You may be nonplussed by the sight of an occasional bale of hay and upside-down dried reeds hanging over some of the tables (won’t some of those fluffy bits fall onto the plates full of food?), but apparently that’s what the decor of a dacha (a Russian summer cottage) looks like, if we are to believe the owners of La Datcha, a new restaurant in Paris’s 11th arrondissement.
No matter, because we loved everything else about this restaurant: the comfortable seating, wide spaces between tables and low noise levels in spite of music playing in the background. What a pleasure to be able to relax and talk to your friends while eating! Not the least of La Datcha’s assets is the food, prepared by chef Maksym Zorin, a former acolyte of Alain Ducasse. His Ukrainian origins must be the explanation for the restaurant’s name and its rustic decor.
We were seated upstairs, which meant that we missed out on the show of the open kitchen downstairs, but we were happy about the peaceful ambiance.
The classic menu offers starters (four choices), main courses (five) and dessert (three) instead of the shared small plates that are still so popular in Paris restaurants. Nevertheless, we still ended up passing around every dish, so all of us could have a taste.
First, we indulged in the complimentary appetizer, carrot mousse served in a little pastry cup prettily topped with a slice of clementine, a pomegranate seed and a pine nut. And we spoiled our appetites with the excellent country-style bread, served with a choice of normal butter, wasabi butter and alga-and-lemon-zest butter. The flavored versions were sublime, encouraging excess consumption of the bread. No harm done, since most of the dishes were not too copious.
Among the starters we passed around was crab wrapped in sea lettuce (a type of alga) served with black venere rice and a wonderful bisque sauce with a few pomegranate seeds thrown in for fruity sweetness and crunch.
Another was beautifully tender poulpe (octopus – apologies to lovers of these amazing creatures), which also came with black venere rice, beet condiment and a beet coulis.
The salmon ravioli turned out to be one big fat raviolo with Blue Meat and Red Meat radishes in a Dijon mustard sauce, topped with salmon roe.
Two of us ordered the Pithiviers as our main course. This puff-pastry pie named after the town in the Loiret it comes from can be either sweet or savory. In this case, foie gras, duck and guinea fowl were baked into the pie, which was served with gravy, an artichoke heart and artichoke purée. While not as mind-blowingly scrumptious as the first one I ever tasted, at Pantagruel, it was a good example of the genre, although one of my friends found it too rich.
The perfectly cooked scallops in beurre blanc – “wonderfully simple,” said one of my co-diners – was served with broccolini and broccoli purée.
The tasty trout – a fish rarely seen on Paris menus – was also cooked just right. It came with carrots and kumquats in a bouillabaisse sauce and was decorated with pansy petals.
The navarin d’agneau (lamb ragoût) had been deconstructed, with the lamb tidied up into a nice round shape and drowned in the sauce, and the vegetables – baby carrots, turnips and onions – placed alongside.
We tried all three desserts on offer. As a lover of tarte Tatin (a sort of upside-down apple pie), I was disappointed by the deconstructed version, which looked wonderful, with the pastry and apples wound around to form a rose shape. I missed on the homey, satisfying lusciousness of the original. The vanilla ice cream that came with it, however, was fantastic.
Another dessert consisted of clementine partnered with lychee, flavored with thyme, sitting on a base of meringue. Light and refreshing.
The third one was a little chocolate tart with cocoa nibs, buckwheat and sumac, with a side of fine chocolate ice cream. Altogether, the desserts seemed to be unnecessarily trying too hard to be different.
The whole experience was a pleasure, thanks to the fine food, the agreeable service and the reasons mentioned at the beginning of this article (space!). The prices were rather steep, but we felt that this little vacation in a dacha, in spite of its slight kitschiness, was worth it.
See our Favorite Restaurants by Arrondissement page to find a good restaurant in the neighborhood where you want to eat.
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