Pirouette in the Time of the Coronavirus

Last night I dined with a friend at Pirouette, an airy, contemporary, bistronomic restaurant with a sizable wine list, handsomely set at the back end of a square in the Les Halles quarter of Paris. Today I received a text message from the restaurant asking if I’d recommend Pirouette to others, on a scale of 1 to 10, and to note what could be improved.

I don’t thumb text easy enough to answer at length on my phone, so I’ll respond here.

I liked the food. I liked the presentation on the plate. I appreciated the mix of savors. There’s some serious cheffing going on in that kitchen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So back to the beginning.

I walked into the restaurant at 7:45pm, several minutes before my dinner date would arrive, and was given a choice of two tables. I selected the one by the window. Before I sat down I asked the servers, a man and a woman, if the restaurant had a cat. The man said, No. Since he didn’t ask why the question, I told him: Because it smells like a cat lives here. No cat, he said. His negation was no reassurance. I smelled something, something that reminded me of a home with a cat or something furry or litterboxy—not in a long-left-untended sense, but in a musky sense. Since I was one of the first clients in the restaurant it wasn’t someone’s perfume. I would hope not.

I wondered if it was more like hay, thinking that hay has a pleasant smell. Maybe they used hay as a bed for some creative dish, I thought, since I knew in reserving that creativity was on the menu. But no, something was off. Damp hay? I don’t know. My senses kept wanting to call it cat.

I like cats. I used to have one. For a time I was lucky enough to call one my significant other. I took my niece and her friend to the cat café when they visited last year. Cats are fine by me. But I thought it odd that a restaurant with a high ceiling and large panes of window giving out to the square and one wall full of wine bottles should smell like a cat, as it did in this corner.

My friend, a French lawyer, arrived a minute later. I’d texted her the previous day to say that in the time of the coronavirus we should support restaurants and, besides, we hadn’t seen each other for six weeks. She agreed, though in the time of the coronavirus she wouldn’t kiss me when she arrived.

I asked if she smelled a cat. She said, No, maybe, well there’s something, maybe it’s the plant—for our table was near a plant. That might be it, I said, something in the soil, so we moved one table away along the window. (Empty tables abound in the time of coronavirus.)

Moving two yards away didn’t completely eliminate the odor, but my friend and I hadn’t seen each other for some time so we quickly fell into lively catch-up talk, and I forget the cat smell, as I did back in the day when I shared an apartment with the world’s most beautiful, intelligent cat.

I thought of the cat again when the waitress placed some pâté before us, but her gratuitous act was much appreciated and we were hungry. We thanked her. We were in for a modern meal and it began with a welcome slab of tradition.

Twice the waitress returned to ask if we were ready to order the meal or something to drink, and the third time she came over we were. We selected from the 3-course fixed-price menu (49€) and a bottle of Gigondas (48€).

We chatted away, as friends of 30 years do, and the wine arrived. I reached for my glasses in my coat pocket to examine the label, as one pretends one does, and by the time I put them on the waitress had already removed the foil from the top of the bottle and was about to poke the cork with a screw. Now that I could see it, I remarked that the label read 2015 whereas the wine list indicated 2013. I don’t think so, she said, this is all there is. Can you check? I asked. She checked. The menu did indeed indicate 2013, and 2015 was indeed all she had. She claimed not to have noticed before. She asked if I still wanted the bottle.

Now what do I know from 2013 or 2015? What do I know from Gigondas or Domaine du Terme other than that I was planning on visiting wine villages in the southern Rhone Valley next month? But I do know that the staff of a restaurant with a substantial wine list should have something more informative to say than Do you still want the bottle?

I said, If it’s discounted.

She abruptly went to consult with the other server who was behind the bar. He was apparently her higher-up. Together they examined the menu. As they did, my friend asked if I knew the different between 2013 and 2015 in Gigondas. I said that for all I know 2015 was a better year, but given the way the bottle had (not) been presented to us and the way I was asked Do you still want it?, it was the principle of the thing. A restaurant that notes “cuisine & vins gourmands” on its awning and presents a wall full of bottles should have someone who knows how to talk about wine, someone who will show you the label and will be willing to engage, if only to say, I don’t know much about wine but let me ask my colleague if he can help. I don’t use one of those wine label apps, so it was indeed a matter of principle. My friend agreed. She said, Sometimes principle is all we have to go on. That’s a rare thing for a lawyer to acknowledge.

The waitress returned. Apparently Pirouette has principles, too. She said, No, same price, do you want it? (I’m translating; these exchanges were in French but no more extensive than that.)

