One of the best decisions you could make while visiting Paris is to eat at the Relais de l’Entrecote located at Porte-Maillot. It’s the only decision you’ll need to make, too.
A famous 50-year-old fixed three-course menu (peruse the handwritten sign out front) means all you need to do is get inside. Once you bypass the influx of carnivorous groupies clamoring to grab a seat at one of the restaurant’s crammed tables, you’ll enjoy a serving of the best entrecote—a traditional French cut of premium steak—in town. But not before you try their mixed salad dressed with walnuts and a killer mustard vinaigrette. End your meal with a desert of your choice (OK, just one more decision!). Our recommendation: the profiteroles drowned in a melted fudge and cream mixture.
When you taste the melt-in-your-mouth butter-based steak sauce, you’ll quickly see why crowds of tourists and locals alike form long lines in front of the three different Parisian locations—the second is in the popular district of Saint Germain and the third in the 8th arrondissement (home to Champs Elysee). The secret formula, which is arguably a feat of chemical engineering, hasn’t changed one iota since founder Paul Gineste de Saurs opened the small restaurant about a mile north of the Arc de Triomphe in 1959.
Besides being an innovative chef with an exceptional palate (perhaps inherited from a long lineage of wine-producers), de Saurs’ was a smart business man. Instead of overcomplicating things, he simplified by adding only a “L’Entrecote” sign outside the bistro front, not fussing with the restaurant’s pre-existing Venetian theme, and, most importantly, posing just one simple question to his customers: “How would you like your steak cooked?”
This brilliant business model continues to thrive today under the guidance of de Saur’s children and several franchise owners, who run replicas of the original bistro throughout Paris and France as well as in Bahrain, Barcelona, Geneva, London, Montreal and New York.
For more information, visit relaisentrecote.fr/.
[Photography courtesy of Wikimedia (top) and EightFiveZero (center)]
Published on July 15, 2010
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