Louis, Quietly

Maybe it's just my usual cantankerous nature, but it is so much easier to complain than to say nice things.  Which is why discussing Louis, the restaurant, for a second time is so boring.  I must admit, there is nothing to complain about when it comes to Louis.  I came to that conclusion last June, shortly after the restaurant opened, and I again conclude that the folks behind this small, quiet establishment in Paris 9 just about do everything right.  The food is fresh and interesting, the service impeccable, the prices reasonable, the wine list is well-composed, and despite the small room, it is possible to have a conversation without other patrons listening in on more than half of what you are saying.  There are positive reviews of Louis to be found, but not a lot of buzz - this is a quiet success story, so far.  Hell, it's not even included in the 2016 Le Fooding guide, a serious lapse on the part of that otherwise stalwart reference.

Given that I've already reviewed Louis fairly recently, I'll just illustrate the meal that Co. and I had a couple Friday evenings ago.  If you want more details, you can scroll down to the bottom  and click on where it says 'Older Posts' to reach my June 2015 review.  Just to remind you, at Louis you have two choices - six courses (48 euros) or eight (62 euros, including a cheese dish).  Our 2012 Languedoc (Montpeyroux Sylvain Fadat) was priced at 37 euros.

An amusing amuse bouche to start off - the third in the row is a polenta cube beside its accompanying vinegrette.

Celery tiramisu

The final amuse bouche - poached egg and something, something.

(Another blurry one ..)  Foie gras with light-as-a-feather brioche for dipping.  If you went with the 6 course menu, you wouldn't have gotten this one, a serious loss.

Fish and seaweed

Perfectly cooked canette with vegetables

Chevre with toasts and pebbles, the latter not for consumption

A subjective look at dessert 1, reflective of the amount of alcohol I had consumed prior to getting there, but much, much clearer in real life.

Dessert 2, a deadly ganache

For good measure, some extras, minus the one I already consumed.  And not mention the little plastic doggy bag with some more patisseries for Co., a sexist discrimination of the worst sort.

Before bringing this one to a close, I have to complain about something, despite my saying I had nothing to complain about.  As is the case in many Parisian bistrots (and, no doubt, beyond), whose carte is comprised of a tasting menu and often nothing else, the courses are not listed, but are left as a surprise.  What am I four-years-old?  If I'm shelling out 150 euros or more for a meal - however terrific it might be - I'd prefer to know up front what I'm paying for.  But I guess that's an idiosyncratic quirk that you are likely to view as reviewer nitpicking, or worse.  So forget I mentioned it.  Did I say that  I really like Louis (the restaurant)?  Don't forget that.

LOUIS (Stephane Pitre)
23 rue de la Victoire
75009 Paris
tel. 01 55 07 86 52
web: www.louis.paris

Dix-Huit - No Name Goes Bourgeouis

One last dinner in Paris before the Moose goes globe-trotting for the summer and he picked a good one, Dix-Huit, the restaurant whose 'name' is the street number so you won't get lost in the upscale Ternes area in the 17th.  Don't let the neighborhood fool you, Dix-Huit/18 is affordable, despite not having a fixed-price 'menu,' something that I don't think I'll ever understand.

Chef Aaron Isap on the right

Inside Dix-Huit, obviously

       The two-roomed restaurant is the domain of Julien Peret and his the Flipino chef Aaron Isap, the latter having worked his way through Apicius, Drouant, Ze Kitchen Galerie and Pan, which is pretty amazing given that he looks like he's maybe 21 (or should I say 18?).  I didn't detect much of an Asian influence in the dishes, as I had been led to expect, but Isap is adventurous enough to keep things interesting - according to him, during his visit to our table when he made the rounds late in the meal - the menu changes daily. 

The restaurant's decor and arrangement are a bit odd - perhaps a matter of taste - we were ushered into the brightly lit back room, with its resemblance to a terrace: an atrium-like roof and an ambiance that suggested lab room with plants.  By mid-evening, the lights dimmed, the tables filled, and things became a bit more copacetic, notwithstanding the New York couple at the table next to ours who kept apologizing for listening in to the fascinating and provocative conversation typical of Moose and my interactions, but then went on to add their two sense nonetheless.  C'est la vie, as they say here.


