Ribeye + The Limiñanas
The first thing we notice at Boucherie Les Provinces are glowing display cases, the meat inside so voluptuously red it nearly pulses with its own light. This is an eat-in boucherie in Paris’s 12th arrondissement, hidden behind the stalls of the Marche d’Aligre. “Stable to table” dining, as it were. Customers queue to buy cuts of beef, veal, pork, and lamb—or chickens plucked to the neck and dangling—from artisan butcher Christophe Dru. Most take their bounty home in paper, but for a little extra why not have the protein you’ve chosen prepared for you?
The shop seats roughly twenty at wooden tables set with spice grinders and steak knives. Our meal—eaten under swaying sausages—was bone-in ribeye, seared minimally on each side and sanguine at its core. The salted auburn crust was paired with greens that awaited dressing in dijon, buttery yellow like the chop’s rim of fat. Crisp gold potatoes. Bottle of Gamay. That grassy field flavor of beef in France.
When last we visited Les Provinces, their logo flaunted a (presumed cannibalistic) cartoon chicken, pig, and cow dining with unbridled joy. The owners recently expanded to open Les Provinces d'à coté next door, where filament bulbs swing instead of saucisses and chef Mattias Castro experiments with the stock: pigs’ feet in pesto, boudin with figs and pickled cherries. For dinner at the boucherie we still recommend the basics.
Like savoring grilled meat in the company of a butcher’s counter, the songs of The Limiñanas are decadent, urgent, and unflinching. A married couple from southern France, their music is a dark and jangling brew of new wave, dark wave, garage punk, yé-yé, sixties art rock, psychedelia, and a dusting of cinematic Morricone western. This is a band for fans of The Stooges and Joy Division, tambourines and back-alley murmurs. With every driving bass line, The Limiñanas embody ominous glimmer and opulent grit. Their early cut “Migas 2000” is a hazy reverb-laden recitation of a family recipe for a carnivorous dish. Gnaw your beef, down your wine, and move on somewhere loud and dim and smoky. Whether meat hooks or guitar hooks, some classics are classic for a reason.
3/21/2019