Ravioli Nord-Est is the near-opposite of my ideal restaurant: it’s noisy, crowded and uncomfortable, and the occasionally rude servers try their best to rush you in and out as quickly as possible. We loved it.
Even though we had reserved a table, we were given menus and asked to wait outside in the rain with the menu and choose what we wanted to eat before we sat down. When I saw the prices, I understood why they were in such a hurry: the only way to make money for house-made food at these prices is to have a high turnover, and Ravioli Nord-Est certainly does.
The promise of “100% fait maison” (“100% house-made”) is what had attracted me to the restaurant in the first place, along with the fact that they specialize in food from China’s northeast. (Thankfully, the new wave of Chinese restaurants in Paris eschews the old-school format of Asian eateries in the West: mostly Cantonese dishes to be ordered by number, listed on endless menus, which made it clear that most were not freshly made. I haven’t seen one of those places in some time.)
As the name indicates, the specialty here is what the French call “ravioli” (dumplings in English). The three fixed menus here are priced €10 or €13. The latter includes soup and 15 instead of 10 dumplings of your choice. Both include salads.
We tried three salads: algue (seaweed), cacahuète (peanut) and liangpi. The seaweed salad was so authentic that it was like eating algae straight out of the ocean. The peanut one was not very peanutty; it consisted mostly of vegetables and was fairly boring. The winner by far was the liangpi, a dish of specially prepared cold rice noodles with cucumber and a vinegar/sesame sauce that always haunts my memory whenever I taste it. We unanimously agreed to order a second dish of liangpi.
There was also a clear winner among the dumplings: the delicious pork-filled xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings, which also merited re-ordering.
The other dumplings were also fabulous. They can be ordered grilled or steamed. My favorites were the pork and ciboulette (chive), but they were all delicious.
The promise of house-made food does not extend to the desserts here. We had some nougat just to finish the meal off with something sweet, but you won’t miss anything if you skip the desserts here.
We had arrived at 8 PM, in the midst of the dinner rush on a Saturday evening, but we stayed for a long time chatting and re-ordering food. By the time we left, it was nearly 10pm, and the restaurant had pretty much emptied out, so I advise you to go around that time to avoid the rushed treatment we received at the beginning of the meal. Although one server was rather rude, most of them were sweet and efficient.
When we left, we marveled at the changes to the Rue Saint Denis. Although a few sex shops remain here and there, we didn’t see a single sex worker, and the pedestrian street, lined with all kinds of eateries and bars, had obviously become a lively center for nightlife, packed with mostly young people enjoying themselves. Ravioli Nord-Est has, by the way, two other branches in Paris, one on the Grands Boulevards and one in Belleville (see website for addresses).
Go to Ravioli Nord-Est for the dumplings, and go back for the dumplings – and the liangpi, of course.
See our Favorite Restaurants by Arrondissement page to find a good restaurant in the neighborhood where you want to eat.
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