Barcelona these days seems overrun with euro-tourism. Unless you have insider knowledge finding a good place to eat is a tall order. This a proper restaurant surrounded these days by perhaps a 100 improper restaurants. How many times can paella be done badly you might wonder, but the answer is quite a lot. This is the real deal. See above.
Can Sole opened in 1903. There are framed photographs around the walls of more famous people who have eaten here: writers, artists, doctors, singers, basketball players you name it, all the Catalan cognoscenti. It is like Cafe Flor from Paris, but with better food for Barcelona. The great things is that it is still going and probably not changed that much since it was a bar for local fishermen.
I have a subjective affection for restaurants that are at basement-mezzanine level so your shoulder is on a par with the pavement outside – everyone else walking while you are sitting and taking a pause at a white linen tablcloth.
It is still family run and frequented by families who dominate over a few interloping tourists. It was a small miracle finding it and there are things on this menu we did not try but would another time, of course – the rice with sea urchin and scallop, fritters either with cod and pine nuts or Iberian ham and foie gras. You understand they do not mess around here. Paella is euros 25, with lobster euros 35. This is how it arrives:
You might also be persuaded to cod ‘Can Sole” baked in the oven and served with romesco sauce and potatoes and aoli. Or stuffed squid. Or what they refer to as the Great Cannelloni filled.with pork, veal, ceps, foe gras and a bechamel flavoured with more wild mushrooms.
For all that is going on around it, this is one reason why the gastronomy of Barcelona and its hospitality earned their reputation.
The mission of this blog – as the underline says – is to go randomly off track and find venues that still keep the old values going. Of being a part of their community. And I am in Via Guiseppe di Vagno. It is a quiet Monday. Everywhere is closed, except here. This is Mola de Bari, north of the masseria line in Puglia. Mola means mill but this the fishing port. The quay is being washed down. It is a bit John Steinbeck.
There is a clue on the central square: A statue to Dona Flor by Bruno Calvani, heroine of Nicolo Van Westerhout’s opera which many people regard as his masterpiece. Westerhout was born here. His handlebar moustache is part of the legend, even though he lived most of his life in Naples and died in poverty. He has the statue, and a street named after him. And the opera house. And a restaurant.
The current allegiance is more jazz than opera, but this is a good restaurant. It gets a run of 5/5 on TripAdviser. This is not Michelin country, it is bruschetta, olives and cornbread.
Tradition is something to be appreciated in Italian restaurants. The old stuff. The tested. Granny’s artichokes, picked so young they have no choke, still sharp and rough in their pickle.
Naturally there is pasta with shellfish – this is a fishing town – and the mill for the flour for the pasta is from here too. It is accompanied by clams, squid, red prawn, langoustine, octopus, and of course tomato. Of course, both dishes work magically, as if, as probably they are, hand me downs for many decades, validated every lunch time by locals.
Our waiter who has taken an interest in us, wants us to go off piste – a bit modern. Try the tempura of prawn with humus. Ummm. Turns out to be a brilliant combination. Fresh prawns, very, fresh, still hot to touch inside the crumb, on a luxurious humous that is just sauce here.
Pretty good, so good in fact that we opt for another prawn dish. The waiter upgrades the wine without being asked.
Not the Gallipoli red prawns – that is just grilled prawns really – but the prawns here are steamed in grappa with a touch of chilli – an Italian piquancy not an America chilli or a Bangladesh curry whammy, just flecks and some slivers of roast potato. Scampi and chips by another name, by another country, by another culture, a bay leaf for colour. Top.
We ate on the street. Inside is all trattoria framed photos and homages to jazz, an enthusiasm from chef Leonardo Amoruso which might be a stage name or just his mother’s prophetic inspiration.
A cutting from La Stampa calls the restaurant ‘atmospheric’. ‘The greatest expression of regional cuisine’. I am not arguing.
Dona Flor herself is more of a mystery, she has another reincarnation – both as a red wine from Portugal but also as one of Brazil’s most successful films from the book by Jorge Amado – a woman whose husband comes back from the dead to ravish her – a celebration of love, sex, food, music and all things that can make a person happy. That is more like it. You can find Dona herself in her older version on YouTube which is more melodramatic…
TOUR buses turn left out of Corfu Airport. If you turn right and wriggle through a few side streets, you reach the harbour. Turn right again and you will find gardens filled with tavernas leading up to the windmill on the dockside. This is where Corfoits go out to eat, to do the passeggiata, to have a swim, to take the air.
