A crew member had recommended this place and our hotel concierge agreed. He called and made reservations for us. We got there 10mins early, and they weren't open yet so we walked across the street and bought ourselves some nice wine to take back home to Canada. While we were perusing wine, church bells started ringing. I guess it's time for dinner!
Our server was quite pleasant and as soon as we sat down, he asked if we would like an English menu. What a life saver. I tried to use my limited French throughout the night, but our server must've been amused. Here's why. I speak very little, if not, horrendous French, my fellow crew member is Japanese so we're speaking Japanese to each other, but she would speak to our server in English. Yes it was an interesting mish mash.
The menu consisted of a la carte items, and more convenient, a prix fixe menu. I like choosing from a list and making up a dinner. So we went for the prix fixe. Out of I think 8 or so choices, I had the rabbit terrine for appetizer, it came with onion marmalade and cornichons. Delicious. Perfect with our bordeaux. My table mate had the scallop terrine which was fresh and light. For our mains, again out of 8 or so choices, I was bold and ordered the rognon de veau. Which is veal kidneys. I'm a sucker for offal. It has texture, flavour and always goes well with red wine. The mustard sauce had a nice kick and the potatoes were out of this world. Might've been roasted in duck fat? I can't seem to recall what my table mate had for her main. ( That's what you get when you wait too long to review! ) But I do remember that she finished it all. For dessert, we decided to go light and had melon carpaccio with strawberry in liquid form. It rounded out our dinner perfectly.
Many people say Parisiens are mean and rude, but this place is the contrary. Friendly and pleasant with a smile. In fact I'm finding it hard to find places where servers have bad attitudes. Times are tough and you can see that attitudes are changing for the better.
To walk off our dinner, we decided to walk to L'Arc de Triomph and enjoy the summer evening. Last minute, we decided to walk up it! 284 steps later... I felt like I was going to keel over. But the twilight view of La Defense all silhouetted in the pink sky and twinkling Eiffel Tower on the other side was a breathtaking view. All worth the huffing and puffing. Now lets try not to get all dizzy walking down those spiral steps! read more