Les Enfants du Marché, a modern & creative restaurant located within the open-air Marché des Enfants Rouges market in the upper Marais, is a dining counter known for natural wine and avant-garde cuisine. While the seating on bar stools in the bustling market might suggest a more lowbrow offering, the surprising combinations on Japanese chef Masahide Ikuta's unforgettable plates evoke a far more fine dining affair (an evocation reflected in the highbrow prices). It is one of our favorite Paris restaurants.
Practical information
Address: 9 rue des Quatre-Vents, 75006
Nearest transport: Odéon (4, 10)
Hours: Closed Sunday and for Monday lunch. Open for wine sales and as a wine bar from 11am-2:30pm and from 6-10:30pm.
Reservations: Strongly recommended for dinner because the small, intimate space often fills up
Telephone: 01 43 54 99 30
Average price for lunch: 10-19€
Average price for dinner: 20-34€
Style of cuisine: classic French, small plates
Website
Reviews of interest
Le Fooding (2013) “The little bites are wonders: Albacore tuna from the île d’Yeu, little smoked trout terrine, blood sausage with onions from La Maison Galland in Touraine, authentic ham and Bordier butter sandwich. As for the nectars, glasses of red (Roussilon Tam-Tam du Domaine du Bout du Monde at €7 a glass) and white (Touraine Petit Buisson du Clos du Tue-Boeuf at €7 a glass).”
In front, a wine shop with a good selection of estate-bottled wines. In back, a place to drink them, accompanied by charcuterie and cheese.
Tucked around the corner from the resplendently stodgy brasseries of Montparnasse is Frédéric Belcamp’s miniscule wine shop and wine bar La Quincave, a destination for natural wine afficionados since 2003 (and featured in the 100th episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations). Belcamp’s long support of more-than-organic, low-sulfur wine is apparent in La Quincave’s 200+ references, which include the occasional back-vintage as well as healthy allocations of certain sought-after selections. The man himself tends to hold court on Fridays and Saturdays; on other evenings his capable staff serve up simple platters of cheeses, rillettes, and cured sausage to the consistent crowd of low-key regulars.
La Quincave’s general template – 7€ corkage, simple snacks, natural wines – may have since become familiar to residents of the 10th, 11th, and 12th arrondissements, where caves-à-manger are as common hairdressers. But few newcomers have managed to replicate La Quincave’s frank, stylish ambience or the wisdom of Belcamp’s wine selections.
You'll be surrounded by an array of tempting products if you decide to lunch at this canal-side épicerie. Bottles to go, too.
A small, thoughtful collection of natural wines lines the wall at this Oberkampf shop, where you can snack on charcuterie and cheese while enjoying a bottle, at zero corkage. There's more space at the second location, in the 20th.
Since opening in 2001, La Cave des Papilles has risen to become arguably the most dynamic, well-stocked, and brilliantly-curated natural wine shop in Paris. Its daffodil-colored exterior displays made-to-measure posters of the cult winemakers featured at the shop’s regular tastings. Founder Gerard Katz and partners Florian Aubertin and Aurélian Brugnau enjoy an industry pre-eminence that ensures a healthy supply of rare and allocated bottles among the shops 1200+ selections. Prices are fair and despite the shop’s deserved reputation for support of more-than-organic farming and low-sulfur vinification, the selection remains broad-minded enough to please even more conservative palates. Keep an ear open for the shop’s occasional block parties, which reliably feature jazz bands, fresh-shucked oysters, and a who’s-who of France’s natural wine community.
Caviste Georges Castellato wields a canny, professorial charm and a magnificent array of back-vintage bottles ranging from established classics to newcomer natural wines at this small, unassuming terraced wine shop in the marché Saint-Germain. Castellato, a former restaurateur who bought Bacchus et Ariane in 1998, is one of tragically few independent Paris cavistes who remain faithful to the true definition of their métier: a caviste who actually cellars wine, putting in on sale when it is ready to drink. So if one has a jones for quality 1989 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, 1990 Madiran, or 2005 Burgundy, one is more likely to find it at Bacchus et Ariane than almost anywhere else in Paris. And at a better price: at a time when much of the surrounding 6ème arrondissement has become an overpriced circus for tourists, the value of Bacchus et Ariane’s selection is downright astonishing. Castellato offers bottle service for a 7€ corkage fee on the wine shop’s covered terrace and at its tiny interior bar, and while no food is prepared on the premises, he’s happy to bring over some oysters or charcuterie from his neighbors in the Marché Saint-Germain. In short, the shop is a perfect perch for fine-wine pre-gaming before dinner – as long as one doesn’t mind the evening’s oenological highlights arriving early.