I would not trust a TripAdviser review here. Either they are suspiciously good, or suspiciously bad. Now there are some truly awful restaurants on Corfu, and some that are just truly awful for a few weeks after granny goes back to Athens but Ektoras is not one of them, although it is rated 225 out of 237 restaurants in Corfu town on TA. Bad algorythmn.
If they served their spaghetti with shrimp in New York then they might rate 225 out of 23,700 restaurants, might get a book deal, might get a proper review on the Eater and be booked up six months ahead.
Ektoras is a granma, pop and son business. It may be no better nor worse than than any of the other dozen or so tavernas side by side in the gardens. The Greek salad was textbook, ie with onion, ie with green pepper, the moussaka definitive.
Some of the poor reviews – which go back 12 years – suggest the chicken and chips were not up to snuff, but if you are ordering chicken and chips then probably you should not be writing restaurant reviews on TA. Another one says it was slow, but this is Corfu not Macdonaldsland. These monstrous libels (and others) hang around on Uncle Internet. TA seems unable to weed out the obvious slander. The only real people who write over-the-top malicious reviews on TA – and who usually only do it once in a blue moon – are rival businesses or people with an axe to grind.
For the record spaghetti with shrimps was 17¢, the salad was 8¢, the bread (not stale and plenty of it, as it was mentioned) was 2¢ = lunch for two ¢27. The picture of the spaghetti with shrimps speaks for itself.
THE difference, the revolutionary difference here even, is that the kitchen at Coombeshead Farm is embedded into the farming routines. There is a large wooden table on to which the dishes appear as and when, yes organized to time with dinner or lunch but essentially just an extension of the working day. It is a modus that stretches the idea of what is a restaurant anyway. One perhaps without theatrics or tablecloths.
This is no Mrs Farmer Giles lobbing an extra potato on to the roast for a few paying guests or rummaging around to see if the chickens might have laid extra for the visitors. This is not AI, but a gastronomic intelligence applied to the countryside. There is an intellectual dialogue going on here that is transforming the valley, a vision of what farming might be, could be, should be…old Farmer Giles might fall out of bed at some of what is going on, but that is no bad thing in my view. In fact it is a very good thing.
Coombeshead hunkers down under the lip of Bodmin Moor, the old dairy for Treslake Manor that can date itself back to Doomsday, possibly because it was so remote, even before that. Progressively over the last decade the farm has become a focal point of regeneration in the valley with hives for the local (obviously) black bees, new orchards, a bakery for which they mill their own flour, a churn to turn clotted cream into butter. The tip of this point is the restaurant kitchen itself, charged with creating a menu from what is around, changing from day to day, like the seasons. I have read a few reviews, most of which were somewhat premature in the sense that Coombeshead has evolved from chef’s table, to a shop, to an embryonic drinks brand, to a small bakery, to the full blown restaurant with a few rooms, to what it is now
It does not perform like a hotel or conventional restaurant, in fact it is quite impersonal, almost hospitality in abstract. Before you reach the dining room there are missives on the email on how to get there (not easy) and in the bedroom there are five pages of FAQs about what is going on, anything you want just head to the kitchen because there is always someone in the kitchen, there is always something to do in the kitchen. The office is only manned on Wednesdays because we are all busy, on the farm, Ben is baking the bread, Thoby is running around making sure everything is working ok, Rose is in the kitchen, Ivo is making the pies, Hannah and Lottie are on the telephone, all very personable. And when you sit down to eat, it may well be Rose, the chef, who brings out the dinner. Running a kitchen on this basis takes out a whole lot of catering stress. Nobody is going to ask you if everything is all right, because it is what it is, all right?
One woman, I read, complained that all she got for her main course (out of five) was a thin pork chop. No potatoes. But that is the point, that is the purpose before the pleasure. This is what your dinner is supposed to be, be aware. It is the exactly the same as Michel Guerard and the other movers and shakers of the once nouvelle cuisine who commanded that sauce should be served underneath the main event, not swamping and overwhelming. Know what you are eating. Appreciate. Oh, and by the way, madame, it is actually quite a rare, specific pork chop, even without its apple sauce.
