duck soup: dans les landes, 75005

When friends visit me in Paris, I seem to always get seized with self-consciousness on the final night of their stay, upon realizing that my grand tour of Paris - this city I adore, despite my complaints - has amounted to just so many excellent meals at fine restaurants. I like restaurants a lot, of course. The time I spent working / basically living in them has instilled in me an unshakeable affection for their infinitely varied dynamics. But mealtimes, at bottom, are largely routinized affairs: one eats and speaks and listens and drinks and oohs and ahs and one departs, often feeling quite sleepy.

For my friends D and P's final night, I felt like making at least some gesture towards having more than a dinner together. Or less than a dinner together, it didn't matter - just something a little unusual. I mentioned my quandary to another friend earlier that day, and she suggested Le Renard, a ridiculous cabaret-karaoke dinner fiasco near the Centre Pompidou, in which "restaurant" I had once been obliged to feign illness in order to avoid a meal of overpriced nightclub fare. To hell with it, I replied to her. We'll just find another terrific restaurant.

I booked us a large table last minute at Dans Les Landes, chef Julien Duboué's recently opened southwestern-French tapas place on the native side of the 5ème, thinking that perhaps an enjoyable light meal on a terrace in an informal environment with friends passing through might encourage the night onwards to other, non-gastronomic adventures.

The restaurant was indeed terrific. But I had miscalculated in a number of key ways.