Given that the carte changes daily, the following won't be of much use to you, but below you'll see what the offerings looked like the mid-week evening of our dinner:

Click on photo to enlarge

And here is the translation, in pictures:

This white asparagus dish, perhaps the tastiest of the evening, was comped to us by chef Isap - what can I say, the Moose is connected

My Crudo de Doraude entree was more pleasing to the eye than to the tongue - good, but nothing spectacular (9€)

The Moose was more than satisfied with this tartare de veau entree (11€)

My main dish - pintade with radishes - coulda been a contendah, but the betterave (?) accompaniment didn't really work for me.  The meat was excellent, though.  (23€)

Opting out of dessert, ever mindful that such extravagances could multiply any ill effects of his copious lager drinking on non-dinner out evenings, the Moose savored his lieu jaune (19€) and watched me dig into my espuma cafe  (9€).

This rather mundane looking dessert grew more interesting and tastier the deeper I dug, as I hit the pistachios.  Wouldn't mind another of these babies

The verdict is more a pretty good than a spectacular.  However, given the ever-changing menu and chef Isap's experimental nature, Dix-Huit certainly warrants a return visit, probably with the ever-discerning Co. in tow.  I'll keep you posted (which is why they call these things 'posts').


DIX-HUIT / 18
18 (you guessed it) rue Bayen
75017 Paris

From the restaurant's website

Caillebotte - Isn't It Romantic?

The answer is: NO! 
And the question certainly was relevant on the Friday evening that Co. and I visited Caillebotte, the relatively new offspring of Franck Baranger (the chef), and Edouard Bobin's popular venue Le Pantruche.  Located not far from the Gare St. Lazare and the Grandes Boulevards in the South Pigalle district, you are guaranteed to get lost if you follow Google maps.  I speak from experience.  By the way, the Friday evening in question was Feb. 14th, better known as St. Valentine's Day.  Well into our meal, as I gazed lovingly into Co.'s deep, dark eyes, she looked at me and whispered, "It isn't very romantic."

She had that right - more on the modern side of traditional, Caillebotte, despite the misleading images you'll find at Googe images, is intimate, but not in a good way.  The space is pretty tiny, and if you don't luck out like Co. and I did and get seated at one of the solo two-seat tables, you can expect to be scrunched in-between other diners and hearing every word they coo.  We were lucky, as I mentioned, but still had the ornery waitress glaring at us from time to time, I guess a function of the fact that we arrived around 8 pm for our 7:30 pm reservation and came within, I surmised, about another minute or two from having our table handed over to a female duo waiting eagerly at the bar.  Ignorantly following the Google map in lieu of my more reliable little red book (Paris by arrondissements), I got us about as far away in the opposite direction as humanly possible before a human with half a brain would stop and say, "I don't think we're going in the right direction."

Well, enough complaining, if there's one thing that definitely recommends Caillebotte, it's the one thing that really matters - the food.  And here I had no complaints.  For a 3-course 35€ menu (plus - and I guess I can complain as I am wont to do when this element rears its ugly head - some supplements), the quality was well up to par.  Here's the barely visible carte from the evening of our visit:

click to enlarge

Round one, the entrees, went to your's truly with the poulpes - a unique combination of egg yolk, mushroom cream, chantilly fumee, etc.  Excellent.  Co.'s salade de legume d'hiver was less impressive, and pretty sparse when it came to the key ingredient that lured her in that direction, the smoked eel.  Still, pretty tasty with the chevre and parmesan crumble.

Salsifis aux poulpes de roche (+2€)

Salade de legumes d'hiver

Things stayed on a high note with the main plates.  I happily went with the one fish dish on the menu, the pave de lieu jaune, replete with the chapelure de pain brulee, cauliflower mousseline, and bouillon parmesan - the combination hit the spot.  Co. perked up with the scallops dish, St. Jacques d'Erquy, with fenouil de cafe and mousse d'oursine.  I remember reading a comment online from a dissatisfied diner who claimed to have been served unfresh scallops - no problem in that regard for Co.

