I have 2-words to say, OK, if I don't use a contraction then it's 3-words..., "DO NOT GO".
We went the other night. It's a cute restaurant, quite large by Parisian standards. They have seating on the main floor as well as upstairs.
This restaurant specializes in Basque cuisine.
We were 4-people. For our entrées, 2 had salads, a squid salad, and the other salad was made of grilled bell-peppers. These dishes were OK. Now here comes the bad and the ugly. My companion and I had the "foie gras" du jour (special of the day) which was served encroute akin to "beef wellington". All I can say is that you needed an axe to cut into the meat. Inquiring minds want to know, how can you get an overcooked foie gras encased in an undercooked puff pastry is beyond me!? part of the dough was actually raw!
Now for our main courses. Two shared a basque style paella, while I got the boar, and my partner got the hare. Where do I start? Let's start with the boar. It was smothered in a wine sauce that was so acrid, I couldn't eat it. The meat was unidentfiable. It was accompanied by thin egg noodles maybe tossed in a little butter, accompanied by an egg custard and a zuchinni cup filled with grape jelly, I kid you not! Needless to say, I drank tons of wine just to try and get the food down, and just gave up and left my plate barely touched. My partner had the hare, pretty indescribable meat, but it was accompanied by simple oven roasted "scalloped" potatoes. The only saving grace of this dish were the potatoes. It was served as a side and was not contaminated by the other food, and it tasted rather good. But one cannot live on just potatoes alone, n'est-ce pas?
I was so hungry, I asked if I could eat some of their rice from the paella. On a good note, the paella was not bad, but wasn't anything exciting either. I also had a cheese plate after dinner, because again, I was hungry.
I feared for my life ordering the dessert so decided against it, while my companions ordered a poached pear, a chocolate something or other, and a tart. They all said the desserts were just OK.
In summary, once we ordered, our first course came within 5-minutes, and second course came within a nano second later after we finished our entrées. This is unusual for any restaurant in Paris, unless you're in a fast food place. The plates were extremely hot, and I suspect alot of the dishes were kept in a warming oven and either reheated in really hot ovens or maybe even nuked.
It's unfortunate, because the servers et.al, were really nice, and it's a beautiful restaurant, but the food just plain sucks, Oh well. Onto the next food adventure. read more