Thoumieux

Editor's note: as of October 2021 the head chef here is François Vallejo.

Attached to a hotel, this brasserie is in a quiet street not far from the Eiffel Tower, and a short walk from the Seine. The brasserie and its gourmet sister restaurant upstairs were until June 2015 run by Jean Francois Piege, who had at one time been chef at Les Ambassadeurs. The new chef in charge of both the gourmet restaurant and the brasserie is Sylvestre Wahid, who was previously at two star Oustea de Baumaniere in Provence.

The decor of the brasserie is quite classical, with red banquettes, wooden floor and mirrors. The all-French wine list had labels such as Pierre et Rudolf Gauthier Bourgueil 2014 at €39 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for €15, Vacheron Sancerre 2013 at €83 for a label that costs €29 in a shop, and Yves Cuilleron Cote Rotie Madiniere 2012 at €119 compared to a retail price of €52.

Although this is a casual place there is still some attention to ingredients, with vegetables from well-regarded supplier Joël Thiébault. Bread was supplied by a baker called Frederic Lalos. Mr Lalos is not only a Melleiur Ouvrier de France (MOF), but the youngest ever MOF at the time he qualified at the age of 26, and has won numerous awards including baker of the year in 2010. The bread here was a mini loaf with excellent crust and very good texture (easily 17/20).

I began with a salad of endive, walnuts, apple and Roquefort (€18), a nicely balanced dish with good dressing and high quality endive (14/20). Also very good was a tomato salad with olive oil and burratta, the tomatoes having plenty of flavour, a world away from most of the ones we put up with in London (14/20).

A burger and fries (£23) was also very pleasant, with good meat served in a brioche bun with more of the very good tomato, though the fries were a touch overcooked (13/20). Confit salmon (€26) was better, nicely cooked and with decent flavour, served with thinly sliced courgettes, radishes, squash and carrots (14/20).

For dessert, what was notionally a lemon tart (£24 to share) was actually a modern interpretation, little balls of lemon cream and meringue on a shortbread biscuit base and a garnish of basil. I don't mind if pastry chefs want to play around with the classics, but it would be good if the menu actually explained that this was not really a lemon tart. The lemon cream was good and the biscuit base quite well made, the basil flavour mercifully subtle (13/20). Given the nature of the dish it was entirely unclear why this was only available for two people, as it would be trivial to slice in half.

Service was generally good, though wine topping up became rather haphazard as the meal wore on. The bill came to €136 (£97) per head, but that was with a bottle of Billecart Salmon rose champagne. If you shared a more modest bottle then a typical cost per head would be about £65. This seems to me a tolerable price for the level of food that we ate. You could certainly do worse in Paris than this.