L'Entrecôte, Bordeaux

L'Entrecôte on the Cours du 30 Juillet in central Bordeaux is one of the city's most famous and most deliberately simple restaurants, operating for over sixty years on a formula that has never been altered: one menu, one price, served to anyone who waits in the invariably long queue outside. The meal consists of two courses only. First: a walnut salad dressed with a mustard vinaigrette. Then: a thinly sliced entrecôte steak cooked to the diner's specification and served in the restaurant's secret Café de Paris-style herb butter sauce—with an immediate offer of seconds on both the steak and the sauce at no extra charge. Hand-cut frites arrive in a separate basket, continuously replenished. The sauce is the restaurant's closely guarded secret—a compound butter of herbs, anchovies, capers, and other undisclosed ingredients that has been the subject of considerable culinary speculation over the decades. No reservation is accepted; the queuing system is rigidly enforced and the queue begins forming before the doors open. Tables turn in approximately forty-five minutes. Service is brisk and efficient, delivered by waitresses in the classic French brasserie apron. The wine list is brief—a few bottles and carafes of Bordeaux—since the formula requires no elaborate accompaniment. The restaurant's Cours du 30 Juillet location puts it at the center of Bordeaux's elegant commercial district, a five-minute walk from the Grand Théâtre and the Place de la Comédie.