Dame is tucked away in the upper ninth arrondissement, just a half a block up and then a half block left from Lazu, that I wrote about last week. Today’s lunch was excellent in quality of ingredients and execution and at a price that would have been a steal pre-pandemic, not to mention in the wake of the post-pandemic inflation.
The restaurant opened in the last half of 2024 with a kitchen led by chef Matthieu Charriaud, who has also led Dame’s older-sister restaurant, Bonhomme (where I’ve not yet been) nearby in the tenth arrondissement.
The interior is in gold/beige and purple and airy.
Note the unusual ceiling.
The lunch menu at 22/26€:
And the carte:
If you order by the carte, the dishes are for 1, 2, or 4 people and are delivered family-style to the center of the table for each diner to take his or her own portion.
We opted for the daily menu, each of us taking a different one of the options for each course.
The wine list is excellent, very well chosen and at reasonable markups. There are about 100 options by bottle. The wines-by-the-glass list:
To start, we opted for glasses of the Côtes-du-Jura, a Chardonnay, from the excellent Domaine Rickjaert:
This wine was a most attractive, crisp, crystalline expression of Chardonnay, and a very good match with the food.
The velouté of butternut squash with a Parmesan biscuit was excellent, too — lots of flavor, a velvet texture, and just the right amount of crispness added by the flavorsome biscuit:
The coppa, a generous portion served with pickled vegetables and toasted sesame seeds, was at least equally good, maybe even better, being intense with just the right amount of saltiness, a great introduction to the meal and a perfect match with the wine:
The pork main course was quality pork served with a very tasty broccoli purée:
Again, a generous serving without being too large.
I especially loved the roasted cauliflower served on a bed of mushrooms with delicious gobs of yogurt and tahina:
The dish was light but intense and showed very good flavor.
With this course, I took a glass of the Cahors:
This wine was from a producer whose wines I have seen on good lists, but had not previously tried. It was impressive, but still a little young. I expect that in another 2-3 years, it will be even better.
For dessert, I took the cheese, which was a great example of Saint-Nectaire, creamy and firm with plenty of flavor. It was served with pickled radish:
Not only was the pickled radish a welcome change from the standard fruit jam, its acidity played perfectly against the cheese’s creaminess.
The poached pear with buckwheat crumble was also an eye-opening change from the standard wine poaching liquid, here being black tea:
This kept the pears from being very sweet, and instead focused the flavors on the pears themselves. I’m going to have to experiment with the making of this dish.
The bill did not include my glass of Cahors, and when I pointed this out, I was told it was deliberate. The bottom line:
Paris’s ninth arrondissement is a hotspot these days for all sorts of wonderful restaurants, but Dame is special for what it achieves in its class, fresh everyday cooking with creative twists. I strongly urge you to go.
Dame
38 rue Condorcet, 75009 Paris
Tuesday-Saturday lunch and dinner (open late)
Tel: 09 87 46 72 89
website: dame-resto.fr
Métro: Cadet, Poissonnière, Anvers, Barbès-Rochechouart, Pigalle