Spend Like a Guest, Think Like a Host

What three days of eating taught me about margins, service cadence, and flavour that pays its own way.

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Field Notes is my working notebook. On the Clock is the operator view: routes, venue cards, receipts, the nuts and bolts. Off Shift is the softer lens: a lean 48-hour guide, places that moved me, ballpark costs. Most stays free, paid unlocks the full kits.

We landed at Charles de Gaulle at 9:30am, eyes sandy from the start. Metro into the 15th, bags on our shoulders, hunting sugar and coffee.

First bite: a chausson à la rhubarbe from Des Gâteaux et du Pain. Still warm, glaze so tidy you could check your hair in it. Rhubarb that tasted like itself, tart enough to make the next thought arrive faster. Jack took it apart the way chefs do, feeling the lamination. I watched the small stuff. Prices. Portioning. Ingredient list printed on the wrapper: almonds from Provence; eggs named. Quiet pride. We could do more of that at home.

We split a pain perdu and a brown-sugar tart with pear. Caramel just shy of bitter, fruit soft and clean.

Coffee at Café Méricourt, ten minutes through that scruffy-handsome 11th. Busy with laptops and half conversations. Staff moved at a clip without tipping into rush. I took an allongé, Jack a noisette. . Right temperature, clean, no bitterness. Rooms like this don’t make a meal out of coffee.

Lunch, Le Servan. Daylight flat through the windows, tiles giving that calm kitchen echo. We booked ahead, and ordered like we meant it: boudin noir wontons; sardines on brioche with smoked chilli butter; clafoutis to finish. Also veal brain with mezcal beurre blanc and tarragon; a soft-boiled egg with butter beans, girolles and miso-plum sabayon; corn ravioli with saffron butter and chilli peanut. The brain was more delicate than expected. The egg’s sabayon was outstanding. Ravioli a sleeper hit, saffron butter lifted by the crunch of chilli peanut. Wontons hot and fatty with a sweet heat in the dip, boudin noir melting, thin Lyonnaise onions running through it. Sardines were a small masterclass: skins blistered and silver, flesh just set, oil pooling where the smoked chilli butter hit, brioche soaking up spice and fish fat. Not clever for the sake of it. Just right. We skipped wine, took Poiré Bellenos cider in a wine glass, cooled properly. Lower alcohol kept the afternoon steady. Clafoutis was generous and easy to like, crisp and caramelised outside, purple from ruptured blueberries inside, ice cream dripping through the fractured crust. We left feeling light on our feet.

Lunch at Le Servan

We checked into the apartment off Line 12 and did a Franprix run. Baguette, saucisson, goat’s cheese, good salted butter, cornichons. The little basics that pull a trip back into real life.

Dinner, Clown Bar. We sat outside as the room glowed behind glass, clown murals humming. A small complimentary bite hit the table after ordering: mange tout with celeriac hummus (standard welcome bite). We started with champagne by the glass and cured duck ham, plus oysters under a sea-lettuce granité, and a beef tartare on a nori crisp with a Korean kick. For a main, crispy veal sweetbreads with chanterelles, shiitake and a savoury foam, a veal crown perched on a playful throne of macaroni cheese, and a glass of oxidative Savagnin from the Jura that made the whole thing sing like a French cousin of fino. Then the reason you book: pigeon and foie gras pie for two, halved onto our plates. A stack of radicchio with a single anchovy. A small dollop of beetroot purée. A plate of purple, earth and game. Pastry sable-precise yet forgiving in service, topped with a gelatinous slab of foie gras. Blushing breast meeting liver, a loose farce of minced pigeon and herbs where an English wellington might hide duxelles. In lieu of silver, a cloche of pastry, golden and glazed. A northern Italian red blend kept the pastry in check. Dessert was black figs, split and bleeding syrup, with caramelised pistachio and a scoop of fig-leaf ice cream, green and milky. We meant to take Poire Williams with dessert. We finished the eau de vie too quickly, and the team sent over calvados on the house. Full, not angry at ourselves. That’s the line.

