The full story of the word “restaurant” — involving an 18th-century Parisian called Boulanger, lots of broth, and Matthew 11:28 — is too long to relay here, though worth looking up in an idle moment. The snappier take is that “restaurant” borrows from the French verb restaurer, meaning “to restore”, which is illuminative of their quintessence: seen in the right light, restaurants are about one person helping another. In this are folded notions of comfort, kindness and generosity. I think about this sometimes in the money-coloured misery pits that haunt Mayfair, but also in finicky fine-dining rooms where manicured plates seem born more from machine than man. I detest their anonymity. Who is doing the restoring, the reviving? And what’s so wrong with having a personality, anyway?
That’s one thing Paulette isn’t short of. Crikey. This small French bistro is one where the walls are mustard yellow and dotted with black like peppercorns, where the ceiling is wallpapered in boudoir florals and from it hangs junkyard lampshades. Bentwood bistro chairs are tucked under red-and-white tablecloths, and each of these tables is set for Champagne on arrival. Bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux fill one wall; next to these is a fridge full with rillettes, confit duck, wheels of Roquefort the size of spare tyres. Is it perhaps ever so slightly unhinged? Undoubtedly. But so too is it an utter joy, an antidote to every last one of those million-pound openings designed by the same studio. Would I have drawn up a room looking like this? Not on your life. Still, somehow, owners François Guerin and Jean-François Lesage seem to have opened my dream restaurant. Only it’s not a dream I realised I had in the first place.
