I recently jumped aboard the Thalys to visit Vi Hornblower who has just taken up residence in Paris not a million miles from the Champs-Elysées, having become the Paris correspondent of the Reading Chronicle. Vi's retired husband Desmond had still not awoken after a week in the sleep clinic last March, so she called up her old flame Reggie, who used to be Something Big in Bauxite, and was on one of his regular jaunts from darkest Africa where he has an important position as The Despot's Special Adviser, to join us for lunch.
We piled into the Bistro du 17eme, on avenue de Villiers near Pereire RER and metro, which offers a 38 euro menu including aperitif, three courses, half a bottle of wine per person and coffee. The Bistro is part of a chain of seven restaurants which all serve the same menu, and includes the Bistro Melrose, one of Harold's and my favourite troughs in the old days. Harold used to love the foie gras, although could not pronounce it to save his life, and ended up making it sound like some kind of sushi.
The Bistro du 17e is very classy, with proper linen tablecloths and napkins, and lots of plush and mirrors. We perused the menu over three kir royales, which gave me flashbacks to the Bloggers' Christmas party the year before last in Reading. Violet and I had foie gras de canard to start, in memory of Harold, and Reggie had a Gateau Landais, which was a very posh potato cake.
To follow I skillfully dissected a simple but perfectly cooked sole meunière au beurre, served with a little tub of flawless creamed potato. I do find it sad that restaurants don't have fish knives any more, even in Paris. Vi had perfect carré d'agneau, cooked à point, with gratin dauphinois. Reggie, being a fairly unadventurous type, had entrecote with pommes frites, or steak and chips to you. We washed this down with a bottle of Touraine blanc between Violet and me, and Reggie had a whole bottle of Premières Cotes de Blaye red at no extra charge. The service was elegant, efficient and the staff all spoke English, which was just as well as a number of our neighbours appeared to be from the better parts of Surrey.
How we managed to hold a conversation with our faces constantly in our plates is a mystery, but we hardly stopped nattering. I now know more about bauxite than I will ever need to, but Reggie was so charming that he kept us both enthralled. It is unusual for Vi to be enthralled by anything over 25, especially fully-dressed, but I guess Reggie and she had previous. It was sweet to see the two of them flirting competitively with the young waiter.
Vi and I were already stuffed but couldn't resist the dessert list. I was served something wonderful called a Magnifique, which was indeed magnifique, a sort of mousse with a caramelized topping, which I admired for several seconds while Vi demolished her Millefeuille with its salty caramel sauce. Reggie, ever circumspect, went for the cheese, having the dregs of his whole bottle of red to finish off.
Three coffees later we paid the bill and staggered back to Violet's luxurious penthouse on a roll, where we polished off two bottles of champers and Reggie, who is what is known as an Old Africa Hand in the office, regaled us with his tales of derring-do and adventures up the Zambezi. Vi dug out some old photos of her dancing the can-can in a dugout canoe going over Victoria Falls, and how we laughed when she told us that Desmond was known to the local lingo as "Little White Man With Huge Set of Bongos".
The Bistro Company comprises:
Le Bistro du 17e, 108 avenue de Villiers, Paris 17e
Le Bistro Melrose, place de Clichy, Paris 17e
Le Bistro St Ferdinand, 275 boulevard Pereire, Paris 17e
Le Bistro de Breteuil, 3 place de Breteuil, Paris 7e
Le Bistro des Deux Théatres, 18 rue Blanche, Paris 9e
Le Bistro Champetre,107 rue St Charles, Paris 15e
Le Bistro de la Muette, 10 chaussée de la Muette, Paris 16e
