some sweetheart deal: au bon coin, 75018

Let me begin by relating a certain suspicion I have.

Have you ever wondered about all the interchangeably anonymous loser cafés hunched on even the most desolate, least-trafficked Parisian streetcorners? For every thronged Le Progrès or La Perle, there must be another thousand sad unseen cafés, replete with formica counters, tables the size of euro-coins, and surgically bright lighting that serves only to highlight a conspicuous and enduring lack of patrons. How do these joints afford their rents, which, if residential real estate is anything to go by, must be stratospheric?

I'm have no hard information on the subject, but I assume there's some combination of government subsidies and death-grip rent-control at play.* Au Bon Coin, a gem of a café on a quiet corner on the low-key side of Montmartre**, is emphatically not a loser establishment, but something tells me they either own their building, or have not seen rent increases since sometime around the end of the second guerre mondiale. The prices on their tasty, simple menu, and on their emminently quaffable, never-updated wine list all evince a kind of unhurried attitude towards making money or staying afloat. Many of the bottles are around 16eu.

practically our canteen: le petit vendome, 75002

A few posts ago while raving about Le Rubis I mentioned there were two terrific lunch places near my office in the 1er. Here's the other one:

Here are the owners, as pictured on the menu, which, on those rare occasions it changes, does so via white-out and Sharpie:

I imagine if there's ever any kind of succession they'll just white-out one of the heads and draw in the new owner. (Related anecdote: we had a good rapport with the previous rugged jolly sandwich maker here. One of my friends made out with him. He left without explanation one day, replaced by someone who looked very similar, only a little skinnier. Equally jolly. There is still a sandwich special named after the original dude.)