In a part of town that isn’t really renowned for its great restaurants, l’Assiette is a pleasant surprise. We fell in love with a photo of the place found on the web, and if you like delicate, inventive French cuisine, especially meat dishes, you’re in for a treat.

Here’s our review.

It has to be said that there’s already a huge choice of great restaurants, but sometimes the urge takes us to wander a little further into unknown territory… the 14th arrondissement ?

In what used to be a delicatessen, chef David Rathgeber has founded his own restaurant after a dozen or so years working with master chefs in palaces like the Plaza Athénée and the Ritz. It’s a beautiful space, very discrete from the outside (perfect for a business lunch, fro example) with a painted glass ceiling in one room that’s typical of historic Paris commerces.

There are also lots of quaint little objects dotted around to give the place a very retro feel…
The waiter knows every one of the dishes on the menu by heart, giving a detailed description of the ingredients and how they are prepared. While we make our choice, a small plate of ham and another of butter are served, and the dishes of the day are presented on a slate nearby, encouraging to choose the fixed price menu (which comes at a very reasonable price).

M. Rathgeber seems to be quite a rising star – videos on  YouTube show him preparing his favourite dishes, made with whatever inspired him at the market that morning. You can see that he loves cooking and has tons of ideas.

For us, the time has come to choose our meal!

However, it was very quickly apparent that in the grand French tradition, the restaurant is practically 100% carnivore. Even the ‘Cocotte de légumes de saison’ (seasonal vegetable casserole) is cooked in chicken stock. We had advised when booking that one of us was was vegetarian, but apparently no effort had been made, and no solution was offered.

Thus, one of us had to have gaspacho as a first course (very good, spicy and fresh) with the only possible choice for a main course being… a plate of tomatoes.  Such a shame. As lovely as they were, ten tomatoes (price: 18€) do not a meal make.

Our guest had a rather better experience, opting for the daily special of roast octopus with saffron rice which was tender, perfectly cooked and splendidly presented – one of those ‘wow’ moments when you first see it.

If you do decide to order à la carte rather than the fixed price menu, prices can be quite steep though – around 30 euros for a main and 15€ for dessert.

We nevertheless decided to try the rum baba, something that would appear difficult to make a mess of, and yet experience has shown us that many restaurant s just aren’t capable of making it a success. Here, the rum was served not in the dish but aside – they leave you the bottle! We generously doused our baba, which was spongey perfection, served with a scoop of fior du latte ice cream. Well worth the expense.

Even the coffee gets special treatment here, with sponge biscuits accompanying it (homemade, of course).

So, l’Assiette is a great restaurant is you love your meat, love your French cuisine and are not on a budget. The chef is full of inspiration, the presentation is superb and the space itself is pretty charming (I wish we’d tried the cheeses too!)

However, don’t even think about going with a vegetarian friend ) they will be desperately unhappy, and while the staff is super friendly, it would seem that nothing – absolutely nothing – can be done for anyone with a special diet. You have been warned.

L’Assiette (here) is open Wednesday-Sunday for lunch and dinner

To book online, click here

Website: restaurant-lassiette.paris

Facebook: facebook.com/lassietteparis

Instagram: instagram.com/rathgeberdavid

To check out all our photos of l’Assiette restaurant in Paris, simply click here.

A photo posted by David Rathgeber (@rathgeberdavid) on Apr 9, 2016 at 7:54am PDT