After serving giant water snails with aioli, a green salad with hard-boiled eggs and anchovies, and squid with potatoes in a pink rouille, he arrived carrying a big black iron pot: braised bull cheek that had been marinated in merlot and slow-cooked in the oven.
Arrange the squids and potatoes on serving plates and spoon over the buttery pan juices, capers and zest.
Squid-and-potato croquettes, with a shit ton of truffle".
Best of all there's a lunchtime special: for 12 euros you get two dishes (one recent offering: carrot and baby squid soup and potato crepes, or roast with spinach soufflé), with wine.
So, the question then becomes, should we all switch to a diet of tofu, sweet potatoes and squid?
Far less expensive but still delicious are the deep-sea squid, thick-cut fried potatoes and taramosalata — fish roe dip — at Sardelles (Persefonis 15; 30-210-347-8050; 25 euros for dinner).
Au Passage was opened by a talented young crew from Spring, and working with produce from the star Parisian truck farmer Joël Thiébault, the Australian-born chef James Henry does a daily blackboard menu of superb gastro gnoshes like seared tuna with mussels and potatoes, griddled squid and baby vegetable salad and sliced steak with kimchi style cornichons.
Entrees include Indian-style stir-fried egg noodles in an authentic mild dried squid sauce with tofu, potatoes, shrimp, egg and bean sprouts; special egg noodles in homemade soy sauce with ginger and duck meat; and chicken cooked over low heat with lemon grass and chili paste, then simmered in a rich coconut curry.
With a blustery wind outside, hearty dishes like meatballs with squid and trinxat — a potato-and-kale pancake — were exactly what I wanted.