Actually this all started with the pigs. There is in the farmhouse a copy of the second edition of Jane Grigson’s French Pork and Charcuturie originally published in 1967 but super relevant. Here we are raising Middle Whites and also a small herd of Mangalitzas who look when they are small like so many teddy bears. They are a slow growing Serbian Hungarian cross that was almost extinct in the 1960s but have been championed in Austria by Christoph Wiesener. The interesting thing about the Mangalitza is that if allowed to mature to 24 months and beyond, their fat becomes, or did, so prized they started a cosmetic industry and were traded on the Viennese stock Exchange. The meat has more aminio acids than mackerel. Not the kind of benefits historically appreciated by large scale farmers. The Mangalitzas are an explicit statement that there can be more to farming pigs than what is sold as Danepak.
More down at home the farm has also pioneered ciders and its own spirits. Devon is currently awash with more gin than in the Victorian age – you can organize your own case and design not so far away across the border at Dartington – but the sloe gin left out to try in the rooms here illustrates the same brilliant perception that only comes with the knowledge of running a kitchen where such things really matter. Professional. Like nearly everything here, the sense of design and taste seem almost second nature and revolve around having a kitchen that knows what it is doing…which it does. And it takes this knowledge back down to the roots of the food, so the wheat is milled here for the bakery in small batches, the cream is churned for butter. There is only one word for it gastronomically speaking, exciting.
Of course none of this actually dropped out of the sky like some ET style ufo, but rather like Wrexham football club, has been the vision of a pair of gastro heavyweights in Tom Adams who set up Pitt Cue in London and April Bloomfield, the English star of New York, who wears her Michelin stars like so much jewellery these days and who still visits, but if she was not here when I was I can report that the team did her proud. Just saying.
The dinner was completely devoid of clichés, allowing the produce to speak, a small cut of exemplary pork terrine served with a courgette piccalilli, the asparagus, even though it is in season, was lightly pickled, served with ricotta and crushed hazelnuts. I should mention the bread and the butter, which are worth the price of admission alone.
The main course was slow cooked shoulder of Romney Marsh lamb, decorated with kale and breadcrumbs, sauced with cream of nettles, so there was a tinge of iodine there, a reminder that this breed of lamb is usually a salt marsh grazer, even if here we are higher up on the moor but not that far from either coast either. The salad, don’t miss this point, is a cup with individual leaves laid one on top of the other, so you notice the difference, you eat each leaf one at a time as it were, not an assemblage in a bowl.
And then we end with this triumphant little rhubarb and fromage frais with crumbs and more hazelnuts and that is it…that is the point. You have arrived.
In a parallel universe I would like to sit our minister for environment, food and rural affairs, currently madame Therese Coffey, although possibly not Therese Coffey probably, down in the yard to take on board what is going on. Maybe one or two of the more clever chaps in the ministry could dig out their Wellington boots and put the Labrador in the back of the Qashqai and book themselves in for an education. This is the future. This is what the countryside should be up to. This is how to reclaim it. Small is good. Maybe grab a copy of George Monbiot’s Regenesis to read on the way down. Small is beautiful. Sixty six acres may sound a lot to us townies but it is small potatoes in farming terms these days. But IT IS BIG ENOUGH.
Coombeshead is not, I should point out, on the scale of one of those millionaire funded foodie destination quasi farm shops like a Daylesford or Roth At Bruton. This is more on the scale of ordinary people in the vein of Sally Rooney. And by the way, Therese Coffey, it was not funded by the banks, a point you might appreciate as a former Mars financial controller, but a trickle down cooperative called Folk2Folk…which I might suggest to you is one of the core problems in case, Therese, you are reading this.
I should say also, for the record, that I am not writing this as some elitist culinary fantasy, or even because these are my distant cousins or because I am hoping to blag a freebie (it costs more to travel down from London, than to stay) but I have some skin in this game. Maybe 30 years ago or so Dave Ashen who was then the head of the catering college at Plymouth called me to say he had come across something special, a local pig farmer had cross bred some sows with a boar from eastern Europe. The results he said rightly were stunning. We managed to rope in John Torode who was then setting up Bluebird, yes he now of Masterchef fame. John was great. He took one pig in the first week, two in the second but on the third the farmer turned up with 10 more and needed an order for the rest of the summer. Even with a restaurant the size of Bluebird that was more than he could handle. In truth we were too late. The pigs were deemed too fat, too different to enter the usual supply chain. The farm went bust before we could find anymore customers. It is a memory I keep not least for what sadly happened to the people involved. This is what might have been. Maybe.
On a more positive vein, I have met with this kind of culinary zeal before, with Raymond Blanc when he wanted to convert his walled garden at the Manoire into a vegetable potager, with Alastair Little when he wanted to change the menu everyday in Soho. Steering the helm of a kitchen like this is not straightforward, but I don’t mind mentioning Rosie Maxwell in that context, or her mentors in Tom and April. I was right before anybody else on those other two, so I think I am on the money again here.
