5.7 Lebeauserge aka Le Beau Serge, 14, rue des Moines in the 17th, 01.58.59.12.15, Metro: Brochant, open for lunch Saturdays and Sundays and dinner Tuesday-Saturday, has been open exactly sixty days and has been reviewed by exactly no one. In my role as resident curmudgeon, limping flanneur and general snoop, I chance across places like this en route elsewhere - in this case Comme Chez Maman - look in, get a card, do some research and generally move on. Look: nice, clean, lotsa wine but food too. Card: cool Lebeauserge not Le Beau Serge, which was, according to that famous source Wiki "directed by Claude Chabrol....in 1958...[and] is often considered the first product....[of the] "French New Wave" film movement." Research: Yahïa Ouled Moussa, its creator, cook and major domo is (according to levitrine.com) "a Paris based designer who has a way with reinventing old clothing or fabrics into funky and functional design objects." Which explains a lot.
Like, why there is an amuse bouche of cucumbers marinated in olive oil, vinegar, coriander seeds and green herbs (delicious), a Saharien couscous, wet but dry, with lamb not mutton, carrots, chick peas and other veggies on a bed of pastry (I originally thought was pasta) (once you got past the pre-conception that is would be your usual couscous, quite tasty) and no, I repeat no, Harisa in or addable to it (astonishing, but one can get used to anything) and the flat "bread" of pita like wedges (again, very different but nice.
Afterwards, I had seen there were two desserts - a chocolate mousse and tiramisu, and ordered the mousse and my dining companion hesitated but asked for a cheese plate - of brie and chevre (that I thought were/was way above average). At that point I had no room for the mousse and luckily our host had forgotten (for which he apologized profusely) and we finished up our fine Languedoc (the wines were marked up just about double their take-away price), paid up (74 E for two of us with a bottle of wine, no bottled water and two Illy coffees) and went back out into the winter weather.
Go? Now, this is weird. I usually am much tougher than my companions or readers on places and the couscous here was most out-of-the-ordinary, there was no Harisa and the pastry bottom was most unexpected, but, but, but - it was quite good from start to finish. So, as Francois Simon said of Leo Dupont - go if you're a neighbor because you'll soon become a habitué.
