Gare au Gorille

Gorilla train station. That’s all this name means to me, and I’m not going to look it up to prove myself wrong. Gare = train station and Gorille = Gorilla. That’s all it can be.

Small plates revelation of the year! We all know small plates are the thing. More food to try is always better. This might be my new favorite but the one downside is its location. Right in the middle of absolutely nowhereville. But it is absolutely worth the effort and the trek. If this place were located anywhere between the 1st and 10th, I’d go, I don’t know, every hour?

But I digress  on a soliloquy about my laziness and/or my desire to gravitate to the 10th and 11th.Gare au Gorille had been on my list for a long time. I finally went a couple months ago, and I have to say it was a standout. I met up with two visiting friends, one of them being Michelle Boyd, who provided all the fancy photos on my About Me page (as well as the table shots above). Michelle and I have a mutual friend who emailed me one day a couple years ago saying, “Hey, my friend Michelle is a photographer, and she wants to take pictures of someone around Paris while she’s visiting.” Sure, why not. And that resulted in a fun full day photo shoot as well as a new friend. So here they were (she and her husband), two years later, visiting the most magnificent city in the world.

And, well, you’ve gotta eat. So may as well make it delicious. It may be out in the boonies, but I can find no fault with the dishes.

And by dishes I mean both the food and these bright teal dishes. If only my purse were big enough. Above is bonito tartare with eggplant and salicornia (what you would get if asparagus and seaweed had a baby).

Gazpacho with haddock, beets, and raw cream – So fresh on hot summer evening.

And what’s under the radishes, you ask? You know what, I don’t know. There was a lot happening, and I was busy eating, and I forgot. It’s the worst food blog you’ve ever read. I’m a failure. I think that’s mackerel with sorrel and lardo. But I just get excited about food, and I eat it, and then it’s gone. But it’s still pretty the next day.

Whiting fish tempura with tartare sauce

Pommes Darphin – Apparently not a typo, but the first time I’ve heard of it. A good old fashioned potato cake. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, salt flakes visible from across the room. A thing of beauty.

Lamb croquettes with prune sauce. If you like that sort of thing, which I do. I popped all of these in my mouth in quick succession before my dining companions could stand a chance. I told them it was just prune sauce, a special French delicacy, through chipmunk cheeks.

This doesn’t include the fish rilletes with yuzu and smoked EEL’S HEAD pâté that we got to start with, nor the eye-roll inducing chocolate creme dessert. Because again, sometimes the food is too exciting.

Go. Do not delay. And I thank me for reminding myself that I need to go back immediately.

Gare au Gorille
68 rue des Dames, 75017
Closed Sunday & Monday
01 42 94 24 02
25-40€ for a variety of small plates