Fabulous lady chef twins

So whilst eating at Mandari in Tblisi we were introduced to the head Chef Tekuna Gachechiladze, who not only was cooking some pretty stunning food also bore a striking resemblance to Kristen from @lecamionquifume.

Thanks to @msmarmitelover for the photo of Tekuna.

Le Bigarrade

A disclaimer:

The following is not going to make me look good. There is no way in which I can explain that which I wish to explain without looking like a right over privileged nob.

Ok, so on a whim I decided not to cook but to go for dinner at a place I’d been thinking about for a while. It was a recommendation; I knew nothing of the place save the name. I certainly didn’t know that the menu would offer me eight courses or twelve, or that it was a two Michelin starred temple to ‘le cuisine zen Francais’ not my words.

So instead of telling you about the meal I’m going to list the things that annoyed me.

My aperitif of €20 Infloresence Champagne took ages to arrive, then, mere moments later the first glass of my tasting menu wines arrived with the first two amuse dishes. Bear with me here. So you’re a two star restaurant only offering tasting menus, with an emphasis on wine matching with natural wines. Hence I am to assume that this glass you have just set down in front of me has been carefully selected to complement the two dishes with which it arrived. This leaves me quite the quandary. What am I to do? Eat the dishes whilst enjoying my Champagne (my €20 Champagne at that) and potentially miss out on the palette fireworks that the proffered glass would no doubt have offered? Drink the glass of wine (a Loire Sauvignon as it happened) whilst leaving my glass of €20 Champagne to gently warm and go flat? Or scarf the fucking bubbly whilst the maître d’ looked on somewhat akin to a rugby club captain surveying his new charges during initiation?

The third and fourth glasses of wine were warm, I’m pretty relaxed about wine temperatures, but these were too warm.

The fifth dish arrived bearing a jauntily placed half spear of asparagus. One small asparagus bisected lengthways. Asparagus are expensive vegetables, especially so early, but really, what in gods name is the benefit of only serving me half on one? Maybe it’s the chefs attempt to induce the wistfulness of longing, memories of asparagus halves past. Who knows, all it said to me was tight fisted fuckwad.

Speaking of which, the wine measures. I had seven different wines, Sauvignon, Chenin, Pouilly fume, Chenin, two St Josephs and a Coteaux de Layon. For €70, ffs if I really wanted I could check all the prices, but I know they weren’t particularly expensive wines, yes they were all nice, but Jesus Christ, they could at least have given me some salve afterwards to help with the chafing next time I tried to sit down.

As the third wine was an excellent Pouilly Fume from Alexandre Bain I had been savouring it somewhat, completely forgetting that it had been poured into the same glass as the first two. Hence, when the next wine was due to arrive I still had wine in my glass (I Know so careless of me to upset their serving rhythm so terribly). I’d like to inform you that the maître d’ wordlessly placed a new glass on the table and went on with his business, but no, we were back to the looming at the table bottle in hand waiting for me to finish my glass before we could continue. It’s a wonder he managed to stop himself from rapping his fingers impatiently on my table.

Wine four was a St Joseph, a lovely natural one from domaine des Sept Lunes.

Wine five was a St Joseph, a lovely natural one from domaine des Sept Lunes. Yep you did read that right, they served me two virtually identical wines in succession as part of a €70 wine flight. Yes the second was a different cuvee, and I’m certain that had I tasted the two side by side it would have gifted me with priceless insights into the various terroirs that domaine des Sept Lunes work upon. However I was having dinner, an expensive one at that. Am I seriously to imagine that given the multitude of natural wines from France from which they had to play, they could not find something more suitable to go with the second dish.

Which was cheese, the eighth dish. Yes out of an advertised twelve course tasting menu we’ve reached the cheese at the eighth dish. That’s including amuse bouches.

The cheeses were a small piece of chavignol, and some comte. As the waiter didn’t elaborate as to what age comte, I enquired, it was a twelve month old. Only twelve, not an eighteen, or a twenty four, not the sort of comte I expect to find in a fucking two star restaurant. No, not that sort.

Milk sorbet with nori. So I double-checked, nori, like the seaweed? No, it’s not a seaweed was the reply; actually yes it was a seaweed. And in case you’re wondering, no. Nori should never be served with milk sorbet. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had the pleasure of such an objectionable combination in my mouth. The nori, cold and damp, leaking its ever so slimy algal sea wateriness into the rather delicate milk sorbet. Somewhat akin to seeing an innocent fresh faced young girl being corrupted by some nightmare of an oriental seaman. I’ll concede that for the analogy to work you do have to take on the mindset of a rather prim Victorian sort, but I digress.

