6.1 Semilla, 54, rue de Seine in the 6th, 01.43.54.34.50, open 7/7, opened rather softly a month ago, which is puzzling since it is the 5th venture of Juan Sanchez and Drew Harre who have run, had a hand-in/etc., separately or together, La Derniere Goutte, Cosi, Fish, Albion and now Semilla and has a Meilleur Ouvrier de France at the head of a huge (I counted 8 at one point) brigade. This portion of the rue de Seine is beginning to rival Christian Constant's St. Dominique Empire.
My friends found me wandering up and down the street searching for it like a bewildered amnesiac - oh, not one more of those - a minimalistic, no sign or menu outside, you'd better know where you're going, place? Inside is light, airy, visible heating ducts and stone walls and a "California" kitchen. Cool!
We arrived very very early since I had a conference call with my boss at 3 PM and they graciously seated us, gave us water (from their own machine - how Green!) and made it clear that there would be no menu, no ordering, no food before 12h30. Fine, we watched the staff eat - looked mighty good - although we worried that they wolfed their delicious-looking food down in seconds - and the last thing we wanted was dyspeptic chefs. The menu changes DAILY - oh boy - and is quite interesting.
The entree was a trio - a veloute of mushrooms (very very good), a chestnut "muffin" that had too much salt for me and a rillette-like/tuna-fish-salad-looking queue de veal that was also superb.
There were three choices for a main and after some horse-trading, together we ordered the pintade (two ways, one confited) which was the least successful dish of the day, a wonderful maigre (aka bocca d'oro - huh?) covered with sliced raw mushrooms and salad, atop terrific cooked spinach and an eggplant involtini (rolled microtomed aubergine around chevre with a basilic sauce).
For desserts we had the soup of agrumes and chocolate on top chocolate with kumquat slices; both were outstanding.
With a bottle of this wonderfully-labeled Gueule de Loup (Chat de Roquefort) red plus two glasses of Sancerre, pretty good bread for a holiday and one coffee, our bill amounted to 81.46 E a couple.
Go? It's in the title: "I'll come back.....I'll send folks here."