Crawl Notes | L’Entrecôte in Montpellier
A Cut for All
The good thing about running a half-marathon is you can pretty much eat whatever afterwards without guilt. The weird part sometimes is you actually don't feel hungry. That's where I found myself on a Sunday evening after finishing the rainy and cold half-marathon at Les Pyramides in La Grande Motte.
The sign that called out to me
After a warm shower I took a walk around the city center, meandering around the area and looking at various menus outside of places. Nothing was really striking my fancy. I stopped for a gelato at Delacrem and then hung out at Hopulus Brewpub and enjoyed the evening chatter.
I made my way back to the Place de la Comédie, the main plaza in the city, and then took a walk down Rue de Verdun, a street I had not explored before. After a block or so I saw the word L'Entrecôte in yellow staring right at me. "Huh, the steak and frites place?" I thought to myself. I recalled bookmarking something in Paris that had the word in it, but never actually tried it. After an evening of flâneuring around my appetite finally surfaced. Maybe it was time to check it out.
La formule
The doorman warmly opened the door and had a laugh with some other people on the street, some regulars perhaps. I stepped in and was greeted by a hostess in a red top and neatly tied hair bun. She sat me down close to the front next to the bar. A couple with their baby was enjoying a large plate of profiteroles in the corner. The wait staff buzzed around in their distinct uniform, matching the tablecloth and menu, all distinctly black and yellow. It made me think of Wiz Khalifa, the Steelers, the Iowa Hawkeyes, and Waffle House. A palette that screams blue collar and unfussy, much like their menu.
L'Entrecôte
23€ Meal
Salade aux noix (salad with walnuts)
Faux-filet paré finement coupé (finely sliced upper sirloin)
Pommes allumettes (french fries)
Served with their famous sauce
Now if you come to L'Entrecôte, then you're only here for one thing: meat and potatoes, in the form of steak frites. It's because there's nothing else. Decision fatigue? It's off for the night. The most complicated thing is figuring out your drink order, how you want your steak, and whether you can throw down a dessert after your bout with the main event.
A green salad, lightly dressed in a vinaigrette with walnuts quickly appeared with some bread. Light, salty, and refreshing, it was a nice palette cleanser. Then the main came out, a plate with my medium rare steak, all sliced, and doused in their special butter sauce accompanied by a mound of fries. The other half of the steak lounged in a pool of butter sauce buoyed by a raised platter kept warm by a couple of tea candles resting under it, keeping the butter from solidifying (my guess). How romantic and pragmatic.
Now the cut is called a faux-filet, something I've never heard of, which I learned is a very French cut that has no English equivalent. It's somewhere in the upper sirloin region. I also had never seen the word pommes allumettes either. It's basically the term for matchstick fries. There are dozens of different cuts for fries in French. La frite classique (6-7 cm), les frites allumettes (matchstick, 3-4 mm), and les frites épaisses (wedges, 15-20mm).
"Am I going to finish this?" was my thought. I kind of wanted to save some room for the profiteroles after eyeing the baby going to town on the chocolate sauce. I guess we'd find out.
I honestly had low expectations coming into the place. I figured the frites would be filler and hoped the steak wouldn't give my jaws arthritis. The premise of a place just serving one thing felt like a bit of a mill, but then I took a bite of my steak. Huhhhhhmmm. A raised eyebrow. The special butter sauce? Don't mind if I start mopping it up with this bread here.
Ok, now I see why they give you a small pool's worth of it in the platter.
Frites on the other hand, these looked like regular sized ones, not matchstick so I'm not sure about the name. But I'm someone who is pretty much in the camp that McDonald's fries are just hard to surpass on average. I enjoy tots, home fries, wedges, waffle fries and their battered varieties, but for a regular french fry, pound for pound, McDonald's is goated. Maybe one day they'll fry them in beef tallow again (thankful I lived in that era), but even in whatever horrible for your health recipe they have now, it's amazingly consistent everywhere.
L'Entrecôte
So then the frites. They looked like something you'd get at a bistro, somewhat elevated, a nice golden-brown color. Sometimes frites that look like this can be a soggy mess or a crispy hollowed out shell, its soul left behind in the fryer bin.
