It’s rather worrying when the restaurant you plan to eat at is called Pagaille, meaning “chaos,” but I was confident that that was just some kind of ironic private joke on the part of the owners.
Pagaille is one of a string of restaurants on the Rue Ramey in Paris’s 18th arrondissement that have been receiving positive attention in the French press (others include Sosso and Nakatsu, the latter a specialist in karaage, Japanese fried chicken).
My first impression of it was positive. It has a colorful decor in warm shades of ocher and yellow, with a couple of large Matisse-like paintings and lots of plants. The two servers were smiley and attentive, and although music was pouring forth from a speaker right above my head, it was somehow not disturbing then or even later when the restaurant was filling up, probably because of the good quality of the sound system.
My friend Bonnie and I decided to drink glasses of orange wine with our meal, which turned out to be a fine choice, and to share two starters. The vitello tonnato was fairly classic: sliced veal, a creamy tuna-flavored sauce and capers, with the addition of grain mustard and the currently popular pickled onions.
The other starter was a pleasing Asian-inspired dish of roasted eggplant in sweet-and-sour sauce with Greek yogurt, peanuts, sesame seeds and more pickled red onions.
So far so good, but then things started to go downhill. Bonnie had ordered the espadon (swordfish), while I had opted for the échine de cochon (pork shoulder). Both came with puréed vegetables that were ice cold. Her fish was also cold. We called the server over and asked him about it. He came back and said that purées and fish were supposed to be served cold.
Okay, it’s officially still summertime, so why not? The mint-flavored pea purée with the fish was lovely and even came with some fresh peas, but the swordfish was fairly tasteless and uninteresting.
My purée, of sweet potatoes, was also delicious, but the pork, which had been breaded and fried and topped with a curry-flavored sauce, was chewy and unappealing. I made a valiant attempt but could only get through half of it. To his credit, the server was concerned to see so much left on the plate and asked why. I told him the truth: it just didn’t taste good to me.
In spite of all that, we gave the restaurant another chance by ordering the two available desserts. The chocolate cream with whipped cream and pieces of chocolate cookie was perfectly fine.
The other dessert, however, which had sounded wonderful when the server described it to us, was extremely disappointing. The melon sorbet, which should have been bursting with fruity flavor, was positively insipid, as were the little cubes of fresh melon. There was no sign of the limoncello he had mentioned, which might have livened up the dish.
A couple of other little red flags that had seemed fairly unimportant earlier in the meal also detracted from our overall impression: many of the dishes used were chipped and, instead of giving us fresh knives and forks for the main course, the server took our food-covered utensils off our plates and laid them down on the bare table.
In light of the positive reviews of the food that have been published, I wonder if the regular chef was off-duty that night because it was Sunday, but why should that make a difference?
Pagaille wasn’t exactly chaotic, but there did seem to be some disorder in the kitchen’s preparations, and neither of us expect to return. That won’t stop us, however, from visiting the other restaurants on the Rue Ramey.
See our Favorite Restaurants by Arrondissement page to find a good restaurant in the neighborhood where you want to eat.
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