L'Esquisse in the 18th was my first rentree resto at my rentree after a lovely summer out of Paris; Colette has since come back and our oldest Franco-American friend here had to do Grandma stuff with her little flautist down the street, so I thought I'd see how things were going at the sketchy restaurant - was my first impression just my rentree altered memory or my rentree revelation? The menu aka carte is really exciting, as one might expect from an ex-Ritz, ex-Baratin alumna and we had a tough time deciding.
Colette chose to not have a first (saving herself for dessert) but my old pal from our 1953 Paris/Loire summer, who has lived here ever since, and I had the praires, which our perfect English-speaking waiter wanted an English translation for/of.. "Ah, clam family" said I, originally from Boston/Cambridge. "No, they don't taste like clams," says she, originally from the Long Island Sound. "So more like between cockles/coques and bulots," "Not at all." My A-Z says "dog cockle shellfish, another source says venus clam" Hunh? Well we left poor Thomas wondering what kind of translators we were.
So onto the mains where Colette had the pork cheeks with abundant vegetables made in a wok and my old friend ("my old friend" ah yes - Craig Wiseman and Steve McEwan) and I had the perfectly sourced and cooked pintade which also came with a lot of veggies and kasha and ice cream. "Hold on, Thomas, ice cream?" "Yah, we like to do hot and cold." "Whoa, cool."
Our desserts were even better than our firsts and seconds which is hard to believe; an apple tart, lemon something and a fig delight. Wonderful.
With 2 bottles of wine (we were celebrating her new eyes and my new heart and Colette's new knee-fix), no bottled water & 3 coffees, was 147 for three, thus 96 E a couple.
Go? Please don't, you'll ruin the non-"pesky" atmosphere, which even with infants, was only 70.8 dB.
