“Let us cultivate our garden,” said Candide in Voltaire’s famous tale. I don’t know if the namesake restaurant in Paris’s 10th arrondissement has a garden, but judging by the satisfying number of vegetable dishes on the menu, the chef pays special attention to good, seasonal garden produce.
On the night we ate in the pretty, all-white restaurant, two of the four starters were veggie-dominant. We chose to share the broccoli, grilled over binchotan (a type of Japanese charcoal that is increasingly popular in Paris restaurants) and served with anchovy butter, aged Parmesan and toasted buckwheat. The flavor of the anchovies didn’t come through, but the broccoli was tasty and perfectly cooked.
We also tried the tarama, the real thing (with none of that horrible pink coloring you sometimes see), served simply with olive oil and the wonderful bread made by Thierry Breton.
Two of us decided to share the échine de porc (pork shoulder), available only in a double portion. Tender and flavorful, it came with two great side dishes, one of them a salad of thinly sliced, marinated zucchini with fresh mint, a version of a Neapolitan dish, zucchini à la scapece. We all loved this simple yet delicious way of treating a boring vegetable. The other side was excellent polenta with Parmesan.
One friend ordered the barbecued chicken alla diavola, which had been listed as pintade (guinea fowl) on the menu. He would have preferred that, as the chicken was a bit dry and not very exciting, but he liked the spicy sauce. The French fries that came with it, which he cheerfully shared with everyone, were outstanding.
The other main course was poulpe (octopus), which one of our party ordered after the now-obligatory discussion of the ethics of eating octopus after seeing the documentary My Octopus Teacher. He was reassured by my assertion that even though the female octopus dies immediately after giving birth, she first lays hundreds of thousands of eggs. In any case, he thought it was fantastic. It was served with mashed potatoes, green asparagus and a sauce flavored with nduja, a spicy Calabrian sausage.
Time for dessert. The financier made with the same Basque Grand Roux cornmeal as the polenta was astoundingly good – so, so buttery. It was served with fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella) ice cream and an unusual and delicious sauce made with squash seeds. The other dessert was a fine example of a tiramisu.
We went to Candide on a Monday evening and found it nearly empty, which was surprising, given how good it is. Perhaps it is just a bit too chic for the neighborhood, or maybe the area’s French residents were tired out and broke from all the long holiday weekends in May. Or maybe they stayed on in the country to cultivate their gardens.
See our Favorite Restaurants by Arrondissement page to find a good restaurant in the neighborhood where you want to eat.
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