Baptiste Day, 35, is a discreet man. When, in 2017, he opened Capitaine, his own restaurant, he chose the least frequented cul-de-sac in the entire Marais, yet a stone’s throw from the historic Place des Vosges. What did he have to hide? A golden course? Trained a few hundred meters away, at L’Ambroisie, at Bernard Pacaud, the young cook then sailed to Alain Passard’s Arpège, where he met Tatiana Levha, who was also doing her classes there.
From there, he enters a cosmogony where cooking rhymes with travel and bistro. He finds Bertrand Grébaut at L’Agapé, then Tatiana Levha at Pascal Barbot’s, at L’Astrance. The chef asks Baptiste Day to be on all trips abroad. He discovered spices and a certain freedom of expression which he explored alongside Tatiana Levha when she opened Le Servan. Baptiste Day will be the second for almost three years. The taste of elsewhere is deeply inscribed in him, it is felt from the first dish tasted at Capitaine.
Welcome croquettes
In a neighborhood bistro atmosphere, couples coo around a bottle of natural wine, while men in suits have lunch alone. Here, croquettes are an essential element. Four in number, they are accompanied by a ginger, garlic and chilli mayonnaise. The golden panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) calls for the immediate croc. The dumpling explodes with contradictions under the tooth. The fat, the soy sauce, the silky texture of the pork – there is the shoulder, the foot and the loin cooked in broth all night long – envelop the soaring flavors of ginger, coriander and other herbaceous not identified but present.
“The recipe changes every day depending on who makes it,” slips the waiter, before confiding that, for the regulars, like these solitary gentlemen, the croquettes are a welcome gesture. Obsessives could make a meal out of it. But that would be missing out on the pork belly ravioli mixed with sweet potato and candied lemon. Their lightness floats in a broth of daily vegetable peelings which transcends the dough in a veil of delicacy.
Comes the main course. The breaded horse mackerel recalls the croquettes of the beginning. He plunges into a kind of euphoria that pushes him to prick the fork in the plate opposite, where a pork belly (still) sits like a trophy. No doubt, Baptiste Day wants us well. He affirms it again with his Bourdaloue tart, whose frangipane sprinkled with coconut makes you dream, with such a captain, of traveling to the end of the world. Could it be this treasure that Baptiste Day intended to hide at the bottom of the Guéménée impasse? Good for us, he was found.
The address Captain4, impasse Guéménée, Paris 4and. Phone. : 01-44-61-11-76. Open Wednesday to Saturday from noon to 2 p.m. and from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
The essential dish Pork croquettes.
The detail that is not one The broth of vegetable peelings, which changes every day according to the seasons and the cooks.
The bill At noon, 34 euros; in the evening, around 60 euros.
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