When it opened in the late ’80s, Le Télégraphe instantly became one of the most modish tables on the Left Bank of Paris. It was a conveniently short walk from the then new Musée d’Orsay, making it perfect for lunch, and it had a charming setting in the former refectory of a residence for telegraph operators with a tile floor, high ceilings, rounded arches and many potted palms. The menu ran to stylish calorie-conscious dishes like salmon tartare and veal piccata.
The fashion crowd, including designers such as Claude Montana and Yves Saint Laurent, along with a gaggle of models, took to it, and it became popular – but not with its aristocratic and haute bourgeois neighbours in the 7th arrondissement. “La cuisine est frivole,” tut-tutted a Countess who’d once been my landlord when we met here for lunch. She was right, and the fashion restaurant label stuck to this space even after it became Les Climats, a good restaurant specialising in Burgundian wines.
Sole Meunière – Gloria Paris @JoannPai-02620
And now it’s become an outpost of the Big Mamma group, the thriving chain of affordable Italian restaurants in Dubai, France, Ireland, Spain, the UK and Monaco, which was founded in 2016 by Italophile French entrepreneurs Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux. Sourcing directly from Italy, Lugger and Seydoux have considerably improved the benchmark level of Italian cooking in Paris, a city where, until quite recently, it was frankly pretty mediocre compared to London, New York or Sydney; think overcooked pasta, crème fraîche in many places where it doesn’t belong, oddly sweet tomato sauces and a general incomprehension of the fact that great produce is the soul of Italian cooking.
On an icy January Saturday, I headed here to meet a friend for lunch after taking in the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay.
En route, I wondered if Lugger and Seydoux would succeed at pulling off the more ambitious menu served at the Osteria Gloria. The dining room had been done up in sort of an antic La Dolce Vita décor with zebra print carpeting, apricot velvet tub chairs, huge Murano chandeliers overhead, and bibelots like a ceramic black panther lurking in a corner. I had a sudden flicker of apprehension about the impending meal, but happily joined a childhood friend who now makes olive oil on a Greek island in a glass of mineral-bright Sardinian vermentino.
Chef Francesco Fronda – Gloria Paris @JoannPai-02362
The crowd was a mixture of tourists and Madame Figaro-reading, Hermès scarf-wearing, cashmere-swathed Parisiennes d’un certain age who had dragooned their husbands into taking them to lunch at this trendy new restaurant they’d read about. A few local antiques dealers and some staffers from the Musée d’Orsay rounded out the crowd. Hungry, we shared some stracciatella with girolles mushrooms and an order of vitello tonnato croquettes, a clever idea, and both were excellent, although Amanda, my friend insisted that her Greek olive oil was leagues better than what was on the table here.
Next, a very good cacio e pepe with thick homemade pici and a perfectly seasoned spaghetti alle vongole (baby clams). “This is much better than what I was expecting,” Amanda chimed in, and I agreed. We shared a huge Milanese di vitello, a flattened veal chop encased in a crunchy envelope of golden crumb with a salad of Treviso. All told, it was a pleasant meal in a comfortable dining room in a great location and usefully, this place is open daily for both lunch and dinner.
41 rue de Lille, 7th arrondissement, Paris.
Tel. +33 06 65 56 52 34, www.gloria-osteria.com.
Average à la carte €65.
From France Today Magazine
Lead photo credit : Gloria Paris-Floor-Jérôme Galland
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