Le Bouillon Chartier, A Classic French Food Dining Experience

With the recommendation of friends of friends of Chantelle, she arranged a little dinner group to go to ‘Chartier’ restaurant, close to Grande Boulevards. We stood in line with the rest of them, no reservations here. The essence of the place is to deliver a very simple, inexpensive French dinning experience in a huge antique dinning room. Everyone loves comfort home cooking and this place is completely packed with 300 seats, every evening, with a line to get in!!

This is the line ahead from where we stood

The menu, posted outside

A suggestion of a three course meal plus drink for under 20 euro

The dinning room was the main attraction for me, it is fabulous

Two floors, coat hangers, wooden furniture, the lighting... Was hard to get it in the picture but this place was huge and very crowded.

So much places to put your bags and coats next to you, I love it!

The service was in fact contrasting the dinning room atmosphere. It was sort of a fast food diner service. Very practical. I wanted to take the special of the beef in sauce Roquefort but they were out. The menu is filled with French classics like confit de canard, tartar de boeuf, tete de veau (veal head), escargot (snails), shrimp with mayonnaise …

Our order was placed on the table itself.

Pouring the house wine, we took while and red

For the first course I took the soup of the day – vegetable soup for only 1 euro. Was the cheapest thing on the menu.

I enjoyed the soup, it was simple but very tasty, came in the metallic bowl like we used in school which is priceless.

And for the main course grilled rump steak with pepper cream sauce. Asked for a vegetable side dish instead of fries and got pan fried champignons

William with Choucroute Alsacienne

Fayçal's having the Confit de Canard

My rump steak in the process of being eaten, not bad, I would go for more sauce or a stronger sauce.

How cute are we?

For dessert, Delice au chocolat maison with creme anglaise. Translation: chocolate-mousse-bread-pudding with creme anglaise.. but I guess I'm spoiled now, no vanilla bean in the creme anglaise, is that heard of? Disgrace.

This meal altogether cost 18.5 euro. I have to admit that nothing was very thrilling cuisine wise. I had all these classic dishes everyday for 5 months at the school cafeteria and it was more or less the same quality (except for the dessert which was better at Ferrandi’s cafeteria no doubt). Like I said I was impressed with the dinning room, the atmosphere. It really makes you feel like you’re in France. And if French food is your childhood longing it’s a lovely place to get that feeling, or if you want to experience the very basic French cuisine for the first times – it gives you exactly that in a fair price.

I will stick with my favorite Korean takeout for 10 euro for now.