I’m tired now so I’m going to finish by giving you the response to my request for a marc or grappa (to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth). ‘bah, non, mai on a un super vielle rhum qui est assez similar”.

Oh and I left still hungry. I’m not even going to bother broaching the topic of what constitutes acceptable dish size in comparison to bouche in a tasting menu format. I’ve appended the photos below, please try to identify the bouches and the dishes for me, I’m still slightly at a loss.

The queue last night for Le Camion Qui Fume

So this was the queue last night for Le Camion Qui Fume, it's really frustrating because they're great burgers, but I'm just not prepared to wait the best part of an hour to get one. Oh and this was at about five minutes past seven, they opened at seven.

Les Enfants qui a perdu son politesse

Quite apart from how difficult it can be to secure a table reservation for five people on a Saturday in Paris when you’ve restricted yourself to choosing places where the wine list focus is what one would call natural. There are other issues involved with trying to have a celebratory evening out in France’s capital city.

T&C had hopped on the Eurostar, somewhat on a whim and we were planning a good solid evening of wine consumption, accessorized with a few plates of decent food and lots of catching up.

Meeting them off the Eurostar we ducked into a nearby bar to sort out plans for the evening. Of course this necessitated the usual rigmarole of catching the proprietors eye, taking a table, then waiting for him to see fit to come over and take an order, nothing out of the ordinary there.

We hopped in a taxi to the hotel, which was a neat 9.5 euros. T&C nipped up to their room to drop bags, then we asked the hotel to order us a taxi to the restaurant, essentially back where we’d come from.

It was here that I started to get a trifle annoyed, after repeating the name of the restaurant, the road name and the quarter 1eme a couple of times, while the driver queried the 10eme (all in French). He finally shook his head, asked again, I offered to show him the address as written, he then repeated it word for word as I had told him, before shrugging and driving us there. For 19.50 euros. Cunt. Now my French accent is pretty good, and I was being very clear, I can only assume that his view was as English folk we wouldn’t really know what we were doing.

Les Enfants Perdus, on arrival to an empty restaurant. (In French)

Me – Hi, we’ve got a reservation for 5 in the name Edwards.

Waiter – OK, where are the rest of your party?

Me – Oh, they might already be here, they left before us from the 18^th.

(bear in mind the restaurant is empty, it’s 7.30pm before most people eat in France)

Waiter – Nope, please can you wait at the bar.

Me – Sorry, is it ok to go to the table.

Waiter – Well, sometimes the rest of a party can take some time to arrive, so it’s better at the bar.

What the fuck, it’s a tiny little restaurant bar, there are three stalls, the table is empty and we’re on time. What did they think they were going to squeeze another sitting into the time we were waiting for the rest of the party. Did they hope that making us feel like three out of place cunts was going to make us order more? No fucking clue.

(a couple of minutes later)

Waiter – You can go to your table now.

Ahh we’d served our penance for arriving at different times and now we were being given the privilege of our table. E&E, the rest of the party arrived moments later.

I’d considered posting about what we ate, it was all pretty good, the wine list was about 6.5/10. A nice Alex Bain Pouilly Fume 010 (though I was a bit uncertain of the storage as it wasn’t as fresh as the last couple of bottles I’ve had), a non-descript Savennieres and Ermitage Pic St Loup, were our choices.

The service carried on its theme of incompetence and misplaced hauteur, so we left after mains.

Les Enfants Perdus, 9 rue des récollets 75010 Paris

I understand that this reeks of first world issues, but I've spent a large part of my life working in hospitality, and there is no need for this odd need that a lot of French waiting staff seem to have to ensure the guest knows his place.

Bistrot Paul Bert

The underground walkway between the line 4 and line 12 of the metro at Marcadet Poisonnieres is interminable, throw in a trip that took three changes an empty stomach and a slight hangover, you’ll understand why I was a bit jittery by the time I arrived at Faidherbe Chaligny to meet my friend Juel (@winewomansong).

Lunch was to be at the storied Bistrot Paul Bert, an old school place down a little side street. They were middling busy when we arrived, 1pm on a Tuesday in February possibly not being their busiest service.

