John Talbott's Paris

Le Libre Echange in the 17th: making the best of a bad situation and doing surprisingly well.

Prequel : every two years or so I make a reservation at a place and for various reasons it's shut when I show up, sometimes the electricity blew out, sometimes they took a bunk and sometimes, like today, they just weren't ready to open, despite having taken my reservation a week go.  So, in my pigeon brain, I have a few interesting fall-backs I've passed by, and it was such a bistro that I tumbled on today.

5.1 Le Libre Echange, 127, avenue de Clichy in the 17th, 01.46.27.09.78, open 7/7, (Metro: Brochant) has no famous chef, famous designer, famous owner - it's just a neighborhood place.  So I had no expectations, positive or negative.  The menu was nothing special and we ordered as if was our neighborhood joint.

My dining partner ordered onion soup, which I was tempted by as well, but she said the cheese had clumped on the bread, but my avocado with tiny shrimp were out of the ordinary, and the sauce was xtraordinary.  Unfortunately the bread was subpar.

Then she had a cheeseburger, can you believe that?, insisting that after her summer in Provence minding to her house's renovation, she needed one.  All I can say is that she finished every bite.  Me, I had the entrecôte with os a moelle, well, it was Julia Child's steak Aux poivres, to a "t". The frites need to take a lesson from Brussels.

We voted against a dessert but had two coffees.

With a bottle and glass of wine and no bottled water, our bill was 79.90€.  DB's = 74.5

Go back?  If the place we intended to eat at is still mysteriously closed, I'd consider it.

Le Camondo in the 8th: "It's the total experience, John!"

4.5 Le Camondo, 61bis, rue de Monceau in the 8th, 01.45.63.40.40, closed Sunday and Mondays, (Metro: Villiers, Monceau), is one of those places that all the food writers listed at the start of the summer, as great terrace places where one can eat in the heat of the summer.  A great friend and fellow blogger (although he insists I'm a critic not a blogger) wrangled an invitation today, and a good thing too, it was totally full of very upscale French folks, many in the 2017 fall uniform of a blue suit, blue shirt, with or without a blue tie.  The place is really spectacular, with a wonderful inside converted garage and outside garden with umbrellas shielding diners from sun or rain.

We started off, he with a dish of cool salmon with a cheesy fluff and me, with 3 crevettes, done tempura style with a nasty sauce (a problem is that the same dish done at the Bistro Cote Mer, was so good, almost no one can come up to its excellence).  However, the shaved zucchini nicely offset it.

Then my friend had the taziki of beef, which he loved but I found not much if a much, and I had braised beef, which I was disappointed in.  I realize I'm an old stuck-in-the-mud grouch, but why try to improve on beef braised simply with red wine?

Finally, he had an ordinary rice pudding and I some ok strawberries with fluffy Chantilly.

We exited having also been treated to pedestrian bread, a bottle of very fine Bordeaux, a half-bottle of Badoit and two coffees.

Go back?  I hate to bite the hand that feeds me and considering the "total experience" to have been lovely, I want them to succeed but it'll be a while before I retry it.  DB's = 85.1. But no smoking.

La Poule au Pot in the 7th: "I have no complaints," my friend said on exiting.

5.0 La Poule Au Pot, 121, rue de l'Universite in the 7th, 01.47.05.16.36, open 7/7 (Metro: la Tour Maubourg, Invalides), is one of those places one has passed a million times without looking inside, that says it serves house made food and has interesting wines.  I was prompted to go by a review in L'Express just before the vacances, as well as a friend's urging.

I arrived 8 minutes late but had trouble catching up; the menu and carte as well as wines were differentiated by different colors of type and supplements and I was totally confused.  In desperation I asked what my friends were having, thinking that might make my mind up, nope, no help.

My friends started with a a round of caviar d'aubergines with creamed cheese (I swear) and a carpaccio of salmon with cakes and figs while I had cubes of melon and watermelon with cured ham, quite nice, but nothing one couldn't make at home or get in Spain or Italy any day.

As mains my friends had a piece of tuna snackee with beans and cukes and a bavette of Angus with a ton of rather pathetic fries, while I chose an andouillette sausage with rather nice mashed potatoes.

For desserts we all went at one fine strawberry tart.

Our bill, with no bottled water but two bottles of the amusingly titled wine with a cute label on back, and one coffee, was about 84€ a couple with a lot of noise (83.8 decibels).

Go? Not necessary, really, as my old pal, the RFC would say.

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The Rotisserie d'Argent in the 5th: still a "zombie restaurant?"

So some history.  I've eaten at this spot for a number of years, too many to count, and it's always been pleasant, nothing bad, nothing spectacular, but always popular with the Yankees.  In 2011, Alec Lobrano coined the term "zombie restaurant," and in his thread's comments, the Tour d'Argent and its offshoot restaurant, the Rotisserie de Beaujolais, were fingered.  Well, earlier this year it reopened as the Rotisserie d'Argent and quite frankly, after Emmanuel Rubin, usually a trustworthy critic, gave it 1/5 hearts, I ignored it. 

Until two very trusted sources went and one urged me to go, specifying that their best offerings were for two apiece - they had both the cote de boeuf and the epaule d'agneau: she preferred the lamb and said the radishes with butter as a first were most worthy.  I yawned.  No, she explained, they were shaved Japanese and French radishes, with butter or butters with herbs and such.  Really different.  Ok, I'm sold. 

