John Talbott's Paris

Marso et Co. in the 13th: Tomy Gossett scores again with a "Balade autour de la Méditerranée" (Le Point)

6.6 Marso et Co., 16, rue Vulpian in the 13th, 01.45.87.37.00, (Metro: Glaciere) closed weekends (hey he's a family man who has a wonderful wife and two kids named Hugo and Marceau whence commeth the names of his places) keeps on rolling along.  I never knew his work at Taillevent, le Meurice or Boulud, but I certainly recognized his talent at Pirouette and have been following him ever since to Tomy et Co., Hugo et Co., and now here.

Tomy really spread out the welcome mat to mix a metaphor, starting us off with glasses of Proseco, roasted green peppers, focaccia, Trás-os-Montes sheep cheese with quince marmalade and hummus which my friend who is Armenian and knows his way around the Mediterranean, expounded about, noting the differences between those in various Middle Eastern countries, this with mint, petit pois and nuts.

We both started off with the best-in-show poulpe with orange slices and fennel, cooked just right and tender as can be; then my friend moved to a cod brandade and I a mackerel salad, neither of which blew our socks off; ending with Pasteis de nata de Belem and chocolate which I haven't had since another friend introduced me to them in Newark's Ironbound.

 

Our wine was a lovely white Montlobre but the coolest thing was a miniature milk bucket it was kept chilled in.  Our bill?  Ah our bill.  I have no ides.  A kind fellow sitting next to us not only lent me a pen but picked up the check - all we know is he was Herr Kelly.  Thanks Sir!  dB's = 86.3

Go?  If looking for a Mediterranean spread, indeed, but it's not French-French.

Sellae in the 13th: "How do you find these places; we've never been here; this is superb."

Sellae in the 13th, has more than outdone its sibling Mensae on the Right Bank, and now stands as one of our favorites no matter where.  The prices are also "right" with a three course "menu" at lunch at 36E.

For firsts we had astonishing raviolis with snails in a rich mushroom sauce with sliced raw mushrooms and a cream of potato/parmentier soup with lardons, dill and cilantro.

For mains we wavered between the bavette d'Aloyau and canette, both with vegetables and wound up sampling both.

Finally, we ran the table with their ile flottante, pears with chips of meringue and chocolate mousse, all simple but superb.

Our bill, with two bottles of Pinot Noir and one coffee, was 197.00 or 98.50 E a couple for a meal that was faultless.

Sellae in the 13th: creative, inventive; old boy, old school, new boy, new school? Who cares?

As I was walking out of the polling station in the US last month, a bystander said behind my back “old boy” which an official told me referred to my shirt, bowtie and seersucker suit.  I’m never sure what “old boy, old school cooking” is in France but one might think that escargots, frogs’ legs and chocolate mousse would be pretty similar to what I had in 1953 at a country auberge.  Unh, unh.

Sellae in the 13th is the recently opened sibling of Mensae both of which are far from my digs but well worth the schlep.  The menu and carte choices look super-traditional in print but one look at what came out of the kitchen to our neighbors showed burrata with a ton of fruits and veal with a ton of veggies, in dishes that were totally unfamiliar.

Colette started with gazpacho with both a melon and watermelon twist, peanut bits and ham and I had escargots and mushroom strips besides a very large portion of purée.  Wow!

Then she had the snails and mushrooms as a main course and I had a "partiger "course of frogs’ legs, crisply fried and then presented swimming in a sauce of clear butter. Zowie!

For dessert Colette had the strawberries with sorbet and I had what was called a chocolate mousse.  Guess what?, it wasn’t.  It was a bowl of divine warm chocolate poured over a scoop of ice cream.

Our bill, with a bottle and glass of wine, their bottled water and two coffees was 118€?

Berty in the 13th: “the best baba I’ve ever had.”

7.1 Berty, 124 Blvd Vincent Auriol in the 13th, 09.80.72.16.46, closed weekends and Monday dinner (Metro: National) is a place that makes known that it has an entire feminine team, inside and out.  In this neighborhood of horrible Soviet-era concrete towers, see below, it’s nice to find a raw wood décor inside.  The carte, while heavily tilted towards vegetables, does have “boy food.”

My blogger friend started with raw white asparagus with a garlic crumble and coques, superb, but my veal goyzas were way overcooked and barely saved by the citron cream.

Then she had citron-confited chicken with olives and greens and I had 4 huge fresh sardines with lovely new potatoes.

We finished up with tapioca with grapefruit and what she deemed the best baba in her life, quite a statement.

Our bill with a bottle and glass of Rhône, no bottled water, but two coffees, was 81.90€? Db’s 76.5

Go back?  If it weren’t so far for me (an hour plus on the bus) I would if only for their naan and other interesting sounding stuff.

Sellae in the 13th: "Very good food" plus one of the nicest front guys ever.

