Eating out in Paris - L'Entente British Brasserie

'Qu'est-ce que la cuisine anglaise?'

When you have an hour to kill in Paris before interviewing the former first lady of France, where do you go? The city’s first British brasserie, of course. I’d been in touch with owner Oliver Woodhead on Instagram for some time, we have a friend in common called Miles Morland who is an investor in L’Entente and who featured on Drinking Culture a couple of weeks ago.

Woodhead first came to Paris in 1998 and has never moved back to England, working in fashion before moving into restaurants. He had a lively stint in New York managing the legendary Odeon and working with Keith McNally’s former wife and business partner Lynn Wagenknecht. This involved being repeatedly hired and fired which must have been an educational experience.

In 2017, he returned to Paris and opened L’Entente in the 2nd arrondissement, not far from the Opera Metro. When I arrived there was Woodhead by the bar looking about as English as it’s possible to look with his floppy hair and pink trousers. One can imagine a young Hugh Grant playing him and wouldn’t it make a great feelgood romantic comedy, the Englishman trying to sell British food Paris?

The restaurant is a bright airy space which, thank God, doesn’t play on twee cliches like Union Jack cushions. Instead there’s a colonial air with pictures of tigers and the like though the words of ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ are written on the wall, a nod to the restaurant’s logo, a ceramic blackbird in a pie.

There wasn’t time for a pie so Oliver suggested a Welsh rarebit. It was impeccable, as you’d expect from a restaurant inspired by St. John, the first chef came from St. John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields and there was a copy of Nose to Tail Eating on the wall when I visited. Much better than the kind of thing you’d get in an old fashioned gentlemen’s club. This was followed by a smoked fish, salmon and haddock, and quail’s egg salad which was inspired. I’d never thought of putting smoked haddock in a salad. It was like a Scottish take on salade niçoise.

The menu is less austere than St. John. Essentially it’s wall-to-wall classics like fish and chips, beef wellington and there’s always a pie of the day. Prices seemed quite reasonable to me for this part of Paris, rump steak with triple-cooked chips for €36 - about £30. You might be surprised to learn that the customers are largely French though many of them will have spent some time in London and missed the British classics. Considering good English food isn’t easy to find in London, what Woodhead and his team are doing in Paris is remarkable.

In contrast to the food, the wine list is all French. He thought English wine would have taken too much explaining though I think it’s a shame he doesn’t have an English sparkling wine by the glass. I asked Oliver what sold well with Parisians and he said, the cheaper stuff. Apparently diners in New York were far more likely to spend money on wine. Beaujolais, except the very cheapest stuff, is a hard sell as is Alsace as most French people think it’s going to be sweet. Sounds a bit like British customers. Furthermore, despite the prevalence of natural wine bars in Paris, funkier wines can be a harder sell especially as they don’t have a designated sommelier to explain that, yes, it is meant to taste like that.

Despite this, there are some natural wines on the list such as Marcotte, a gutsy red made from two varieties I had never heard of, duras and braucol. It’s bottled without any sulphur but though unusual, it’s not wacky. One can imagine it would be wonderful with offal. It comes from cult eaux-de-vie producer Laurent Cazottes who provides spirits for Bouchon Racine in London. The Gers, armagnac country, is Woodhead’s favourite part of France. His parents have a house there.

We also tasted a very ripe red Sancerre by François Crochet. He stocks some esoteric stuff like Loire producer Lise & Bertrand Jousset plus some absolute bangers like Tempier Bandol rosé and Tibourin rosé from Clos Cibonne, a wine with the best label in the world. Wines start from around €36. Again good prices when you think a bottle of Picpoul in central London will now set you back about £40. The coffee, unusually for Paris, is excellent.

Woodhead was planning to buy the shop next door and turn it into a wine bar but there was a problem with one of the investors and it fell through. But he thinks it will happen. The other idea was a bar devoted to the great aperitifs of France like Noilly Prat, Byrrh, rivesaltes, banyuls, maury etc. The kind of things that old Frenchmen would have drunk but are now quite in with the hipsters.

I wish I’d had time to explore the wine list more and taste one of L’Entente’s famous pies but I had a pressing engagement. I asked for the bill but le patron insisted it was on the house. We walked over to a nearby hotel to meet Carla Bruni and her team. I was there to talk to her about her own brand of rosé called Roseblood (full story coming in Decanter). They were curious when I told them where I had had lunch. “But what is British food?” Bruni asked. I suggested she go to L’Entente to find out for herself.

You can read the first part of my series on Parisian restaurants, Le Baratin. There will be more next week.