Ok, now the problem is I had made no plans to meet anyone today, far less made a reservation. So I called a co-blogger who is one of the few folks I know who trusts me enough to go places on a whim at my crazy say so.

5.9 La Rotisserie d'Argent, 19 quai de la Tournelle in the 5th, 01.43.54.17.47 (Metro: Maubert-Mutualite), open 7/7.  As I approached I saw a voiturier, whoa, man, this is not what I expected.  I entered and the front room guy had a bow tie straight out of a Gene Kelly musical - wow - plus he treated me like Gene Kelly even though I was wearing my Tom Wolfe white suit.  My game companion arrived, we sat cote-a-cote facing the river, cool.  What could be better in Paris on a beautiful Sunday than to look out on the Seine?

We ordered, "the lamb shoulder, please, one of us likes it raw, the other no longer moving." Our terrific waiter with another Gene Kelly tie, quickly figured out we were weird and said that the chef can do it roughly that way.  Terrific. "Anything first?"  "Yes, the radishes we've heard so much about."  "Oh oh, we're all out."  "What, out of radishes?" "How about some great escargots?"   "Ummm, ok."

So the escargots were barely ok, less garlic but more butter than usual, but sad to say the lamb was simply not up to par.  There were almost raw pieces and very done pieces, as promised, but they both required "adjustment", 

Pause, my co-diner had asked for mustard but I missed that because I was busy worrying about a woman my age who had just fallen on the floor and insisted on getting up rather than accepting my profound medical opinion to rest there a while, while the Securite guy, whom I thought was a Pompier, insisted she get up, 

No, that was later, but anyway, back to the lamb, let's say it needed a lot of adjustment with salt, pepper and very strong mustard and even then was nothing like my wife can do.  We finished with an ile flottante, she insisted on it, it was fine, but she didn't really want it and I was only sacrificing my body for Colette.

Our bill, with a bottle of wine, get this - called Baby Bad Boy - and two glasses rewarded for my medical intervention on the woman who disregarded my medical advice, NOT x2 and two coffees, was 129€.

Go? Been asleep, eh?

eels in the 10th: another son of Ledeuil's is launched, another star is born.

Background: A dear couple who live in the neighborhood told me they'd walked by this really cool new restaurant and we should eat there.  Doesn't take much arm-twisting to get me on board.

7.8 eels, 27, rue d'Hauteville in the 10th, 01.42.28.80.20, closed Sundays and Mondays, (Metro: Chateau d'Eau).  It is indeed cool, located in an ancient couscous joint, and everyone seemed not only quite pleasant but as if they knew me and they certainly looked familiar to me.  But from where?  It soon became clear, KGB and before that Fernandi.  A look at the carte also made it clear that this was serious food, every dish had four ingredients.

Dangerously, all three of us ordered the same thing to start - sliced warm pieces of eel, but hey, its their signature dish, how could one not?, with a hint of licorice and a sauce vierge.  To say this was astonishing would be insulting, it was way beyond that.  For our mains two of us had crevettes, not rubbery, or wet or raw, but perfect, with all sorts of carrots, grapefruit slices and a saffron bisque and our other diner had lamb two ways, a piece of very properly undercooked quasi and some confited shoulder, with smoked caviar d'aubergines and a cumin sauce.  And some Italian black truffles thrown in.  Pretty damn good, both.  For dessert we all had the roasted mirabelles, quetsches and Reine Claude's, with a sweet clover cream, also outstanding.

With a bottle and glass of wine, their filtered water and two coffees, plus 10€ for the truffles, our bill was 220.50€ for 3, or 147€ a couple.

Go?  I cannot tell a lie, even though I'd like to tell you to go elsewhere, but this is the revelation of the reentree.  One complaint: the DB's were high and talking difficult due to lack of sound-dampening.  Hats off, though, to chef Ferrand and front-man Felix Le Loucram.

N3 (Napoleon III) in the 8th: three cheers for its "total experience."

Background: So, I have this longtime friend, co-blogger and co-diner, who titles himself Randy de Paris but also hails from Northern California.  He and I have a lighthearted running dispute over whether a restaurant should be judged only on its food, damned be the decor, welcome, napery, service, etc. (me) and he who judges places on all the above, an evaluation of the "total experience."

 

5.6 N3 (standing for Napoleon III), 132, boulevard Haussmann in the 8th, in the dazzling Villa Haussmann, 01.42.65.29.29, closed weekends (Metro: St Augustin).  When I approached it, it looked pretty swank, surrounding the corner of the sidewalk outside the hotel.  I was greeted warmly, even though they had no idea who I was, by waitguys who - hold your hats - had nametags.  Off the bat they served an amuse of breadsticks and cuisinart-ed eggplant that had just the right amount of spice to tingle the tongue.

The carte is fairly pricey, as required by an International hotel, but they had a "formule" for 35€ with fish on Fridays with all sorts of veggies, deserts and coffee.  So that's where I went.  The lieu jaune which everyone in Paris seems to be serving these days, was I thought, overcooked, the artichoke purée with basil ok, the girolles average but the roasted cherry tomatoes terrific.  For dessert I had their tart of the day, apricots, which was nice but worth 11€ I don't think so.

With no bottled water but a half bottle of wine, my bill for one at 47€, would be 94€ a couple.

Go?  It was a lovely experience and the girl-watching, I hope that's not sexist, to say, was wonderful.  Dear Buddha, in my next life, I want to be Bill Cunningham.