The Kitchen
Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.
8 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks
Apéro runs roughly six to eight, and it is not dinner. You order a glass, something to graze on arrives with it, and nobody hurries you out. In the old bistros that means œuf mayo and cold charcuterie pulled from the fridge. In the natural wine bars of the 11th it means a planche of pig and cheese, a good tin of fish, panisses. Bread lands unasked. Very little of it is cooked to order, because most of these places have a two-burner kitchen and no intention of apologizing for it.
Rillettes de porc · Paris
Pork cooked in its own fat until it gives up, shredded, packed into a jar, sealed under a fat cap. You get a jar, a knife, toast, cornichons. You do not get a portion size.
Where you'd actually eat it: Bistro counters and charcuteries citywide, sold by the jar. Drink Chinon or any light red served cool, which is how every bar in the 11th pours it anyway.
From behind the bar: Take the jar out of the fridge 45 minutes before serving. Cold rillettes taste like nothing and spread like plaster.
Terrine de campagne · Paris
Coarse pork and liver, baked in a loaf, pressed, then left alone for two days. Cut thick. Anything thin enough to see through is a hotel buffet.
Where you'd actually eat it: On the slate at every bar à vins worth sitting in. Beaujolais, a Loire cabernet franc, or a beer if the place is honest about being a tabac.
From behind the bar: Ask a butcher for the coarse plate on both meats. Fine-ground terrine goes pasty and tastes like supermarket pâté.
Rillettes de maquereau · Paris
Smoked mackerel forked into crème fraîche with lemon and shallot. Fifteen minutes of work and it is the thing on the table that empties first.
Where you'd actually eat it: Standard-issue on the small-plates list at natural wine bars around Oberkampf and Charonne. Drink a skin-contact white or a dry cider.
From behind the bar: Hot-smoked is the one you want, the flaky kind. Cold-smoked mackerel stays slippery and will not fork apart.
Brandade de morue · Paris
Salt cod beaten with olive oil, garlic and potato into something between a dip and a gratin. From Nîmes, on Paris tables since forever, best eaten hot on grilled bread.
Where you'd actually eat it: Southern-run bistros and Languedoc-leaning wine bars in the 11th. A cold rosé from the Rhône, or a Picpoul.
From behind the bar: Buy thick center-cut salt cod, not the thin tail pieces. Thin pieces desalt unevenly and end up either bland or brutal.
Tapenade noire · Paris
Black olives, capers, garlic and anchovy pounded into a dark paste. It is named for the capers, not the olives, and it belongs on bread with something cold in your other hand.
Where you'd actually eat it: Provençal, but it turns up in every Paris apéro spread and on the free bread plate at half the wine bars. Rosé or a cold light red.
From behind the bar: Anchovy is traditional, so this is not vegetarian. Leave it out and you have a decent olive paste, but call it that and not tapenade.
Caviar d'aubergine · Paris
Eggplant roasted until it collapses, drained hard, then mashed with garlic, lemon and olive oil. Smoky and loose, not the thick paste sold in tubs.
Where you'd actually eat it: On apéro tables and in traiteur windows across the city, strongest in the eastern arrondissements. Rosé, or a chilled Gamay.
From behind the bar: For real smoke, char the whole eggplants directly over a gas flame for 10 minutes first, then finish in the oven.
Tartine de foie de morue · Paris
Cod liver out of a tin, broken onto dark toast in lobes. Soft, oily, faintly metallic, deeply unfashionable. It costs three euros and it settles the argument about whether you are hungry.
Where you'd actually eat it: Breton conserve shops in the 11th and the bars that buy from them, apéro hour, everyone standing. Muscadet sur lie served too cold, or a demi of blonde.
From behind the bar: Cod liver is very high in vitamin A. Keep the portions small, and anyone pregnant should skip it entirely.
Crevettes grises · Paris
Tiny grey shrimp boiled two minutes in hard salt water and eaten whole. Shells, heads, all of it. Salt and crunch, no cutlery, no work. Engineered to make you order another beer.
Where you'd actually eat it: The écailler stand set up outside a brasserie in October, or the shellfish bars on rue des Martyrs. Cold beer or Chablis, taken standing up in your coat.
From behind the bar: True crangon is near-impossible outside Europe. Use the smallest whole head-on shrimp you can find and eat them shell and all.