More importantly, Coombeshead is a magnificent example of the first steps in what could be a rural regeneration, just, please, don’t treat it like it is just a restaurant, Mrs Giles would not like that…Are you listening Therese?
Thanks also to Ryan in the garden, Ethan and Craig in the kitchen, and Hope and Jake in the bakery.
EVERY eaterie in Bologna seems to boast that it serves the best, the very best, the top top top tortellini en brodo, almost commodifying this city wonderful culinary history. And I am not arguing, but it is curious that the chicken for this brodo does not seem to make the same impact on the menus. There is an imbalance here. I saw one offer of chicken terrine with salsa verde, and a few chicken salads, but not really enough to explain the mystery of where the rest of the chicken has gone. Plus in a conversation, in my admittedly wayward Italian, at the awesomely stocked Simoni my request as to if there might not be a pork bone or an offcut to support my own brodo was met with bewilderment. Why? (Well that is how I do it, but I am not arguing here either, the great Ada Boni says just use the whole chicken). The salumeria has its own imbalance too – a lot of back legs and bottoms, but little evidence of what happens to the rest of the animal. No faggoterini here, no broth shops either. And despite quite a few pretty girls rolling out the fresh pasta in shop windows for the tortellini et al, not much evidence of any cookery of the cotto at all.
The Traviata is listed as the 151st best restaurant in Bologna by TripAdviser. That is fine by me. I aspire to be the 151st writer/critic/blogger if anyone wants to open a TA for writers/critics/bloggers. The osteria has been in the same family since 1928. “Eating well is important” says the legend on the website, a pretty obvious thought in Bologna.
From the main square, the lyrics to John Lennon’s Imagine are strewn in neon across the via d’azeglio. When you reach the end, when you are not the only one, carry on for another block and then take a right. (There is a little small plates gastronomia on the corner called the Emporio, if you are early, eating here is puctual 7.30 for 8. On fair days and holidays, everywhere gets booked up, be advised).
The room off the arcade, like a lot of the city, is a converted 17th century warehouse/shopfront with tall ceilings, plenty of room, white walls, white ceilings, white tablecloths, wooden chairs covered with straw like Chianti bottles, young staff.
The menu just cuts to the chase really, this is Bologna in abstract if you will, a city distileld in a few plates.
Here is the bresaola, cut thin, a little salad of mache aka lamb’s lettuce, segments of blood orange, oil a fiery Tuscan, fenel was advertsied which might have been good but we are splitting hairs.
And then we have it. THE TAGLIATELLE BOLOGNA. The ragu is cooked towards the dry side, the pasta – and this is a pasta taverna par excellence – if you can call it voluptuous, then it is voluptuous, long and silken. Parmesan is offered grated to the side but not totally necessary when everything else blends so well, all 300 years and more of heritage…
And then, as if this was not sufficient, we have a suckling pig, on the menu at a mere 17 euros, roasted so the skin crackles while the meat is sweet and fatty, and about as good a rendition as you might find in many more expensive variations… which also sort of gets round the what-to-do-with-the-rest-of-the-pig problem, in one swoop…and is served just like that unadorned, barring the sprig of rosemary
And in similar, deliberate, singular style we get a vegetable of the day, the steamed puntarella, on a plate, on its own, on the side…
Elsewhere we had the deep fried courgette flowers and… the tortellini only here, only today, they were stuffed with Gorgonzola and served with Parmesan cream.
Thery are also very proud of the mascaparone in their desserts. The bill was 36 euros for two including three glasses of wine. Closed on Sunday. If you go for lunch, it is directly, a block in fromt of the Majani chocolate factory, which is another essay in bolo-gastro-domina, dating back to 1796.
THOMAS Rule was committed to an asylum after murdering his wife and daughter, or so says Wikipedia, unusually, as an unattributed factoid. His oyster bar is first mentioned in 1798 and was taken over by his son or grandson Benjamin who married Hannah Green whose family came, propitiously, from the oyster estuary at Denge on the Blackwater in Essex. By 1828 he agreed a rent of £5/13s/9d. At the time Maiden Lane was a cut through from the market garden of Covent Garden to the abbey at Westminster and was haunt for all the traders, as it would be for notables such as Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray and later for the soon to be Edward VII who entertained his mistress Lily Langtry. Maiden Lane has its own history beyond its obvious links to the nearby theatres. Turner’s father’s babershop was a neighbour, the first offices of the nascent British Communist Party was here. And Europe’s first recording studio opened in 1898. All this weight of history is framed across the walls of the old building, as each generation since then has left its imprimatur in oils, graphics, cartoons, caricatures to the point that it is now so crowded there is hardly any room left for any generation X, Z or Y.
