[Paris 11e] Le Rigmarole, yakitori and pasta restaurant?

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.

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Glad you enjoyed it. We were sitting right in front of the window. I don’t remember whether they were serving set menus or not, but we ordered à la carte. We’ll be back in Paris in 2 1/2 weeks. Looking forward to trying Détour and Virtus, as well as returning to L’Arcane.

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Wow … 13 dishes !

My my. How did you eat all that ?

Looks quite lovely …

So it lived up to it’s name being something of a rigmarole getting a table then :smile:

The food looks lovely BTW.

I wondered why this place is so hot, sure it is good, but as many other places. French press doesn’t seem to talk a lot about this place. I think it is due to the fact that it is owned by 2 Americans in Paris. The English speaking media covered a lot and give good exposure to the place.

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It wasn’t difficult, since it was served over 2.5 hours. And no bread! :wink:

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I was curious that the neighbours were drinking some orange wine, colour was quite fluo. I just checked, it was probably Roditis Orange Natur Maceration (2016?). Anybody knows about orange wine?

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No, but here is one fair article on it.

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Bingo. Look how long the French press (and Michelin) ignored Daniel Rose in both his Spring venues, while NYC ate Le Coucou up with a spoon.

Other friends just wrote us about their meal at Rigamarole last week. They had been warned about the time requirements of the tasting menu, so created one of their own which contained 11 dishes and took “only” two hours. They loved their meal and the restaurant.

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We noticed a solo diner, probably arrived 30 - 45 minutes after us, he left just 15 minutes before. But maybe they tried to hurry a bit since he was solo at the counter.

Thanks for the vin orange article, just ordered the bottle mentioned above, will go to the store to collect it.

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I checked again, and actually le Rigmarole won le prix Fooding 2019. Truth to be told, the French seem to accept more easily Japanese chefs than American chefs.

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:kissing_heart: :two_hearts:

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Based on our recent stay in Paris, we’d recommend trying Fulgurances and Korus (recommended to us by Pilgrim - thanks again).

Thanks for the heads-up. Korus is already on my list of places to try, but as I remarked once to @pilgrim, there is no chance that I’ll ever get to all the places on the list. But Détour is a priority this time.

After a long pause (gave up 1 star Michelin for 2 babies), Le Rigmarole is opening again starting from 18 October, reservation opens 2 weeks in advance for lunch. Dinner will be in table d’hôte format. More info on their website.

Curious to know how the cooking will be like.

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