I reviewed charming La Buvette de Camille for HiP Paris. Read it
there or below:
As I very much enjoy drinking natural wines
in London, I thought I would probably enjoy drinking them even more in France.
So my thinking went when planning my trip to Paris last month. I can’t remember
where I first heard about La Buvette, but it was on my list of natural wine
places and also on my list of places that have been opened by ex-staff of Le
Chateaubriand or Le Dauphin, where the owner of La Buvette, Camille Fourmont
used to work.
That part of rue Saint-Maur is uninhabited
enough at night that, as I stopped outside La Buvette to take a photo of the
neon lit sign spelling out its name before going inside, my friend E coming up
behind me and saying hello made me jump and let out a small shriek. It’s
actually not that far from Parmentier metro, but it seems so when you’re
walking up the street in the dark, not knowing where it’s going to be. E, who
knows the area well (and shares a surname with the owner Camille Fourmont – but
is no relation as far as we could all discern) said she thought Camille was
forging interesting new territory by opening there.
Once inside, it was pleasantly refreshing
to be in a wine related space that had clearly been put together by a cool
girl, rather than a man. Not that it’s girly. It wasn’t dark and there were no
ancient dusty bottles gathering mould as décor. Instead, the white tiled walls
with shallow wooden shelves held bottles of mostly natural wines, with the
prices clearly written on them (add €8 for corkage). There were vintage glass
light fixtures, each one slightly different, and a pot containing a fresh
arrangement of white flowers and eucalyptus. The whole effect was light, unfussy and modern.
The menu of small plates was written up on
a mirror, with prices ranging from €3 - €6 for a plate of olives or fourme
d’Ambert cheese, saucisse seche, haricots blancs, or ricotta with quince jam
and hazelnut oil. We had most of the dishes that were available and I was still
hungry afterwards, but this isn’t a restaurant, so it was probably my own fault
for trying to make it into dinner. Due to licensing / lease restrictions it’s
not allowed to be called a wine bar – it’s officially a wine shop where you can
try the wine. The small space seats exactly fifteen and there’s also a zinc bar
to lean on. It was full to capacity but not crowded on a cold Friday night in
February.
We were interested in the already opened
bottles by the bar and we let Camille guide us in our choices, which she did
charmingly. This allowed us to try a glass of a few different wines each
without committing to a bottle. I’m no wine critic so I’ll spare you my amateur
musings, but every glass we tried was excellent, and seemed to complement the
previous – whether by accident or design. Before we knew it, it was 10pm – La
Buvette has an early closing time, making it perfect for an aperitif, less as
the focal point of your night out.
I enjoyed La Buvette for its thoughtful
details: the glass light shades, the thirties plates, the simple fresh flowers,
the light touch with which its been conceived, as much as for the wines. It was
my favourite of all the wine bars I went to in Paris in the month of February
–and I went to a lot.
