Even though its mentioned in the latest lonely planet, its an upmarket place, with good food and wine. Make sure to reserve a table, even if you just call ahead that same day. They have enough tourists & non-locals come through that they speak reasonable english. Ask for a table in the dome room, against the wall. Nice scenery and the people watching can be good too.
Like all french restaurants that care about their cooking, they do “extra mini courses” between the official 3 courses on the menu, so when you add up the little snack courses before and between the other courses, it turns into a 6-7 course meal. All very very tasty, and very filling! They have a full time wine somalier who is quite a personality, loves his job, and is good at it. Unless you *really* know what you are doing with wines, just tell him what you do/dont like about wine, and how much you’re willing to spend, enjoy the interaction and follow his advice.
While the food and wine was all good, the desert left me speechless. Something orange-and-lemon, as best as my french understanding could take me. At first glance, it looked like a tumbler glass containing orange segments in foamy orange juice, and a small baked cake with a small dollop of cream on top. However, it turned out to be *way* better then that.

The orange foam had the same consistency you would get by pouring Coke into a glass too quickly… except the foam was orange coloured, not Coke-light-brown. And the instead of the foam collapsing down, like Coke foam does, this foam remained in unchanged shape all the time. If you closed your eyes, and moved a spoon through it, the spoon would meet *no* resisitance and you wouldnt be able to tell when you were moving the spoon through foam or not. It was that light! Then I noticed that the orange segments were not just any old broken chunks of orange. Instead, they were all perfectly formed complete segments, each individually peeled of their skin. And the orange juice was mixed with some sort of orange liquor. The dolop of cream on the side cake also had some orange zest added, so had a mild orange flavour to it. The cake was some variation of a lemon pound cake, and it was sitting in a little white baking dish, and the cake sitting in a few mm of lemon liquor. The transition from light orange foam, to stronger orange to strongest orange juice, to light orange cream, to light lemon cake, to stronger lemon liquor…. was all just awesome. Dont know how else to describe it.

Even now, 2 months later, I still think about that desert… and need to go back again!

Le Dome du Marais
53 bis, rue des Francs Bourgeois
75004 Paris
ph 01-42 74 54 17
email ledomedumarais@hotmail.com
open tues-sat