There is a menu at Les Enfants du Marché – a chalkboard list of specialties that skew seafood (with prices to match, nay, exceed the quality promised and delivered). But there’s also owner Michael Grosman saying, “Shall I just bring you a few things?”
It’s an almost prohibitively expensive offer. Accept it anyway.
The virtues of this wine bar counter located within the storied Marché des Enfants Rouges have been extolled by many before me, but since my first visit (!) is fresh in my mind, let me add my voice to the melee.
Weekends are truly the prime time to visit this counter restaurant; the entire market is bustling, and the three sides of the counter are full of groups but also singles and couples, some of whom will take up their seats for the entire afternoon, nursing a bottle of natural wine and digging into plate after plate of the precise, creative cuisine of Japanese Chef Masahide Ikuta. As a result, there’s always a wait, but never fear: It gives you time to keep watch on what the kitchen’s cooking up on any given day and sip a glass of (natural) wine standing up – just hail one of the servers and don’t lose your place in line.
Once seated (after about a half-hour’s wait), my group of three wholeheartedly opted into the “whatever goes” mentality here; list your allergies and aversions, and wait to be astonished.
Our first plate featured a pair of some of the freshest Galician sea urchins I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling: sweet and silken, they were lovely when paired with a leek jam topped by two briny clams and a puddle of delicious beurre blanc. (Keep an eye on that beurre blanc… it’s gonna make a few encore performances.)
But for now, scene two of this multi-course epic managed to offer a total 180: rich sardines were coated in a squid ink tempura batter and fried until crackly and hot. Dragged through a bright yellow turmeric mayonnaise, they were the ideal answer to the purity of the simple urchin.
There’s something kind of sexy about a dish as difficult to eat neatly as these fresh langoustines, topped with a jumble of bitter herbs and a lovely sprinkle of Espelette pepper and accompanied by a generous quenelle of crème crue. Elbows jostling our neighbors, we picked these clean, depositing the shells on whatever empty plate we could find before our server returned to clear plates and fill glasses. (Wine was selected by Mika with as sole indications color and price ceiling – and he knows what he’s doing.)
Things stayed delicious as we moved on to the next course, but it was around this point that they started to get samey. Turbot was topped with pig trotter and paired with a puddle of that still-same beurre blanc, for a surf-and-turf rich in flavor and fat. While we called “uncle” after this plate and declared ourselves ready to move on to dessert, a miscommunication led to the kitchen sending out one more savory choice…
… cuttlefish with crispy pig ear and, yep, even more of that beurre blanc. This dish would have likely been my favorite of the day, if only the gribiche in the background had been the sole accompaniment, if only that salad had had a touch more citrus to it, if only I hadn’t already filled up on everything that came before. We made a resilient dent in this dish, and it was aghast that we received (and woefully turned away) one last plate of lieu (paired with… you guessed it… even more beurre blanc) in favor of the finale: dessert.
This peanut cream-filled chou was paired with fresh orange slices and an orange reduction for the ideal marriage of bitter, sweet, and acid. The cream could have been a bit more peanutty, but it was tasty nevertheless, and the chou itself was exquisite, proving that this team knows how to handle its pasty as adeptly as it does its seafood and offal.
Sexy chou, slightly broken cream, given the miscommunication and subsequent wait.
All in all, les Enfants du Marché effortlessly turns any weekend lunch into a special occasion. Go with friends who are not picky (seriously – you have to be willing to try pretty much anything for this experience to be worth it) and who are willing to blow 100 euro on lunch, and you’ll be as happy as a pig in mud.
Les Enfants du March̩ Р39 Rue de Bretagne, 75003