neither: frenchie bar à vin, 75002

I finally got around to popping into Frenchie Bar à Vin the other day. I was meeting a friend of a friend (now just friend) called T who was passing through Paris. My somewhat perverse original idea was not to have a meal, but rather to patronise the new establishment in a manner appropriate to an archetypal wine bar, as it is popularly conceived: a meeting place, somewhere to pop in and have an informal splash.

A doomed effort, doomed from the get-go. I did initial research on wait times, something one doesn't do for the Archetypal Wine Bar In The Sky, and was informed that to guarantee no wait the best thing is to arrive smack at opening hour, 7pm. This was, for once, convenient for me, so I did. Upon arrival I joined the ranks of perhaps five other people, holding twelve seats between us. By the time T arrived, a few minutes late, several of us earlybirds were reading paperbacks, which activity, you can imagine, did nothing to create a convivial atmosphere.

There wasn't such an atmosphere the night I went, and I ruefully suspect there's slim chance of drumming one up in a place that ranks this insensibly high on tourists' must-visit lists, a place where your seat real estate is actively coveted by bespectacled native businessmen with pursed lips, holding full glasses like access passes, peeved at having to wait. As a wine bar, it's draggy. It was just lucky that T and I got along swimmingly. And that, despite the misnomer, Frenchie Bar à Vin still manages to be an enjoyable experience on its own terms, which is to say as a terrific small plates restaurant at 7pm sharp.

another glass of mexican wine

I have been seeing a lot of articles lately about a sudden wave of Mexican restaurants opening in Paris, a trend in which I have zero interest. Usually I would add some qualifier, about why my seemingly extreme view on an issue is not, in fact, so extreme. But to hell with it: not in my lifetime will it be possible to get what I consider real Mexican food in Paris, for a zillion reasons, ranging from non-availability of ingredients and kitchen expertise to the native population's total intolerance of even the mildest pique of spice. So I save my pesos for the cuisines of populations that have an actual cultural presence here: Lebanese, Algerian, Chinese, etc.

I can think of only two exceptions. One is my friends' place in the Marais, Candelaria, which serves a very tasty Mexican-like cuisine in a sadistically small room in front of the cocktail bar. (My interaction with the food usually extends no further than elbowing my way past it.) The other is Itacate, in the1èr. It's sort of the opposite of Candelaria in terms of ambition and sophistication, but the folks are very nice, and crucially it's right around the corner from a friend's cave; after tastings he and I often have recourse to a few inexpensive basically acceptable resto-ticket-redeemable tacos.

Additionally, as I remembered the other night with some friends of friends, they serve Mexican wine by the bottle, thereby offering an oenological experience that, while not advisable, it as least a real curiosity in these parts.

punchy: frenchie, 75002

As the NC and I left a cocktail party at Le Bal Café the other night, my friend Z, upon hearing we were meeting friends at thunderously overhyped 2ème restaurant Frenchie for dinner, warned us against ordering the ravioli. "It's like Chinese take-out," she said.

So we got the ravioli. The superfocused menu at Frenchie contains only two appetizers, not including an optional torchon de foie gras, and we were very hungry. Furthermore it didn't seem likely to be the same dish, considering Frenchie presents a market menu that changes nightly.

Later I found out Z was confused and had been talking about a different restaurant. The funny thing is, her description wasn't entirely off the mark. The ravioli we had at Frenchie was vaguely disappointing: oversauced, dissociative, layered with some uncharacteristically wan chair de torteaux. One dumpling doesn't stop the show, of course. I mention it here not as evidence against chef Gregory Marchand's celebrated skills - which were on fine display in almost all the other dishes that evening - but rather as an example of the kind of withering scrunity we're fairly or unfairly inclined to direct against any tiny bistro that, merely by doing things intelligently and with appreciable commercial panache, becomes an unbookable flaming hot destination table.