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WORDS LAURAMARTIN
TRAVELLER
PARIS
You can always rely on Parisians
to put food first. Now those Gallic
gastronomes have come up with a tasty
solution to eating out without breaking
the bank. A growing trend for
cave à
manger
– or cellar dining – has seen
some of the finest wine cellars in Paris
add tables and chairs to become
makeshift restaurants. The plates of food
offered are quite often small – similar to
Spanish tapas – but the menus are
lovingly created withmarket-fresh
produce and paired with the perfect
vin.
Leading the scene is Betrand
Bluy, whose wine cellar/deli/eaterie,
Les Papilles (
30 Rue Gay Lussac,
tel: +33 [0]1 4325 2079,
lespapillesparis.fr
), offers
a €16 pick-of-the-market
set menu that changes
every day. “I bought a wine
cellar and thought it would
be nice to also have a little
restaurant – I wanted to bring
to it the high standards from
Michelin-starred restaurants,”
Bluy explains. “People started
loving the concept, as well as
the food and wine.”
One of the beauties of
dining this way is that it allows you to
have a dish or two in one place, then hop
over to another – or even enjoy a cellar
crawl. Le Verre Volé (
67 Rue de Lancry;
tel: +33 (0) 1 4803 1734, leverrevole.fr
),
a tiny wine cellar on the banks of Canal St
UNDERGROUND DINING
Threemore cellars for the subterranean gourmet
Botin
MADRID
Guinness
-listed as the oldest
restaurant in the world, Botin
has been serving hungry
madrileños
since 1725. Ask to
eat in the
bodega
(wine cellar),
for the finest Castilian suckling
pig amid the bottles.
(17 Calle
de los Cuchilleros, tel: +34 913
664 217, botin.es)
Melker Stiftskeller
VIENNA
Feel spiritual, and not just in
the boozy sense, with dinner in
a space that was once a chapel
and where there was a wine
cellar as long ago as 1629.
Be sure to try the house
special: pork knuckle.
(3
Schottengasse, tel +43 1
533 5530,melkerstiftskeller.at)
Bily Konicek
PRAGUE
Set in a stunning medieval
cellar just off the Old Town
Square, this restaurant
and jazz club has become
a popular place to enjoy a
candlelit, luxurious meal.
The music starts at 8pm. (
Staromestské nám, tel: +4
221 421 160, bilykonicek.co
On The
Down Low
Martin, is a good follow-on spot.
There’s a buzz in this intimate venue,
where the day’s culinary offerings (from
€8) are scrawled onto a blackboard on
the wall, alongside the vast wine list.
Dinner here might mean pearlescent
mackerel ceviche with a zingy citrus
marinade and silky beef carpaccio
washed down with a couple of glasse
of Sancerre.
And for a communal take on the ce
trend, head downstairs at La Cave de
L’Os à Moëlle (
181 Rue de Lourmel, tel
+33 (0) 1 4557 2828
), where everyon
squeezes onto one table to enjoy a
sharedmeal deal of breads, crudities
a dish of the day. Naturally, you can b
sure of a pretty decent bottle of wine
LeVerreVolé is
the wine cellar
offeringmeals
plate fromLes P
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