Paris Journal 2014 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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I type “Serge Bonis restaurant Aux Trois Chevrons” into Google.com, and up comes my Paris Journal for 2000. Do you get the same result? Or is it just that Google.com is so smart it knows I’m looking for my own work? Serge Bonis is a friend of our friend Jean-Paul, who lives on Sanibel Island. We see Jean-Paul often when we have a very late lunch or very early dinner at the Lazy Flamingo at Santiva. Jean-Paul, who is from France, used to own a French restaurant on the island. Serge is a friend of his who used to own a restaurant in the 15th arrondissement called “Aux Trois Chevrons,” after the logo for Citroën automobiles. In June 2000, we checked out Serge’s restaurant and had lunch there on June 26. Here’s what I wrote in my journal on the 28th of June that year: On Monday, we had lunch at the restaurant
owned by Jean-Paul's friend in Paris.
It is called Aux Trois Chevrons (on avenue
Félix Faure) and it is even better than Jean-Paul's (which we
love). Normally, Jean-Paul would be
staying with him (his name is Serge Bonis) during
the month of June, but not this year.
I think that he said that it was because Jean-Paul is selling is restaurant
and needs to be there right now. It
will be a real loss for Sanibel. But,
Serge says Jean-Paul will still go to Sanibel every winter. (Serge speaks no English, so all of this is
gleaned from my crude understanding of conversational French. I hope it is accurate!) Serge is a bit envious of Jean-Paul because
Jean-Paul has been able to make a living off of 4 months
work per year, while Serge has to work hard all year (except for the two
weeks he spends in Sanibel every February).
Restaurateurs in Paris pay a 20 percent tax on every dinner check,
whereas Jean-Paul only has to pay about 6 percent (or whatever our Lee County
sales tax is). The tax paid by other
entrepreneurs in Paris - grocery store owners, for example - is only 5
percent. Then Serge spent quite a
while explaining/complaining to us about French taxes and bureaucracy in
general. We really had fun talking with him, believe
it or not. He remains surprisingly
gleeful even though he has to work so hard all the time. He has a lot on his hands. He has the restaurant, a house someplace
outside of Paris, and an apartment in Paris (which, he says, he would not
normally be able to own but it is wife's apartment - one she has owned since
before they met). You could hear the “burn-out” in Serge’s words, so it wasn’t surprising that he gave up his Paris restaurant sometime within the next year or two. Last year, we noticed that the resto at that location now, called La Table d’Hubert, looks promising. I tried to make a reservation there a week or two ago, but after initially confirming the reservation, Lafourchette.com then sent an apologetic message to me stating that the resto would not be able to honor the commitment. My conclusion was that the resto had forgotten to tell Lafourchette.com about its vacation closing. The closing wasn’t for more than a week or so, however, because I recently noticed the resto promoting itself again on Lafourchette. So I made a reservation for last night. The 30-minute walk to dinner took us all the way down the avenue Félix Faure, from beginning to end. We just love walking that oh-so-Parisian avenue! We were two or three minutes early, before the 8PM opening time. So we stood out on the sidewalk, but Hubert graciously welcomed us in. At least, we think he is Hubert, so we shall call him Hubert. While we were admiring the fun tablecloths decorated with images of colorful buttons, Hubert brought us two complementary glasses of champagne -- good champagne! -- and a little plate of homemade biscuits, in the British sense of the word “biscuit.” Hubert always seems to have a barely discernible smile on his face. I think he likes his work.
We nibbled biscuits while we perused the menu. In a case of role reversal, Tom decided to order salmon and I decided to order steak. First, though, we started by sharing six Burgundy escargots, served piping hot in the shells. There was excellent chewy bread to sop up the extra garlic-and-herb butter. There were even two little wrapped bits of butter in the bread basket! Rare! Tom’s salmon and veggies came in the papillotte in which they’d been roasted. He said the dish was delicious. My steak was wonderful: tender, juicy, flavorful, slightly charred on the outside and rosy and moist on the inside. Steak does not get any better than this. I loved the pepper sauce that accompanied it, even if some reviewers think it is too runny. In my opinion, its texture just made it easier to soak into and blend with the steak flavor. And I think its consistency was an indication that it was truly homemade. I had enough extra sauce to pour a bit onto the dauphinois potatoes, which were absolutely fine. I just like everything to be a little more peppery, I guess. We were so impressed with the food that we each ordered our own dessert: a mi-cuit au chocolat with homemade caramel ice cream for me, and a lemon tart for Tom. Both were very, very good. There were two groups of women dining at the resto; both having a great old time. There were some other tables occupied by small families, all having fun. The ambiance was buoyant, even as it drizzled rain outside during part of the dinner hour. We will certainly return to La Table d’Hubert!
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Wednesday, August 20, 2014
View of the Commerce Café when we were almost home.
Plaster molding on the ceiling at La Table d’Hubert.
Steak au poivre at La
Table d’Hubert. Tom’s
salmon and veggies en papillote, below.
Lemon tart (above), and mi-cuit
au chocolat with caramel ice cream (below). All homemade.
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