25 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1)
Tel:  01-42-36-38-12
AMBIANCE/DÉCOR

This is chef Jean-Francois Piege’s fifth restaurant.  The second purchase of a long-established more modest restaurant (see La Poule au Pot).  I’m sure Piege’s CFO and operations head spends time there, but this is a distant connection to his world class Le Grand Restaurant (see).

I never ate at (or knew) Epi D’Or in its original 1920’s version.  Physically, nothing much could have changed.  It is intentionally so.  This is no re-creation.  It is as it was left by its former owners.  That’s not all bad. It helps create the strong energy which is the restaurant’s best attribute.  Full, uncomfortable, jammed.  It is a small space with 40-50 seats, a prominent bar flanked by tiny tables for 2 and an open closet of a kitchen manned at a packed dinner service by a young chef and one helper (there must be prep and dishwasher in the basement).

I’m sure people were having fun, all ages and nationalities.  Prices appear low (although it adds up); walk-ins turned away.

FOOD

The food?  It’s an issue, and not the highlight.  Actually, at any price, it was a disappointment, both what was served and what wasn’t.

The unique feature presumably carried over from the 1920’s is a very limited menu with a daily menu of 3 widely advertised courses offered every week.  It was Monday, so the offer was ricotta gnocchi in a (delicious) fresh tomato sauce, duck confit and whipped cream with pastry dessert.  So, we knew from the date we reserved what we would eat.  Except at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, no duck.  How can that be, contradicting the key feature of the restaurant’s format?  Maybe worse, an hour later when I walked past the open kitchen, what did I see?  Two orders of duck, saved, I assumed, for special guests.  More confusing, in substitution I was offered pork belly with leeks (pretty good).  But this is a slow-cooked dish, not something pulled out of the refrigerator when they run out of duck.  This was planned.  We were disappointed, glad to have tried it, but are not considering returning.

SERVICE

Service was not very good; two hard-working waiters in the entire restaurant setting and cleaning tables, opening and serving wine, taking orders, greeting guests and frequently stopping to close the front door.  I’ve never seen two harder working staff, and keeping it together, more or less.

PRICES

155€ for two.

 

(1X) (2022)