L'Alivi
Can I escape the Corsican curse in Le Marais? No, apparently.
It’s funny how you can walk by a place every day and never actually see it. Case in point, I’ve been drinking at Stollys for over 10 years and was vaguely aware that there was a restaurant next door. I’d always assumed that it wasn’t a real restaurant though, one you could actually eat at. It was more like a facade in a video game, full of non playable characters muttering programmed lines over and over. It was quite a shock, then, to find myself sitting alone at that very restaurant on a sweltering July afternoon.
This once fictional eatery now had a name - L'Alivi - and from the beer selection on the first page of the menu I could see that it was a Corsican place. I had recently returned from Corsica and it had not been a happy voyage, from a culinary point of view. Meal after meal of food that was overpriced and overcooked, wine options that came down to red, white or rose, and disinterested restaurateurs waiting for you to finish the last bite so they could turf you out and free up the table. I’m usually quite good at choosing places to eat but this trip was a series of gutterballs. A lot of the blame lies with Instagram.
As a result of that attention-sucking phone application, food is now designed to be photographed, rather than eaten. Pages of online reviews with beautiful pictures bumping up the esteem of a joint that serves well-plated mains which taste like school dinners. Of course, if you want the clout from posting a pic of a seemingly luxurious meal, then you can hardly accompany your photo with a caption explaining that it tasted like your grandpa's armpit. To be honest, though, I’m not sure many of these wannabe influencers would know the difference.
In Pinarello, the identical establishments along the beachside strip were consistently 20% more expensive than most places I’ve eaten in France and approximately 30% worse. Whitebait that was soggier than it was crispy, entrecôte that was beige on the outside and beige all the way through, and fish, that while decent, cost almost as much as the boat that was used to catch it.
The hospitality staff weren’t particularly hospitable either. There seemed to have been collective amnesia going on, because nobody could remember the wifi password in any establishments I visited. One even told me (after I had already ordered) that the toilet was out of service, and directed me to some cack-smeared portaloo by the beach that I think was auditioning to be in the next Trainspotting film.
At Porto-Vecchio, with its labyrinth of winding streets, things were better but not by much. In one place I asked a waitress what their best wine was and she replied that it was probably beer. I didn’t let this deter me though, and went full steam ahead ordering a big plate of roasted bone marrow, every bit of which I had to fight for against a particularly aggressive Corsican wasp. To be fair to the patron, the beer was genuinely good.
Just opposite the marrow spot was a shop selling finely made hats, where I was seduced by the owner’s cheeky sales routine. I bought myself a nice straw boater that I thought might make me look like The Man from Del Monte. However, I caught an offhand glimpse of myself in a mirror somewhere and felt I resembled a geography teacher on holiday, the kind of ‘cool’ substitute that would perform Oasis covers at open mic nights and whom the parents didn’t fully trust.
Perhaps the most disappointing food was in the medieval port city of Bastia. This is probably because I walked straight into the machine guns by choosing a restaurant right on the port. Let’s be clear: the view is beautiful, you sit here to take photographs, therefore the food will not be good because eating is not the point of these places and nobody would call it out for fear of ruining a nice evening. We all know this, and I said it to myself over and over as I looked at the thousands of 5 star reviews with nice photos and yet I still threw myself into the abyss. My reward was food that had been cooked an hour ago and left under the lamps to harden until a gormless tourist like myself was recommended it by the waitress.
There was one place in Bastia that caught my eye as I was wandering around looking for wifi so I could at least pretend that I was working. With few online reviews, it was located in a side street that was bathed only in the street lights, meaning that taking good photos of the food with your phone was nearly impossible. This was a fantastic sign, a restaurant designed for eating not posing. I passed by again at 7pm when they opened and was informed that they were fully booked up (on a weeknight). If you know, you know.
So, back to L'Alivi here in Paris, where the nonchalant waiter has informed me that if he were to choose he would go for the carpaccio, with the risotto also a good option if we weren’t already baking in our own sweat on this sultry Saturday. I followed the man’s advice and was shortly served with my plate, along with a glass of Clos Fornelli, which the barman had kindly agreed to chill for me due to our meteorological circumstances. The salad wasn’t much to look at, but it tasted delightful.
The subtlety of the pounded raw meat slices blended perfectly with the sharpness of the pesto. Finding crushed nuts mixed in with the peppery roquette salad gave satisfying moments of crunch. Each sip of wine was a fruity tannic envelope that brought out the juiciness of the Corsican tomatoes. “This is it…” I thought to myself. “The best Corscian meal I have eaten, and I’m not even in Corsica.” Then, at that very moment, I grew wary.
The Corsicans have an old, superstitious culture, and their mythology is not to be fucked with lightly. Perhaps ‘The Mazzeri’, a breed of legendary Corse wizard with a hunger for human flesh, would turn their attentions to my way and smite me for my heresy. In reality, though, I was the architect of my own decline.
Whilst revelling in the garlicky flavours of a roasted baby potato, I managed to knock down my wine glass which smashed and sent shards of glass all over my plate. Most of the wine fell onto the seat next to me, where my straw boater hat was sitting. My boy had been massacred. By the time the waiter came over to help, I’d already decided to just pay the bill and leave. “At least you are ok..” he said to me as he handed over the card machine. I wasn’t though. Corsica had defeated me once again.
L'Alivi - 27 Rue du Roi de Sicile, 75004 Paris