Tamarin last night for farewell (and St Valentine’s) dinner.
We arrived at 6:40 for our 7:00 reservation. Warm greeting from Manu (a consummate host) and seated at preferred table with no drama (for a change

). By 7:00 they were absolutely jammin’.
Service by Loulou was professional and attentive.
Beautiful cocktail presentations.
The young sommelier was very helpful in gleaning an appropriate wine from their substantial carte for our dinner selections. We went with Giuseppe Mascarello’s Dolcetto Santo Stefano. Beautiful.
We both started with Vitello Tonnato. Not sure how that classic could be more well conceived and executed.
From their evening’s ardoise I chose the risotto truffé avec coquilles StJacques juste snackées. Mme Cassidain went with the ravioles à la langouste from the regular carte.
Both very nice.
Mostly Americans there it seemed. At least for the 19h00 seating. There were some very comely, well-dressed ladies arriving for the later seating.
Perhaps this is a good time to address tipping. Upon arrival at the table of the serveur/serveuse with la machine, it’s become pretty ubiquitous to have it pointed out that any additional gratuity has to be entered on the card transaction on the front end. I don’t care for the practice, but I think it’s become more or less entrenched. We didn’t encounter any overt solicitation, but I short-circuited the process by either displaying or handing a cash pourboire simultaneous with the la machine transaction.
Now, I generally leave 5-10% (more like 10% really), but I noticed significantly different reactions to a 10% gratuity. At places most would consider « local » (GdS, Nyama, FishCorner, for examples) the serveurs openly manifested sincere appreciation. At places of a more, let’s say, « international » nature, and especially those frequented by Americans (who perhaps leave 20%???) the reaction to a 10% tip was neutral, i.e. no meaningfully expressed appreciation. Whatever.