Maybe I would have a liked a warmer tone; maybe I would have liked to hear that I was being offered a 5€ discount; maybe I would have liked to have the server explain that 2015 was even better than 2013 or how they were different; maybe I expect a restaurant with a substantial wine list to…. I said, No, I’ll take another look at the wine list.

This time I selected a Vacqueyras, a 20-minute bike-ride north of Gigondas, 2016, also Domaine du Terme. At 33€ it happened to be the list’s least expensive red wine from the southern Rhone Valley. I shouldn’t say “happened to be” since I wasn’t now going to select anything priced higher than the 2013/2015 bottle. I may have been shooting myself in the gut with my principle, but there you have it.

This time the male server brought over the bottle. It’s Vacqueyras, he said, but it’s 2017, not 2016. I thought there might be a punchline but none was forthcoming. In the silence that followed he missed his chance to remark, before my dinner date did, that they needed to update their wine list. We’re in the process of changing it, he responded, humorlessly. Is 2017 alright? It’s 80% syrah. And he followed that by looking at the bottle and saying something about body or structure.

I accepted the 2017. What do I know from Vacqueyras? What do I know from 2016/2017? The waiter poured us a sip. It was relatively direct (80% syrah) and relatively adequate. I nodded. He poured more. This wasn’t the coolness of French service as I’ve come to accept and even appreciate it; this was the coldness of appearing to not give a damn. Sheesh! If this had all been done a bit more engagement on the part of the staff, I wouldn’t have suddenly remembered what health officials keep telling us about the coronavirus: “Maintain a social distance.” The staff at Pirouette must think that referred to something other than distance in space.

The waiter then parted, stirring the air, and I was reminded of the cat smell that wasn’t coming from a cat.

Then the food arrived, beginning with “cruncheese” rice balls topped with marinated sea bream and an orange vinaigrette, for one of us, and green asparagus dressed with herb breadcrumbs and accompanied by citrus butter, for the other. Quite good. We liked it from the start. Then came our main courses of crispy pork, butternut puree with aniseed and a coffee mousse, for one of us, and cod covered with buckwheat accompanied by a crepe-size carrot and ginger ravioli, for the other. A pleasure. Chef François-Xavier Ferrol’s studied mix of savors may not be subtle (perhaps subtlety isn’t the aim) but they form an appealing kind of comfort bistronomy, handsomely presented on the plate. Filling portions. Not stellar, but 49€ fine. The wine was so-so, but who cares? We were two friends enjoying each other’s company over dinner in the time of the coronavirus.

My friend and I had agreed that we could dig into each other’s dish with the clean set of silverware that arrived with each course. Yet dessert has a way of making people forget their coronavirus principles. Having licked the last of her pleasing rice pudding with salted butter caramel from her spoon, she forgot that she’d asked for a second spoon (see photo of third course) and promptly stuck the same one into my chocolate ganache, peanut streusel and cocoa sorbet. I pointed out what she’d just done by saying, And to think you wouldn’t kiss me when you came in, to which she blushed as though she’d just impulsively stuck her tongue into my mouth. Take it all, I said—not because I distrusted her germs but because it was my least favorite dish.

My friend went to the rest room while I paid the bill. Then I went to the rest room while she looked at her phone. The rest room was clean enough. The sink is awkwardly placed. I washed my hands thoroughly.

I’d been away from the table for several minutes and as I returned I again picked up the scent of something cat-like or otherwise furry or litterboxy. It was like when I lived with a cat and would go down to get the mail then return to the apartment. Hmm, I’d think, a cat lives here. Whatever the odor was by the window at Pirouette, and however subjectively I’ve interpreted the smell, there it was. We then left the restaurant.

So on a scale of 1 to 10 would I recommend Pirouette?

Well, everyone deserves a break. Especially these days. There’s too much distrust, too much aggression, too many insistent points of view, too much judging going on—even too many principles. Shouldn’t the main principle be to help keep ourselves and each other healthy and to simply enjoy each other’s company while we’re together because you never know whom you’ll be stuck with in quarantine? So why not recommend François-Xavier Ferrol’s cuisine and forget about the staff’s “social distance,” their cold-shoulder wine oops, and that odor? Why not an 8 then, or a 7?

Because at this price I’d like a more graceful Pirouette, and because mutual support is a two-way street, and because there are (correction: will be) many other worthwhile options in Paris, and because you asked: 5.

Pirouette
5 rue Mondétour, 1st arr. Metro Les Halles. 01 40 26 47 81.
Open Monday-Saturday, noon-2pm and 7:30-10pm.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut