Le Relais de l’Entrecôte
I was so excited to visit Paris for the first time. Excited to see the sights, do some shopping, enjoy a vacation with my hubby without the kids for once, and of course - the food. You'd think that for my first trip to Paris I'd be more prepared, but to tell you the truth I had no time to research where to visit. Worse yet, I had no time to figure out where to eat!!! Good thing we have Instagram, or we would have had no idea where to eat at all. I found out about Le Relais de l’Entrecôte on @yummybites604's Instagram and all the reviews I read on Google and TripAdvisor told me that we just had to eat here. I was really interested to try this place especially because of the dead simple menu. They serve steak and fries - and that's it!
So like I said, I didn't have a chance to do much research for this trip. Normally, I have a pretty detailed itinerary of what sights we'd visit and where we would eat. But for Paris, we decided to kind of wing it and just figure things out on the fly. Luckily enough, as we walked out of our hotel to start exploring, we saw Le Relais de l’Entrecôte with no line up! For those that know about this restaurant, it apparently gets very busy, so since there was no line we decided that steak and fries would be our first meal in Paris :)
pro-tip: lunch time lineups are shorter, so come at noon for a short wait.
Our lunch started off with some bread and salad. The salad was a green salad with mustard dressing and walnuts. Wine seemed to be the right way to go since we were in Paris, so we went with the server's recommendation and had some house wine. Only 11€ and it was really tasty!
So the best part about this place is the way you order. They simply ask you "how do you want your steak". No menu, no hard choices. So simple. Medium please.
pro-tip: they only prepare the steak as rare, medium or well. no medium rare here folks, sorry
I usually like my steak medium rare, but I was pleasantly surprised at the steak. It was so tender and the sauce was just amazing. My husband loved the sauce because it was so buttery and the fries were, according to him, perfect. The fries went really well with the sauce as well. When we finished our first plate, we were served another. We realized later that each order had enough for two servings and they kept the rest of it near by on a heating plate. We were very full and satisfied.
But there's always room for dessert! Ironically, a place with no choices for the main course had plenty of choices for dessert. I actually had a pretty hard time deciding since they all looked so good.
I decided on the 'The Summer Vacherine'. Meringues, vanilla ice-cream and raspberry sorbet, topped with a raspberry coulis and Chantilly cream. Enough Said.
Overall, I really liked our first French dining experience. For Canadians, it is definitely a different dining experience. We really take for granted how spoiled we are here in Canada - the service is always top notch and very, very friendly. Don't expect the same from the French. While not rude, it's definitely not the same level of friendly service in France.
pro-tip: a 15% tip is included in all food prices, so tipping is not expected
We weren't aware that the tip was built in to the price, so we actually tipped almost 20% on top of the bill, but the waitress did not seem to care or appreciate our gesture.
All in all though, a great start to our visit to Paris!
Le Relais de l’Entrecôte http://www.relaisentrecote.fr/ 20, rue Saint-Benoît - 75006 Paris Tel. : +33 1 45 49 16 00 Open daily from 12pm to 2:30pm and from 7:00pm to 11:30pm
