The Great Parisian Plate Debate

13 Carrefour de l’Odéon, 75006
Tel. 01.43.26.26.15

When seeking refuge from the rain, everything depends on location. Out in the countryside? There’s always a tall, leafy tree around, happy to provide respite from the drops. Caught in a tropical downpour on a sandy beach? I’m sure there is a cabana or two with a disturbingly sweet drink nearby. If you are in Paris, a little bar named La Pinte awaits you with open doors, pints of 1664, and full bottles of wine.

I discovered La Pinte after my target, L’Urgence Bar, foolishly closed their doors on this particular day. I found myself in dire need to escape the Parisian torrents, as I was brilliantly sans umbrella as usual. L’Urgence Bar’s loss is La Pinte’s gain, and no amount of kitsch – and L’Urgence, which serves cocktails in test tubes and labels their cocktails with such enticing names as The Laxative, has that en masse – makes me regret my serendipitous choice of La Pinte.

The bar is a narrow one where personality abounds. It’s not a suave bar, although I hesitate to call it a dive. There were no old creepy French locals smoking in the corner, playing pool and lording over the jukebox while lamenting life’s misfortunes. I think for a place to qualify as a dive one leathery old local is required. What La Pinte has is personality. Their bar is cluttered with bottles, scribbled notes on blackboards, tattered posters, dollar bills inexplicably stapled to shelves, an iPod hooked into a good stereo playing good music, and a bartender willing to talk to you while you wait for someone like Dan to finally show up. Actually, interesting story – the bartender told me that the beer taps (unique, to say the least) were old fountains that were removed during renovation. Rather than toss them in a dumpster, the bar’s owners transformed the mosaics into beer taps, which provides a very scenic “I’m going to stare at my pint while it’s being poured” experience for La Pinte’s patrons.

What was meant to be a quick stop in La Pinte turned into a beer, a bottle of wine, several more beers, and I even believe we breached the realm of whiskey before the night concluded. Thus is the power of La Pinte!