Review: L'Entrecôte de Paris

If you were to walk in a room and shout ‘who in here is an obnoxious tourist’, my hand would be the first to go up. No shame. Maybe a little shame. But not enough to stop being an obnoxious tourist. There’s a reason all the good spots are tourist spots, no point in missing out. The only people you’ll see in those places are others who are also ashamed of being seen there.

L'Entrecôte is 100% a tourist spot.  I’m not convinced it’s a tourist trap, however. I’d come across it online, video after video about the long wait time, poor food quality and bad value for money. On top of all that, I don’t like steak, so I was ready for this to be my first big bad write up, but alas L’Entrecôte, you proved me wrong. It’s worth noting when I googled L’Entrecôte for supplemental research, I couldn’t tell which was the original; sort of reminds me of Hard Rock Café, especially since there are not only L’Entrecôte branches, but also knockoffs. I’m pretty sure we didn’t even go to one of the originals but how is one to tell.

Based on what I’ve heard, 9/10 times there are long lines, but if you’re a clever little tourist you’ll get there early. With a party of 9 I expected to be waiting at least 30 minutes, which in the Paris cold would’ve felt more like 60. This was the first instance in which I was wrong: no wait time at all. We were immediately sat, our order taken within 10 minutes and food out in the next 5. It’s worth noting there is a menu here, but I was told by my experienced company, ‘no one actually orders from the menu.’ You tell them how you’d like your steak, medium-well for me, thank you. And no, I will not be taking questions or complaints on my temperature preference.

At €25 per person for as much steak frites and super-secret sauce as you can consume, this was pretty good. Out came the bread, nothing special to note here, there’s a bread basket on every French dining table as far as I’ve seen. Minutes after that came the salad, dressed amply with walnuts and what I can only assume was a vinaigrette, although it was creamier than I’m used to. Once again, nothing remarkable, just a nice salad. I used the aforementioned bread to sweep up the remaining dressing, I’m not one to waste food. While we ate away at our starters, the staff set up tabletop stands in preparation for the family style steak service.

And there it was, the infamous Parisian steak frites. Swimming in their signature sauce (apparently nobody knows the recipe, but we took a few guesses), the steak occupied half of the tray while a pile of frites took the other half. I always expect a steak to be difficult to cut, especially the way I have it and this was the second instance in which I was wrong. This barely required any cutting, more so pulling apart. Barely used my knife. I even tried a piece of medium rare and I must say, very pleasant. Often, I find too much pink can mean too much chewing, but this was just right. The steak had a lovely light char which is one of my favourite parts of grilled food; dipped in the tangy sauce it was a match made in heaven. Same goes for the frites, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were from a supermarket, but it didn’t matter because the sauce carried it all.

 So, what is this infamous sauce? Well, since the founding of the original L’Entrecote in 1959, there have been countless attempts at recreating it. My guesses were anchovies, tarragon, vinegar, lemon juice, and butter because 1. France, and 2. it started to boil up and separate in the areas above the candles. Online variations include sage, parsley, onions, basil, nutmeg, who knows what else. The staff brought out multiple pots of it which was just an invitation to submerge each bite. Every time we came close to emptying our trays, around came the servers with more sauce, more steak, more fries, to the point where we regretfully had to ask them to stop.

I absolutely would have eaten more had I been physically able to; I squeezed as much down myself as I was humanly able to, picking on the last scraps simply to get as much of that sauce as possible. If you’re in Paris and are a big eater, this is ideal. The meat quality was good, more than enough to justify the price especially if you can knock down a few. Just make sure to go early because despite my luck, there was a line outside an hour into service. And I don’t know if it matters too much whether you go to the original to be completely honest, as long as you do your research.