Sun and cloud, and cooler—10 C at 10:00 am.

We took a walk in the Marais (Métro St-Paul), partly to catch a glimpse of this the oldest part of the city and specifically to visit the old-fashioned eclectic food shop, Izrael, at 30 rue François-Miron.

We stepped over the worn threshold into a hodgepodge of culinary items from the basic to the recherché—grains and lentils, sausages and cheese, mendiants and candied cumquats. The display seemed artless, as if new merchandise were simply dropped where there happened to be space. Yet we felt the urge to buy things we might have passed over in any well-ordered emporium: gingembre confit (F100 the kilogram), orangettes (chocolate-coated candied orange peel, F290), loukoumes assortis (assorted Turkish delights, F78).

Who are Izrael’s customers? We noticed a few tourists in the store, and a few locals. Shelves of exotic foods, such as Hellman’s mayonnaise, hinted at substantial business with the ex-patriot community. If we had been planning on a longer stay in Paris, we probably would have returned to stock up on basic foods such as the especially plump and glossy black beans hand-labeled Blésip (the spelling is just a guess, since Izrael’s calligraphy is almost as impenetrable as Mme La Farge’s).

Time passed so fast we had to get a taxi to our lunch place:

52 bis rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, Paris 02. Métro Bourse.

We sat at a comfortably large table in a modest, neat, and quiet dining room.

Amuse bouche: (1) Pastries: A simple, perfect mille feuille, with no flavoring whatever to distract from the mild nutty character of pastry fresh from the oven; a miniature quiche, about the size of a five-franc coin, also mild and good. (2) A quail egg cooked "sunny side up" on a bed of long-cooked leeks, accompanied by a reduction of poultry cooking juices. Acting on a happy inspiration, we muddled the egg-yolk with the reduction to create our very own, exceedingly rich sauce.

One of the restaurant’s personable young waiters gave us an interesting, well-rehearsed account of the restaurant’s effort to secure the best ingredients, including the establishment of a farm in Normandy for fine poultry and rabbit as well as fruit and vegetables.

Langoustines poêlées au vinaigre de cidre doux, tomates acidulées: Shelled fresh prawns cooked just to the point of opacity and retaining a slight resistance to the bite, served on a sauce compounded of prawn cooking liquids and cider vinegar. This was accompanied by a small mâche salad and small baked tomatoes covered with thin slices of something, perhaps turnip, that had been marinated in cider vinegar to produce a sweet-and-sour effect. This dish impressed us with its delicate balance between the acidity from vinegar and the unctuous character of the fish.

Foie gras de canard, tartine à la pomme caramelisée: On one side of the plate, a thick slice of terrine made from chunks of beige and rose-colored foie gras pressed together in a variegated pattern reminiscent of art nouveau. On the other side, overlapping slices of apple that had been buttered and sprinkled with sugar, then toasted to light brown. These visual pleasures had counterparts on the palate in the wholesome flavor and richness of foie gras, and the contrasting mild acidity and sweetness of the apple.

Cuisse de poulet fermier sauté à l’ail doux, pomme à la peau: A leg of chicken on a deeply flavorful sauce, accompanied by oven-roasted potatoes capped with slices of roasted garlic. This straightforward presentation relied for its effect on the superior quality of the poultry from the restaurant’s farm. The chicken skin had been toasted dark brown and almost brittle. The meat was dense but solid and easy to cut, and loaded with the wonderful flavor that to me recalled childhood on a farm where chickens lived a long, active and healthy life, and a roast chicken was the culinary event of the year. The sauce was dark, almost like a beef reduction in appearance but tasting intensely of chicken. The potatoes also offered extraordinary pleasure—especially mashed with a little of that sauce!

Culinary query: What is the meaning of pomme à la peau? (The potatoes were certainly peeled.)

Caille rôti aux endives braisée et raisins, jus de foie gras: Another dish created from farm ingredients—legs of roast quail on a bed of braised endives, surrounded by boat-shaped pieces of zucchini and turnip, and a scattering of small white grapes on a medium-brown, foie gras-enhanced sauce. The quail were cooked to the stage where the meat was red just at the bone—delectable morsels that illustrated the phrase "melts in the mouth." But the greatest joy of the dish came from the interplay between sauce and vegetables. The sauce, moderately intense, seemed to have picked up acidity and sweetness from the grapes. Those notes reacted in fascinating ways with those of the zucchini and turnip boats, and with the faintly bitter fondue of endives.

We drank Mercurey Faivley La Framboiserie 1994. This light-textured, mildly fruity red Burgundy was a particularly good match to the poultry dishes.

Mousse de thé Earl Grey au parfum de menthe fraîche, sorbet Ceylan: A slab of tender, creamy mousse paired with a spoon-formed, rose-colored sorbet. Both preparations gave off unmistakable aromas of their respective tea flavorings—Earl Grey with its citrus-oil note from bergamot, and fruity Ceylon. The mousse and sorbet were served, along with sprigs of mint, on a thin, transparent, herbal tea-flavored coulis. The coulis seemed enhanced by mashing into it a leaf or two of mint.

Among the mignardises, we were especially impressed with a tablet consisting of hard white chocolate enclosing a core of melting-soft dark chocolate, and pastry "medallions" with thin slices of fruits—kiwi, mandarin, pineapple—stamped on a base of pastry spread with crème patisserie.

Afterwards we had a brief chat with the manager, a gaunt woman with a careworn air derived, we imagined, from fretting over the myriad details of running a restaurant to the most exacting standards. We fumbled in our attempt to tell her how much we had enjoyed the lunch. But we must have put the point across, for she lit up like a diva receiving an ovation in the opera house.

The total at Pile ou Face was F752.