Le Tire-Bouchon Rodier - Paris 9

Le Tire-Bouchon Rodier is yet another restaurant in the happening Pigalle area that is worthy of your attention. My report is here.

2 Likes

We used to rent an apartment on Rue Rodier every fall. Loved that location. What is now Le Tire-Bouchon was, at that time, a restaurant – can’t remember the name – that we went to and enjoyed. On the other side of the street, below Condorcet, is Clavlin, a Jura wine bar, worth checking out.

Are you thinking of AT Olive that used to be at 47 rue Rodier?

Thanks for the tip on Clavelin – I’ll give it a try when I get back to Paris.

Onzieme, just wanted to say thank you for all the reviews. Since I subscribe to your Substack, more often than not, I am reading them in the body of an email, so don’t always react or comment. But with a 6-month stay in Paris later this year, I have been noting lots of the restaurants you’ve recommended! Thanks for taking the time to do it. Love your wine reviews, too.

4 Likes

Thank you, Paula. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up and share a meal or two when we’re both in Paris.

1 Like

Michelin Bib Gourmand, March 2025.

We went to Le Tire-Bouchon Rodier for dinner last week.

It’s French tapas-style completely at dinner. They suggest you order 3-4 dishes per person.

The menu is posted at the front, and I believe there was a hard-to-read chalkboard somewhere inside, but they point you to a QR code on your table to grab the menu on your phone:

If you ordered it, they bring bread and plop down an enormous butter dish that IIRC even makes the ones at CLJ and L’Avant Comptoir seem puny in comparison. It is so incongruous for this restaurant that I have to assume it is a French joke of some sort.

The pissaladiere, with fried onion “rings” on top, and the spinach dish were particularly excellent.


The green beans and girolles dishes were very good.


The tuna tartare was fine but nothing special.

The shrimp arancini (no pic) had excellent texture, but was marred by far too strong a shellfish-based stock that overwhelmed the other flavors.

The lemon sorbet we shared for dessert was refreshing, and a bit creamier than those we had in Italy.

I enjoyed my two glasses of white burgundy (12E each). The food was very reasonably priced.

There is quite a lot on the menu for vegetarians and pescatarians. We enjoyed eating lighter that night than we have on most other days on our trip.

If the pissaladiere is on the menu, I would return just for that. Otherwise, we found Le Tire-Bouchon Rodier nice and well-priced, but while we are likely to return, it doesn’t fall into the “must” category that, say, a Brion does.

5 Likes

Putting a big plate of butter on the table alongside the bread is not “a French joke”, however uncommon it has become. It is a blessing, French or not. And it makes sense in a tapas restaurant.

A few decades ago, at La Mitidja (rue Lacépède), a half-pound of fresh butter was on every table in case the couscous grain wasn’t rich enough. (While lamb chops were grilled on charcoal on twisted wire skewers.) The big cylinder of butter at Le Duc is also totally serious.

2 Likes

Thanks much for the background.

This was at least 3 pounds of butter, and might have been 5 or 6. it took up literally a quarter of the table (I cropped the picture, so it may not have been as obvious), so of course it’s designed for you to take some and then they take the butter bowl away.

I took a medium sized slab for my plate; my wife took a smaller amount. I don’t think we actually used it all over the course of the meal.
They charge 4E per person for the (unlimited, they note) bread and butter, making it one of the least good values at the place - unless, of course, you are in the mood to eat a lot of bread and butter.

1 Like

I hate it when they charge you for the bread. Or worse, when they bring it on demand, or only after a few courses have passed by. In some countries like Greece, extra charge for bread and cutlery is traditional, so I’m used to it, but in France that simply should be forbidden, or at least the restaurateurs should include it in the overall expenses.

That’s because, in our collective subconscious, bread is the very stuff of sharing — it is not even supposed to be confined to a basket and should never be stationed on your plate. It has been said for generations in French families that “bread on the table belongs to everyone and no one”, and it is not considered bad manners if you borrow a bit of your table neighbor’s bread, although this is very rarely done anymore. When it is done, it is convenient to ask first, but nobody would decline.

The quantity of butter they put on the table at Le Tire-Bouchon could be a psychological means to justify the extra charge for the bread service, but actually you take very little of that quantity, so that seems a little manipulative after all.

4 Likes