The Great Parisian Plate Debate

12 rue des Messageries, 75010
Tel. 01.47.70.06.84

Café Panique is a restaurant that someone opens when he or she is tired of cooking food that potentially scares his or her friends and family.  I cannot think of any other explanation for making a soup entirely out of beets, or cooking an eggplant dessert.  The oddly delicious thing, which destroyed any hopes I may have of becoming a chef by proving I likely lack sufficient food flair, is that it all tastes pretty good.  A tip of my cap to the creativity…

Dinner started off as all dinners do, with me desperately lusting for additional water while a basket of bread is placed on the table.  A round of entrees soon followed; a gazpacho which improved if you sampled it via bread vs. spoon, and a bright red soup that was surprisingly not too bad given that it was created out of an outcast vegetable.  I don’t even think the beet has a place anymore in the realm of the vegetable - it has been kicked out and become a hobo root, traipsing about from kitchen to kitchen, searching for the opportunity to liquefy and pour itself triumphantly into a soup dish, loudly proclaiming, “See, I can be edible!”  One of the other entrees - the chevre ravioli - I would highly recommend, but be warned that there are only four little raviolis served.  Too few for such an outstanding entrée.

The plats arrived shortly after, and they did the trick as far as dinners go!  The filet mignon du porc was presented in an unexpected manner…encrusted with crushed nuts and crowned with a pile of sprouts, it was unlike any porc dinner I have ever had, and in a good way.  A fellow dining companion ordered the fish, which was supposedly some type of flying fish.  At least, that’s what we think the menu indicated.  Perhaps it was all the flights and such, but the fish was soggy.  Not a good adjective to have to attach to anything, really.  Its saving grace was the carrot accompaniment, but it is slightly sad when a carrot must play savior.  One of the other plats that was ordered consisted of a lamb, trussed up with twine, which proved to be very high on the official “That’s Good Lamb” scale.

Dinner had been highly satisfactory through this point, so we tempted fate and forged ahead with dessert choices.  It was a battle which Café Panique emerged from battered, but not beaten.  The choice which I can only describe as a cookie-ish thing topped with a fully wrapped CaramBar, was shockingly disappointing.  It had looked so good.  The most creative dessert had to be the sugary eggplant offering.  I won’t be returning to Café Panique for this, but I am amazed that the chefs were able to get such an impressive taste out of it.  Two of us purchased the cheese platter, which was likely the best choice among the three others.  If the world ever decides to break its dependence on oil, I believe the viscous blue cheese would be an ideal substitute to fuel cars and other nuclear power plants.  It certainly packs a wallop.  One must be careful not to fall out of the chair while sampling it.  Such is the blue cheese power.

The waiter served the bill with a plate of sliced watermelon - a refreshing way to introduce the departure of 162 euros from our bank accounts.  That works out to about 40 euros a head, for the full dinner menu - entrée, plat, and dessert, and a nice bottle of chilled white wine.