TEKÉS -- Restaurant Review

 

Check Website for directions, menu and reservations. Click on this link https://www.tekesrestaurant.com/ 

Rating Standards: 5-Stars = Extraordinary; 4-Stars = Excellent; 3-Stars = Average; 2-Stars = Fair; 1-Star = Poor

€ = Inexpensive: 30€ and under; €€ = Moderate: 31€-49€; €€€ = Expensive: €50 -75; €€€€ = Very Expensive: more than €76 (prices based on minimum 2-courses)

1-Bell = Pleasantly quiet (less than 65 decibels); 2-Bells = Can talk easily (65-70); 3-Bells = Talking normally gets difficult (70-80); 4-Bells = Can talk only in raised voices (75-90); BOMB = Too noisy for normal conversation (90+)

4.5 - Star.......................................€€....................................... 3.5 - Bell

This is a relatively new restaurant. From my understanding they've only been opened approximately 6 months. It's in a great, easily accessible area. It's quite popular with the young and it was surprisingly packed for a Monday night, when Mondays are typically known as "dead" days for dining in Paris, in fact many are closed. 

If you are a lacto-vegetarian, this restaurant is for you.  They do have vegan choices, but the majority are lacto-vegetarian with creams, butters, and even eggs being used. It is 100% vegetarian..there are no meat dishes.

Honestly, my first impression was, I'm not going to like this. Only because I've had very few good vegetarian restaurants experiences. Mostly ethnic (Indian, Mexican). 

But I came with an open mind..

The interior is quite large. Middle-eastern music is playing in the background, you oftentimes have to share long tables with strangers, I like it, you make new friends, n'est-ce pas. But it was a bit hard to hear, so we just smiled and nodded mostly with our seat-mates.

As I mentioned the interior is quite large. You can actually sit in part of the kitchen. It was comfortable and felt very homey. 

You order dishes to share, sort of like tapas. I thought all the dishes were excellent, full of flavor, perfect amount of spices to make vegetables tastier rather than overwhelm them. On the menu, they used play on words like liver, or beefsteak, but in reality the meals were all vegetarian.

We had a lot of dishes. I'll list the dishes that we had and give a short description. I did manage to taste all the dishes except for the raw tomatoes, which I can't do because of acid reflux.

Interestingly, the menu was divided into 3-sections: Raw & Cold (literally), Wood & Sand (not sure what it refers to), flames (hot dishes), and Motek (desserts).

Our wait-person David spent an extraordinary amount of time with us to describe the philosophy behind the menu and dishes, the philosophy of the restaurant and the chef's vision of what she wants the restaurant to be. It was information overload, but very much appreciated. Sadly, I forgot most of it, so can only describe the dishes. 

Broccoli. I know this dish as a middle-eastern dish called "cigar", because of the shape of the phyllo dough. For lack of a better description, they're like middle eastern "egg rolls". Overall, this was a very good dish. It had hummus on the side and the poached egg, which was used for dipping the cigars, it was great. A good start.

Laffa druze dish, a flat bread almost like a gigantic roti served with interesting sauces of butter and sage and "srough". The srough had a nice kick to it, but not overwhelming. A good dish

Beef carpaccio.  I did not taste this dish but the folks that did loved it. The beefsteak tomatoes were juicy and very tasty, with a topping of fresh cheese and spices it made it a good substitute for the real capaccio. 

Fatayer. A spinach dish with Tomme Cheese, and added black sesame cream. Although this was a good dish, this was my least favorite dish. 

Fattoush. Crouton, fennel, and brown butter salad. Because one of us has celiac disease they actually put the croutons on the side. That was very thoughtful. I really liked dish, the spices on the salad made it. Although it is a common salad made in the middle east and has many variations, I loved this combination most. I wish I could tell you what the spices were, but they'd probably kill me if I leaked their secret. 

Girolle Pasta.  Girolles are in season and can easily be found in Paris. They are narrow tiny mushrooms and have a very earthy, woody flavor. In this dish they also added Chanterelle mushrooms kirsk and sage. I really liked this dish a lot, very tasty. If I just have one minor complaint, it was a little heavy handed with the salt. 

Aboukir. An eggplant meloukhia, known as "Jews Mallo" a deep green vegetable served with sumac butter. At first we couldn't find the eggplant, but later they brought the eggplant on the side. It was good, but we don't know if this was intentional or they forgot to incorporate the eggplant in the dish. Either way it was a very good, delicious  dish.

We did not ask for dessert, but they comped us for the dessert because of a few service errors. I thought this was commendable, since this has rarely or probably never happened to us in the 14 years we've lived here in Paris. I give them points for this.

All the desserts were delicious. We had a lemon cake, a mirabelle cake and a chocolate mousse. The mouse was my favorite. They drizzled olive oil and sprinkled sea salt on top. It truly enhanced the flavor of the chocolate. A HIT

SUMMARY 

If you are a vegetarian, go. Finally Paris is getting some really good vegetarian restaurants. When I think of vegetarian in Paris, I always think of it being very limited, and Indian would be the direction to go.

I have a lot of vegetarian friends and all I have to say is you have a lot more choices today than you had just even 10-years ago.

This restaurant is relatively new and has been opened approximately 6-months. They have some growing pains and service can be a little sporadic, but the good part is that they know that. The supervisor could tell, so she came up to our table to ask us for our feedback and what they can do to improve. WOW, this type of solicitation is unheard of in Paris. I give them points for this.  

I thought the food was excellent, and the staff are FABULOUS. Friendly and so hospitable. With time, I have no doubt that their timing will improve.

Overall, it is an excellent, tasty, vegetarian restaurant. They do have vegan alternatives. If I have any feedback, I would say order some pita bread, because a lot of the dishes have thick sauces, you need bread to sop them up. Would we go again, ABSOLUTELY.

Another wonderful thing the restaurant did, they comped us for some of the dishes because of some of their minor errors. Again, more points. We bumped up the total rating because of how accommodating they were and willingness to make up for their errors.

They sincerely want to improve and accommodate their customer (one at our table was gluten free, and one did not eat vinegar nor mustard), and they did. KUDOS TO THEM.  Also, they gave us an after dinner drink, a shot of gin and fruit.

With that said, our total bill came to €216 for all the dishes listed above. In addition to 6-glasses of wine, 2-gin and tonics and 1-vodka tonic. NOTE: not the true price because we were comped several items.