5.9 Les Quilles, 123, blvd Menilmontant in the 11th, 01.47.00.03.66, closed Sundays, has been mentioned from time to time since it opened last September; I keep meaning to go, but......and then A Nous Paris listed it this week as one of their seven places of the year - well, that caught my attention.
It's on the Boulevard Menilmontant just down from Belleville and across from that fabulous street market on the median and the interior is every visitor's dream of a Paris bistro. The wine list is very large and the lunch chalkboard (vs that at night) rather modest in both number of choices and cost (two dishes are 12.50 and dessert 3.50 = 3 for 16 E). But it offers something for everyone.
I thought my friend's eggs mayo were rather ordinary but she disagreed but, hey she was born and has lived decades not far from here so I bowed to her judgment. However I thought my herring with potatoes were a step above the crowd - the herring did not have that cloying taste some cheapo ones do, these were sleek as silk.
Then she had a Salers rumsteak that we both thought was as good and tender and well-cooked as it gets with wonderful melt-in-your-mouth Sarladaise potatoes that I'd return for and I had veal kidneys advertised as grilled but perhaps because I'd asked for them blue, they too were tender and nothing like tough ones elsewhere; in addition the small halved roasted potatoes I had were out of sight.
At this point we could easily have taken a pass on dessert and maybe she should have since the crushed pink macaroons on fromage blanc were not up to her standard but I liked my peaches in sauce (mango I think) with specks of mint, which were above average.
With a bottle and glass of wine, no bottled water, two Illy coffees (2 E each), and bread that was, hummm never-delivered nor asked for, our bill was 60 E. 60 E!
Go? *Answer to the question raised in the title: "Honest food, honest prices."
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