Service was gloriously French in that it had that charming inattentiveness that only the French seen to quite manage. They had their own pace for feeding and watering us and little I could do seemed to change it. Mind you aside from the quibbles over getting a jug of tap water and a basket of bread there was little for which we wanted.

2007 Overnoy Arbois Pupillan: Savoury and salty with some neatly delineated dusky oxidative lowlights, but nothing too outré. This was all about the coiled acidity and tightly wound minerality.  

Turning established gender menu choice stereotypes neatly on their head I opted for the red mullet carpaccio followed by the brill, while Juel took the agricultural laborers option of terrine de campagne de la maison and tete de veau avec sauce gribiche.

The mullet was a beautifully arranged carpaccio of luminescent stained glass like slices decorated with milky white disks of daikon and lightly pickled spring onion. The slices came slightly thicker than at Au Passage, and though the plate was marginally more cluttered both dishes were astonishing in the freshness and quality of fish presented.

In contrast to the carpaccio, the terrine was a veritable doorstep of country bluster. An edible cliché of traditional peasant directness and honesty, it’s muscular porky depth bristling like stable boys stubble on a ladies cheek.

Jean-Francois Ganevat, Cuvee de l’enfant terrible Poulsard 2010 was almost schiller wein in colour, being fresh and like a deep rose. Light carbonic style tannins came with fresh Jura alpine influenced acidity. Some faintly cherry like fruit notes, but really this was about restrained site specific expression.

I have long held that there is nary a dish that cannot be improved with the measured addition of pork product. The Brill with Puy lentils (aux lard) was a prime example, marvelously cooked brill, seemingly needing no more than a shrug of the knife to come away from the bones, the flesh still juicy in it’s chunks. The flesh had been crowned with two perfectly crisp rashers of bacon that neatly proved a flavour bridge to the slick of creamy lentils, their lovely earthiness grounding the dish.

I didn’t try any of Juel’s tete de veau, but there was very little attempt to gussy it up for the restaurant table, indeed the waiter congratulated her on her order and left with a wry grin on his face. A pile of fatty, meaty head was topped with a pile of sauce gribiche, there were a couple of boiled vegetables added as an afterthought and a surprise treat of a largish morsel of wobble brain. Judging from the heroic amount that Juel ate and the entirely positive noises I kept hearing it was rather good.

 

I’m always less impressed with desserts that I feel I ought to be, it’s probably related to my tendency to work my way through the bread basket at the start of the meal. That said the desserts were great examples of Parisian classics, my Paris Brest coming liberally decorated with bits of nut and fair bulging with praline cream. Juel’s Baba aux rhum looked like a particularly extravagant mediaeval hat with it’s towering spiral of cream at its centre. As usual the bottle of rum was left on the table in the off chance that we’d need to add more.

I loved Bistrot Paul Bert, it was exactly what I imagine of a French bistro, bold traditional flavours where necessary, delicacy if called for. A stunning wine list of natural wines, though taking the more liberal French interpretation of the term means that there are wines for everyone here.

I will be back

Bistrot Paul Bert, 18 rue Paul Bert, 11eme Paris
+33 1 43 72 24 01

Wine by one

This is the posher end of the Paris wine bar scene, all shiny black tables and polished steel, there is none of the natural avant garde's rusticity here.

The idea (indeed it’s unique concept) will be familiar to anyone who’s visited the Sampler or Selfridges in London. Enomatic machines line the walls upon receipt of your euros, deposited via card, you can taste differing size measures of a selection of wines.

Oddly, the selection of wines on offer when I went seemed strangely outdated. Rather as if I was looking at a top restaurant list from four or five years ago. There were a couple of Mouton Rothschilds, Opus One, Ridge Montebello, a couple of top end (big and oaky) Chilean Carmeneres, Cloudy Bay Sauvignon (mind they had Clos Henri Sauvignon as well).

All very excellent wines, and particularly if you’re French and looking to taste some highly regarded new world wines then it’s not a bad place to stop by. However I couldn’t help but feel that the selection rather missed the changes that have taken place globally in the last five to ten years. There was no evidence of the trend towards lighter less oak influence new world styles. There was a token acknowledgement of the impact that natural wines have had on France, but it didn’t feel like anyone had their heart in that part of the selection.

Finally, we were there on a middling busy Sunday afternoon, and there were simply too many bottles that were empty (I counted 5) or on their last drops. Which for me isn’t good enough to be taken seriously as a wine bar.

Wine by one, 9 rue des capucines 1eme, Paris 

+33 1 42 60 85 76