Over the years it has been all things to all people from Downton Abbey – this is where Michael takes Edith to discuss the magazine; there is an appearance in James Bond’s Spectre. The poet John Betjman led a campaign to save the old building from developers but that has not stopped other brands moving in and hunkering around the old lady as if hoping to share its allure, although how many of the mob handed tourists that rejoice in the local retail is moot.
Rules was one of very few restaurants that stayed open through the Blitz circumventing strict rationing laws by its contacts with the country estates, hence the jugged hare, the game that still feature on the menu. Lunch was £5.
These days the oysters are no longer from Essex, but from Jersey and Rossmore. Roast beef is £45 a head, minimum two people, so £90. For wine there is a leaning towards the Rhone.
All of which perhaps puts it beyond criticism. And if you stay with the pies and the traditional puddings, it remains there. Plus the starters are mainly ingredient led icons like Devon smoked eel, Dorset crab, smoked salmon from Lodge on the Hebrides, all impeccably sourced.
The chicken and mushroom and leek pie is dainty in its little paper casing, and a crumble of apple and blackcurrants served, of course with a salver of English custard, are both superb echoes of another era.
Other shoves towards modernity are not so accomplished. Sops to fashions like sourdough instead of toast seem rather gauche both in conception and execution. The lauded grouse succumbed to a laissez faire bowing down to the laws of mass tourism and the potted shrimp are now just potted mousse. You are forewarned. Enjoy the history. Btw…the glorious old bar takes walk ins, if you have not booked weeks ahead.
IF you have a restaurant in a prime spot on the harbour, the nightly passeggiata is something of a two edged sword. It brings crowds, but it also locks out many people as the traffic jam encircles the inner city and parking spaces, like some medieval siege. Go for lunch, at least in August, time of the ferragusta.
Al Gambero is old school. The last update I can find on its Facebook page is 2015. It is set near the old fishmongers who huddle these days surrounded by yachstville, coffeeville, buckets and spades, gelateria. ceramic etc. The centre is closed off, just for walking up and down. Al Gambero is for sitting down.
The menu is blue plastic printed, unchanging, except there is an ice tray of the day’s catch. The opening item is a raw fish starter, sashimi style, I might say, but actually it is also Salento bravura. We know our fish well enough to be doing this. This is not a kitchen that needs to be showing off. The room is full of old photographs of boats and patrons, a few wine bottles and a ceiling that looks like a ship’s gallery with wooden rafters, and a view on the marina, half closed today because, well we don’t want any distractions, thank you.
Let us demonstrate the point with this very old school antipasti – a plate to share of freshly breaded and fried squid, sitting on a thin slice of swordfish marinated in oil and lemon, a few prawns and cuttlefish rings scattered about, some rocket plus a gratin of mussels which is what grown up kitchens can do with mussels when the children are still doing moules frites.
The pasta with vongole is exemplary, but look at this specialty, what looks like a few tomatoes and mussels on pasta in the photograph is a mirage. The sauce is actually thinly cut squid, prawns, octopus clams, more swordfish, half the Ionian seabed mixed with tomatoes. A piscine Bolognese, you could say.
Local wine is from here. Right here. This is a wine region bordering the Ionian. The Apenine wine route they call it further east, known mostly to southern Italians, the Primitivo capital is Manduria, 30 minutes north. Everyone here knows exactly why they are here, staff and customers alike. And proud of it, a junction box that connects on the one side the ocean and on the other the people who live beside it.
The Italian solution, following the table next to us, is to order one of the starters each and to share them out, then a pasta, then a fish and something with cream and sponge that excited everyone greatly. Our bill for two was £40.
English speakers do not usually stray down here to Porto Cesareo, between Gallipoli and Taranto, which is a bit of a relief. Gambero is what I suspect many Italians would call a good restaurant. TripAdviser has it as the 53rd best restaurant in the port. Do not follow that advice. Number one is a hotel. Number two is a burger place. Number three is a mojito bar. Get with the programme, guys. It does not get much better than this. The pictures at least show the skill and brilliance of the pastas and vibrancy of all things fishy.
Caterina on FaceBook says: “Everything is very good. Fresh and tasty fish. Welcoming place and kind staff and attentive to customer’s needs. Highly recommended.”
