Bistro Pastis (English)

Saturday afternoon and time for some food prior our visit to the Swedish Royal Opera and The Magic Flute. The food trip goes to the small French bistro named Pastis. A bistro I have only heard good sayings about, so it is with positive expectations we take our seats at the table.

Finally, a real French bistro in Stockholm. I could might as well have been at La Palette in Paris, what a great feeling!

 With a warm, but slightly whimsical, reception we got the menu and wine list. For the first time in a long time I didn’t disappear into the wine list right away. Instead I took the time to have a good look around the beautiful dining room. The big mirror on one of the walls made the dining room seem much bigger than it really was.

”Cela se sent français. Je pourrais tout aussi bien pu être à Le Palette à Paris. Ce sera vraiment bon! Bon appétit”

With a classic bistro menu I easy find what I want, steak tartare the French way. Miss E has been to Pastis before and suggests therefore a cold platter before the main course to have something to nibble on.

My Madame orders moule frites so our ordering of main courses went fast. So, now for the exciting wine list, that of course is packed with good wines from France. As the gallophile I am it was a hard choice but eventually we decided on a bottle of a 2011 Domaine Chavy- Chouet ”Les Femelottes”, and goddamm it was good!

It has been some time since I tried these wines from Chavy- Chouet and I realized right away that this was a very happy rendezvous. A sweet shimmering green shade in its glow, the scent of a wonderful classic Bourgogne.

The minerals, the elegant green fruit with a hint of sweetness. The taste is big for being such a young wine, it unfolds like a Hermés scarf of over my tongue and bombards it with fresh and brisk flavors of fruit, the fine acidity and the subtle buttery tone from the windswept rapeseed fields of Öland.

While I hobnobbed around in my wine glass the cold platter arrives with a multitude of small scrumptious bite sizes. A small steak tartare corners in with a baked goat cheese, lomo, chorizo, salami, beat roots and olives. So easy but still cracking good.

My wine snuggled in between the fatty textures while loving the acid from the cheese and the saltiness from the meat.

Since I am still looking for the perfect steak tartare the idea hits me that it might be here that I am going to find it. All the classic garnitures are there and a fresh salad comes at its side. The French fries are so crisp and perfectly salted I almost forget that there is a cold and nice steak tartare in front of me.

Now I have experienced the pleasure of yet another steak tartare in my gastronomic life. It was real good, but I have yet to find the best one.

Miss E disappeared behind the big pot of the freshly made moules. The best part is when the lid comes off and the scent of sea, cream and herbs hits our faces, just magic. From her side then it was silent for a while before she showed up again with a grandeurs smile. I didn’t have to ask if it was good, you could tell right away it was.

Only remark on the moules was the about ten or so unopened mussels. We notified our waiter who took the info to the kitchen.

Unfortunately there was no time for dessert this visit due to the lovely food, wine and wonderful company that had made the time fly, of course only in the positive sense. So the check, a quick espresso and then onwards toward the opera.

My final saying about this visit is only brilliant, apart from the unopened mussels. I will definitely go back to Pastis and the nest time no opera will stand in my way of exploring their whole repertoire from a pastis to the avec.