7.4 Pollop, 15, rue d'Aboukir in the 2nd, (Metro: not really, buses lots of), 01.40.41.00.94 (but they don't always answer and toss you off the the answering machine), open lunches weekdays and dinners Tuesday-Saturday, is a place that opened in July when I must have been asleep because it's taken me this long to go - only prodded by my SF Art Historian friend who lives nearby and arrived this AM, who wanted to eat reasonably nearby. Ok.
The place's front looks like the entrance of a 5th Avenue/57th Street art gallery building, small, but you enter and there's a railway car row of tables, then this back room with book shelves and an upstairs equally festooned. The carte is interesting, very interesting, somewhat Asian-influenced but drift down to the bottom - 50 cl wine for 14 E; my kinda place totally.
So, he orders the two tartares - first that of tuna with agrumes and sesame, damn good, and I had the shredded piggie ears with shredded veggies, as we said in Viet Nam - "Numbah One." You had to have been there, actually no, you were wise not to have been. With this was a carafe of Chinon that was terrific with the food.
Then he had the Thai beef tartare, spicy enough, but not over the top ("Sir, they don't like that here") with gross frites (OK) and I had the veal in a green curry sauce with rice that was incredibly good. I finished up with an Illy coffee.
Our bill, with a lot of wine (not at the Graham Nash/Keith Richard's level and of course we were not doing cocaine or MaryJane, just curry and coriander), no bottled water, not terribly inventive bread in a place around the corner from one of the great bread places in town, was 74.70 E.
Go? "Fools," as we used to say on Bow Street, "you must."
