Boccador, the legendary Italian restaurant in Paris 8th arrondissement reopens

Le Boccador, a stone's throw from the Champs Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe, this restaurant that smells like Italy, has reopened its doors. Want to taste a cuisine with great Italian classics? Let's go and curl up in the comfortable armchairs and benches that have lost none of their charm of yesteryear to taste a transalpine cuisine.

The Boccador, created in the 70's by Mario Nicolo, a pure Italian who made it a high place of Parisian life, has been renewed in 2019, after, already, some changes of decoration in 2017.

The Boccador had been given a little makeover while remaining in its juice. This small case that can accommodate 32 covers has kept its carpet, its woodwork and its large velvet armchairs. From now on, portraits of the greatest Italian film stars who sat at these tables are displayed high up: Sofia Lauren, Monica Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni or Vittorio Gassman. Italian music accompanies the meal while the air conditioning cools us down.

We always enjoy a traditional Italian cuisine with some novelties.

In a welcoming and intimate atmosphere, thanks to the subdued light and the comfortable seats, we like to meet there for work or for a good time. In the heart of the Golden Triangle, the restaurant cultivates its convivial side.

Voluntarily shortened so that everything is homemade, the menu includes many products imported directly from Italy.

The chef proposes as a starter, fritters not of mozzarella or vegetables, but of bread dough. It is original and above all very good, accompanied by a very sweet tomato sauce. But also a perfectly cooked grilled octopus served with orange and fennel. Not forgetting the classic but still very effective vitello tonnato, those very thin slices of veal with tuna and caper sauce.

On the main course, the traditional linguine alla vongole, clam pasta with shellfish juice, a very iodized dish, is served alongside a half-cooked red tuna served in the form of croquettes with a very crispy breading, surprisingly not dry at all and very lemony, with black rice and spinach, as well as a very tasty baked sea bass on a bed of spinach and covered with grilled zucchini. A very fine dish.

For sweets, the chef offers tiramisu, panna cotta but also a succulent real Sicilian canolo, with its sweet dough that contains a little almond, and topped with ricotta and Sicilian pistachios of course.

The foccacia is also homemade and very good.

And, for the first time in its existence, the Boccador offers a lunch formula with two choices of starter, main course and dessert each day.

Of course, no meal without wine, the place offers a very nice selection of Italian wines.