Dinner at Clown Bar

We drifted to Little Red Door. There was a queue. There’s always a queue. Inside, water refills appeared like quiet magic and the drinks were certain. Four seasonal cocktails from the current menu. Their new menu is focused on regenerative farming; work started in January. That’s the same gestation as a human child. My notes blur here. Tipsy.

Morning, hot croque monsieur from the boulangerie next door, eaten at home with cornichons from the fridge. Then a trade tasting: full tables, open bottles. Carole joined and the rhythm changed. She raised a brow when a wine was all talk, smiled small when one had a job. Jack was building dishes. I ran the numbers. We short-listed nine bottles that felt like real value. Think Chiroubles from Beaujolais, Cairanne from the Northern Rhône, Viré-Clessé from Burgundy: clean, generous styles with jobs to do. Not a natural-wine pilgrimage. Not a dogma hunt. Just clean winemaking that punches above its price. Nothing in the UK yet. Two prices on offer. Pay normal on allocation, or pre-pay and commit to volume for the sharper rate. Take a few hundred up front and pass on real savings to our guests across a year. That matters more than bragging about a unicorn cuvée.

Lunch at Bistrot des Fables, paid for by Maddie, our supplier. I’m telling you because that bit matters. Steak tartare with fries, then rum baba the way it should be. The bottle set down and left. No measuring. No theatre. Trust reads louder than a speech. We drank leftovers from the tasting and paid corkage. He took the piss out of our accents. Cheeky, but the technique underneath was solid.

Afternoon, Maison Dubernet across the street, deli glass, huge tins of confit de canard you could build a house with. We bought foie gras, pork head terrine and smoked duck breast for a quiet dinner. Before heading home we met the tasting group on the Champ de Mars with earlier bottles. Not tasting, drinking. Half the group left for the airport, we stayed another night. Back at the apartment, Jack laid out a board of deli goods and supermarket treasure. Carole pulled a Moulin-à-Vent from her suitcase. We ate, we drank, we slept.

Last day, Marché des Enfants Rouges. Stools at Le Nautile and oysters: Gillardeau, Joséphine, Fines de Claire. Sixteen total across two rounds. Lemon and mignonette. Good shuck, no grit. Liquor cold and bright. Gillardeau creamy, almost sweet. Joséphine brinier, a lick of iodine. Fines de Claire clean and cucumber-cool. Then a Lyon-style brioche sausage from Caractère de Cochon because melted fat and pistachio improve the day. Over the river to the 5th for Bonvivant. Duck hearts, rillettes with bread and cornichons, mimosa eggs with jamón, split bone marrow. Mains: quail cordon bleu and a breaded pork chop, both with fries. No wine, pacing for travel. They clocked we were trade and offered a cellar tour. “About 600 bottles.” Said like it was nothing. The pork chop took it: thick-cut, juicy, a crust that stayed crisp. The quail was clever, heavy by the end. Too full for dessert. The sort of generosity that stays in your head longer than the bill.

Lunch at Bonvivant

Three days. A dozen meals. A tasting table that looked like trouble. Ideas stacked like plates waiting on the pass. We spent with intent. It was a fair whack for a small restaurant to cough up, and every order comes with a little heart-rate spike. I could’ve sent Carole for a day and called it done. But these trips aren’t just for picking wine. They’re for room feel, service pace, scripts, pricing ladders, lighting temperature, the way a menu reads and how a sauce is explained without condescension. All the tiny, unglamorous parts that make a guest think the big thought: I want to come back.

We’ll get our return. Some of it clean and countable. We’ll pre-pay for a few hundred bottles at the better rate and pass the saving on. We’ll host a dinner when they land. Jack will write a menu to match. Carole will run the pours and tell the stories properly. I’ll talk about pies and service and the way a cider can hold a lunch together. The rest is harder to count and more important. A topped brioche starter inspired by those sardines at Le Servan. A Savagnin by the glass that asks for salty food and rewards brave orders. A small, warm canapé at the start of a meal that says we’re happy you chose us. None of it shouts. All of it adds up.

You may not notice any single tweak when you sit down at my restaurants. That’s fine. You’ll feel the whole. That’s the work.