Lieu jeune - terrible photo, I know, but sometimes with food porn, you've got to live with grainy.

St. Jacques d'Erquy (+5)

 Desserts hit the hat trick.

Biscuits russes (me, the sucker for anything pralinee)

Mousee au chocolate - not what you'd expect (in a good way, with black olives)

All told, with the two 'menus,' the supplements, a reasonably priced Pinot noir (25€), and one espresso (2€), the whole shebang came to a respectable 104€.  By dessert time, the St. Valentine's vultures - the ones with reservations for the 9:30 second seating - had begun to hover in the foyer and things got about as unromantic as possible.  The waitresses were stressed, the first sitting diners were lingering (me, over a cafe), and who knows what from the patrons who casually arrived a good half hour after us.  Not exactly the best ambiance, I grant you.   It may not be your candlelit lover's hideaway, and it may be spatially challenged, but as long as the food stays this good, they'll keep a-comin'.

CAILLEBOTTE
8 rue Hippolyte Lebas
75009 Paris
01 53 20 88 70
website:  don't think so.

L'Ebauchoir - Eat A Peach

I was up for something off the beaten path from the tour of the fancy neo-bistrots, which in the past months has included some old favorites and some new discoveries.  Something more traditional, an old Parisian mainstay, popular and summery with outdoor dining possibilities, now that we are deep in the heart of summer in the capital, and for once the weather is temperate and sunny and the livin' is easy.  Fish are jumpin', etc.  What do you want, I just learned a new jazz arrangement for Summertime on the guitar, so the tune keeps haunting me.

And so, verdict is in, L'Ebauchoir it was.  According to minimal research, everybody loves L'Ebauchoir for its conviviality, traditional and tasty cooking, at - drum roll, please - low prices and space for twenty diners out on the 'terrace,' facing the rather non-descript and shady rue de Citeaux in the heart of the Faidherbe - Chaligny area, where one week earlier, Co. and I had a terrific meal a couple blocks away at 6 Paul Bert.


One of the main reasons I chose L'Ebauchoir was to dine outside, but by the time we arrived in the early evening, the sun had deserted rue de Citeaux and Co., feeling a chill, pushed me through the door and the host did the rest, leading us to a small table by the window.  Even inside though, L'Ebauchoir was airy and open enough to suggest outdoor dining, so what the hey.  Well, no question, this is a convivial and popular joint - the host and his minions made for a laid-back, friendly, and competent staff and the atmosphere, filled with apparent locals, wall mural, and antique mirrors certainly made us feel at home, home being Paris, France.  The food and prices, however, served to undermine the overall experience, with disappointments on both fronts.


Heavy on meat, with a couple entree and dessert specials on the posted blackboard, it was quickly evident that long-term owners Thomas Dufour and Thierry Bruneau had a run on peaches this week, because a majority of dishes included peaches in one facon or another.  I was tempted by the entree special - a crab salad on avocado (14€) but instead opted for mozzarella buffalo with peaches in a green pea sauce (13€).  This dish looked better than it tasted, the taste being rather bland, although the pea sauce definitely served well for sopping via the tastier than usual slices of baguette.

Co's entree, the tuna tartare (14€), was probably the hit of the evening, with its large chunks of marinated tuna bearing an unidentified spice that left a curiously interesting aftertaste - in a good way.

On to the plates, with your's truly opting for the one main course fish dish on the evening's carte, a slab of tuna on a hefty and heavily marinated slice of eggplant, with pea pods, small roasted potatoes, and aforementioned peaches (22€).  Again, this looked better than it tasted.  I really had a hard time finishing this for lack of interest halfway through.  The potatoes were tasty, but the fish, which I had asked to be cooked 'a rose,' was in fact overcooked for my taste, and dry as a result, and the eggplant did not compute at all.

