Rech in Paris, by Pierre Monetta
The French and I parted ways about six years ago. I became a vegetarian (with a fish caveat) and they no longer wanted to know. Try as I did – for the rejection was rather on their part – and no matter how gamine my haircut nor how Breton-striped my T-shirt, we could not reconcile our differences. When I enquired timidly about meat-free options, they hissed, aghast, about the quality of their steak-haché; waiters collected my plate with pursed lips, noting the chunks of meat still left on the plate, ordered defeatedly to try and sidestep the awkward conversations in a second language. But that look requires no translation.
The tension flares worst in Paris, which cultivates its impression as the apex of the French cultural experience: the definition of all that is French. Particularly on the matter of food. I have been to restaurants in Paris where I cannot order anything.
Rech unwittingly atoned for all those occasions on which I have felt marginalised by my own freely-exercised dietary habits. Alright, I’ll accept that I am not a figure who evokes particularly ardent sympathy. I am certainly not deserving of a niche charity for whom people might run the London Marathon. But whether or not you consider mine a plight or an affectation, Rech was thrillingly, superlatively delightful.
Formerly a heady art deco café restaurant, a long-standing, bobo Parisian institution on the otherwise nondescript, CBD boulevard, Avenue des Ternes, it was acquired by charismatic restaurateur Alain Ducasse in 2007 and has been a part of his Paris portfolio ever since. Outside, grimy cabs screech past and French teenagers giggle in front of Princess Tam Tam sharing poorly-rolled cigarettes and swigs of vodka from misused water bottles; inside, it is calm and spare, all white decor, artful pebbles, and mirrored expanses.
According to staff, maître d’ Eric Mercier, has acquired the status of legend, accompanying his clients on what he calls a “static voyage”, on which they must feel both “at home and in a far away place”. He was bombastically, extravagantly attentive to our needs, flirting shamelessly and delivering bottles and courses with a hyperbolic flourish. Like a child starved of affection, stung by the usual monosyllables, grunts and rolled eyes, I lapped up every gesture, giggling on cue like the French teenagers outside.
But what I was really waiting for was the food, which would constitute the act of forgiveness I believed France owed me; the proof that it did, in fact, love me back. Everything was astonishingly fresh and despite Eric’s flourishes (for, of course we could call him Eric), disarmingly simple. My starter was a seasonal vegetable tart – the only radical detail the tension between the warmth of the pastry base and the cool vegetables.
The menu at Rech plays off the tides: it serves only what is in season, much of its produce sourced (sustainably) from the Breton coast. This model, too, is simple: a return to a humble supply chain that offers what is available when it is available, rather than voyaging imperially across the globe to make it available all year round. However excitable the staff and however chi-chi the setting, Rech is essentially a family-run restaurant with a local outlook.
My main – the Grenobloise-style skate was exquisitely tender and pleasingly light, leaving room for the four sweet desserts presented at the end of the meal. I felt vindicated, and as my own thank you, I left nothing on any plate. No chunks to be collected by a purse-lipped waiter. Rech: quite the Entente Cordiale. C
Rech, 62 Avenue des Ternes 75017 Paris, France
01 45 72 29 47; restaurant-rech.fr