7.6 Sellae, 10, rue des Wallons in the 13th, 01.43.31.36.04 (Metro: St Marcel) closed Sundays got a rare 3 hearts from Emmanuel Rubin of Figaroscope yesterday and slow learner that I am it took me a while to figure out that it was in the former Variations space and its chef a former Top Chef, was someone I adored at Mensae.  Well, spoiler, he's done it again.

My dining partner, a fellow Viet Nam Vet, except he was a Marine machine gunner and I was a Jewish doctor who can't stand blood (look up the joke reference) said "you order."  No one has ever said that to me.  I shook my head, no no, I could not take the responsibility especially if things went South.  So he ordered the quite fine mussels and I had the dish of the year - mushrooms and snails in a green soup, foam, espuma, sauce called sabayon - my oh my, in heaven and not coming back.

Then he had two tender juicy lamb chops with a stalk of what they listed as romaine, but I said was celery or leeks, and savory and I had two absolutely perfect pieces of pintade with spinach (so there, Colette!) and a ton of morels.  Delish!

At this point we looked at each other - I was full but on a roll, I suspect he was as well - so to hell with diets - he ordered the apple tart (which our incredibly genial waitguy said was "apple pie a la mode") and I had chocolate mousse - OK, hold it right there.  How many chocolate mousses have you or I had in Paris?  A zillion, right.  And they're good, generally, sometimes very good.  This was off the charts - 10+.  Liquid, languid, luxe.

The bill John?  Jeez, claiming he owed me in return for reading my reviews forever and my cowardly service to my country, he picked it up.  But here are some hints.  The wine was 35E, 3 dishes at lunch are 22 E and the carte at night is 50-65E.  We're talking for a 7.6/10 meal.  dB's were equally outstanding, 88.4 dB.

Go?  Nah, it's too far for you, leave it for we schleppers using bus 91.

PS He designed the menu at Jacopo and I'll go in 81 hours.  But who's counting.

Sourire in the 13th: Very good food but no shooting stars.

6.5 Sourire, 15, rue de la Sante in the 13th, 01.47.07.07.45, closed Sunday and Mondays (RER: Port Royal) got a 3-heart rating from Figaroscope this week and that caused me to dash there as soon as possible.

They started us off with two lovely amuses - a small piece of rare lamb and a tiny tempered carrot.  Then one of us went with the rare veal and the other two had a nice chunk of bar de ligne, nicely offset by a Meyer lemon sauce.  For desserts we all has a chocolate round topped with ice cream.  Everything was proper, correct and nicely prepared, but there were no shooting stars.

 

Our bill, with a bottle of Chinon, fair to middling bread and 3 coffees was 85.32 E a couple.  dB's = 79.8

Go back?   I'm not really in a hurry.

Tricotin 2 in the 13th: Where to go Christmas or New Year's Days? Ans.: Here.

Tricotin 2, 15 avenue de Choisy in the 13th, 01.45.84.74.44 (Metro: Porte de Choisy) is a Chinese/Cambodian/Laotian/Thai/etc. place on the Southern edge of the city that is one of our two friends' favorite Asian places and since Colette and I "must" eat lunch out on Christian holidays, we tend to aim towards the 13th.  We let the friend who goes to China 2-3 times a year and who knows everything about food - order - and the dishes rolled out:

We had 12 dishes, among which were:
- 2 types of shrimp preparations
- chicken feet
- ricecrepe with beef
- Peking raviolis
- Coriander raviolis
- Turnip dim sum
- brioche with lacquered pork
- fried taro root
- pork ribs, and
- 2 noodle soups.

With a bottle of Bordeaux, a bottle of beer, two teas (one with lemon, the other with warm milk), no bottled water, coffee or dessert, our bill for 5 was 91.80 E, or 36.72 E a couple.

Go?  Next New Years maybe.

Comptoir Tempero in the 13th: This guy is exciting; the food, the feeling, the friendly prices, wow!

7.8 Le Comptoir Tempero, 124, Blvd Vincent Auriol (you remember him, the first president of the Fourth Republic from 1947 to 1954, well I do) right off the Square Pinel (he who took the chains off mental patients), 01.45.84.15.35, no reservations at least at lunch, (Metro: Nationale), closed weekends and Monday, is the off-shoot of Tempero, also in the 13th, where the Brazilian-Franco-Viet Namian couple set up their first place.  Confession: I never went because "Brazilian-Franco-Viet Namian food" sounded confused, how wrong I was.  The outside is the now-standard minimalist grey gun-metal, the inside raw wood and cool walls.

The amuses were those spicy little balls, the bread good, no very good, really really good and the wines, starting at 23 E a bottle - impressive.  Oh and the menu/carte seemed Ok, but nothing out of the ordinary - how wrong I was.

Oh, how wrong.  My first was called gyozas of lamb with beets, but the raviolis were perfectly cooked and perfectly set off by a spicy beet sauce; my main was called seabass with black rice, but the bass was perfectly sourced and marinated in some tasty thing, and its skin was crispy crunchy and came with beets two ways (confited and cooked) and a huge 1/2 carrot; and my dessert, a cheesecake the likes of which Philadelphia has never seen - about the best ever.