 

Not to brag or anything, but the fish tacos I concocted the night before were far superior to L'Ebauchoir's tuna dish, so why not take a gander at my own personal baby.  Light, spicy, and tasty - everything my main course at L'Ebauchoir was not.  Attention - you cannot order this fish taco dish at L'Ebauchoir, but if you would like the recipe, let me know.

Co. complained less, but was nonetheless uninspired by her lamb, potato puree (with three pieces of garlic embedded), and courgettes melange (20€).  Maybe it needed some peaches...

My dessert was a no-brainer, L'Ebauchoir's trademark dish, the traditional gateau riz (rice pudding cake), just like your mammy used to make if your mammy made rice pudding cake.  This arrived in a metal cooking container that contained enough gateau riz to feed four diners - you take as much as you want, which mirrors the restaurant's 'au comptoir' option for wine if you choose not to select an entire bottle.  For the wine, you pay as you go; for the dessert, you pay 7€, regardless of how much you consume.  Well, I don't deny, this was really good.  I disagree with one disenchanted diner's  online assessment arguing that this dish was overrated because the caramel syrup overwhelmed the cake.  I think that syrup really made the dish special.

 

Co. went with the dessert special, an almond mouse with raspberries, and seemed perfectly happy with her choice (8€).  Oddly, the chef apparently deemed the peaches to be appropriate for all menu items save the desserts. 

 As for wine, we opted for the special of the evening, a bottle of Poivre et Sel (Gamay, Pineau d'aunis), which was as light and fruity as the waiter promised (no peaches included, thankfully) (26€). Otherwise, the wine menu is copious and fairly priced.

As you can surmise, the meal was hearty - a carte, save the peaches, that would have been at home in the middle of winter, with its heavy emphasis on meat among its main dishes (with a vegetarian dish included, it is fair to say), more traditional than innovative, and no great shakes.  That's well and good when all you are expecting is an unpretentious, low-priced meal in a popular, pleasant Parisian bistrot.  But whereas I had been led to expect, from my humble pre-dinner research, something around a 60€ bill, we ended up paying nearly twice as much (110€), something you already know if you were keeping a running score as you read the above.  That's not outrageous by Paris standards and is, in fact, around what we usually pay (or at least not significantly lower) for the innovative neo-bistrots I usually write about.  In fact, it's a couple euros more expensive than the far more interesting and satisfying meal we had last week at 6 Paul Bert - in fact, no comparison.  L'Ebauchoir would have received less of my chagrin had their carte included a reasonably priced three-course menu, but alas, that was not to be had, and what you end up with is a price/quality ratio overwhelmingly favoring price.  My recommendation, if you must, is to go there for lunch.  Especially if you have a peaches fetish.

L'EBAUCHOIR 

43/45 rue de Citeaux
75012 Paris
tel. 01 43 42 49 31
website:  http://www.lebauchoir.com/

Le Chateaubriand - Movin' On Up

That's what I'm talking about - originality, surprise, subtlety, outrageousness. What am I talking about? Last Friday night's dinner at Le Chateaubriand (let's say LC, for short), quite possibly the best meal I've had in Paris all year. LC has been on my radar for some time, but each time I came close to reserving, something held me back. 'You'll either love it or hate it!' 'Noisy and crowded!' And this one from Le Fooding: 'Impossible to get a table. Impossible to get a table: need further explanation?' And also from Le Fooding: 'Gourmet works of art.' There you have it, yin and yang, to go or not to go? Well, when someone tells me 'impossible to get a table' I immediately reach for my phone. Let's face it, if it were truly impossible, how could the restaurant make any business? And sure enough, I was offered a table two Fridays away without difficulty. 'Impossible to get a table' -don't believe it.

