John Talbott's Paris

Pique Nique in the 1st: Laura Portelli scores big time. Again!

Pre: March 1st, 2016 I had my first meal at Christophe Saintage's blue-facaded Papillon in the 17th and noticed its next door neighbor, a traiteur called the Garde Manger, almost its mirror image, but in red, run by Laura Portelli, and could not resist buying stuff for dinner there as often as I could.  They shared a kitchen and apparently a life and so when one of my best friends and food spotters told me to go to Pique Nique I hesitated.  "Wait a minute, I don't want take out bread, cheese and charcuterie."  But no...….

7.2 Pique Nique, 14 rue Bertin Poiree in the 1st, 01.40.26.67.19, open 7/7 (Metro: Chatelet; line 1 is 1 block from the restaurant)) is a genuine real restaurant, no fooling, forget the name, but it does have clever menus; you check off what you want like an old-time state fair joint.  Three dishes are 28 and four dishes are 38E.  And what dishes!

 

The ladies, being ladies, started off with healthy vegetables - cauliflower and beets, while I tossing caution to the wind, had luscious bulots with just the right spicy aioli.

For main courses, Colette had delicious chicken. She wanted haricot coco but they were out of them. The steamed vegetables needed help. Our friend from the Marais and I had enough confited veal and cabbage and potatoes sarladaises (which calls for only three ingredients - potatoes, garlic and duck fat) to merit doggie bags for dinner.

For dessert we shared the chou of praline and chocolate and the All Citrus, both superb.

Our bill, with a bottle of wine and 3 coffees, was 117E or 78E a couple.  dB's = 76.0

Go?  You'd be a fool not to. Décor is lovely and the welcome warm.    Plus below is their idea of dejeuner.

 

Zebulon in the 1st: Lovely, perfectly lovely!

Zebulon in the 1st has provided fine food under several chefs and Takashi Aoki, its current one, is right up there among the best.

There were 4 ofus today and we went straight to main courses: two choosing the duck breasts with salsifis and my side of the table indulging on sweetbreads with pickled and pureed carrots.  The pickled ones being spectacular.

For dessert we went our separate ways: with a Mont Blanc deconstructed, rice pudding and choux a la cream and caramel ice cream.

Our bill, with a Coke, a tea and three coffees plus a bottle and glass of wine was 220E or 110E a couple.

Astara Depuis 1981 aka Caviar & Friends in the 1st: “It’s in a good feng shui food area John”

6.2 Astara Depuis 1981 aka Caviar & Friends, 7, rue des Petits-Champs in the 1st, (Metro: Pyramides), 09.74.19.76.70, open 7/7, is one of those places you’ve walked by a thousand times and thought “oh, it’s just one more of fastfood restos catering to young folks in the offices around here.  Well, yes and no.  It had a few such customers today, a Saturday, but I’ll bet weekdays it’s full of office workers seeking blinis and caviar or bagels and salmon.

We debated the choices but chose to go with:

- raviolis stuffed with confit of sturgeon and merlan in a dashi bouillon with carrots al dente and enoki

- risotto with shrimp and smoked trout and shimeji mushrooms 

- a croque-caviar, actually toasted American-style white bread with sturgeon, cream cheese inside and two spoonfuls of caviar on top

- a Fontainebleau and

- cafe gourmands with the above, chocolate mousse and creme brûlée with pistachios.

All were above average and got me in the mood so much that I got down some salmon eggs from their epicerie shelves for dinner.

Our bill, with 2 glasses of Muscadet and a bottle of San Pelligrino was 116.50€ or 77.66€ a couple.  No noise.  Accessible.

Go?  For a refreshingly caviar and it’s seagoing friends meal, in the feng shui region between A. Noste and Zebulon, why not?

Brasserie du Louvre (Bocuse) in the 1st: "Boring, ordinary, but great service."

Pre: Paul Bocuse, long dead, has sort-of reappeared in this remake by Hyatt, of the Brasserie du Louvre.  I say sort-of because anyone who ate at his famous restaurant won't find many traces of his genius except in the names of dishes.

4.0 Brasserie du Louvre (Bocuse), 172 Rue de Rivoli (Place du Palais Royal) in the 1st, 01.44.58.37.21, open 7/7, is as delightful a looking place as when I ate here decade(s) ago. The choices are not exactly contemporary but, hey, you came for a whiff of the great Paul, no?

