Le Café de l’Usine opened last October and is one of the most attractive new restaurants I have come across in a long time. My report on dinner there is here.
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@onzieme - thank you again for a brilliant review! We are booked to dine here this coming Saturday the 26th, and your review has only heightened our anticipation. Thanks for the great wine suggestion as well, we will follow your lead!!
Thank you, John. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did, and let us know what you thought.
My wife and I dined at Le Café de l’Usine last night and are still smiling!
Our dinner was a stunning experience that over-delivered in every way.
The ingredients were flavorful, tasting as if they had been caught or picked that morning (which they probably were). Additionally, the balance of each dish was laser-focused, with no ingredient overpowering the other and coming together brilliantly.
The service was friendly, elegant, and professional, with perfect timing between each course. Finally, the wine suggested by the Somm (Hüpnos, an orange wine from Greece, where the vines are grown among the vegetable patches) paired perfectly with every course. @onzieme, my apologies, I really intended to order the wine you enjoyed, but the Somm was so excited by the bottle that I could not say no.
The value could not be beat (158 Euro for two persons, which included the cheese course), and we have already booked our return visit for next week. Definitely a must-dine when in Paris!
My photos are nowhere as good as @onzieme’s, but I will post a few. Sorry, we have no picture of the main course, which was Monkfish with green onion and garden peas, with a broth to die for, or the dessert course of strawberries in mascarpone. We were so engrossed with both dishes, we forgot to snap a photo.
First course - Ricotta wrapped in kale, the ricotta was silk! (This was a substitute for the Oysters, since my wife is allergic to shell fish)
Second course of haricot verts with guanciale and crème Fresh. The guanciale added an undercurrent of weight to the haricot verts with crème fresh to balance.
Third course of clams in broth, with asparagus and a vegetable pesto, this was magical. My wife had the gnocchi in garlic which was so light and delicate.
Cheese course consisted of saint nectaire with a pear compote and a chevre with roasted red peppers.
Here is the wine we woould have never choosen but were thrilled with
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Your photos look very good and the food looks quite appetizing.
The wine is a very good choice indeed, it’s Hüpnos from Sous le Végétal, a natural wine project with the help of Patrick Bouju, reviving the ancient vines of muscat de Samos in Greece through the making of dry white wines. Exceptional wines.
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@Carmenere - Thank you for the feedback! I personally find food tricky to photograph, so I am glad I pulled it off.
Also, I am very grateful for the additional infromation on the wine, super helpful. This information reaffrims my belief and expereince that the more I learn about wine, the more I realize, I do not much of anything.
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Onz, this does indeed look good! It goes on the list, but how am I going to fit all these places in??? That cheese from the Savoie looks scrumptious - where is Stephan when we need help I.D-ing a cheese? Jake, what do you think?
Thanks John, for your photos and review. Your enthusiasm helped confirm for me that this is a must-try.
@sfcarole - it seems silly in a city so rich with choices that besides our wine bar, we went to Le Cafe de l’Usine two times in a row for our dinner out, but that is what we did! Lauren (sp?) the maître d’hôtel, and Somm Johann (sp?) were so welcoming once again and the whole evening was just a treat.
We began the evening with a glass of Cremant from Jura that worked so well with the tarama et herbes marines, also shown is another natural wine from Joahnn that we loved…
Followed by Peas and Strawberries, which L and I were delighted by! The labor required to remove the peas outer skins must have been tedious but so worth it! The creme fraîche had just a hint of smokiness that was enchanting.
Gnocci with wild garlic in vin jaune, so buttery yet balanced.
The main was lamb and haricot verts with a most inventive mustard that worked so well.
And for dessert, a chocolate mousse that was paired with a haznelnut ice cream and we still are not sure how they did it, but the ice cream was a light as the mousse and the balance was spot on…
We are booked at Parcelles on Monday, I will be curious to see how we feel about it after these great experiences!
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Not at all. When you get a place that speaks to you and is clicking on all cylinders, it is totally understandable. At least I hope so, as we’ve done this with some place or other every time we’re in Paris. Unfortunately, with all the changes that occur in the restaurant business, we’ve discovered that waiting to re-visit a special place until we’re back in Paris is, more often than not, disappointing. Glad you did this.
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@jmc167 Your second dinner looks as impressive as the first. I can see why you returned!