LC sits on a busy section of avenue Parmentier in a funky area of the 11th, and that funky atmosphere follows you into LC, an old-style Parisian bistro that once was an old-fashioned grocery, remnants of which appear in their antiquity here and there on the otherwise unadorned walls, save the obligatory chalkboards announcing the available wines by the glass. This is a roomy bistrot that starts feeling more intimate once the room fills, and believe me, it doesn't take long for the place to fill up. Nonetheless, Co. and I were ushered to a cozy corner in the back room, apart from the more hustle-bustle of the larger front room/bar area. And it does get noisy, but in a quasi-bawdy way that adds to the atmosphere, if you get my drift - this is what a Parisian bistrot is supposed to be all about.

But all that noise and crowdedness is for a reason - the evening's 50€ set menu created and prepared by chef Inaki Aizpitarte, who emanates from the French Basque country, and previously held court at La Famille. Alexander Lobrano (Hungry for Paris, Random House) put it very well when he described Aizpitarte as 'a brilliant miniaturist, composing original origami-like compositions of taste that are often potent and pretty.' Our menu for the evening was explained by a young, bearded waiter, slowly, with questions saved for the end. We started off with a set of five amuses bouche, wham bam thank you ma'am, one after the other. First up, a small plate of four gougères - savory little puff pastries, with what may have been subtly embellished by pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top. (Photo thanks to the great eye and camera of gourmet traveler.) A low-key start, with hints of the miniaturist concoctions to come. Our empty plate was soon replaced by two small bowls of cheviche with tiny scallops in their liquid, which our spunky waitress informed us should be consumed in a single gulp. Up next came a dish of two grenouille enveloped by a mysterious sauce with bread crumbs. If frog turns you off, never fear, this looked nothing like aforesaid amphibian. The string of amuses bouche continued with a bowl of miso-like bouillon with small cubes of foie gras. And that was followed up by a plate of tiny crevettes grise with berries and pineapple. Bear in mind, this was all to wet our appetite for the set dinner, which hadn't started yet! I suggested to Co. that this wouldn't be a bad time to pay for the wine (an adequate, but rather light, 36€ Bourgueil) and leave, our stomachs filled with the pre-meal tapas selection, but of course, this was solely in jest, as both us really wanted to see what was next.

What was next was a mulet noir, perles du Japon, huitre, cresson dish. My blurry photo will give you some idea, but the photo really doesn't do justice. Next, a cabillaud, pil pil, betteraves dish. Pil pil reflects the Basque origins of this recipe (i.e., the dish was prepared in a special sauce originating in the Basque country), which was highlighted by a delicate, sweet lump of beet, which really brought the steamed cod alive with flavor. Well, it's been two years that the betterave has been showing up in one way or another in finer restaurants around the world (see my Finland reviews), and when this much maligned root is cooked right, it can't be, sorry I can't resist, beat. But I'm starting to get that 'been there, done that' attitude about the beet. With 2011 right around the corner, I say, 'Next trendy vegetable, please!'

At this stage of the festivities, Co. partook of the boeuf, beurre noisette, racines offering, while I was granted an appropriately bloody portion of canard in lieu of the beef. The dish worked well with either meat, and this was just fine. Up next, two desserts, a dish of pommes, butternut, rose, obligatorily consumed before the crunchier chocolat, celeri invention. (You have the option of going with the desserts or the fromages du jour.) And that was that. Each dish reflecting the confidence and skill of the artisan in the kitchen, not a false note during the entire epic meal.









Don't take my word for it, just go. With Rino and LC under the belt this month, I feel like we're movin' on up quality-wise. Yet in both cases, the set menu approach keeps the prices down, with LC topping out at 139€, including one post-meal cafe and the wine, and how many courses, if you include the amuses bouche and two desserts? I count 10. While I also liked Rino very much, if I was stranded on a desert island and could only take one of the two bistrots with me, it would be Le Chateaubriand, hands down.

Note: other than my pitiful photo of the appetizer (Mulet noir), the other food photos from the aforementioned gourmet traveler; others from qype and The New York Times.

LE CHATEAUBRIAND
129 ave. Parmentier
75011 Paris
tel. 01 43 57 45 95
website: can't find one

P.S. There's another Le Chateaubriand restaurant in Paris, in the 17th. That's not the one I'm talking about.