Le Pichet

You walk into 32 seats, candlelight, and a wine list that reads like someone's personal cellar notebook from Lyon. There's no performance here — no overwrought wine binder or QR code theater — just a focused, all-French card that tells you exactly what kind of place this is. If you came here expecting California Cabs, you made a wrong turn.

The list is short and entirely French, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your flexibility — we think it's a feature. You get representation from Savoie, the Rhône, and Languedoc, with producers like Domaine de l'Idylle and Maison Ventenac anchoring a list that clearly has a point of view. There are no prestige vanity bottles padding out the page count, which means almost everything here is actually meant to be drunk with food. The gaps are real — no Burgundy depth, no Alsace to speak of — but within its own logic, the list holds together well.

Ten to sixteen options by the glass is genuinely generous for a 32-seat room, and the pours track the bottle list: France, France, and more France. The 2018 l'Ameillaud Côtes du Rhône is reliably on there and does heavy lifting as the house red workhorse. Rotation appears modest — don't expect a new discovery every visit — but what's there is well-chosen and priced for the neighborhood rather than against it.