A Week at Paris's Most Chaotic Restaurant

A year after taking punches at the Bouillon Pigalle, I returned to experience it as a customer.

A restaurant, it has been said, should operate like a swan. At least that’s the opinion of Will Guidara, author of Unreasonable Hospitality and former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park. “All that the guest should see is a gracefully curved neck and meticulous white feathers sailing across the pond’s surface—not the webbed feet, churning furiously below, driving the glide.”

Of course, that’s a fine analogy for Mr. Guidara’s three-star palace, but Le Bouillon Pigalle in Paris’s ninth arrondissement is a different bird entirely. Diners don’t spend months trying to secure a reservation; they spend hours lined up by the sex shops of the Boulevard de Clichy waiting for a table. And it isn’t a world-renowned, multi-course meal that draws them, but a menu of French staples at rock-bottom prices.

I could see them through the window, hundreds of them packed on the sidewalk like Black Friday shoppers circa 2012, itching for one last retail rush before the Mayan prophecy wiped them all out.

We were all lining up for our 11:55 pre-shift briefing. I was dressed in a white shirt, black tie, black vest, and a half apron, about to start my very first shift. In five minutes, the floodgates would open, and I wouldn’t get my head above water, apart from a one-hour break, for another 12 hours.

The Bouillon’s director—a tall, sturdy, neatly-coiffed, blond man approaching his forties—ran quickly through roll call, just as the last team members rushed inside, still exhaling their final puff of cigarette smoke. We were twelve servers, a handful of commis de salle, three maître d’s, and one cashier.

In his strong Belgian accent, the director used the remaining minutes to instill in us the Bouillon’s chief values. There’s no time for “unreasonable hospitality” at the Bouillon Pigalle. The name of the game here, rather, is “pump and dump.” How else are you supposed to make over a million euros a month, charging just €3.80 for a French onion soup? Get their order, get them their food, and get them out.

At noon, the doors opened, commencing a customer service frenzy that I can only liken to a less luxurious version of Yubaba’s bathhouse. My section filled up almost immediately. I started by taking the orders three tables at a time: drinks, appetizers, and main courses all at once. Then, equipped with my large oval tray known as a torpilleur, I rushed to the back.

My first stop, right by the dish pit, was the drink station. I danced around my colleagues to grab carafes of water and Coca-Cola, and to fill up one-liter quilles of red wine from a series of taps (a huge selling point at only €15.20).

With all my liquids pushed towards the center, I carried my tray above my left shoulder over to the line. “Va te faire enculer!” (“Go f*** yourself”), one colleague shouted to another before kicking through the swinging double doors. Pans clanked, meat sizzled, and doors slammed as several servers and commis, all carrying trays, muscled themselves into line, shouting out their orders to the various sections of the kitchen.

There are no tickets at the Bouillon Pigalle; everything is announced verbally, and you are not allowed to leave the kitchen until every dish you’ve announced is on your tray. I started by pulling my cold starters from the fridge: œufs mayonnaise, poireaux vinaigrette, terrine de canard; and then announced the hot items: “Les entrées s’il vous plaît! Deux soupes à l’oignon, deux os à moelle et trois escargots s’il vous plaît!”

The cooks prepared the starters at lightning speed, slamming them onto the pass with a frisbee-like flick. I packed the plates tightly onto my tray until they overlapped like fallen dominoes fanning outward over the edge.

The last obstacle was the cashier who sat right at the exit of the kitchen. She inspected my tray, verifying that its contents matched what I had entered into the POS system with my pad (a busted-up iPhone at least five generations old). “N’oublie pas les pinces!” she shouted. I grabbed several little tongs for the escargot, placed my overflowing tray onto a stand, and served the various dishes to their respective tables.

And so it continued, hours on end, except that from then on, each time I went into the kitchen, my tray would be stacked high with dirty dishes, and I’d have the following courses of my existing tables to remember in addition to the new orders I took.

Needless to say, I was less the swan gliding across a tranquil pond, and more the limping pigeon, flapping in a puddle of sewage. I lasted only five days before deciding to find a job at a restaurant where I was less likely to develop scoliosis.

During those five days, I developed enormous respect for my colleagues and a strong curiosity about my customers’ experience. Were they actually enjoying this? Was it worth waiting upwards of an hour in the cold? A significant portion were tourists, sure, but not all. The French also came in droves to fill up on cheap wine and enjoy the belle époque nostalgia. They seemed to be satisfied, and that perplexed me. So this week, nearly a year after my last shift, I decided to experience the Bouillon Pigalle as a customer.

We arrived at precisely 18:59, and the line already stretched around the block. It was broken into two sections so as not to obstruct the entrance to the neighboring McDonald’s and the infamous “CinéX,” allegedly a porno movie theater, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what goes on in there, or at least not all that goes on in there.

My partner and I agreed that if we made it to the end of the first section in fifteen minutes, we’d stay; if not, we’d eat at our favorite ramen shop just around the corner. She halfway hoped we wouldn’t make it, and technically, we didn’t; but just as we were about to abandon our mission, the line advanced significantly in a sudden wave. And, although the past quarter hour was a sunk cost, we decided we were “priced in” (to use poker jargon) and that we might as well stay the course.

“Are you guys French?” a feminine Aussie accent inquired from behind.

“She is, I’m not,” I replied.

“Oh, do you know if this place is good? The receptionist at my hotel told me to come here. I have no idea what it is, like, I didn’t know there was a line or anything. I’m here for one day, then I’m going to Disneyland Paris. Do you know if they have snails?”

There ya go, I thought to myself. Case in point, why people think French food is overrated. They come for one day, and they’re sent to the Bouillon.

I did my best to rectify this injustice. For the remainder of our wait, we engaged in friendly conversation and provided several restaurant recommendations that I hoped would redeem the image of French gastronomy in her eyes.

Finally, exactly one hour after getting in line, a host brought us to our table. Our server was visibly “in the weeds,” 8 pm being the peak of the peak. He ran up to our table with a stack of menus, asking, “You want eengleesh?”—a question we hoped was more indicative of the general clientele than the look on our faces.

Having found his rhythm, he took ours and the neighboring table’s order just a few minutes later. From then on—boosted by our nethermost expectations—we enjoyed an evening of pleasant surprises.

Eva’s onion soup, while heavy on cheap stringy cheese, was deemed “ya know what, not that bad,” while my onion and goat cheese tarte tatin earned the official rating of “ça passe eh… ça passe de ouf.”

Having gotten my fill of meat over the holiday, I continued with a heaping plate of ravioles du Dauphiné (cheese and parsley ravioli) in creamy leek with a gratin top. The flavors were rich, but not heavy. Eva opted for a second starter: quiche Lorraine and mesclun salad. Each received the respectable distinction of “c’est bon, franchement.”

And we admitted to each other, as we polished a scrumptious crème brulée, that there’s something special about a place like the Bouillon Pigalle. Beyond the food, they’ve engineered a certain magic. It starts outside, waiting in the cold, then crescendos as the line snakes indoors. Just being seated becomes the principal victory. Finally, nestled tightly around a table, one can enjoy the frantic energy, that classic Parisian spectacle of pigeons flapping in a puddle. Whatever follows is gravy, provided expectations remain measured.

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See you next week,

Max