Astair in Paris: A New Brasserie/Bistrot in an Atmospheric Old Setting

When the central Paris food market, Les Halles, was razed in 1971 and replaced by a grim shopping mall, it became that much harder to find places that evoke the everyday side of the city as it used to be. Curiously, some of the most evocative of those places are in fact shopping malls: the “passages” and “galeries” built for all-weather shopping, mostly in the nineteenth century. Those that escaped Baron Haussmann’s rethinking of the city’s plan and survived subsequent development schemes are a mixed bag of chic and slightly shabby: You find a jumble of businesses such as second-hand bookshops, stamp dealers, cafés and upmarket and downmarket clothes merchants. The passages themselves vary in impressiveness too: The aisles of, say, the Galerie Colbert and the nearby Galerie Vivienne are broad and ornate, while others remain pleasantly ramshackle.

The Gallerie des Panoramas on a cold, rainy night. Photograph by Edward Schneider

The oldest of the genre is the Passage des Panoramas, built in 1799 or 1800. Its long (133 meters / 435 feet) aisle and its few cross-passages are narrow and the night-time lighting low. It has charm - and, with a number of popular and well-regarded restaurants, it has become something of a gastronomic destination, as Paris resident Alexander Lobrano has written. Indeed, it was on Mr. Lobrano’s blog that I first read of Astair, a new modern brasserie (or is it a bistrot?) that proved to be just the ticket for the evening before the big-deal dinner of the trip (an exquisite meal at Eric Frechon’s three-Michelin-star Epicure in the hotel Le Bristol). Astair provided the easy-going contrast we needed, serving mostly classic brasserie/bistrot dishes with canny twists of innovation, careful cooking and high-quality ingredients in a comfortable, stylish but not especially luxurious environment.

(I take the terms "modern bistrot" and "modern brasserie" to mean restaurants whose menus have a solid basis in the cooking of old-fashioned bistrots and brasseries but which, first, dare to buck entrenched practice in small and less-small ways and, secondly, take greater care in their choice of ingredients and the way they are cooked. For it is a sad fact that it's pretty easy to eat tedious, disappointing food in an unreconstructed restaurant in Paris and elsewhere in France.)

The inviting façade of Astair. Photograph by Vincent Leroux

Astair was established in 2018 by three young and successful restaurateurs - Jean Valfort, Charles Drouhaut and Jean-François Monfort - with Gilles Goujon as consulting executive chef. Mr. Goujon is the chef-proprietor of the three-Michelin-star Auberge du Vieux Puits in southern France, and some dishes on the diverse and appealing menu are identified as his, though he is involved in all that emerges from the kitchen.

Astair. Photograph by Vincent Leroux

The night we were there, the clientele was diverse as well: A couple of grown-up couples like us; a young pair with a little baby (I love seeing kids exposed to dining out so long as they are reasonably well behaved, as this one was); a guy on his own eating a steak; a big table of, mostly, men in their twenties or thirties. We weren’t the only foreigners, but it was a mostly French crowd, which made us irrationally feel as though we were in on some sort of Parisians-only secret. There were comfortable red banquettes and a circular bar with red stools. There were big windows looking out into the Passage. There was music, but it wasn’t loud enough to annoy us. (Our annoyance threshold is pretty low, so it can’t have been too intrusive.)

Our plan had been to start with a dish of squid fritters, but appalling weather had affected seafood deliveries (not just at Astair), so there were none. It wasn’t hard to find alternatives, and we ordered two of the Gilles Goujon starters (not because of the “Gilles” label, but because they sounded so good): a “carpaccio” of calf’s head with a lightened, brightened sauce gribiche. The gelatinous calf’s head slices were well seasoned and, happily, were served just below room temperature, so they did not get rubbery with cold; coarsely chopped hazelnuts added toastiness and textural interest, something often lacking in dishes of this kind. An “oeuf parfait” was indeed perfectly cooked (at low temperature for a long time); the egg was set on a base of brioche and was surrounded by a true-flavored, slightly frothed mushroom soup/sauce strewn with wild mushrooms. This was all about the mutual support of the inherently complex flavor of mushrooms and the richness of soft-cooked egg - especially the yolk. Both were gently and successfully tweaked brasserie/bistrot standbys.

Oeuf parfait de poule fermière aux champignons des bois. Photograph by Edward Schneider

Grilled main courses at Astair include steaks - rib eye for two or strip loin for one, both from Galician cattle aged for six weeks (right on trend, but no less promising for that) - and charcoal grilled sole. Sauces for these, if you want one (for me, salt is the best sauce), are chosen separately. If I’d been eating a steak and had been forced at gunpoint to pick one, I’d have plumped for the confit shallot sauce.

The main dishes we ordered, however, required no extra sauces: Jackie had been tempted by seared calf’s liver with a vinegar-based pan sauce, but a greater temptation was boudin noir from the south-west French producer Christian Parra, beautifully served on just-right potato purée (very but not ludicrously buttery) and topped with picture-perfect lightly caramelized apple wedges. The casing-less (and hence easy to eat) mixture was uncommonly complex, with a well rounded spice blend setting off multiple organ meats, blood and not-too-finely chopped pork. If you needed to convince a timid dining companion to eat blood sausage, this might be just the version to help you make your case.

Boudin noir Christian Parra. Photograph by Edward Schneider

I ate fish. Or rather I ate glazed root vegetables (légumes de couleur as the menu had it), such as carrots and beets with perfectly sautéed monkfish cheeks. The fish was delicious - tender but with considerable structure - but I’d have been no less happy with just the glistening vegetables in their short, intense tarragon-scented sauce.

Sauté de joue de lotte aux légumes de couleur. Photograph by Edward Schneider

Our desserts were two that we cannot refrain from ordering: a rum baba with citrus; and floating island. The first did not please: the citrus-rum syrup was strangely bitter and strangely un-rummy. But the floating island ranked with the best: in addition to the usual drizzle of caramel, around the meringue “island” were little slabs of crunchy almond nougatine. A clever addition.

Île flottante et nougatine. Photograph Edward Schneider

The night was cold, and it was pouring rain. So imagine how nice it was to emerge from Astair not into the wet chill of the Boulevard Montmartre but into the atmospheric low light of the Passage des Panoramas and to stroll along, window-shopping and looking at other people finishing their dinners. The magic was short-lived: to get into the Metro there was no way to avoid the rain above and the puddles below. Such a pity, but that was not Astair’s fault.

Astair. 19 Passage des Panoramas, 75002 Paris; Metro Richelieu-Drouot or Grands Boulevards; +33 (0) 9 81 29 50 95; www.astair.paris. Open every day from mid-morning (for late breakfast) till after midnight (11:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday); our dinner for two with a bottle of nice wine cost €140 ($160) including tax and service but not optional tip. Lunch prix-fixe from €15 to €25.