Eating out in Paris - Le Baratin

This is the first of a three or perhaps four part series on restaurants in Paris. First up: a cult favourite with a patron who doesn't suffer fools gladly.

Parisian waiters have a global reputation for rudeness. The snooty maître d' turning his nose up at amiable Iowans is a stock character as rich as the red-trousered wine merchant or literary grande dame. And yet on numerous visits to the capital over the last 15 years my wife and I have never come across such a creature. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most of the time we've had eager young waiters with impeccable English who want to talk about London. Not even a sniff of a curled upper lip.

And then we went to Le Baratin in Belleville. This is a cult restaurant which featured in Anthony Bourdain's series 'No Reservations'. It's since become a site of pilgrimage for food lovers searching for le vrai Paris. We were staying nearby at Babel Belleville so it was the perfect place to meet my old friend Seb Emina (who is well worth following on this site).

We don’t want any trouble. Seb Emina (right) and me.

He booked the table and my wife and I turned up on time. She speaks passable French and said that we had a reservation under Monsieur Emina. The patron, however, a short man in his 60s, came bustling out with the air of someone shooing a couple of troublesome pigeons away and denied having the reservation. He switched to English and said there was another restaurant called Le Baratin, perhaps we had booked that instead, it happens all the time. I'm pretty sure this is a lie as no other restaurant comes up when you Google 'Le Baratin'. He then almost pushed us out onto the street, saying that we were blocking the restaurant.

Seb then arrived and spoke to le patron in French who again insisted he had no reservation for us. 'But I spoke to you last week', our friend argued. Like Marshal Pétain at Verdun, le patron was insistent: 'ils ne passeront pas.' Then my friend asked about whether one of the empty tables was free and le patron admitted it was and that we could sit there! So the 20-minute argument was completely unnecessary. But rather than being angry, I was pleased. At last the proper Paris experience.