I leaned in and took a bite of this batch. Crispy, pillowy, salty. It felt like Troy Polamalu jumped over the table and hit me right in my taste buds. Ok, I didn't have to go to McDonald's later to right this frites ship. These were shockingly good. And better yet, there was a pool of secret butter sauce for them to take a dip in.
Où sont les frites? À la piscine de beurre.
A Family Affair
When I looked at the menu earlier, I saw that the restaurant had locations in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyon, and even Barcelona. So it wasn't from Paris. I figured maybe it's a concept that has just been done around the country then. I recalled that there was one in New York that came from Paris that had crazy lines. That one happened to be Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte which, I learned, wasn't the first time it had opened in New York. This was a resurrection from it closing years before.
Two floors of Steak Frites goodness
Le Relais de Venise is actually the OG restaurant founded in 1959 in the 17th arrondissement (Porte Maillot) by Paul Gineste de Saurs. After Paul's passing, one of his daughters, Hélène, took over.
His son, Henri, opened a similar concept in Toulouse, L'Entrecôte, the very chain I was at.
Not to be outdone, another daughter, Marie-Paule, opened a similar concept with the name Le Relais de l'Entrecôte, which has many locations including three in Paris alone. This was the one I had bookmarked.
No wonder I was confused and got mixed up. They all shared the word l'entrecôte, but it was in honor of their father. The word l'entrecôte means rib steak or ribeye. And all three chains operate with the same simple menu their father created, along with the secret butter sauce.
I wonder when they all get together for the holidays if they each just bring one part of la formule. Or they just order out Chinese.
The family legacy brought to mind several BBQ legacies in Texas, most notably Louie Mueller, the founder of Louie Mueller Barbecue whose grandchildren, LeAnn Mueller founded La BBQ and John Mueller who taught Aaron Franklin of Franklin BBQ.
The next generation for each L'Entrecôte chain is seemingly involved in the business, so Paul's legacy doesn't look like it'll be ending anytime soon.
Final Impressions
Bruce Lee is well known for his quote, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” And there's something to be said about a place that has dialed in a singular dish well.
A little pick me up after the main bout
During my meal I watched families come in, couples, groups, and solo diners like myself. They ranged from young to old. Some looked like tourists with their shopping bags. Others knew the staff. It was like a diner, albeit a bit more elevated, with its bright yellow tablecloth and hefty silverware, but there was an air of ease, perhaps because everyone knew what they were there for. A moment of familiarity.
As for me, I was glad to have skipped out on all the other places during my stroll and finding this outpost of L'Entrecôte. I managed to polish my plate but couldn't make it to dessert. I settled for an espresso at the end to stave off the food coma that was to come. Maybe I'll figure out a new strategy for the next time.
Come to think of it, I've never run a full-marathon before. We shall see.
Crawl Notes
L'entrecôte | Montpellier, france
References
Address
3 Rue de Verdun
34000 Montpellier
Continue the Crawl
Crawl Notes | L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude
“It’s beautiful. It’s marvelous.” said a gentleman standing within earshot of me talking on the phone. He described the rose color painted across the sky at the Étoile to his audience of one.
Crawl Notes | Heritage Days | Le Sénat in Paris
Many popular attractions are open for free during the few days, but for me, it was the places that typically aren’t open to the public that piqued my interest.
La Liberté éclairant le monde, Liberty Enlightening the World
Earlier in the year, I went to watch Folarin Balogun play in Ligue 1. I took a side trip to Monaco to watch him play against Angers SCO at Louis Stade II.
A Run Through the Pyramids at La Grande-Motte
Waterproofing is a nice concept until you begin to sous vide from underneath your poncho.
A Warm Meal Before the 2026 Olympics Closing Ceremony
“Is the taste good?” asked the man in Olympic gear as I was eating a bowl of polenta and pork.
The Biggest Impact
“They say that everything is bigger in Texas,” said Charles, our guide, as he pointed to the horizon around Omaha Beach.
