RESTAURANTS • First Person
Over the last 25 years, the rents luxury brands are willing to pay for space in Saint-Germain-des-Prés have transformed much of the storied bohemian neighborhood into a predictable place for Platinum Card holders. Wonderful late-night dive bars like the Old Navy, open 24 hours originally and until 2am just before it closed, were bullied out of business by co-op boards who didn’t like the crowd they pulled, while most of the bookstores are gone, and the rue du Buci street market is no more.
I watched all of this happen, because I lived on the Left Bank for 15 years. My first flat was on the rue de la Sorbonne, then I moved to the tony rue Monsieur, and finally to a small but charming and very quiet apartment on rue du Bac where the working fireplace and a view over a pretty courtyard garden next door to a convent made it possible to put up with Madame Rosa, the evil Portuguese concierge.
So it was with huge curiosity that I headed for dinner the other night to Brass, a new brasserie in the neighborhood. The space at 131 boulevard Saint Germain was most recently an outlet of Leon de Bruxelles, the mediocre chain peddling mussels and frites, but when I arrived in Paris in 1986, it was a funky café with a cracked tile floor and a great crowd of local regulars. Alas, the café vanished, and recently, it’s been much easier to find sushi or a pizza in Saint-Germain-des-Pres than good Gallic grub, because French cooking is expensively time-consuming. News that Brass had opened was such a happy surprise that I had almost memorized the menu from the restaurant’s website by the time I arrived.
It was a great sign that the place was packed at 22h, and also that the bartender mixes a mean Negroni. The dark-red lacquer décor and stamped art-deco metal ceiling also had a louche, decidedly ’80s charm, too. Were the oeufs mayonnaise the best in the world? No, but they were good, as was the onion soup under a cap of melted Emmenthal on a raft of toast. A beef filet in black pepper sauce came with a small boat of golden frites, and the organic sausage with potato puree was excellent, both washed down with a fairly priced bottle of Fleurie (which reminded me that my instinctive fear of the Gamay grape as a hangover menace is not always well-placed).
By around 23h30, the soundtrack had gone disco with Sylvester’s ballad “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” causing the elegant woman with a steel-gray bob and Alice band at the table to my right to politely sway, maybe with memories of nights on the town from when Parisian nightlife sizzled. A minute later, ‘High Energy’ prompted a silver-haired man in an azure cashmere cardigan at the table to my left to grin at me and ask, ‘Vous vous souvenez de la Palace, Monsieur? Putain, mais Paris etait vraiment une fete dans le temps.’ (Do you remember Le Palace [a nightclub beloved of Grace Jones, Jean Paul Gaulthier, Thierry Mugler, et al], sir? Fuck, Paris was such party in those days!)
It wasn’t just these vintage bourgeois types who were getting lit up by the music and the energy here, however, but a whole busy dining room packed with twenty- or thirtysomething Parisians in little black dresses, or black turtlenecks and jeans, or white shirts and jeans, the night-on-the-town looks of Western silk-stocking arrondissement (6th, 7th, 8th, 16th, 17th) jeunesse dorée.
This is because Brass is the restaurant the Left Bank seems to have been waiting for. The uncomplicated food’s good, the late serving hours appeal — but the best thing about this restaurant is that it’s a very good time. –Alexander Lobrano
→ Brass (Saint-Germain-des-Pres) • 131 Blvd Saint-Germain • Daily 12h-2h • Book.