Luz Verde - Seduce and Destroy

BEST GUACAMOLE IN PARIS.

Now that I have your attention . . . where the hell have I been?  You may wonder, or not.  I could say I have been in restaurant reviewing purgatory after that little episode last June in Le Servan when I knocked a half litre bottle of water to the floor, whereupon it shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving a piercing sound in my ears to this day.  Don't blame me.  I can't help it if the Moose dragged me to the Vodka Lab around the corner on rue St. Maur where we found ourselves at the mercy of a benevolent entrepreneur who for some reason deemed us test subjects for tasting trials of every unknown variety of Russian vodka on the planet.  Or it may have been that faux pas I repeatedly commit when I wander into Paris cafes during my photo treks demanding a glass of red wine without first asking what they have to offer by the glass.  I could go on.  But I won't.

At any rate, I am back to seduce and destroy.  Actually, that sounds good, but my mission here is not so much to destroy the typical template for Paris restaurant reviews which, however accurate, are BORING, but to guide, admire, discover, and recommend in as casual a manner as whatever my relative state of sobriety allows.  I digress.

I've been doing a lot of eating in the months since my Clown Bar review.  (Was that really in 2017?).  I hope you were sitting down when you read that.  To precise (as we French are fond of saying), eating in restaurants.  But lately I've been getting into the lunch circuit and have much to relate.  I begin by Luz Verde, a small taqueria on quiet rue Henry Monnier, a couple blocks walk from the not-so-quiet center of Pigalle.  At Luz Verde you will find the BEST GUACAMOLE IN PARIS.  Would I joke about something as momentous as that?  I know what you're thinking.  Best guacamole in Paris - ben, that ain't saying much.  That is true.  The bar for good guacamole in Paris is low.  Very low.  Typically, what you will find in French Mexican restaurants is a cup of tasteless, creamy avocado accompanied by a small basket of stale nacho chips.  Let me tell you something about nacho chips in Paris restaurants.  They are ALWAYS stale.  I can't for the life of me explain why that is the case, but trust me on that.  Which is one reason the guacamole at Luz Verde is worth the visit.  On the two occasions I tried the dish, a full basket was brought to the table bearing nacho chips that were relatively fresh.  Not only that, the guacamole was somewhat chunky, very tasty, and arrived in a large bowl accompanied by refried red beans, large coriander leaves (the closest thing to cilantro you will find in a Paris restaurant), tomato, red pepper, onion, and lime.  Certainly in the same ballpark as the many dishes of genuine guacamole I sampled during my various visits to Monterrey, Mexico.  Have a look.

Luz Verde's guacamole: a meal in itself, and the dish is yours for €9

Luz Verde also has received strong positive reviews for its tacos and I can't disagree there.  During my first visit I opted for the tacos de poulet duo (€7) pictured below.  The second visit, I gave the tacos de gambas a shot (€9).  Fresh and tasty, with one big gripe.  You cannot pick these babies up.  Believe me, I tried.  The first time, I got the message and quickly shoved them into my half eaten bowl of guacamole.  This was a mess - the 'destroy' part of the title (see photo), and probably a good thing that there were few in the restaurant at that point in the afternoon to observe my uncouth eating behavior.  Things were worse with the gambas - don't get me wrong, the gambas were large and seductive, so much so that I quickly tried to bring the taco to my mouth and half of its contents quickly fell onto the table.  I quickly scooped everything up and shoved what I could salvage into the guacamole bowl.  I'm telling you, once I obtained a small cup of hot sauce from the waiter and threw that in with the rest of the slop, the meal was excellent.  Etiquette begone.

Chicken tacos before I tried to eat them.

One of the aforementioned chicken tacos several minutes after I tried to pick it up to eat.

One drawback to Luz Verde at lunch is the limited carte, lacking some of the more intriguing items available at night, such as guindillas, poulpe, and couteaux al ajilla.  Maybe I just got there too late in the afternoon, but one advantage to that is this (see below).

And this:

Because if you go at night - no reservations taken - you can expect this:

Because Luz Verde is a popular night spot for the denizens of Pigalle, with a nice list of cocktails to slake one's thirst:

I slummed it with glasses of serviceable Tramonte at €5 a pop during my two lunch visits.

Voila.  Finally a decent Mexican restaurant in Paris.

I'll tell you more about some good Paris lunches and lament some bad ones in a subsequent post.  Unless I suffer a return trip to restaurant reviewing purgatory.  But I will be back.

Luz Verde kitchen - seduce & destroy

LUZ VERDE
24 rue Henry Monnier
75009 Paris
tel: 01 70 23 69 60
website:  www.luzzverde.fr

Cost of lunches described above: €21 (one glass of wine, chicken tacos) and €28 (two wines, gambas tacos).