To start, my fellow blogger chose the entree du jour, pressed jellied chicken that she (and I) immediately deemed "boring" while I had the sausage with pistachios from Lyon in pastry which I deemed (and she agreed) "ordinary" even with Paul Bocuse's own cute mustard jar.

Then she had the swordfish cooked a bit on the outside, raw on the inside, with sinews that made cutting and eating most of it impossible.  The highlight was a nifty little plastic lemon squeezer that looked like a duck.

She ended with the patisserie du jour (clafoutis) with apricot sauce and I a very safe choice - the creme brulee.

Our bill, with a bottle of great Rhone (I should hope so) and 2 4E coffees was 92E.  db's not worth measuring until the toddler screamed.

Go?  I can't think of one reason to.

Baltard au Louvre in the 1st: Nice lunch; very nice lunch.

Baltard au Louvre in the 1st was a pretty good choice for what was predicted to be the hottest day since 1943.  Air-conditioned, certified by the Pirouette/Zebulon gang and chef'd by Ewout Vranckx.  The menu was appropriate for the hot day and the interior room free from sunshine.

One of us had green tomatoes with an avocado puree and two the smoked bass on top of pureed mushrooms; both perfect for today or any day for that matter.

For main courses we had cod, lomo Iberico and ox tail, all with lovely, light but off-setting sauces.

For desserts we had tapioca with strawberries, Basque cakes and a chocolate cake.

With a bottle and glass of wine and three coffees, our bill was 194 E or 97 E a couple.

Zebulon in the first under Benjamin Andreau: "Hey guys, would you move on a bit."

Pre and Post: I'd heard Zebulon had a new chef, one Benjamin Andreau who came from Boulaud in NYC, one of my favorite places, so off I went.  After lunch I asked my dining partner to shield me when I withdrew money from an LCL ATM and afterwards we were chatting our goodbyes and a Paris City green man with a pressure hose said in impeccable New Yorkese "Hey guys, would you move on a bit."  Well, that pretty much summed up our meal.

Zebulon, 10 rue de Richelieu in the 1st, 01.42.36.49.44, (Metro: Palais Royal), closed Sundays, has been a favorite of ours since it opened in 2015 under the management of Thomas Chaput one of the founders of Pirouette.  The prices always seemed right to me (we'll get to that later) and the food exemplary.

Neither of us particularly took to the sound of the "menu" whose prices I realized later where somewhat higher (2 and 5 E for 2 and 3 dishes) than 2 years ago so he started with the intriguing sounding and wonderfully tasting cucumber with gin sauce and I had an equally good tartare of langoustines topped with sliced raw mushrooms.

Then he had the filet of pork shoulder with tasty veggies and I had pigeon with caviar d'aubergines and thick pigeon drippings that was also worth noting.

Then I talked him into sharing a dessert of Granny Smiths two ways with meringue that was just OK.

Our bill with a bottle and glass of wine, a coffee and an infusion, was 151.50 E, which surprised us both.  We questioned our gracious wait-lady but indeed, with two 6 E supplements, it was correct.  dB's = 80.1

Coda: After coming home I looked up my prior bills - 92, 93, 106 and 101 E a couple.  Hummm.

Go?  I guess so, although I'll look a bit more closely at the prices.

Zebulon in the 1st: Amidst violence, fire and brimstone: an oasis of sheer pleasure.

Zebulon in the 1st is not exactly the place one should set out to eat at when the gilets jaunes are in full anger mode at L'Opera or the C-E nor when a gas explosion occurs in between home and there; but venture down we did after I telephoned to make sure they were open.

We looked at the menu and carte and simultaneously said "pintade as an entree?"  Yes, on a bed of mushrooms with a cooked cold leek beside.  Very very smart.  Then she had a deconstructed lemon tart, her 10th this week I reckon, and I had ice cream, chocolate, ganache and chocolate chips; both hit the spot.

With a bottle of wine and two coffees, our bill was 92E.  Well worth the two taxi rides getting around the trouble zones.

Baltard Au Louvre in the 1st: "This is fantastic."

