, I was eating out tonight at the house of a chef I have enormous respect for, so I wanted to eat light; therefore, I ordered two starters; only smart thing I did.
My os a moelle was unredeemable on the substandard bread, even with a liberal sprinkling of salt crystals, and the dressing on the side-salad was unappealing and the tomatoes (and remember, they’re terrific now,) were hot house Holland babies, and the vol a vent of escargots with mushrooms in a cream sauce was equally without luster; bottom line, one got a ton of fat, calories and heart-clogging stuff with no taste.
Francois Simon always asks “should one go?” me, I say “can’t you say anything nice?” Yes, they have a ton of wines at 20 € the bottle, also available by the glass and pichet; there are lots of comely young women walking by who clearly live in the nabe; the place really looks like a 1950’s bistrot and if you were in France shortly after the war, my war anyway, this would remind you of places struggling to recover with inadequate staff, poor product and forgotten cooking techniques. As deGaulle said, this is “Paris outragé, Paris brisé, Paris martyrisé…..”
The bill = 29.50 € which even if they paid me that much, I wouldn’t repeat.
*Originally published in September 2006
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