La Vitrine - Spring Backwards, Fall Ahead

By Paris standards, this past Friday night was virtually arctic, but Co. and I gamely donned several layers and headed out to the metro, direction Pigalle, and ascended into the Paris night at the Anvers stop. As we walked toward La Vitrine, our destination for the evening, and approached the square on rue Turgot, we paused for a moment to turn around to have a look at the Sacre Coeur, sitting majestically atop Montmartre all aglow. Once we passed the Auvergne cheese and fish stalls aligning the square, there was the Montparnasse tower off in the distance straight ahead. Paris it is. And my mood was truly upbeat, because after checking out Vitrine's website and catching a glimpse at the following dishes, I was looking forward to a memorable meal.





I really wanted to like La Vitrine. First, there are those snide comments on other review sites about how La Vitrine is doomed from the start, having moved into the old site of the local legend, Spring. Now, I still haven't found out how wonderful and super fantastic Spring is, because the last time I tried to reserve there, which is when they still resided at the rue de la Tour D'Auvergne location, I was told, sorry, we're fully booked until 2015, or something like that. Second, everything was copacetic upon arrival. A nice welcome from the charming hostess, we were seated abutting the counter separating the dining room from the open kitchen.

It's understandable that a wildly successful venue like Spring would bolt from its original location. La Vitrine's owners have done an admirable job of making full use of the limited sq. meters, lining up a grand total of 9 tables along the two walls. The offerings for the evening, barely legible on two mounted slate boards included the following dishes, as listed at the website:




Unfortunatley, La Vitrine ultimately didn't live up to expectations. I went with the marinated tuna, the fish of the day - a rectangular slab of lean white fish, poisson maigre - and the lemon tartelette. Co. opted for the raviole (which unfortunately couldn't touch that of Table D'Eugene, see my last entry), cochon, and creme brulee. The personal touch of Israeli-born-and-bred chef Kobi Villot-Malka, seen preparing the tuna marinee dish below, was plainly visible to the naked eye. After all, as he was preparing the dishes, he was probably as close to me as Co. was at the other side of our small square table.

All that work put into each individual tuna entree resulted in a dish whose taste was surprisingly un-wow (pardon my deconstruction of the English language). My maigre (2nd image below) was delicious, but the accompanying thick turnip circle didn't seem to make any sense - its slightly bitter taste contrary to the almost sweet elegance of the fish. The small cubes of panais - a root vegetable close to the carrot - were pretty much tasteless. What could have been a great dish ended up as a minor disappointment. Co. was less critical of her cochon dish, savoring the topinabour cream. Two big thumbs up for the desserts, however. I now recognize that I am an easy mark when it comes to well-prepared lemon tarts, and the one at La Vitrine was a winner, accompanied by a mound of gentle slices of mango and cassis. Much care also went into the creme brulee with truffes preparation - Co. happens to be a creme brulee fanatic, and this one scored mightedly.






The meal was washed down with a decent bottle of Haute Cotes Beaune, reasonably priced at 27€. The wine menu was relatively short, but well composed. A couple of post-meal cafes, brought to the table in cute little covered tasses, brought the grand total, including a couple 'supplements' to 107€. The menu lacked from inclusion of a cheese course - incomprehensible given the Auvergne cheese stalls a couple blocks away, and I'll say it again - why not bring a couple patisseries along with the coffee, especially when the dessert menu lacks a chocolate option? Little things, big effects. Too bad to see only three other tables occupied during our visit, perhaps more a function of the weather than reputation. I got the impression chef Kobi likes to experiment, so maybe you'll have better luck, but I don't think we'll be returning. La Vitrine is still fairly new and it deserves a look. Nonetheless, as we made our way to Gare du Nord, a light snow was falling, reminding us that we're still a long way from Spring.

LA VITRINE
28, rue de la Tour D'Auvergne
75009 Paris
01 45 23 99 13
website: www.restaurant-lavitrine.com

L'Aromatik - Sounds of the City

It was a sultry Friday night, but Co. and I braved the non-air conditioned metro and ventured out to the theater district in the 9th, to L’Aromatik, which a May issue of Telerama promoted as a ‘bistrot coloré à la partition fusion honorable.’ The bistrot, which apparently dates back to the circa 1920s-30s jazz era (when they didn't have AC), is a claustrophobic, but quaint, Art Deco venue which sits on the rather uninteresting, long and windy rue Jean-Baptiste-Pigalle, a street that arises from the Moulin Rouge in the Pigalle area to sights unseen and unknown. Well, I guess it’s true - you do learn something every day, and on that sultry Friday night, the first thing I learned is that Pigalle was originally a somebody before he became a someplace and a some street – an 18th C. sculptor to be precise. The second thing I learned is to never again visit L’Aromatik on a sultry Friday night, or any other sultry night for that matter, at least not until they get that second overhead fan working again (assuming it ever did).

