Prequel: So, since it opened I've passed Cazes practically every day on the famous 95 bus and even gotten off and looked at the chalkboards, but alas, they're only open for dinner, except Sundays, and you know how much I hate brunch, at least the French idea of what American brunches are like. It was driving me crazy so I got off the bus one day and looked at the brunch menu, it wasn't brunch, it was a sampling of small dishes/tapas French style with some scrambled eggs to sucker in the Yankees who might be drifting by (none were there today, save me.)
7.0 Cazes, 44, rue Joseph de Maistre in the 18th, 01.85.09.14.99, open Tuesday-Saturday nights and Sunday for a real French brunch, (Metro: faggedaboudid, do the 80 or 95 bus). Parigi, or whatever she calls herself these days, would declare this is a feng shui danger zone, since several good places and my beloved snail shop have gone belly up here, but I went anyway.
They gave me three options for arrival for lunch/brunch and being a good, albeit anxious boy, I chose the earliest 11:30, convinced that the 1 PM and 2:30 seatings would be backed up (PS I was right). From when I entered I realized that this place was different, sure, like everybody in town they say they're doing farm-to-table, home cooked food with natural, bio wines at reasonable prices. Yah, but they deliver.
The wait-lady presented the brunch menu: beverage, ok, juice, ok, then gazpacho, a salad with cukes and mild feta and leafy herbs, two slices of a filet with smashies, pickled radishes (they said mackerel) a la Japanese, scrambled eggs with herbs, Paris ham, a great sliced comte and good bread. So stupid of me, I said "I have to choose, eh?," being Canadian. "No you get it all, they're very small portions." Yah, well, I could put up the good fight until the ham, and then I tugged on my forelock and got it wrapped in alumnium to go with tomorrow morning's eggs.
To top it off, they served a slice of perfect brioche with the best apricot jam of my life and a bar of chocolate with a crème anglaise (which my "French" mother in 1953, very un-pc called négresse en chemise.)
My bill, with a half bottle of wine, with an espresso rather than their American-looking coffee, would be 41.50€ or 83€ a couple. dB = 64.9
Go? No question. I'd just ask that one of my loyal followers, who eats out at night, confirms my impression.
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