After lunch at the pizza place, we went back to the apartment and took it easy for awhile. We made a dinner reservation at Frenchie. By pure luck we managed to get in even though there was supposed to be a month-long waiting list.
When we were ready to head out again, it was cocktail hour. That meant that the outdoor cafés along Rue Montorgueil would be filling up with people enjoying snacks, refreshments, and people-watching. We’d soon be among them.
We got changed, locked the door, and went down the narrow, winding little staircase to lobby number one. We crossed the courtyard, walked through lobby number two, then out the big iron-and-glass front door. Then we walked half a block down our street to get to Rue Montorgueil. Sure enough – lots of people were out and about.
We picked one of the cafes and grabbed a table. My beautiful, demure, and thirsty better half ordered a glass of wine and I ordered a draft beer. Most of the places here sell a draft beer I like called “1664.” Kronenbourg makes it in Germany. They named it for the year the brewery was founded. It ought to be pretty good – they’ve been making it long enough, eh?
To order a beer, I usually say something like, “une pression, s’il vous plait,” (“a draft beer, please”). Then the server will name the kinds they have on tap, and I’ll indicate the one I want. The reason I order it this way is because “1664” is a mouthful in french: “meel-seece-sohn-soiss-ahnt-kaht.” And if I mess up it up when I’m saying it, who knows what I’d end up with?
We settled in among the crowd and watched the show passing by. The café was busy. We were all packed in pretty tightly, which is odd for us, but normal for people who live here. They’re used to it because everything is small, and space is always limited. Even though we were packed in like sardines, it was OK because people here are respectful of other peoples’ space.
Pretty soon we struck up a conversation with a couple of guys sitting next to us. They spoke english. One of them spoke excellent english because he was originally from Chicago. He had come to Paris for a vacation 20-something years ago, and he never went back.
We had an entertaining conversation about all kinds of things. They told us this neighborhood was the best area for seeing what Paris is really like. In fact, they said, there’s a story about the time Queen Elizabeth came to Paris for a royal visit. She asked to be taken to where she could experience the “real” Paris. They brought her here.
The subject of dinner came up, and when we mentioned that we had a reservation at “Frenchie,” their eyes lit up. They hadn’t been there yet only because of the three-month long waiting list to get in. They flipped when we told them we’d just called to get the reservation that afternoon.
Eventually it was time to go, so we had to say “au revoir” to our new friends. We were going to go straight from the café to the restaurant, and it was approaching “vingt heures,” or 8:00 PM.
Frenchie
The restaurant was a five-minute walk from where we were. When we arrived, we were greeted by a nice young lady. She spoke french, but she also spoke english with a British accent. The chef/owner studied cooking under Jamie Oliver. (I remember watching his television show, “The Naked Chef”). The chef/owner here is French. He worked in England for Jamie Oliver, where they called him “Frenchie.” Hence the name of this restaurant.
Inside, the décor was very relaxing. Lots of dark woods and candles. Not at all pretentious, like what one might expect from a popular Parisian restaurant. Everyone inside was very nice, too, and since most of the servers spoke english as well as french, understanding the evening’s specials and ordering was really easy.
We ordered a bottle of vino and for the starter we ordered fois gras to share. Hey, this might be the fanciest restaurant we’ll ever go to in our lives. We might as well not hold back too much, eh? Besides, after trying to teach those girls how to say “fois gras” last night, I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
The fois gras showed up, and it was amazing. There was a good-looking chunk of fois gras served with a slice of peach, some sauce, and other stuff I didn’t recognize. It was a very nice presentation, so I took a picture of it. I don’t love taking pictures of food in restaurants, but I didn’t feel too bad about doing it in here. Everyone was doing it! It’s the only restaurant we’ve ever been in where little flashes were going off all over the room the whole time.
For my main course, I had “pintade,” otherwise known as “guinea-fowl.” It’s supposed to be like eating partridge, (in case you’ve ever eaten any partridge). It reminded me of eating dove or quail – very tasty. Best pintade I’ve ever had. Honh honh!
My wife ordered a kind of trout that was pink. It looked like salmon to me, but our server said it was trout, and I was inclined to believe her. I think she knew a wee bit more about it than I did. (Ahem!) The presentation was something to behold, of course.
For dessert, we split a dish of home-made ice cream. It didn’t look like any dish of ice cream we’d ever seen before, with all kinds of little touches to fancy it up. We were nearing the end of our meal when the chef came out of the kitchen and checked on everyone. That was a nice touch, eh?
It was so comfortable in there that we didn’t want to leave. We had to, though, so we left and made the 10-minute walk back to the apartment. Rue Montorgueil was still lively, but it had calmed down quite a bit. Now, some shop owners were starting to close up for the day.
One nice thing about tonight’s dinner was that there was plenty of food, but not so much that we were stuffed to the gills when we left. Now that we’d walked some of it off, I started thinking about having a little late-night snack. It was time to do a taste test!
To be continued…
Photo credit: hotels-paris-rive-gauche.com/blog/2009/10/01/frenchie-restaurant-paris-rue-nil/
