Pre: I ate at Abri twice after it opened in the Fall of 2012 and liked it enough to rate it a 7.2, but have no record of ever going since then so when friends suggested we go today I was more than willing.
Abri in the 10th still has that misleading sandwich shop sign outside and by 12:30 was full of locals and Asians and us. Four courses are 30€ with a choice of plat between fish or meat.
They started us off with a salad of crab, fennel and saffron which was OK. Then we had a purée of sweet potato with Earl Grey fluff that was so subtle I left most of it. The rest of the table then had cod which they said was good product, properly cooked, but in my book it was also just OK; I had magret de canard, which I’ve been eating for 66 years and never had such tough and inedible pieces. Dessert was an absolutely forgettable clafoutis of mirabelles.
The food was bad enough, but what went on aside from that was even worse: the music was intrusive, one of the waitladies spoke so softly as to be ununderstandable, we were jammed in so tightly that the amorous couple sitting at the comptoir kicked me every time they smooched, which was often. The last straw: the restaurant’s credit card machine had been broken since yesterday and they kicked us out of the table at 2 PM. Turning a table at a supposedly good restaurant in Paris? This was a first.
Our bill with a bottle of wine and one Chateldon was 164€ or 82€ a couple.
Go back? Not if it were the only restaurant left in the world.
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