Feasting without reservation

We'd been walking.  We were hungry.  It was dinnertime.  We had no reservations.

Still, when Tom asked about dinner, I suggested that we go to Le Blavet.

The Pont de Bir Hakeim was formerly called the Viaduc de Passy.  It is on the
opposite end of the Ile aux Cygnes from the Statue of Liberty.

Two decades ago, when we first dined at this little restaurant, Madame la Patronne would have frightened us with a scalding glare if we walked into her place without a reservation.  But she retired years ago, and Le Blavet is now much more relaxed -- like the river it is named for.

Without a reservation, we thought we'd be anonymous at Le Blavet (as real restaurant critics should be), but the chef periodically came out of the kitchen, stood behind the bar doing something, and kept looking right at me, like he was trying to figure out if I was really that person from Florida who continues to blog about restaurants in the 15th arrondissement, summer after summer.

Croustillan de Chevre at Le Blavet.

We've never met him in person.  He, like some other shy chefs, stays in the kitchen almost all the time.

At Le Blavet, two fixed price menus are offered.  The food is extraordinarily consistently excellent.

I ordered from the 27-euro fixed price menu, and Tom ordered from the 36-euro menu.  Each includes a starter, main course, and dessert.  No problem -- we brought our appetites with us, and we'd just walked four miles.

Sole Meunière at Le Blavet.

I started with a croustillant de chèvre -- a thin, crispy pastry wrapped around a deliciously warm little chunk of goat cheese.  It came with an onion "confiture" that was identical to the onion "chutney" that accompanied Tom's terrine de foie gras.  Both starters were delicious, and amazingly identical to the ones we remember from previous years' dining at Le Blavet.

Tom ordered the classic sole meunière, which came with the classic accompaniment, white steamed potatoes.  Sometimes sole meunière is served in a slight pool of clarified butter, and sometimes it is not.  I'm not sure which is more "correct."  The version at Le Blavet is served without the pool of butter.  The server did not offer to de-bone it for him;  that's just as well, because we de-bone our fish ourselves (maybe they remember that we do?).

Magret de Canard at Le Blavet.

My main course was a classic magret de canard.  It was wonderful.  It was superior to the magret I'd had at another, nearby restaurant recently.  The sauce was sweet and sour, with apples, and the accompaniment was a gratin of potatoes dauphinois.

We each had crêpes, but they were of different kinds.  Mine was two folded crêpes, one with dark chocolate sauce, and the other with rum sauce.  Plus there was a dollop of whipped cream and a small scoop of French vanilla ice cream.  

Le Blavet is on the Rue de Lourmel, south of the Avenue Emile Zola.

Tom's was a flat crêpe with roasted apples and a Calvados sauce, with vanilla ice cream.  

Fortunately we'd started dinner early, at 7:30PM, because the restaurant was hot and full by the time we left.  A large group of 20 or so people occupied the larger dining room.

This morning, I persuaded Tom to go to the market at Grenelle with me.  He needed a shirt and some socks, and believe me, these markets have the best prices for those kinds of things.  We meandered through the dense crowd at about 11AM, and Tom was successful in finding and buying what he needed.

We enjoyed looking at the Oriental rugs in the market, and in the window of a closed rug store on the Boulevard.  Caution:  do not buy Persian rugs in Europe now; you cannot take them home to the U.S. because of the current sanctions against Iran.

Most shops are closed on Sundays, except for those that sell food.  The latter tend to stay open on Sunday in this neighborhood because of the Grenelle market (which is on Sundays and Wednesdays, until about 1PM).  

Walking along the Ile aux Cygnes, in the middle of the Seine.

So we went to the grocery and bakery, and came home to have a "picnic" lunch before this final stage of the Tour de France.  The Tour comes to Paris today, and I adore watching all the helicopter views of La Capitale.

Au revoir!