Reserved the meal exactly a month before, at 12 am. Le Rigmarole is quite difficult to book, as each time slot, they have one table. Before I entered the restaurant, I was thinking it was a clever marketing trick playing on scarcity. Once I sat down and saw how they served the meal, I understood the aim was to maintain a rhythm with a minimum of cooking chefs, without the stress of having a lot of clients arriving at the same time slot.
Le Rigmarole has 4 staffs, including the couple Jessica Yang and Robert Compagnon, both US, but ended up with cooking passion and in Paris. They studied something else in US university but entered cooking school just after. The couple met when they were both working at Guy Savoy. Third staff is a Bangladesh dishwasher but we saw him cooking. The fourth was a red head waitress sommelier, always with lovely smiles. The team was dynamic and lively. The speciality of the place is white charcoal grilling, binchotan and pasta.
We chose the 69€ menu which composed with 13 dishes.
Pumpkin chips
Scallop tartare with yuzu and thinly sliced mint
Oysters cooked on carbon stove until they opened
Grilled mullet with spinach
Duck neck with spicy orange
Ravioli ricotta eggplant, a bit of imbalance between the proportion of dough and insert. If not, this was tasty and well cooked.
Grilled leek with smoked cod egg sauce
Steamed egg with chicken broth and watercress
Grilled pork with sesame oil
House made pasta with lobster - delicious
Endives
Chicken meatball with rocket cream and pancake
Brittany Far with prune for the birthday boy - according to Mr. naf, it was delicious.
My dessert was even better, fondue chocolate with a Brittany biscuit and barley ice cream.
On the whole, the cooking was precise. Maybe the pacing was a bit slow when more clients arrived. We spent nearly 3 hours at the place. According to Yang, the restaurant was having also its birthday, 2 years old!
I hesitate to call it a fusion restaurant, in fact the dish looked either Japanese or Italian. @bcc recommended the place nearly a year ago and warned about the smoky atmosphere. Actually we didn’t have any problem at all, no textile smelled bad, no even hair. I guess they have fixed the problem. Or maybe bcc was siting in front of the grill?
Mr n got a nice local beer from Montreuil and me some sweet potato Shochu…
The place is small, with maybe 30 seatings, with counter seats and some normal tables. That particular night (Saturday) was full, most of the diners were English speaking tourists of all ages. Book early and go.