So to the bill.  3 courses here are 20 E (no, not kidding), a bottle of wine 23 E, so for two, with no bottled water but coffee (superb, beans ground before your very eyes), tossing in a supplement for the bar, a couple can easily exit starting at 64 E.  Decibel level = 82.3 dB.

Go?  Lordy me yes.  I've been reading reviews and Hounders talking about 400 E - $1000 meals that may be nice stuff from Ducasse & Savoy (both of whom I've eaten with) but this sort of place with a young exciting chef is more interesting to me at this point in my life.  BTW, the tables were full by 13h00.

L'Auberge du Roi Gradlon in the 13th: Bon, Belle et Bretonne, Bien fait.

6.4 L'Auberge du Roi Gradlon, 36, Boulevard Arago in the 13th, 01.45.35.48.71, (Metro: Gobelins or Bus # 83), closed Wednesdays and Thursdays (don't believe Rubin), is the second resto of L'Auberge du 15 (called that because it's at 15 Rue de la Santé but in the 13th not 15th) which I liked, so a Breton place open on Sundays appealed to me despite the vertiginous prices.  It's a hole in the wall in more ways than one; on the street, it's almost hidden, but it has a big cave, whose stone walls were part of the Convent/Abbey of the Cordeliers, of which little remains.

The lunch "menu" is a very reasonable 30 E for 3, but I wanted the ormeaux (abalone) at the vertiginous price of 56 E - oh hell, you can't take it with you, or maybe you can.  While debating these serious choices, I had some lovely sliced crudities with sorrel butter, lovely warm crusty bread with (I assume), straight Breton butter and some lovely wine.

The very genial chef, serving 75% of the dishes himself, started me off with a cup of the Dubarry (cauliflower) soup, rich and relaxing; then I had 6 (unpictured) Prat-Ar-Coum oysters (at 4 E each); and three ormeaux with an incredible puree of artichoke hearts in each shell; and finished with - what else - a perfect Kouign Amann with salted butter caramel.

My bill, was, as I intimated, big, because I had the most expensive items on the carte, plus a coffee (which came with slices of Breton cake made from the chef's grandmother's recipe), but even this way, plus a 1/2 bottle of wine and no bottled water, we're only talking about 108.50 E - but for a couple who took the "menu" and a full bottle of wine and two coffees, the damage would only be 97 E.

Go?  It depends folks.  Sunday, Brittany, fresh product, fresh from the sea; what's the price of that?  And quiet - 74.6 dB.

PS As for the name of the restaurant, wiki has it that he was "a semi-legendary 5th century "king" of Cornouaille who became the hero of many Breton folk stories."

Restaurant Simone in the 13th: Roshomon, forgetitude and mixed results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roshomon: Version 1: Three weeks ago I ate at the Restaurant Simone with one of my game pals here and rated it a 5.1/10 concluding that "....I hope our meals aren't reflective of the average ones here - I'm an outlier when it comes to all the other reviewers."  So like a trained pigeon, when I got out of the Gobelins station, I headed straight here, only to realize halfway through the meal that I actually had reserved at the Bon Coin 200 meters away (a 6.5/10).

Roshomon: Version 2: Exactly four weeks ago, I ate at Le Bon Coin in the 13th and loved it so much (6.5/10) I reserved today for Colette and our pals from downstairs where we used to live 34 numbers down the street.  When I emerged from the Metro, I headed down the Blvd Arago, on autopilot and seeing this nice place of which I had a decent memory entered saying "M. Talbott, 4, I reserved."  They didn't bat an eye, steered us to a table, we ordered and only realized halfway through the meal that I actually reserved at the Bon Coin 200 meters away.

Resultion: Pull forelock, apologize, grovel, attribute to geezertude which led to a discussion of software to improve aging folks' aging memories, and enjoy what you have, instead of what you do not.

 

 Madame started with the mozzarella which she sort-of-liked albeit it was too bland for her and it came with sour confited tomatoes (at the height of fresh tomato season); M. had the mackerel tartare which we all thought was just fine; and I had cold lentils and two slices of rock-hard warm sausage.

Then Madame was served a gigot of lamb that she expressly insisted be rosé and came out decidedly well-done; quick negotiation, "no more," "but how about a tenderloin of veal" - hubby says yes, you like that - she didn't - we did - delicious, great piece of meat, perfectly cooked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile Colette was having a superb piece of merlu with fennel and other veggies and M. and I had super-tough pieces of beef with thick-cut potatoes that Madame loved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colette, not having had an entree (eg first) had the confiture du lait - a thick, outasight creamy caramel concoction.  we soldiered on with the wine.

Our bill, with 2 bottles of wine, 4 coffees and 2 Calvas offered, was 65 E a couple.

Go?  All the critics love it, the locals too, so much that they were turning people away even with outside tables but I'll never get my gang to return.  Sad.