Ristorante al Gambero , piazza Nazario Sauro n° 18, Porto Cesareo, Italy +39 0833 569123
AND so…Corfu has a decent restaurant, at last. Not in the north, the kensington by sea, where you might expect, but in the south, which you might deem more Dusseldorfia.
Take the road south on the west coast, almost to Lefkimmi, at the sign for Marathais keep taking the right hand slip roads until you reach the beach. There is a solitary red house on the hillside by way of a beacon. Below it, in among the dunes, like a Spanish chiringuito, is a white wood terrace that used to be Rick’s that used to be another cliche but now we have a chef. There is no phone, no web site, but Google maps has a few mentions of the new regime already and the season has barely started.
You might think it would be blindingly obvious that an island surrounded by fishing boats might have worked out that you can do more than grill the catch of the day. But here carpaccio is radical – not ceviche which would be a cure but closer to sashimi, thinly sliced with coriander, pepper and spring onion.
These sardines have been butterflied, boned, turned on themselves and then grilled with oil and lemon to the side:
And from the ice cabinet we have prawns and mackerel:
And anything that does not go the to the charcoal goes into one of two casseroles in cast iron, the one with white wine wine, garlic and potatoes, the other tomatioes and peppers…
And there are other things like excellent aubergine, a salad of split peas, sourdough bread…
And even even chips, because after all if there is one thing Corfu does well, it is chips. And other elements – the sandy beach, the calm sea, the headland that keeps out any afternoon winds, the local wine, and that increasingly hard pressed sense of hospitality are all extra pluses. Other venues, some of which I have written about here before, serve the tradional dishes well enough, but they are a bit of an old oompah band, but this kitchen has another tune…excellent little place.
WALK down this mews in downtown, or north main street, would you believe, you might spot the little bull sculpture over the green door. And you might think this is a tanners, a speakeasy, some kind of smelting yard or even a fashion shop. If you are here, you are supposed to know…The Bull is nothing if not discreet. Inside is black walls, dark, barring a few spots and chandeliers and a grand piano that has been converted into a bar. There are booths if you want even more anonymity. The web site does not offer any address or menu or anything at all, just a phone number.
It is a short menu. but we are here for one thing…the steak, listed as table steak at $115, in fact sold by the ounce depending what is in the kitchen. There is a ladies fillet for $52. We order a tomahawk on the bone weighing in at 48 ounches, enough for three. That is 1360 grams by Europeans standards. Served plain, as it is, off the grill:
The lighting does not do it justice, but for the record:
Albeit the dinner plate might give you an idea of proportions:
It comes with an array of vegetables that have already been prepared so everything pivots on how long to cook the steak…we opted for rare with the sweet fat barely cooked through (fine by me). You don’t get steak like this in Europe. This was Wisconsin, prairie grass raised, they do not defer to Chicago here, it is a Kansas strip, should you ask.
In the event I plan to go vegan, I will be passing here for a final steak.
Other elements are deep grained American hospitality like the gargantuan four tier chocolate cake and the creme caramel that comes on a soup plate. Plenty of cream in the chowder. Those vegetables at $10 a go – rare enough around here – are swift to arrive..here is a mushrooms bourguignonne:
ONE for you oenophiles. If you are in Montparnasse, one of those junction boxes that links much of southern Paris but otherwise its artistic legacy as a meeting place of inspired and penniless artists has given way to urban sprawl and oppression – the original name was mount parnassus after the Greek poets. Wine pilgrims come here.
The wine list is emphatic and even if your pockets are not deep enough for the Hermitage ’91 La Chapelle at 600 euros or even the four variations on Morgon in an encyclopaedia put together by Pierre Vila Palleja, formerly of Ritz, Lasserre, Crillon etc that runs to 750+ examples of the finest in French viticulture, there are wines of the day by the glass (upwards of 10 euros) which are typically convincing to the notion that the French keep the best things to themselves.
The dining rooms is in the railway car by the station tradition of the capital, well schooled by a team who know where are they are coming from. Many people seem to come for steaks (well curated meats) and chips but there are more interesting old school dishes which marry even better with the wines like the bouef bourguignonne marinated for 24 hours for around 20 euros. Plus a few modern touches like this marinated salmon with seasonal vegetables.
To finish, the cafe gourmand amounts to an espresso with a small glass of chocolate cream, another of rice pudding and a slice…a riposte against gentrification of latte culture, old school.
101greatrestaurants.com 