In a neighbourhood not particularly well know for its gourmet food (although La Boulangerie isn’t too far away), we tried out this new restaurant after reading a couple of reviews that said the food was surprising and the waiters really cheery and courteous (not always the case in Paris). And guess what? It’s all true ! Read on…

It’s true that Parisian waiters have a bit of steely reputation. The cliché says that they are generally rude or completely inefficient, often both, and incapable of understanding English. I’d say that Paris has made a lot of progress in recent years and that numerous Internet sites can now help you avoid the places where you’ll pay over the odds for bad food and insults. Hopefully, we are one of them.

After reading a couple of times that staff at La Bouche are really adorable and that the food was inventive we decided to make the trip up to the 20th arrondissement to check the place out. It’s quite a way from the Left Bank, but Paris isn’t that big and we think it’s worth the effort.

The restaurant is on a quite corner just off place Maurice Chevalier (which sounds more romantic than it is, admittedly).

It’s also right next to the Notre-Dame de la Croix church, the third biggest (er, longest) in Paris, dating from 1880. An impressive line of steps lead up to it, and the bell tower is nearly 80 metres high. It makes for a nice setting if you’re eating on the terrace.

The interior of the restaurant has a sort of ragtag brocante charm to it with strong, retro colours complemented by black & white photography, lots of wood and a great atmosphere. We were there on a warm evening which allowed the window onto the street to be open, and the whole place felt very homely. The relaxed atmosphere was immediately tangible.

Back on the terrace, we admired the view, perused the menu from lunchtime (they serve drinks all day, with a limited menu outside of main eating hours) and checked out what was on offer for dinner.

The dinner menu looked really delicious, but with only two choices for each course being vegetarian makes things a little tricky…

As you may be able see, three courses costs 28€ and two courses costs 23€, which is surprising high for this area. However, after the word of mouth for the place, we were ready to see whether it was worth it. Our waitress was really super nice. For those who have studied basic French (or Spanish for that matte), you’ll know that there are two ways of saying ‘you’; formal and informal, and here everyone uses the informal version. Usually this would be see as rather rude, but here it fits in completely with the laid back atmosphere of the place. It’s surprising, but endearing. For pure English speakers, you’ll obviously not really see the difference!

After ordering, the wine arrived, as did a little surprise: a little bowl of home-made houmous. It went wonderfully with the fresh baguette!

By now we were starting to seriously relax, you know what I mean? The initial pangs of hunger that one gets at this time in the evening were wearing off, thanks to the first little treat we’d eaten, the wine was kicking in, and with such a lovely warm evening it was difficult not to chill out.

The smiling waitress came back to remove our little (empty) bowls of houmous, and almost immediately came back with a second surprise: a tapenade made of sweet pepper. Yummy!

The presentation was sweet and it tasted really fresh and delicious. Needless to say, it was swiftly consumed, although we did our best to savour it, I promise!

With this second taster tidied away, it was finally time for the first course. As the fired duck hearts really didn’t sound up our street at all, we’d both ordered the same thing: velvet swimming crab bisque with salmon, cucumber and granny smith apples (which definitely seem to be in fashion in restaurants at the moment. A summer trend?). Once again, the presentation was excellent…

It’s a great idea to have three different cool tastes to go with the warm soup, and what a soup! Very thick, very creamy, beautifully seasoned. We loved every drop of it, mopping up the little that was left with our bread. Definitely a strong opener.

We were certainly impressed and relaxed. The sun was going down, illuminating the church in yellow, and the air was still warm.

For the main course, we had cheated a little to avoid the meat dish, asking for a vegetarian alternative. In some restaurants you’ll be looked at strangely and even rebutted, but here there was no problem, and we left it up to the chef to concoct something from the various vegetable accompaniments from the other dishes.

The vegetarian platter turned out to be a copious serving of chanterelle mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, some creamy mashed potato and a line of citrus vinaigrette to add a bit of piquant. Although I wasn’t sure that the taste of the tomatoes successfully went with the mushrooms, it was an audacious mix, as was the crunch of the salad shoots together with the mashed potato. Altogether a pleasing main course.

My companion had chosen the pollack fillet with chorizo sausage vinaigrette and mashed potato with star anise. Although very similar to the other dish we’d been given, the fish was well grilled, and the tastes light and subtle.

After a dignified pause, we were ready for dessert, often the weakness of a restaurant. First up: a hot white chocolate soup with coconut milk, peach, kiwi and thai basil. It was sugary and milky and unusual and delicious!

The second dessert was a lime cake with crystallised fennel and lemonade. Sounded like a strange mix, but in fact each element came separately. I’m not sure I’d ever heard of fennel being used as a dessert, but it was great! The little lime cakes were fresh and the lemonade very obviously hand-made. It’s great to be surprised by such an original combination…

And with a coffee to finish, our lovely dinner was over! The sun was below the horizon, illuminating the clouds with tinges of pink and a perfect evening was coming to a close…

As you may have gathered, we had a great evening with some surprising food in a lovely relaxed atmosphere and we’d heartily recommend La Bouche. It’s definitely worth the effort of going up to Menilmontant to try out. Count on spending around 35€ per person, including wine. For such great food, that’s not a bad deal at all.

Feel free to check out our photo gallery here on Flick to get a better look.

La Bouche is here and open every day except Monday for lunch and dinner, plus drinks and a bit of food in between. Don’t forget their brunch on Sundays too! You can call them to reserve on 09 53 56 24 14.