Opened since the 1910s, Benoit is a institution in the Parisian dining scene. Sometimes, nothing beats a cosy, traditional restaurant and its honest and delicious French food.

By Alexander Lobrano

Since traditional bistro cooking has increasingly become an expensive heirloom dining experience in Paris, Benoit is a place I happily keep close tabs on, regularly returning to revalidate its reputation as one of the capital’s great gastronomic institutions since it opened in 1912. Sitting in the Metro on my way to my most recent dinner here, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic as I mused on my first meal in this charming dining room, with its brass coat racks, globe lamps and big service bar in the original dining room.

On a chilly wet September night in 1986 when the stone pavements of Paris were covered with slippery yellow appliqués of fallen chestnut and poplar leaves, I pulled back the heavy red velvet breeze-blocking curtains at Benoit and stepped inside. Newly arrived in Paris, I was living in a (now long-gone) hotel on the Rue Boissy d’Anglas, which meant I had to dine out every night, a daily inevitability I deeply dreaded.

Aside from an occasional lunch seated on a stool at an American coffee shop, I’d never eaten alone in a restaurant dining room, and I found this public display of my solitude excruciating. I squirmed non-stop, imagining that people thought I was pitifully friendless or eccentric – or both. I bolted through these meals as quickly as I could and avoided eye contact as well.

Still, since I was living on a company expense-account it would have seemed foolish not to make the best of things, so I was working my way through the addresses found in a popular restaurant guidebook to Paris and had booked a table for one at Benoit.

Though I especially loathed what seemed like the eternity of standing by the reservation stand by myself, I was immediately mesmerized by the soft, glowing light of this intimate dining room, its velvet banquettes and the framed black-and-white photograph of a natty old man in a beret on the wall. I was greeted and seated immediately, though, and my waiter was an avuncular man with an immaculate white apron tied with a small tight knot in the middle of his barrel-like girth.

For some unknown but lucky reason, he was instantly amused by me, and after bringing me the menu, he returned with a flute of champagne, which panicked me, because I hadn’t ordered it and didn’t want my new employer to accuse me of extravagance. I fumblingly tried to wave the bubbles away, but he shook his head.

“Avec ce temps de merde, il faut boire du champagne,” he insisted (‘with this crappy weather, one must drink champagne’); he was right, too, and the drink never showed up on my bill either. When he returned to take my order, he told me what I would be eating instead – leeks vinaigrette with toasted hazelnuts, boeuf aux carottes, and tarte Tatin (my first), washed down with a bottle of Cairanne. I was dumbstruck by his gastronomic domineering, but it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. Why was he so kind to me? I’ve often wondered, but I can’t help but think that I may have reminded him of himself the day he’d climbed on a train somewhere deep in the French countryside as an innocent young man to move to Paris and make his way in the world.

In any event, Benoit has been a fixture in my life for nearly 40 years, and through various changes in ownership – Alain Ducasse bought it from the Petit family in 2005 – it’s never failed me. Meeting a friend for dinner the other night, however, I was disappointed by the distracted and disorganised welcome from a rather off-handed young woman, because given its prestige, Benoit deserves a seasoned maître d’.

But the menu continues to deliver in the most marvellous of old-school ways. My spouse is from Valenciennes, a small industrial city on France’s border with Belgium that I’ve visited many times, so I was glad to see this proud, hard-working little town’s gastronomic speciality still on the menu: la langue de Lucullus fine slices of smoked tongue interleaved with pâté de foie gras a rich but sumptuous treat. Onion soup and escargots in garlic butter, which my friend had, were also excellent versions of these monuments of Gallic gastronomy. Skate wing with a grenobloise sauce (lemon, capers, brown butter and croutons) was outstanding, as was the cassoulet, a long-running favourite of the regulars here, and the tête de veau ravigote, or boiled calf’s head. Sadly, these great French dishes are increasingly difficult to find in Paris as younger French diners prefer ‘light’ eating, including sushi, hamburgers and pizza.