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.

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.

obligatory admiring post about: spring buvette, 75001

No, I haven't been to the restaurant upstairs. The friendly American couple (C and his wife E) I met outside informed me there was a three-month wait for reservations. This would be welcome news for liver transplants or space tourism; for a meal I have to profess I consider it a kind of insanity.*

Me and C. 

So it will come as welcome news that at 21h on a Saturday night in autumn, when my chef friend P and I left after sharing a delightful impromptu light meal with C and E, Spring Buvette still exuded a kind of prayerful, exclusive-hotel-lobby calm. Candles didn't flicker, wine didn't spill, and communal tables - which I'd expected to be kind of trough-like and lively - were still mostly empty.

So, yeah. You can get a table, and the staff - uniformly bilingual - are all pretty awesome. Part of me suspects that Daniel Rose's real secret to success - beyond the market menu, culinary ingenuity, etc. - is his fidelity to American customer service, which in Paris is considerably more scarce than great cuisine.

There are other Americanisms visible in Buvette's presentation. The big wine glasses are a treat**. The rear wall of half the restaurant is lined not with a standing bar but with two chairs and a teensy table that add significantly to the aforementioned hotel-feel. Also, it might have just been that night, but the place was chock full of Americans. I feel this might be due to the general appeal Rose's story has for American bloggers and American press in general. Chicago chef conquers Paris culinary scene! It's a kind of expat triumphalism, rendered all the more hysterical for the decades Americans have spent in quaking awe of French cuisine.

But: the wine, the wine, the wine. It's why I popped by that night, and why I'll invariably be back shortly after I receive my next paycheck. The Buvette list is absolutely crammed with serious grand-slam wines. So much so that I'm compelled to break my unofficial rule of only raving about one wine per post.