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La Cagouille:
Rekindling a Friendship with an Old Favorite
PARIS – Old restaurants often become like old
friends. We don’t see them for years, and then
when we are reacquainted again, we ask ourselves why
we waited so long between encounters.
The popular fish restaurant La Cagouille is a lot like
that. I guess I know why I stopped going about six years
back. Prices seemed steep, the décor got me down,
and as fresh as the fish and shellfish were, the plainness
of the presentation just did not entice me to return.
A few weeks ago, looking around for a spot for Sunday
lunch, I decided to give La Cagouille – which
means snail in the dialect of the Charente region of
France – another taste. Am I glad I did. I have
been back again and again, and even though many of the
old problems – mainly the lackluster décor
and the service without personality – continue,
I found new life and energy in the food and the wine
list.
Owner Gérard Allemandou was there that day,
and offered us the creamiest, most buttery baby scallops – pétoncles – from
the Oléron, miniature shellfish with brilliant
mahogany-toned shells and a deep, haunting flavor. The
treasures were simply steamed open and served as is.
Another standard starter-teaser here is a giant bowl
of perfectly steamed, buttery baby clams, tossed in
a bit of salty butter just to please the palate even
more.
If a restaurant can serve a cooked dish better and
cheaper than I can do at home, I’ll go for it.
That’s the case with the whole grilled sea bas – bar – ticketed
at 35 euros and served roasted to perfection.
If your palate is looking for something a bit more
complicated, try the starter salad of green beans, fava
beans, pine nut and basil, a dish I quickly added to
my home repertoire, making sure the pine nuts are fresh
and freshly toasted, which they were not at La Cagouille.
An equally good salad starter is their salad of lamb’s
lettuce (mache), warm morue (salt cod), red peppers
and bacon: This is salad as a meal, copious, well-seasoned,
and as meaty as can be.
I could return once a week just to sample their ample
main course preparation of skate – raie – served
with an enriching sauce gribiche. Here the gribiche – rather
than the usual glorified mayonnaise – appeared
as a main player, with cubes of carrots, potatoes, turnips,
lots of cucumbers, capers, chive and chopped hard-cooked
eggs, and a healthy dose of vinegar.
On the same visit, we reeled with pleasure over the
well-priced (30 euros) Macon-Villages, the 100% Chardonnay
Comte Lafon Macon Milly-Lamartine 2000, a stony, mineral-rich
delight that one could imagine sampling each day at
lunch with a different fish offering.
The season is nearly over, but if you hurry you can
still sample their excellent scallop preparation, giant
sea scallops seared to perfection, the quick heat enhancing
and intensifying the flavor of shellfish itself. Deglazed
with a touch of balsamic vinegar and showered with a
garden full of minced chives, it was a dish to bring
delight to the eyes as well as the palate.
On a later visit, we were no less impressed with the
food and wine, but I just wish the wait staff could
go to smile school. When you have such great food to
serve, how can you be so blasé about it?
At any rate, the wine of the week was Dauvissat’s
Chablis 1er cru La Forest 2000, a 48- euro wine that
offers a touch of smoke, of flinty, is highly concentrated
and well structured. Drink it when you can!
La Cagouille
10/12 Place Brancusi
Paris 14
Telephone: 01 43 22 09 01
Fax: 01 45 38 57 29
Email: la-cagouille@wanadoo.fr
Internet : www.la-cagouille.fr
Open daily. Credit card: Visa. Menus at 23 and
38 euros, including service but not wine. A la carte,
40 to 60 euros, including service but not wine.
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