Chicken at Le Coq Rico (Agence Ollie), beef at Les Fines Lames (GLK).
Post note: In 2021, Le Coq Rico changed its named to Le Coq & Fils, still owned by Antoine Westermann, at the same address, and still focused on preparing and presenting high-quality fowl. We have nevertheless left its earlier name throughout this text, other than in the line noting the address.
For the first-time visitor of Montmartre there is generally only one way to the top: the steep way. It’s either the behold-the-basilica honey-beeline from the Anvers metro station or a bumblebee line from the Abbesses station (with a stop at the Love Wall), unless you’re a lazy bee who, after arising from either station, takes the joyless funicular toward the summit of the Mount of the Martyrs.
But there are many ways down, whether you’re a first time visitor or not. Rue Lepic, for example, a Napoleon-era path that takes the long and gently winding way past two windmills, a view toward the Invalides, and Theo Van Gogh’s apartment (#54), eventually reaching the hub of its lower neighborhood on the final stretch toward the Moulin Rouge and the Blanche metro station.
Recently, during a stroll down rue Lepic, I found myself confronted with an essential dining question: Chicken or beef? Le Coq Rico, Antoine Westermann’s “poultryhouse” near the top of the hill, or Les Fines Lames, a beef restaurant run by a three entrepreneurial friends towards the bottom?
Chicken (and other poultry): Le Coq Rico
Since 2012, Antoine Westermann has been on a mission in Montmartre to see to it that diners at his “poultryhouse” Le Coq Rico appreciate and understand that birds can provide noble meat. His “bistro of beautiful birds,” is now seven years old, making it a very mature establishment if he is sincere in believing that “the lifetime of a restaurant should not expand beyond ten years.”
Heritage poultry with exacting sourcing and precise culinary care naturally carries a heartier price tag then the free-range chickens rotating on a spit outside of a butcher’s shop on the basse cour end of rue Lepic or served in a café on rue des Abbesses. Count 30-40€ per person for the poultry portion of the meal, before appetizer, dessert and/or beverages.
Is that too much for a main course of rotisserie poultry? Coming from the land of frozen Butterballs and baked Perdues, we may be more easily sold on the added value of well-sourced beef than well-raised guinea fowl and 120-day Bresse chicken. Westermann has said that “If animals are offered the life they deserve, it will show in the quality of their meat.” Leaving aside “the life they deserve,” dine here if in search of that quality, not to impress followers on your Instagram account—because it doesn’t necessarily look much different on the plate than the poulet-frites served in a café.
The 24€ quarter of a challan chicken that serves as the entry-level main-course bird on the menu arrived at the table resembles too much its café cousin to make me feel that I’ve arrived in the dining room of a poultry specialist. I imagine that, compared with its cousin, it led a more comfortable, well-fed life before being slaughtered and eventually slow-cooked in a broth then roasted. Still, I recommend looking further along the menu for a choicer, whole bird, despite the additional cost.
With all due respect to the friend with whom I had a tête-à-tête dinner and that quarter of a challan at a side table, I have founder memories of sharing a whole bird and several different side dishes with four others at the long table in the back. In fact, Le Coq Rico is at its best when you’re a party of three or more dining in a Thanksgiving-like spirit, starting with appetizers (15-24€) that further present a passion for poultry (eggs, poultry livers, cream of poultry soup, an offal platter, foie gras) before the whole bird is presented at the table then sliced by the staff. (There’s no poultry in the desserts, 14-16€, take it or leave it.)
In addition to the flock of heritage breeds of chicken, turkey, duck, goose, quail and guinea fowl that regularly appear on the menu, Westermann has been making a fine-feathered tour de France this year, giving a different bird place of honor of the menu each month: July honors the rustic “naked neck of Forez,” September brings in a buckwheat-fed, 200-day-old bird from Sarthe, October’s pick is a pigeon from the foothills of the Alps. As to November, that’s time to prepare for a traditional American Thanksgiving (with French turkey) since Le Coq Rico is a Turkey Day hot spot.
Westermann’s personal enjoyment of American Thanksgiving comes from his time in New York, where he and a partner opened an American wing of Le Coq Rico in 2016. The partnership split up in 2018 with the partner now holding the New York wing and Westermann retaining the Paris wing, nevertheless he has not fully flown the New York coop. He was headed there to celebrate Thanksgiving when I sat with him last year to talk turkey. Thanksgiving, he said, is “necessary for my body.”
Le Coq & Fils, 98 rue Lepic, 18th arr. Tel. 01 42 59 82 89. Open daily noon–2:30PM, 7–11PM.
For dinner count 60-70€ per person, before beverages, if selecting 3 courses. For lunch there’s a 27€ 3-course menu. The daily lunch specials are evidence of the restaurant’s (American) family-friendly leanings: Monday: mac and cheese with poultry morsels; Wednesday: poultry burger; Thursday: grilled poultry sausage.
Beef: Les Fines Lames
Calling Les Fines Lames (meaning The Sharp Blades) a steakhouse would be to attribute it an ambition that it doesn’t have. True, this restaurant primarily serves steak, decent steak at that, but no cause to talk about marbling, aging and pampered cows. Furthermore, the trio of thirty-something entrepreneurs and longtime friends—Guillaume Levevre, Thibault Tierelin and Vivien Chauveau— who opened the restaurant in 2018 are upfront about it being their service and managerial skills that led them to open Les Fines Lames rather than butcher pedigree. Beef, why not?, they like beef, many people still like beef, beef it is.
So Les Fines Lames is not a steakhouse. It is not the steak equivalent of the Westermann’s poultryhouse. It’s a 34-seat house serving steak on tables with sharp knives planted in them and within a décor of framed butcher’s tools, a display of wine bottles and a ceiling of cut wine barrels. It’s as straightforward as that. Steak—decent, tender steak—costs 28-32€ for filets and entrecotes, with a side dish (4€ per extra side dish), 59-69€ for two for a large slab of rib steak or for a trilogy of cuts. There are also 180 gram (6.3 oz.) smaller or lesser cuts, as well as hamburgers and tartare, at 16€, making for a reasonable lunch choice.
Add to those a straightforward selection of appetizers at 7-9€ (gazpacho, bone marrow, charcuterie, burratina…), an equally straightforward selection of desserts (molten chocolate cake, French bread, sorbet…) at 8€, and a selection of wines from independent winegrowers covering the French essentials, as well as a few beers, and you’ve got the kind of place you’d go to if you were a beefeater and lived in the neighborhood and didn’t want to a steakhouse—or if you were a visitor descending from the top of Montmartre and chose beef.
Les Fines Lames, 35 rue Lepic, 18th arr. Tel. 01 42 55 95 95. Open daily noon-2PM and 7-10:30PM. While seating isn’t tight, the 34-seat restaurant can be loud when full.
Additional fare on Rue Lepic
If unable to agree with your dining companion(s) on the question of poultry or beef but nevertheless wishing to eat on rue Lepic, consider Jeanne B, at #61, where you’re sure to find a well-prepared bit of everything (much of it pre-prepared), and La Rughetta, at #41, a nonchalant Italian restaurant owned by the three guys of Les Fines Lames.
© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut