Restaurant Review - Le Relais de l'Entrecôte

OK, time for another restaurant review. In August we were very kindly treated by Kirsten Grant, along with Kirsten's sister-in-law Alex, to dinner at Le Relais de L'Entrecôte. Kirsten used to live in Paris so we trusted her judgement. Usually when people recommend a restaurant for a certain type of food or cuisine it's because they do that dish or cuisine particularly well, along with some other things on the menu. Well not l'Entrecôte. They only have one thing on the menu, actually there isn't a menu, just a wine list. When you first enter you immediately notice the black and white traditional waitress uniforms, and a flury of 50 something year old waitresses whipping around the restaurant at full speed. They sit you down, give you a wine menu and a few minutes later they come back to take your order. Choosing the wine is the hardest part so we just went with the house wine. The next question is how do you like your steak cooked. That's it! There is no menu, no choice other than rare, medium or well done. A truly ingenious business model: a salad to start, steak, fries. Vegetarians and vegans need not apply! Needless to say the steak and their special sauce was fantastic. Then just when you think, well, that was good but...... back comes the waitress with your second course of.........you guessed it, more steak frites.

Apparently there is a bit of a battle between Le Relais de l'Entrecôte and L'Entrecôte as to which one is the original, the best etc, but I'm not going to try and solve it here. I'm sure L'Entrecôte is just as good.

After dinner it was desert time the famous Ladurée on the Champs Elysées.

Le Relais de l'Entrecôte

15 rue Marbeuf

75008 Paris

01 49 52 07 17

plus other locations: www.relaisentrecote.fr

Ladurée

75, Avenue des Champs Elysées

75008 Paris