Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Le Comptoir Restaurant (Paris)

After a nice walk from Le Bon Marché, we arrived at one of our preferred bistros in St. Germain. The bistro is called Le Comptoir.

You are guaranteed to be cramped in classic style at Le Comptoir, a Left Bank bistro in the Carrefour de l'Odéon. Yves Camdeborde was never a three-star chef, but he ran La Régalade, a far-from-central but a wildly popular bistro, so it's not a surprise that this bistro is the toughest reservation in town (for dinner).


However; we always preferred to eat lunch at Le Comptoir. Its a great place to people watch. Normally, you have to stand in a queue and wait about 15-20 minutes for a table. We were very lucky today because we only waited about 15 minutes. Since it was such a beautiful day, we definately wanted to sit outside.


The first dish was salad nicoise. A lovely salad with all the right fresh ingredients. We agreed that we did not like salad nicoise with grilled tuna. A good can of tuna can make the salad just as good. With grilled tuna you cannot mix in the tuna and get that flavour throughout the salad. The vinigrette was also very good. It did not use balsamic vinegar with usually over whelms the taste of the sauce.


The second salad that we shared was salad gourmand. This salad consisted of green salad, green beens, artichokes and fois gras. A very nice combination.



The third dish was grilled tuna with grilled vegetables. The tuna was cooked raw, almost sashimi style. A light lunch but it was an enormous portion.


The fourth dish was a slice of choux farci. Beautifully presented and it tasted as great as it looked.


The fifth dish was slice of roasted poulard. A huge slice of tender chicken wrapped around with a slice of lardon laying in a wonderfu light creamy sauce.


The sixth dish was joues de boeuf. One of my favourite dishes. It comes carrots and maccaroni pasta simmering in the jus of the beef cheeks. So yummy.


With such wonderful weather, atmosphere and food; we had another perfect lunch at Le comptoir.

Le Comptoir
9 Carrefour de l'Odéon 6th Arr.
Saint Germain
Paris, France
33-1-43-27-07-50

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