Le Cornichon: Eating Steak In Paris

The first steak I ever ate was in Paris, at the age of 34, after 17 years of various phases of vegetarianism, veganism, and pescatarianism. Paris felt like as good a place as any to return to carnivorism.  

It’s a city that remains undefeated, and potentially undefeatable, in the centrality of its eating habits and rhythms to its culture and cultural depictions, from Emile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris to a Chardin still life, Ratatouille to the endless cafes and bars of the Nouvelle Vague.   

The humble, dependable, endlessly comforting and endlessly adaptable bistro is the cornerstone of eating in the city. Their food, like their interiors and architectural stylings, is encouraging and familiar. They are familiar punctuation marks on the streets of the city. The food in some is good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes just average. 

The untrendiness of the bistro burger, large and meaty and overflowing with juice, with a glass of ice cold Coca Cola, remains a distinct and wonderful lunchtime pleasure. A well made croque monsieur is equally enjoyable. These are prosaic, honest treats. They are not concerned with the baubles and foams of haute cuisine. They can be done well or not, but often still reassuringly familiar.  

It is the same with the interiors of these bistros and cafes; like Irish Pubs they have an identikit familiarity, but a real connoisseur can, among the ersatz and the kitsch, find some charm, and can tell immediately whether it will be good.   

This is the feeling when heading into Le Cornichon, one of my favourites to recently emerge from those which mass on the corners of every street in Paris. It leans into the historic decor of the cafe, with a zinc bar and pinball machine and neon lights that run across the space. It feels suspended in time, the exemplar of the cafe.    

The kind of place that works equally well for a morning coffee or glass of hangover-curing pastis as it does lunch, you could steal an hour here to yourself in the afternoon for a demi blonde, or late in the evening, enticed in by the glow of neon.  

Which is to say it is really a place about pleasure, good food, friends, drinks, having a good time. Cornichon is an effortless blend of nostalgia and modernity, a pint of beer, natural wine, tiled floor, a menu of simple efficiency.  

The space used to be a neighborhood cafe, and it retains that intimacy and informality. It was refounded by chef Bertrand Chauveau a few years ago. The menu leans towards comfort and homeliness, experimenting within the strict codes of cafe food: rillettes and saucisson and a bikini, lentil salad and egg mayonnaise, prawn cocktail and beef bourguignon.     

These are the small plates to be eaten, and they come out across a lunch time menu of ever changing classics, but it is evening, we are here to eat a steak. A huge steak, delivered on a silver platter with an equally decadently sized plate of fries.  

A big steak, cooked medium rare, served on the bone and shared between some friends. A side of béarnaise. One of life’s truest pleasures, one that can barely be improved upon. Some things are simply correct. 

Cornichon’s steak made a good case for the end of my vegetarianism. In the last few years I’ve eaten many steaks in many places around Paris, I’ve not considered returning to vegetarianism.