Cafe Salle Pleyel: Listen Up

Helene Samuel, the genie behind Delicabar Snack Chic in the Bon Marche department store has created a new, equally chic spot, Cafe Salle Pleyel, in another mythic location, the newly renovated Salle Pleyel concert hall.  The girl knows how to pick her places.

The Cafe Pleyel is what the French would call a confidential address, meaning it's one insiders know about.  But while it's confidential now - it's on the second floor of the Pleyel building and there is no sign on the street - it won't be for long:  Le Figaroscope just wrote about it.

The room is modern in a deco kind of way; cool in a zen way; and relaxing in every way - the tables are far enough apart that you don't have to whisper secrets and the chairs are so comfortable that a friend of mine wanted to buy one along with her coffee.

And the menu is signature Helene - light, funny, smart and appealing.  (Here's la belle Helene)

For the Cafe Salle Pleyel, Helene (whom I'm sooooooo lucky to have as a friend), created the menu with her Guest Chef for the year, Sonia Ezgulian.  (I love that the restaurant has a Guest Chef just way an orchestra has a Guest Conductor.)  Sonia, the former restaurant critic for Paris-Match, chef of her own restaurant in Lyon and a prolific and very good cookbook author, comes to Paris once a week to change the menu. 

All the dishes at Pleyel are cooked either on a plancha or in a wok and every week there are different gremolatas and fleur-de-sels set on the table, so you can season whatever you want as you want.  It's a great idea.  (Last week, the gremolata was hazelnut, orange and cilantro and the fleur-de-sel was mixed with candied ginger.)

While the Cafe, which serves lunch Monday through Friday and dinner on concert evenings, has only been open a little over a month, there's already a signature can't-take-it-off-the-menu dish:  Le Cafe Salle Pleyel Burger.  Although it looks like a great all-American cheeseburger, a rarity in this town, it's actually got a secret ingredient:  chopped cepes (porcini mushrooms), which make the meat seem even meatier.  The burger comes with housemade pickles, confited tomatoes, salad and more of those delicious mushrooms.  (This picture comes, with permission, from Caroline Mignot's terrific blog.)

It's hard to pass up the burger, but then neither is it easy to ingore the wasabi-marinated vegetables cooked on the plancha and served with a sparkling little herb salad.  And how can you give up the mango-pain d'epices croque for the caramelized baked apple filled with dried fruits and nuts?  Oh, just go with friends and share - it's the only way to have it all.

And speaking of friends, when you see Helene, say "hi" for me.

Comments

[Rosa]

I can't wait to try this place, it looks great!

I know how busy you are but I couldn't resist tagging you on my blog. There is no pressure, it's just if you feel like it!

[DrBehavior]

The ...Burger looks truly awesome - is that processed American Cheddar Cheese on top? The reason that I ask is there was a PBS special the other evening on cheeses and cheese shops, one of the shop owners who had been in the business for over forty years was extolling Kraft Slices. He was rather vociferous in fact and 'intoned' that processed cheese definitely had its place in the lexicon of cheeses and that far too frequently people turned their noses up at it simply because they didn't know any better. What do you think?

[Dorie]

I think the mushrooms are finely chopped and sauteed - essentially they're turned into a duxelle - before they're added to the meat.

[christianne]

What a brilliant idea for a burger! Would you saute the mushrooms before adding them to the ground meat, or just put them in raw?

Yummy!