6.5 Le Bistro des Dames, 18 rue des Dames in the 17th, 01.45.22.13.42, (in the Eldorado Hotel), open 7/7 (Metro: Place de Clichy) is a place that I suppose has been open eons but I'd never heard of until I was searching for a restaurant in a garden on my "end-of-summer-terrace" quest. Friends asked me to reserve for a Sunday lunch and hey, it was a crap-shoot. I arrived early and already there were 12 people waiting outside. I entered thru these crappy-looking rooms in this crappy looking hotel called the Eldorado, of all things, and was ushered out to a jungle paradise where pretty soon all 30 or 40 seats were taken (it now being 12h20.) The menu is pretty interesting and among us we made our minds up quite quickly.
My friend had the artickokes with mozzarella and tapenade which was very pleasant and my eperlans with tartare sauce were enough for the 5 of us.
All five of us loved our mains, save one small problem:
- one of the two slices of mi-cuit tuna was bien-cuit but the other was fine as was the Thai salad (very spicy and good)
- the salmon was cooked to perfection and set off nicely by the fresh spinach
- the risotto with asparagus and poutargue was infinitely better than usual
- the DIY beef tartare was terrific and
- my duo of crispy-skinned daurade and succulent cod had a wonderful sauce and terrific mashed potato accompaniment.
Our bill, with 2.3 bottles of wine, very fine bread, no bottled water, no desserts but 4 coffees, was 174.50 E, thus 69.80 E a couple.
Go? On a nice day, go early and you'll love it. Esp the 72.5 decibels.
