La Grande Cremerie in the 6th: "But We Can Eat Better and Smaller up the Road" They Said.

5.1 La Grande Cremerie, 8, rue Gregoire de Tours in the 6th, 01.43.26.09.09 (Metro: Odeon) is a larger upgraded verson of La Cremerie on Quatre-Vents where I first encountered Pierre Jancou on a blustery cold February day years ago, standing there all alone slicing charcuterie and cheese and pouring first-class wine in a place that couldn't have had more than 8 seats.  Well, this new version has many many more seats and staff (Jancou long gone of course), wonderful walls and an expanded menu - still stuff they don't make but which comes from first-rate producers.

We jointly ordered 2 fish, 2 animal and 1 cheese dish: potted boudin noir (a bit of a surprise but OK);  a trio of taramas (frankly I couldn't tell a difference), a terrine of rabbit (the best of our main dishes); and smoked tuna from my favorite Ile, the Ile d'Yeu with creme fraiche (which, with the toasted bread, almost constituted what our kids called fox and lox).

We ended with 4 slices of St Nectaire which were the best I've had in 2013.  When I returned from the toilettes the other three were busily discussing how they would rate the restaurant using my 10 point scale and a new friend asked me preliminarily - "Do you rate inedible food a 2?"  Oh, oh I thought.  But no, they were just testing the waters although one suggested we could eat much better with smaller portions up the road at the Avant Comptoir, another was annoyed at the service at the end and a third said he didn't want to influence me but it was OK with a lot of "buts."

With a magnum of Cahors, quite, quite decent, the house-bottled fizzy water, 3 coffees and a tea, our bill was 148.50 E, thus 74.25 E a couple.  dB level a quite acceptable 77.2.

Go?  The consensus was that you need a big party, and it's OK in a tourist zone if you chance by famished, but a couple cannot put away many big portions and you need to better pair wines and dishes than we did, or I did, since I was paying them back for picking up and schlepping 3 heavy pieces of furniture from IKEA.  Up the road, anyone?