Out of the pen and into the frying pan

A few steps from Place de la Bastille, a neighbourhood teeming with gourmand restaurants, there’s Bruno Verjus’s table. The food journalist was capable of adding a new chapter to the bistronomic saga in the 12th arrondissement. A foodie, the soul behind blog foodintelligence and already a collaborator of Identità Golose and Omnivore, last spring he opened a restaurant in which he puts his skills of self-trained chef to the test, together with a young talent of Japanese origins: Masa Ikuta.

Verjus is not the first to decide to get his hands dirty with pans and creative recipes. And given the result, we can say: bravo! He wanted to fulfil a dream: to cook in a minimalistic, welcoming space, following the concept of sharing. The 35 seats are distributed between small round tables, a counter adjacent to the restaurant and an imperial table at the entrance, to the right. Once seated, all the guests admire the work in the open-view kitchen and, unless there are special requests, the guests are being seated next to each other, without knowing one another, in order to share the food and comment together, and share their opinions.

«We all go to the restaurant and we need to eat, so why not do this with a smile, trying to have fun with food?», says BJ. This is the art of partager. Which translates into a simple cuisine, with very fresh ingredients sourced from the market and from artisan friends. There is no real menu but a list with local dishes, a true exploration. The wine list ranges from small French producers to some Italian wines, and all in all it is rich of bottles, illustrated according to the territory and their organic philosophy.

The lunch menu is simpler: roasted meat cooked on Cornue skewers, platters of cured meet and cheese made in France while at dinner the offer is more structured. The meat suppliers come from France and Flanders and the fish is supplied by Paris’ market, the same goes with all vegetables. Nothing is left to chance: the mise en place is a signature one, there are no tablecloths but there’s a candid and refined linen placemat. All around, steel and bricks prevail, without any interior design snobbism. The team in the dining room and in the kitchen is young and professional. The service is quick and attentive.

Dishes are based on few ingredients: meat, fish, seasonal vegetables and two or three cakes. The Grilled foie gras with pumpkin cream was interesting, an excellent play of sweet and caramelised notes. Simplicity characterised the Fried egg with white truffle and the Poularde, a traditional recipe reinterpreted with roasted chicken or cooked at low temperature and aromatised with verbena, served with a cream of pumpkin, radicchio trevigiano and sautéed spinach. The mix of textures was excellent, and the flavours were finely balanced with one another.

To finish, the cake was a tribute to the Tonda delle Langhe hazelnut: Chocolate cream with hazelnuts, salted butter cookies with hazelnuts and hay ice-cream, a nice contrast for the taste buds which had already been excited by the previous dishes.

Table
3, rue de Prague
Paris, France
+33.(0)1.43431226
Closed on Saturdays and Sundays
Tasting menu: 110 euros, 149 including wines