|
One's Memorable, Another's Just Dull
PARIS - La Zygotissoire, a small rotisserie restaurant
at the edge of the trendy Bastille neighborhood, is
perhaps the city's best buy today. Where else can you
have a delicious, can't-finish-it-all three-course meal,
with coffee, for 80 francs? And the food is not just
O.K., it is memorable and inventive.
On the 80-franc ($13) menu, one might begin with a
chicken-wing salad, made up of a quartet of moist, beautifully
roasted chicken wings set on a bed of greens; move on
to a faux filet cooked on the rotisserie, and sauced
with shallots, then top it off with a dessert of homemade
ice cream or sorbet. A la carte starters include the
brochettes de legumes anchoiade, excellent brochettes
of zucchini, tomatoes and eggplant, with a delicately
flavored anchovy sauce and a small green salad alongside.
Good main courses include a filet of sea bass grilled
on the rotisserie, or a filet of bar, on a bed of Swiss
chard greens, served with a round gratin of the celery-like
whites of chard.
The wine list offers some offbeat surprises, such as
the rarely seen Ladoix, a worthy red from the northernmost
village of the Cote de Beaune, and almost always a bargain.
The restaurant shares ownership with the popular 12th
arrondissement bistro, Les Zygomates. - It has been
a long time since I had a meal in Paris as boring as
the one I had the other night at the trendy, and generally
good-buy,
Campagne et Provence: The welcome was as chilly as a
day in December, the food dull as dishwater and the
service amateurish.
Walk in with a reservation, suggest you might be seated
at that nice sunny table in the window and the head
greeter shrugs, suggesting that when he puts people
there they always ask to be seated elsewhere. (So when
the restaurant is half empty, why not let the customer
choose?) Everyone on the staff (including the chef)
seemed to want to be elsewhere.
A salad advertised as mesclun was nothing other than
a tangle of mixed greens - no herbs, no verve, a few
shavings of Parmesan and strips of ham. Equally unimpressive
was saffroned rabbit with a ''risotto'' of epeautre,
or ''poor man's wheat'' - a dish that sounded promising
but turned out to be something that might have come
from a packaged TV dinner.
Only the wine list - with Alain Brumont's robust 1994
Madiran Meinjarre - and the wholesome sourdough bread
from l'Epi Gaulois in the 14th arrondissement saved
the evening.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
La Zygotissoire, 101 Rue de Charonne, Paris 11.
Tel: 01-40-09-93-05; fax: 01-44-73-46-63.
Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday. Credit card: Visa.
80-franc menu. A la carte, 130 to 160 francs,
including service but not wine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Campagne et Provence, 25, Quai de la Tournelle, Paris
5; Tel: 01-43-54-05-17; fax: 01-43-29-74-93.
Closed Saturday lunch, Sunday, and Monday lunch. Credit
card: Visa.
120-franc lunch menu and 180-franc and 215-franc dinner
menus including service but not wine.
|
