Paris 13: Le big steak frites meal

This is the lunch courtesy of my mother, who sent us a nice check for our anniversary, even though as far as I am concerned, nobody outside one's marriage is required by any kind of rules of polite society to recognize the passing of yet another year of that marriage, but who am I to argue with a nice gift? When she sent the check, I told her we would use it to have a nice meal in Paris and today, we had that nice meal.


We ate at Le Relais de Venise, a steak frites restaurant recommended by our college friend Boris, who lives in Paris. He warned us to get there early because there is always a line to get in. We arrived at 11:57 for the 12:00 opening and were seated immediately.


There is no menu for the main meal. There is a dessert menu, which is shown above. But they serve only steak frites. The only questions they ask are how you want your steak cooked and what you want to drink. The waitress scribbles something on the tablecloth and away she goes.

She returns in a second with the salads. No choice of dressing because THIS IS FRANCE and they don't ask such silly questions, plus the salad comes with only their dressing, which, fortunately, is very very good. So good I used some of the bread that comes with the salad to soak up the leftover dressing.

When you are through with your salad, she brings the steaks and the fries. Only she gives you just half of the steak because the other half is being kept warm over small candles. That's how fancy it is: they keep your meat warm while you are eating the first part of your meat.

When you are done with the first half of the meat, the waitress brings you the rest of it, along with more fries. Don't even think about refusing extra fries, as the guy next to us did, because THEY ARE HOT! THEY'RE GOOD! EAT SOME MORE!


You have to pull the table out to get to your seat, so go to the ladies' first.

Eat dessert. They have delicious chocolate cake.

Merci, Maman. xoxoxooxx