The place is small, but we managed to appropriate a little table – and I do mean little – more or less by its lonesome, but we were already working up a sweat before the rest of the tables filled. I counted four floor fans and the one workable overhead fan cranking away, to little avail. The front of the restaurant was wide open for air, but here is where I learned a third thing – the narrow, typically Parisian rue JB Pigalle may look charming from the outside, but inside it is one noisy mother! My back to the street, I listened to a steady parade of buses, motos, Mack trucks, and Sherman tanks. How the tanks fit such a narrow street I cannot say, but the decibel level, not counting the screaming patrons, managed to drown out the waiter’s explanations and the lilting melodies of Miles Davis’s So What, which remained barely audible in the background.

The heat and noise did little for my disposition, so you may want to take my evaluation of the food with a grain of salt or some other aromatik spice of your preference. But let me digress for just another minute. What is it with restaurateurs’ fascination with naming their venues with mispelled words? Aromatik, Thai Me Up, Brews Brothers, you get the idea. Is this supposed to denote an ironic or playful indicator of imaginative meanderings in the kitchen? Anyway, I suppose Aromatik is supposed to signify a sort of thinking outside the box in the sense of asiatic and organic ingredients that justify the fusion-oriented nomenclature. Along those lines, to start off, following a tasty amuse bouche of crème of sardine with tomato, Co. went Mediterranean with the gaspacho entrée and I went Asian with the rouleaux de printemps à l'aïoli de Marseille. Even cold soup sounded too warm for me under the circumstances; Spring rolls struck me as a couple months more temperate. Neither of us was wowed by our choices. Co. did appreciate the combination of ham and fruit pieces in the soup (normally the ham is an accompaniment). My spring rolls had that tres fusion look, but appearances were deceiving in this case. Once I cut into the Spring rolls, a veritable garden blossomed onto my plate, which made me wonder why the dish was accompanied by a mound of greens. Until I reached the tasty two pieces of shrimp in the second roll, I felt like the green gardener. The uninspired sauce (mayo/mustard, tournesol) did little to spice up this disappointing entrée. But I admit, it looked nice.

The main plates were more satisfying, Co. going with the pintade and myself choosing the plat du jour, crevettes and risotto, identified as ‘Suggestion Bertrand’ (after youthful chef Bertrand Martin) on the bill. By this point, I think a delirium had set in largely attributed, I am sure, to the wine (a more than tolerable Domaine du Trillol Corbieres 2005) and rising heat. I vaguely remember Co’s pintade with peaches, having tried a couple forkfuls. I also remember two huge shrimp sitting atop my risotto, which was accompanied – imaginatively enough – by some paper thin slices of smoked duck. Things could have been worse, I guess. But if this is supposed to be fusion country, we were largely on the peripherique.

I am always lightly amused by French stabs at New York cheesecake, so I couldn’t resist trying Aromatik’s Cheese cake New-Yorkais au chocolat blanc. I couldn’t quite fuse my memory of the typical New York cheesecake with the round dessert that appeared on my plate, and where the white chocolate was my taste buds would not disclose, but I did experience a nostalgic rush when I found that it was sitting on a base composed of actual graham cracker.


Co’s 3-course ‘menu’ was priced at a reasonable 35 euros, but because Bertrand’s suggestion wasn’t included as a ‘menu’ choice, my ala carte total ran a bit higher at 46 euros. Topped off by the 25 euro Corbieres, our bill came to 106 euros, air not included, but more than enough decibels of noise to give you a free headache for the rest of the weekend. Overall, my evaluation of L’Aromatik is clearly less favorable than the more laudatory reviews you’ll find at Lobrano and Talbot’s blogs. Chalk it up to the weather, the noise, whatever. I have to hand it to Monsieur Martin, at least he is making an effort – judging from the dishes that appear on the menu – to spice up the typical Parisian bistrot menu, the latter of which is so predictable at this point you surely won’t need a roadmap. Even the reasonably-priced wine list included some non-French (an Australian, a Chilean, and a Spanish), and some biologique alternatives. But if you choose to try L’Aromatik before the end of the summer, just be sure to dress lightly and take some ear plugs.


L'AROMATIK
7, rue Jean-Baptiste-Pigalle
01 48 74 62 27
website
video