Omid T.
Yelp
I'm wavering between one and two stars. Two stars because the food is decent, some parts of it even good. One star because I'll never come back.
Grillé is the kind of place any food aficionado is supposed to like: Owned by a partner in perennial Worlds-50-Best-Restaurants contender Le Chateaubriand, with meat supplied by Paris' most famous butcher. That's a pretty good pedigree, even for a lowly kebab shop.
Ok, so it's a high-concept kebab shop: To ensure quality, only one elephant leg of (quality) frankenmeat is served per day. Once runs out, you're shit out of luck. Your one kebab can be garnished with one of three housemade sauces (of which only two were available at this time) and accompanied by optional housemade fries. The flatbread is not only made in house as well, but it's actually being baked fresh during service.
The good: The staff is very friendly, and with only two menu items there's little chance they'll ever fuck up your order. The freshly made spelt-based flatbread is truly excellent. You'll likely be waiting in line a long time to place your order, and the smell of bread coming out of the oven in the corner will keep you company until your turn comes up.
The problem: The whole doesn't nearly equal the sum of its parts.
That beautiful bread, hot out of the oven, is stone cold by the time your sandwich is assembled. You'd think they'd throw it back on the grill before wrapping it up and serving it to you, but they don't.
This is because there IS NO GRILL. The place may be called "Grillé" but the "luxury" kebab turns on a halogen roaster. (With aforementioned celebrity butcher Hugo Desnoyer's brand on it, of course.) This makes for even cooking and little mess, but also lacks the lovely caramelization one expects from grilled meats. The meat is shaved off the cylinder and placed under a salamander for a quick reheat, but it gains nothing in flavor from this process. And it still ends up in your hands lukewarm at best.
This cool (in the literal sense of the word) luxo-meat is most certainly is of high quality. But as with just about every Paris "concept" restaurant loudly pimping its source of meat, the end result isn't any better than if they were using lesser meat. Only you're paying twice as much...
...for even less flavor. There's so little meat that you don't much taste it anyway. I'm all for reduced meat consumption as a whole, but when I go out for something like, oh, a KEBAB, I expect to taste, you know, meat.
And the sauces are a bit of a joke. The white sauce claims to have horseradish in it, which maybe you could find by centrifuging it and performing a chemical analysis. The green sauce mercifully has some flavor. None of them have spice - which is baffling since in the typical kebab world, Harissa or the ill-named "Samurai" sauce are the most commonly ordered, so you'd think there'd be some upmarket analog involving piment d'Espelette or some other fancy Frenchified version of hot sauce. But no, it's all just... BLAND.
And finally, the fries: They look beautiful. Rustically uneven, thin cut, and delightfully well done - not a single pale frite comes out of the deep fryer here. As you watch your order being assembled, the dark golden-brown color simply makes you drool, just itching to dive in. Until you get your fries and realize that despite the beautiful appearance, they're just typical limp-dick Parisian fries that even a box full of Viagra couldn't firm up. (C'mon, France - Belgium is right next door. Haven't you learned anything about frites from them!?)
Worst of all, in my case, I spent €11.50 (pre-drinks) for a kebab-frites and still ended up hungry. Or hangry, rather. They should just shorten the name to "Grr" - it'd be more accurate.
Look, I understand the desire to do high-quality versions of junk food. I'm a fan of the idea overall. The thing is no one in Paris seems to be able to execute it. And often, there's no need - there's probably already someone doing best-in-class junk food of almost every genre out there. For instance, if you want a high quality kebab with handmade bread and fresh ingredients, you don't need a celebrity butcher or Chateaubriand pedigree. Just hit up the unassuming Kurdish joint Urfa Durum in the 10th for a superior experience at half the price.
