La Cave de l’os à Moëlle and the World Cup in France
What a night for a girls’ night-out! Every Parisian was plastered to the TV screens for THE match of the week: France versus Portugal. There was no one out at dinner, so we practically had the whole place to ourselves. We chatted and giggled over intimate girly matters… this is the way girls’ nite-out should always be.
I went out for dinner with three girlfriends to La Cave de l’os à Moëlle. La Cave de l’os à Moëlle is une table d’hôte, a home-cooking type of restaurant. There is no “service” per se. The best way to describe a table d’hôte is to compare it to communal dinners in a family. The food is there and you help yourselves to it. If there’re people at another table with a dish you want to try, you hop over and serve yourself. If you’d like a new plate, you swipe the leftovers into a wash basin and grab a new plate/ cutlery.
We sat down at the end of one of many long kitchen tables and helped ourselves out to the fresh cut vegetables with a home-made rémoulade (mayonnaise-type dressing) dip.
We reached over to another table and cut ourselves a generous slice and slices of pâté. We feasted on pâté campagne (country pâté), pâté de boudin noir (pâté with blood sausages), another pâté de poulet (chicken pâté) and rillette de porc (like pâté but a smoother spread). There was soupe de poisson (fish soup) with croûtons (croutons)and rouille (a red colored mayonnaise for fish soup) and ragout de bœuf et champignons (beef and mushroom stew) gently heated up on an old-style cast-iron poêle.
Half way through dinner, we said we would have to save some room for dessert… and one of us said “Well, we’d better save a lot of room for dessert.”…. Was she right! There was pot au chocolat (chocolate pot), cherry clafoutis , apple crumble, fruit salad, a total of 8 different types of desserts. Not that I was counting of course! The cheeses were stored in a wire mesh cage mounted on the brick wall above the dessert table and served on a roof slate.
The food and atmosphere of La Cave de l’os à Moëlle is à la bonne franquette*: no frills, just plain good homecooking style food. La Cave de l’os à Moëlle was an interesting and refreshing dining experience. It had the farmhouse, country eating feel to it. I enjoyed smelling the stews and seeing the desserts. The red brick walls, the floor-to-ceiling wine shelves, le zinc (bar made of zinc), the big wine barrels, high stools, brush concrete floors… made for a perfect cosy table d’hôte. If it were wintertime and La France is not playing in the semi-finals, they would have to drag me out of there.
Getting home was an equally enjoyable ride. We were smart and left La Cave de l’os à Moëlle 15 minutes before the end of the match. My taxi ride home was a dream… I saw Paris for all she is. Beautiful Paris all lit up at night, a smooth ride in a Mercedes S500L V8, all four windows wound down, cool breeze, not another car in sight (literally), and opera music blaring away. (The taxi driver is “anti-foot”, a rare breed in Paris and the only reason how I caught a cab home.)
I arrived home pile (on the dot) when they declared France to be the winner. Everyone came of nowhere and the party and incessant car-honking began and lasted way into the night.
La Cave de l’os à Moëlle 181 rue Lourmel Paris, 75015 Tél: 01 45 57 28 28 Métro : Lourmel (ligne 8)