One thing that really irks me is a so called trendy restaurant that's crawled its way up from the primeval sludge, and made its way into all the guides and magazines, the collective dining public's mind, and somehow, despite the fact that they were famous pretty much only in the 80's, because Jean Paul Gauthier went there once or twice, and because during fashion week it's filled with noisy, stupidly dressed American fashion press people , they still retain some sort of authenticity.
It went like this: It was Saturday night and I had no idea where to go, but a strange hankering for Argentinian meat or ceviche. I called Anahi: "We've only got space in the back room" (ie for the little people). Ok fine. I'm hungry. We arrive. Restaurant empty. We are relegated to the back room while the Argentine lady owning roams around the front room, preening herself for the real guests (who, by the way, take two hours to come).
The first round comes: decent, although tiny empanadas , guacamole, a little too smooth (think baby food) and lacking a bit of spice, but with great homemade bread, decent ceviche . We order our meats, told it comes with green salad. Everything comes with polenta instead.
"Can we have the green salads we were promised?" I say to Argentinian owner lady and fashion ambassador. "No it comes with polenta". Me: "We were told it comes with green salad". Her: "You'd like extra green salad". Me:"No, I'd like what we were promised, green salad". Her: "OK, sorry for the waiter , he never works in the restaurant, only on Thursdays". Okkkk......The kicker was when she took away a small bottle of Pago juice (20cl=8€!! , 85 cents in the local Monoprix!) that was only half empty, and spirited it away to the kitchen. When told , she said sorry, disappeared into the kitchen again, and was seen bending down to get the juice bottle - yes yes yes , at just about poubelle height. I could go on and on: the basil/tomato sauce on the brochettes was forgotten, no sugar offered with coffee, etc etc
I was fortunate my company was so charming.
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5 comments:
I was sceptical and didn't know if I really wanted to try this one. Now I know .
I love it when a place gets BLASTED.
Sounds like you had fun! Hope the second part of the evening was more "interesting"! I went for the first time to Violon d'Ingres and it was excellent.
How can anyone who writes a blog be considered one of the little people?
On the contrary , Simon, I'd consider MOST people writing blogs nowadays the little people
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