I'm increasingly convinced that, for Parisian restaurateurs, the greatest challenge is not to find the best location or to source the best ingredients or to stock the best wines, but simply to inspire a cheery staff. Even a reliably polite staff is an achievement in this city. There's a very simple in-built societal reason for this, having to do with the disproportionately enormous costs of hiring and firing people in France. When French service staff, enduring the punishing stress that typifies restaurant work, behave as though they own the place, it's because, in effect, they do. Getting rid of a bad egg involves painful negotiations that can end with the employer paying two years' worth of the ex-employee's salary, a cost few restaurants can afford.
Philou, a winningly sharp, modern bistro tucked just off the Canal Saint Martin in the 10ème, has been garnering beaming reviews from all corners since it opened this past August, and while all the other criteria for success are certainly in place - well-priced natural wines, a solid market menu, the nearby canal - it was the engaged, reactive service that was the runaway highlight of a recent meal there.
To wit: a party of foppy Anglophones strides in, takes an eternity to order, and Linda, the superinformed and apparently telepathic server, intuits correctly that the delay is not that of bumbling tourists, but rather that of someone who worked in restauration who is simply jazzed to be there and geeking about the wine list to his friends.
