It’s an anomaly to find such a relic trad resto in the otherwise bobo/ trendy/ hip 11th. But that doesn’t mean that the food is remarkable.
What was the rest of the clientele like ? I’m big on vibe and the demographics has a big impact on that.
Many trad restos in Paris are one-dish wonders and that’s the case with Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes… cassoulet, cassoulet, cassoulet. Admittedly, I haven’t been in years and stopped going when the original very regional menu became identikit trad, retaining only the cassoulet as an echo of its origins.
And yes, 3 in the kitchen is fine if all you want is cassoulet but can be disastrous for anything else. I tend to avoid restos with large menus precisely because of these risks if the kitchen team is too small or too inefficient.
It’s not usually a matter of bad service because French waiters are well-trained and tend to be ultra-efficient, and a pair should be able to handle a dining room the size of Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes. The snags happen in the output from the under-staffed kitchen trying to cope with a much too large menu.
Just FYI, my grandmother makes terrific sole meunière. It only takes her 15 minutes. Of course she sometimes spends half a day doing the rounds of the fishmongers until she finds a fish to her liking.
Was the Brum sole the same size ? When I lived in England, I noticed that servings of restaurant fish (excluding the increasingly rare local chippie) were often smaller than what I was used to in Paris. Especially salmon and sole.