Baltard au Louvre in the 1st is the third in a successful run of restaurants managed by Laurent Frechet following Pirouette and Zebulon (credit also goes to his brothers Jean-Marie and Thomas Chaput).  We were warmly greeted by our host and later warmly welcomed by chef Ewout Vranckx both of whom spoke with the ease of those who have worked all over the world.  The meal started with a most generous offering of glasses of a Sancerre that one of our guests recognized as best of show in the region, and an amuse of lemony mouse on tiny  bits of celery.

The 25 € formula sounded terrific and our co-diners from the Bay Area went with it, starting with a watercress soup and cooked but cool mackerel (“fantastic”) covered with a host of herbs and veggies.

They then had the lieu jaune and boudin noir (for which the “this is fantastic“ utterance came again), while Colette had the a la carte half pigeon in blood sauce and I the a la carte foie gras, first poached, then sautéed or vice versa which dissipated my need to stock up before New Years Eve.

To finish up we all dove into their daily dessert - a  very nice rice pudding.

Our bill with a bottle and glass of wine (St Joseph) and Badoit  and 4 coffees with lovely mignardises, was 177 € or 88.50 € a couple.

(Photos credits for food and wine = Jake Dear).

 

Mumi in the 1st: another stunning meal from chef Angelo Vagiotis

Mumi in the 1st is another place where a talented chef rolls out dishes, one more interesting than the last and it hardly matters what the named dish is called because the accompanying ingredients come together to make it new composition.  As an aside, as our waitguy was pouring the sauce over the pintade, he said the equivalent of “not your Mothers’ coq au vin, eh?”  In any case here’s how they played out:

An Amuse-Bouche

Tartare of mackerel with mussels

Pintade with bacon and girolles

Myrtilles with chocolate

Figs with mushy brioche and chocolate

Raspberries, passion fruit and cream

Our bill, with two bottles of wine, one chosen by my wine expert friend and one by me, and coffee, was 219€ or 109.50€ a couple. 

La Poule au Pot in the 1st: Biggest food fraud of 2018, another “zombie restaurant.”

Backstory:  In 1953, before they tore down the wonderful Baltard-designed Les Halles and turned it into an illegal drug selling center, I ate here and recall it as a traditional and ok place for a cynical adolescent.  Sometime later, maybe 1985, I was seized by a nostalgic impulse to have some onion soup at some weird hour and trundled down and it looked exactly like it did before, but the onion soup was watery, the cheese heated by a blowtorch and the bread so stale even I couldn’t stand it.  I said “never again.” However,.............

-3.0 La Poule au Pot, 9, rue Vauvilliers in the 1st, 01.42.36.32.96, as I said open all the time (Metro: Les Halles), has gotten universally rave reviews since being revived by Jean Francois Piege - absolutely no one has found a single fault, so maybe it was me, or my wife or my blogger pal, or the phases of the moon, or the junior varsity cooking at lunch, or a nightmare in the kitchen, or, or, or....I’ve run out of excuses.  But it was dreadful from start to finish excepting the crusty bread, tartare sauce and Loire wine.

We arrived promptly at noon, because my blogger pal had to be at her office by 14h30.  Welcomed.  “Would you like some water?”  “Absolutely, a carafe d’eau, please.” “No, our water is bottled and starts at 3€?”  Incredible, illegal and ill advised.  Well it went downhill from there, excepting the crispy crusted bread, tartare sauce and wine.

Colette looked at the 48€ 3-course “menu” and said, “I’ll have it.”  We two others chose a la carte which was 37€ apiece.

Colette started with a gigantic silver bowl full of greens, many of which had passed their due date, with a pathetic vinaigrette and my pal and I shared 6 escargots with tasteless chopped parsley from Metro, and undetectable butter, maybe olive oil, my friend said.  She was trying to put a good face on what looked to be a horrible experience.

Next, Colette had the fried merlan, "pretty tasteless" she said, with tartare sauce and fries, which I found inedible, although the tartare sauce was ok.  My friend and I had the blanquette de veau with the driest, most unappetizing chunks of veal ........even Metro can do better.  “The rice is OK,” the ladies said.  “Harrumph.”

For dessert, Colette had a panoply of tarts, cut hours ago, straight out of the frig...... even Carrefour does better.  For a closer a plop of caramel creme brûlée was dumped on a plate for the 3 of us to share.

Our bill, without any water, but with 2 bottles of wine instead and 3 coffees, was 205€ or 136.67€ a couple.

Go?  Back to the worst meal of 2018 or the 21st Century?  No way.  Plus there was no A/C.