If you know anything about cuisine in Paris, you know Frenchie, Chef Gregory Marchand’s one-Michelin-starred hotspot. It’s one of the most sought-after tables in Paris, and if you are a committed foodie who lives in the US, you may have woken up at an ungodly hour on a random day several weeks before a Paris trip to secure a reservation.
I had to do none of those things to get a table at Altro Frenchie, Marchand’s brand new Italian offshoot located right next to the original. Because Italian is my absolute favorite cuisine, I was arguably more excited to eat here than I would be to have another expensive meal of overly creative Haute French cuisine. (I may or may not just be trying to convince myself that it’s okay I didn’t prioritize getting a Frenchie res.) But what could be more up my alley than Italian food from a Michelin starred French chef, that describes itself as having “influences” from two of the world’s other great cities, London and New York?
The meal began with mixed crudos and fried zucchini flowers, two things I generally enjoy very much. Altro Frenchie’s iterations did not let me down. The crudo mixto involved three different raw fishes prepared in the most interesting and original ways I’ve ever seen: red tuna with beetroot, sea bream with stracciatella, and mackerel with rhubarb. Raw tuna is up there with pasta, beef tartare, cheeseburgers, strawberries, and bufala mozzarella/burrata as one of my all time favorite foods, and this succulent and fresh crudo was enhanced by the sweet and slightly tart beet juice. The sea bream, which I’ve always loved in crudo or sashimi form, benefited from the salty richness of the stracciatella cheese as well as the tartness and added interest of lemon zest. This combination of two of my favorite things (raw fish and burrata) was wholly unexpected, and it was an unequivocal success. The only crudo I didn’t love was the mackerel; mackerel has always been too strong a flavor for me, as fishes go. (I’m working on it.) But if I did like mackerel, I’d like this one; the sour rhubarb hit perfectly in the heat of summer. All three of the crudos were drizzled with a bit of basil infused olive oil, which is never unwelcome in my book. On my last trip to Paris, I had mixed crudos at Le George, a Michelin-starred restaurant located in the storied George V hotel, and this blew that out of the water — for probably half the price.
I’ve learned that when zucchini flowers show up on a menu, they are nearly always fried and usually stuffed with cheese, thus rendering a would-be healthy food totally unhealthy, and totally delicious. Altro Frenchie’s were stuffed with a smooth ricotta seasoned with a bit of anchovy, making them perfectly salty, and they were lightly breaded, just enough to be crispy. They came out piping hot, right out of the fryer, and they were heavenly.
As I nearly always do at Italian restaurants, I skipped secondi and focused on primi. We tried three of their homemade pastas: cacio e pepe agnolotti, ricotta gnudi, and pappardelle with rabbit ragu. The agnolotti was the perfect texture, and had that ideal mix of umami and kick that one expects from a good cacio e pepe. It also had another interesting flavor that I couldn’t identify — the menu lists “licorice” among the ingredients, but this was not what I was tasting (indeed, I didn’t taste that at all). Balsamic vinegar, perhaps? I’ll never know. The gnudi was probably our least favorite; while sage and brown butter is almost never a bad combination, the dish’s attributes didn’t go much beyond this. Basically, it was boring, and the gnudi themselves were rather dense, not soft and pillowy which I understand to be the desired texture of this ricotta dumpling. The pappardelle was savory and layered in flavor, with the red wine braised rabbit and wide, flat noodles studded with olives and pine nuts as per the “alla ligure” style. The rabbit was mild and tender—and tasted like chicken, as parents famously tell their picky children. Like the agnolotti, this dish was good, but it didn’t blow us away. Both were well-executed; the flavors just don’t happen to be my absolute favorite, so there was always going to be an upper limit to my potential enjoyment. The fact that the pastas weren’t designed with my exact tastes in mind is not the fault of the restaurant. Still, I expect to love the pasta at an excellent Italian restaurant; with the technical proficiency on display here, I would love to see more pasta options to appeal to more varied palates.
For dessert, we tried the chocolate nemesis; I’m a chocolate lover, and it was described as a tribute to London’s River Cafe (not to be confused with Brooklyn’s), a restaurant on my bucket list. I figured it was a good opportunity to taste a bit of London’s finest restaurants in Paris. It turned out to be a dense, seemingly flourless chocolate cake that was not overly sweet. It was good, but not any more amazing than the Passover specialty whose recipe I inherited from my mom: the King Arthur Flour flourless chocolate cake. It was served with crème fraiche and lemon zest, which balanced the chocolate nicely (I’m taking notes for next year’s Seder). My fiancé had the strawberry sorbet, which was good, but at the end of the day, in my experience, sorbet is sorbet (I have yet to try one that I would describe as special; I’m open to being proven wrong.)
Based on those crudos and the fact that Altro Frenchie is still brand new, I would certainly return to see what they do next. Personally, I’m hoping for some new pastas.
(If I had an unlimited appetite, I would have also liked to try the pizzette with Gorgonzola, apricot, and walnuts. Although I adore blue cheese, my fiancé is a hater, so this was a non-starter. I’m working on it.)
TL;DR: WHAT WE ATE
Loved: crudo mixto (except mackerel), fried zucchini flowers
Liked: pappardelle with rabbit, cacio e pepe agnolotti, chocolate nemesis, strawberry sorbet
Should have skipped: gnudi with sage and brown butter, mackerel crudo