@SteveR - excellent point, thanks for the reminder that everything is fleeting
Another wonderful review for Café de l’Usine. Thank you for sharing. We’re very eager to give it a try.
Well the truth is, since my initial visit, I’ve been back essentially every week that I’ve been in Paris (I’ve done some travelling in May) and will be continuing to do so. I haven’t written several of the meals up because I didn’t have time, but I did write up last night’s meal.
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Thanks to onz’ initial strong rec, we dined at Le Café de l’Usine last night.
The menu:
After the amuse, and the white asparagus first course, and my veal “tonnato” dish, I was wondering if perhaps for once onz had oversold a place. Because while all was fine, and the sauce and fried capers with the veal dish tasty, none of it was worth writing home about.
The best thing by far to that point was the excellent bread (no pic) and wonderful smoked butter (seen above the asparagus and the veal).
But after that… wow!
My wife got a vegetarian replacement for the veal, and it was a baby zucchini with some kind of cheese with currants plus some baby asparagus; really tasty.
Then the monkfish with haricot verts, roasted cherries and a killer garlic sauce (more garlicky than anything I can recall having in France). One of the very best dishes we’ve had this year, and definitely the best piece of monkfish I’ve ever had, absolutely perfectly cooked. I didn’t used to be much of a monkfish fan, but I am now.
Finally, I understood what onz has been “raving” about! 
The dessert was also excellent. Not too sweet, but the sorbet made it sweet enough for my wife to finish all the marscapone, and the lightly candied cashews (I wish there had been a couple more) put it over the top for me.
My two glasses of wine were good, but even the pinot noir was served in the little glasses.
Despite the price of dinner sykrocketing by 22% over what onz just paid - boy, does every great find by onz raise their prices soon afterwards now? 
- it was an excellent value, and we plan to return at least once more before going back to the U.S.
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@andygottlieb42 - thanks for an excellent write-up, we have been back in the US for a few weeks and are already missing this place. We will be back to Paris in August for a few months and are loking forward to visiting again!
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Thanks, Andy. I’m going there tonight and will report back.
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Well, tonight was good but not at the same level as previous dinners. I’m taking another visiting friend next Thursday, so we’ll see how that goes.
Re the wine glasses, they had bigger glasses on all the tables tonight. Did you complain, Andy?
I was at the restaurant with a friend who is co-owner of what I consider the best fish restaurant in SF and also is the former restaurant critic for the the SF Chronicle and then the SF Examiner.
We both very much liked the accras de merlu.
The white asparagus was an interesting idea that just didn’t quite work. Nothing negative, but nothing really positive, either.
As my friend said, the vitello tonnato was good until you compared it to the real thing in Italy. The green beans with it were very good.
The monkfish was ok but nothing better. My friend thought it was not as fresh as it could have been.
The dessert was very good.
It’s difficult coming up with a new menu every week, so I’m hoping this is a one-off. We’ll see when I go back next week.
Well, this is pretty funny, because we were there tonight, as well. We were sitting upstairs, for the natural light and air. I more or less agree with what @onzieme and @andygottlieb42 have said. The asparagus dish tasted all right, but having a smear of almond butter at the bottom of light broth made no sense. The vitello tonnato was lighter than what I’ve had in Italy, but I appreciated that (given how we’ve been eating, and we only arrived about sixty hours ago). I also appreciated that the cherries with the monkfish were roasted (since I can’t eat them raw), but I didn’t think they added much to the dish. I didn’t think “Wow, this is an awesome combination”; I thought, “These components taste fine individually and not bad together, but let’s not do this again.” (I think the sauce was 90% roasted garlic.)
Small glasses (which were on the table when we arrived), but I had an orange and a pinot blanc.
I’ll add more reports when I get a chance, as much as possible in individual threads that already exist, like this one.
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Well, you undoubtedly had a much quieter experience than we did!
For future reference, anyone who doesn’t like a lot of noise should avoid the little niche with the low ceiling on the ground floor behind the kitchen.
Quieter, certainly, but not quiet, since the half-mezzanine opens onto the section of two-tops at the front of the restaurant, and the parties around us were voluble. Mostly English being spoken, but with at least one French speaker at each table. I would have thought we were in an Anglo zone but everyone had full choice of seating. It feels as if Parisian restaurants have gotten noisier, in our very limited experience so far (first trip since 2019) but it is hard to say. Nowhere close to the deafening experience of Bay Area restaurants in the '90’s, before they started investing in serious sound treatments.
