Dans les Landes – Paris

Cuts of offal, ear, nose, head and trotter, it turns out, are as fashionable in France as they are in the UK. Dans les Landes is a bustling wine-bar-cum-bistro offering a Franco-Basque take on tapas, alongside more traditional main courses. We went straight for the tapas.

Parmentier de lièvre au foie gras was a glorified shepherd’s pie with pieces of liver – I wouldn’t have known the mince was hare.

Cous de canards confits et crostillants couldn’t have seemed less Basque: N1 had a lot of fun picking slivers of meat out of every bony nook on the duck necks – an activity I associate more with Chinese restaurants – and the barbecue sauce, which we speculated might have been made with plum wine, didn’t taste like anything we’d expect in a European restaurant. Which isn’t to say it was bad, but it was laden on too heavily for the amount of meat there was.

Pieds de cochons en escabèche came as croquettes filled with gelatinous bits of trotter. We weren’t quite sure where the escabèche came into it; presumably the trotter had spent time in vinegar beforehand. Very tasty, though.

Basque cuisine usually evokes images of hearty peasant food, but it can also mean the far-flung experimental gastronomy of Arzak and Mugaritz, and the more outlandish tapas bars of San Sebastián. The entry on the tapas list at Dans les Landes “Mini hot dog” made me salivate with memories of the tiny Kobe Burger served on a “ketchup bun with banana chips” at A Fuego Negro in San Sebastián; but when the hot dog arrived, it turned out to be exactly what it claimed to be: a tiny chorizo in a bun.

I’ve lost the French for what they were, but we also had fun little rectangular croquette logs filled with polenta and pieces of smoked duck.

Together with some rustic wines, that was enough to satisfy us, and we felt we had exhausted what sounded like the more interesting dishes on the tapas menu. When we arrived, there were plenty of tables free, but it soon filled up – reservations probably required. The staff were pleasant; the Basque rock music became louder and no better as the bar filled up. Dans les Landes is fun and informal, even if it is nowhere near as good as the offalicious English tapas master St.John.

Dans les Landes, 119 bis Rue Monge, 5^th arrondissement