Restaurant Review – Illios
If you happen to wander down the wrong side of Montmartre after a visit to that Great White Elephant of Sacre-Coeur, going beyond the Mairie of the 18th arrondissement and hanging left to find yourself in the rue Ramey, you and your rumbling stomach, you might want to stop for dinner at the restaurant Illios. Because in an area of Paris where it’s hard to find any good restaurants, it’s a real pleasure to find one that’s excellent.Socrates and Yannis run Illios. As you can probably guess, they’re Greek, although their restaurant isn’t, at least not exactly. Already for the decor, there aren’t statues of gods or plaster ionic columns. There is a fresco of ancient Greece, but there are also contemporary paintings on
the walls. And then the food. You don’t see any moussaka or
gyros or even stuffed grape leaves, and no broken dishes. Just go to
one of the “traditional” Greek restaurants along the rue de la Huchette
in the Latin Quarter, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.Socrates (not the philosopher, the co-owner) describes the food at Illios as Sunny Mediterranean, with Greek and Italian touches. But I think that basically the food is really about what Yannis (the chef) knows and builds on to create new dishes.
I went there recently with Tom and Deb, American friends visiting France. Tom is an emphatic sort of guy who wants things to be very clear, which may be why not only his first name is Thomas but his last one too. Thomas Thomas. I think that is so neat, that since knowing him I have always wanted to name a kid Neuenkirchen Neuenkirchen. But my wife wouldn’t let me. It was probably a good thing. Anyway. In contrast to Tom, his wife Deb is very artistic, very visual. We’ve been to Illios before, and when we talked about going somewhere to eat, Tom said “How about going back to that place up in your neighborhood?”
“Sure,” I said, “But I’ve got my kids coming for supper tonight. Mind it they come along?” It turned out that there were only two of them, Joseph and Leah. Paul was out gallivanting. They had never been to Illios before as there had never been a kid’s menu there, no Happy Meal. But I thought Leah might be getting big enough now to be ready for some real food, and as for Joseph, he has recently entered an apprenticeship as a pastry chef, and has become passionately interested in everything about food.
Illios has only nine tables, so my sole concern was whether there would be a table free for five. You really should reserve.
So on entering, it was with trepidation and without a reservation that I greeted Socrates.
“No problem, sir. It’s still early and we have plenty of room,” he assured me, and noisily moved three tables together. This is an important advantage to American early eating habits, because in the course of the evening, the restaurant really did fill up. Socrates greets a lot of the regulars as friends. It must be some of the warmth of that Mediterranean sun.
We were handed menus, and Socrates (still not the philosopher) hung a slate with the day’s specials on a metal tower, so we could see. He re-hangs the slate on other sides of the tower as new customers arrive so that everyone has his chance. “It’s Yannis who writes the sign,” he quickly pointed out, “so if there are any spelling mistakes, you’ll have to see him about it. It’s not my fault.”
You already know you can’t go wrong with the menu at Illios, so it’s exciting to go with the specials. That night there was gazpacho aux champignons et au thym (mushroom gazpacho with thyme). I went for that, and it was wonderful: a cold mushroom puree in cream sauce, of course with thyme.
“What’s that?” Leah asked, pointing distrustfully at my first course. “Looks like dried weeds.”
“That’s the thyme,” I sighed.
“It looks gross.”
“Maybe you are too young to eat here. Why don’t you go on to McDo’s?”
“You’re nuts,” Joseph told his sister dismissively. He narrowed his eyes and assumed a professional air. “This eggplant salad is really interesting. There’s something in it I can’t quite place…. I wonder where they get their olive oil?”
“And this salad is lovely,” Deb said. “Look how pretty it is, pale green slivers of fennel against carrot strips. You could frame it.”
“Now this is great,” Tom said emphatically, holding up for view a mushroom sautéed with garlic, speared on his fork.
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “I usually order that when I come here.” I warmed to the subject of what was on my plate. “But I’ve never seen this gazpacho on the menu before. It’s so original! And so good! It’s like its singing, ‘Come, eat me.’ I remember this great citation from Shakespeare about food, you know, it goes-”
“I think you should just eat” Tom suggested flatly.
“You can put all that in a restaurant review to tell other people.” “Hmm,” I responded.
Perhaps I should point out here that I’m a vegetarian, and although Illios is not a vegetarian restaurant, it is vegetarian friendly. Yannis used me as a guinea pig (there has to be a nobler term for it), giving me the privilege of being the first to try some of his experiments with meatless dishes. The entrees are almost all vegetarian, so sometimes I double up on them; this particular evening I had the penne à l’arrabiata for the main course. Had I known I was going to write this review when I ordered, I would have chosen something more original. But I like it! Simple and good, just fresh pasta with a very spicy tomato sauce and a little sprig of parsley to give it some color.
Tom had the turkey and spinach roll. The spinach is seemingly mixed with something like ricotta, making it light green and rather solid. “This isn’t really rolled,” Tom noted firmly. “It’s more curved, with a thick slice of turkey over the spinach.”
Deb was exclaiming over the rouget à l’huile d’olive she had ordered: “Just look at the presentation: little triangles of fish over string beans and pimento!”. “What’s a rouget?” Tom wanted to get this straight, while Leah poked doubtfully at her pasta aux quatre fromages, Joseph was too busy giving his rib steak with gorgonzola sauce the professional once-over, so I answered for him, “I don’t know exactly,” I paused and added a little helplessly, “It’s a fish.” Yannis was walking by; he’s not the kind of chef who stays in the kitchen all night. He also comes out to help serve and to talk to the customers. To redeem myself I asked him if he knew what rouget was in English.
“Non,” came the first response, with what looked suspiciously like a Greek’s version of a gallic shrug, but he then good-naturedly found a cookbook with a photo of a rouget. But most fish look suspiciously alike – only sharks and pirhanas stand out to my mind – so that didn’t help much either (we did look it up after and saw it’s a red mullet, but that didn’t help much).
“Whatever it is, it’s beautiful! ” Deb said.
Joseph chewed his rib steak with gorgonzola thoughtfully. “What could they have put in the sauce to give it that consistency?”
For dessert Deb had faisselle à la framboise, which was red centrifugal splashes of raspberry around a white cheesy mound. “I want to take a picture of this!” she cried, pulling out her cell phone – her cell phone! - for a picture, standing for the right perspective.
Meanwhile Leah was staring silently and distrustfully at the strange reddish-orange berry in an open paper-like pod crowning her blancmange. Joseph informed us, “That’s a physalis, otherwise known as (and I’m translating from the French) “love in a cage.”
I had known something that looked like that in America, although it was smaller; that everyone always said was poisonous. Maybe it’s not the same thing. Seeing our interest in this berry, Yannis brought us a small dish of them so we could all try. They were a bit sour, but there was sweetness to them as well. Interesting and apparently not poisonous, unless it’s v-e-r-y slow acting. Tom has since gotten to the bottom of this and informed me that in English this is known as a Cape Gooseberry.
Socrates said (this time it’s the philosopher) “Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.” But, hey, what did he know? He never ate at Illios.
Illios
61 rue Ramey
75018 Paris
Metro: Jules Joffrin
Telephone: 01 42 23 67 60
Menu: 26€
