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La Bonne Excuse

yelp

5.0 étoiles 26/09/2013

This was one of our favorite meals in Paris! Watching the chef create your meal was a treat. The food was perfectly cooked and prepared beautifully. The chefs wife helped us with the menu because our french is not very well. We had duck l'orange, lamb shank, cod fillet, apple tarte and all were perfection! If you are in paris go for lunch or dinner it is worth it!

New Orleans, USA

5.0 étoiles 20/01/2013

Another happy accident: my sweetie had a strong recommendation for the place across the street ( Le Cinq Mars) from a colleague (a frequent visitor to Paris and serious gourmand) but they were booked, so after a little stroll around the neighborhood (a couple of blocks from the Musee D'Orsay), we settled into this cozy little space that resembled a spare, chic cafe in Soho rather than a typical Parisian bistro.

Cream colored walls, banquettes and accents with crisp white tablecloths sans tchotkes or other frippery. Again (like Chez Julien), this lovely spot calls to mind the current enthusiasm in the U.S. for seasonal and local produce presented in a subdued or casual setting where the ingredients are the star (rather than the chef's brilliance).

But brilliant he is, and delightful and welcoming is his wife, who runs the front of house. I started with a very simple dish of hyper-fresh raw oysters in an inventive (and perfectly balanced) take on the classic mignonette sauce: pureed green apples with shallots and a touch of cider vinegar. Paige loved her "cannelloni" of lobster, where the pasta was replaced by spinach leaves and served with a light, fragrant ginger sauce. My noix coquilles was just lovely (and again, surprising). Perfectly seared, fresh scallops ringed a bright salad of mache alternating with what looked like little boiled footballs of potato...mais non! Instead, the chef formed quenellles of celery root and balanced them on quarter sized disks of roasted purple potatoes for a visual and savory variation on your standard protein and starch combo. My gal relished her sea bass served on a ragout of girolle mushrooms that complemented the (again, ridiculously fresh) clean fish with an earthy, deep base.

Desserts are a cut above as well; my darling, who is a meltingly gorgeous woman adored her molten chocolate cake (I know, this is almost a hackneyed dish after all these years, but good is good folks) and felt well rewarded for our museum marathon earlier. My apple tart (not tatin, but with a flaky pastry crust) was simply the very best apple tart of any kind I have ever tasted...period, end of discussion. Crispy, caramel coated and still bursting with sweet apple goodness...a perfect last meal for our sojourn in Paris.

5.0 étoiles 15/11/2012 Premier à donner un avis

This weekend I had one of the most amazing meals of my life at La Bonne Excuse. I hesitate to try to describe the food because words will surely fail to do it justice, but in the interest of sharing... for starters, I had oysters that were served raw but out of the shell resting on a lovely and intensely flavorful puree, which I suspect included shallots and lemon. My wife's starter was the most perfectly poached egg ever on top of cepes (better known by their Italian name, porcinis). Both were amazing! For mains, my wife had lamb chops cooked to medium rare perfection and with some kind of crunchy candied glaze loosely on top - hard to describe, but transcendently good! I had a pie containing quail, foie gras, and cepes. Insanely delicious, and perhaps the most perfect crust I have every experienced! But the best was yet to come - for desert we had figs with ginger ice cream along with the chef's signature apple tart. The tart takes a while to make and so has to be ordered early, but is well worth the early commitment. Never have I had such a perfectly light, crisp, and amazingly flavorful apple tart. I hadn't even ever considered that you could make an apple tart of such epic excellence - my mind has been opened!

Beyond the amazing food, this place is really lovely as an experience. It's a small place with perhaps a dozen tables, with clean, simple, modern decor. The chef is visible cooking in the kitchen, so you get to watch the artist at work. It's run by the chef and his wife, and they took the time to chat with us after our meal. They're exceedingly warm and friendly, and the chef is truly intense and passionate about his craft. I couldn't recommend this place more highly, and I cannot wait to go back.

Tél. : (0)1 42 61 50 21
48, rue de Verneuil
75007 Paris
Métro : musée d'Orsay,
rue du Bac ou Solférino