Le Bel Ordinaire
We have not yet reviewed this restaurant. Check back soon for our thoughts!
Category Archives: Wine Shops
Divvino
Practical information
Address: 16 Rue Elzevir, 75003
Nearest transport: Filles du Calvaire (8)
Hours: Open Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday from 12-9pm. Open Friday-Saturday from 12-10pm.
Telephone: 09 83 74 25 04
Website Facebook Instagram
Additional Location
Address: 163 Boulevard Voltaire, 75011
Nearest transport: Charonne (9)
Hours: Open Tuesday-Friday from 10:30am-1:30pm and from 3:30-8:30pm. Open Saturday from 10:30am-9pm. Open Sunday from 11am-2pm and from 4-8pm. Open Monday from 5:30-8:30pm.
Telephone: 09 83 05 27 46
Sauvage
Practical information
Address: 60 rue du Cherche Midi, 75006
Nearest transport: Rennes (12), Vaneau (10)
Hours: Closed Sunday & Monday; Open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch & dinner
Reservations: Walk-ins Welcome
Telephone: 06 88 88 48 23
Average price for lunch: 20-39€
Average price for dinner: 20-39€
Style of cuisine: Small plates, modern French
Facebook
Reviews of interest
Time Out (2016) “As soon as you enter this well-presented cave-cum-restaurant on the Rue du Cherche-Midi, you get an inkling you’re going to eat well. There’s something about all those interesting wine bottles stacked on the walls, the friendly intimacy of the main room (just 15 tables) and the small kitchen nestled at the back that immediately gives a good, homey impression.”
Le Monde (2016) “L’assiette est comme un écho. Elle correspond à des appétits curieux de tout avec une innocence qui est revenue de tout: des palourdes avec du cidre et du citron, du porc avec carottes et bergamote, des ris de veau, racines et cueillettes. C’est biblique, nature, sans chichis. C’est du Doux Jésus. Une sorte de chant tranquille, fredonné.”
Not Drinking Poison in Paris (2015) “Bare-bones, boxy, and cheerful, Sauvage resembles a small-town Scandinavian coffee shop. But owner Sebastien Leroy outdoes himself with a surprisingly uncompromising natural wine selection, and an improvisational menu that grasps beyond the usual cheese and charcuterie to include – at least on the night I visited – a bright and vivid lobster salad.”
Le Figaro (2015) “Des casiers à vins bien fournis, des produits hyper sourcés en arrivage direct, quelques chaises et tables en bois et une atmosphère camarade…”
Paris Bouge (2015) “Velouté de chou-fleur et œufs de saumon, jambon fumé de la Manche, saucisse du Jura et son bouillon de légumes, joue de porc au cidre, fromage normand, riz au lait à la flouve ou encore crème de butternut…”
Le Fooding (2014) “Une vraie potée, du jambon bien cochon, des fromages qui puent, une soupe pour faire chabrot et un coup de rouge en plein quartier chochotte ? Si ce n’est plus possible chez Gérard, ça l’est chez Sauvage, la cave à manger de Sébastien Leroy, ex-décorateur de cinéma, aujourd’hui chercheur de goûts.”
Photo via Sauvage’s Facebook page
Le Siffleur de Ballons
Sommelier-turned-restaurateur Thierry Bruneau’s versatile and tasteful neighborhood wine bar is a cherished mainstay of the Aligre neighborhood. It’s got a long, lively bar for solo diners, a bevy of small tables for couples and small groups, and a rear room that can be privatized for minor occasions. Managers Tristan Renoux and Frederick Malpart curate the dynamic, well-priced, mostly natural wine selection with an enthusiasm almost unheard of in the Paris hospitality scene. And the bar’s simple menu of salads and gourmet foodstuffs is anchored by a brilliant steak for two, prepared in the kitchen of Bruneau’s restaurant across the road, L’Ebauchoir. Bottles can also be purchased to go.
Les Caves de Reuilly
Dynamic young Bretonne Pierre le Nen took the helm of this well-regarded neighborhood wine shop in February 2014 and promptly turned it into one of Paris’ most welcoming terraced wine bars, where an impressively wide selection of natural wines and their more conventional forbears can be enjoyed with zero corkage fee. For anyone peckish, plates of cheese and charcuterie are available, along with an array of tinned and jarred rillettes and the like. Le Nen also stocks an indulgent wall of whisky and a respectable range of French craft beer.
Les Caves de Reuilly’s out-of-the-way location in the 12ème arrondissement ensures an ambience worlds apart from the bustle and hype of more central neighbourhoods: here instead are bands of quality-conscious, budget-conscious Parisians, enjoying honest, inexpensive wine, each other’s company, and the cool evening air. Be sure to ask the staff if the terrace looks full – as often as not, they’re able to simply whip out another table and some chairs for newcomers.
Fine l’Épicerie de Belleville
Founded in 2010 on rue de Tourtille, Cécile Boussarie’s gourmet food and wine shop moved around the corner in 2014 to its current, more prominent rue de Belleville location. Its bold, clean red sign belies the unpolished dowdiness of the shop’s interior, where teas, jams, vinegars, spices, potted meats, conserves, oils, and assorted trinkets line all available surfaces. In the middle of über-urban Belleville, it’s like walking into a deserted village gift shop.
At midday, Fine L’Épicerie de Belleville offers soups and sandwiches enjoyably enlivened with various low-key delicacies (dry Sicilian caper sausage, say, or spiced confit grape cream). Tables in the shop’s deep interior are a refuge from the street for lunchtime diners and the odd professional meeting. Along with cheese and charcuterie, Boussarie stocks a slightly haphazard range of inexpensive natural wine and craft beer. While not a tastemaking authority by any means, Fine L’Épicerie de Belleville remains a handy back-pocket address for things to bring to last-minute weeknight dinner parties and relatives’ birthday brunches.
La Cave de Belleville
La Cave de Belleville’s unlikely origins sound like the set-up for a knock-knock joke: a pharmacist, a sound engineer, and a gallerist open a cave-à-manger. François Braouezec, Aline Geller, and Thomas Perlmutter deserve a lot of credit for the scale of their ambitions, as La Cave de Belleville, open every day of the week, is at once a wine shop, an épicerie, and a vast, casual wine bar. The airy, well-lit space (a former leather wholesaler) positively bustles at apéro hour, when locals nip in for inexpensive plates of charcuterie, cheese, and canned delicacies. The trio’s limited industry experience is sometimes evident in the inconsistency of the shop’s maximalist selections of wine, spirits, and beer. (Were the wine not mostly natural, it would be hard to call it a “selection”. Filling shelves seems to have been the priority.) But one senses the owners’ intentions are sincere, and the Belleville neighborhood – chaotic, culture-clashy, forever on the cusp of gentrification – stands to benefit greatly from a friendly, accessible social anchor like La Cave de Belleville.
Les Caves de Prague
Parisian wine shops tend to exhibit tunnel vision, often to the point of obsession: either they sell natural/organic/biodynamic wine, or they sell “traditional” wine, and rarely do the twain meet. One sees many of the same wines over, and over, and over again.
Not here. There’s plenty to satisfy any palate or ideology, and what’s more a lot of the labels aren’t the common names littering most modern restaurant lists. Add in a casual vibe, a ton of tables for casual in-store imbibing (with a wonderfully minuscule droit de bouchon), a rather surprising menu of tapas and the usual wine bar comestibles, and there’s finally something new under the Parisian sun.