This article refers only to the Sunday brunch.
Bruno Doucet’s bistrot institution A La Régalade (his third Paris address) doesn’t do a croissant or brioche-filled brunch. Instead, it resembles a traditional lunch; a cold buffet of starters with mains served to the table, followed by a dessert buffet – all for €35.
Help yourself to the bar’s buffet of starters – mushroom and nut terrine, celery remoulade, crab with herbs, cooked whelks with house mayonnaise, soft leeks in a mustard vinaigrette and pesto-marinated scallops. Unsurprisingly, the starters were filling enough but we soldier on. The mains are wheeled out, a roast chicken with new potatoes and a slightly less successful moussaka. By this point, belt buckles are straining but the dessert buffet is too good to ignore; caramel rice pudding (La Régalade’s cult sweet treat), madeleines hot from the oven, cheeses, chocolate mousse, apple tart and red plum crumble… A true brunchtime orgy.
TRANSLATION: MEGAN CARNEGIE