Believe it or not, I have eaten at three different restaurants at this address in as many years. Normally that would seem to indicate a curse on the space, but the other evening Rosemary had quite a good crowd, in spite of the fact that it serves “English” food, commonly reviled by the French.
It’s a sure sign of approaching gentrification when a restaurant like 975 opens in one of Paris’s quartiers populaires, in this case the area around Métro Guy Moquet in northwestern Paris, not far from the Périphérique.
For once, I beat the quick-off-the-mark food bloggers to a new Paris restaurant: A Mère. And what a find it is! While it won’t win any awards for decor, it ticks all the other boxes for a favorite restaurant: reasonable prices; high-quality, seasonal ingredients; great creativity; and attention to detail.
The search for good Indian restaurants in Paris goes on. This week I tried Au Palais de l’Himalaya on the recommendation of a friend. A great advantage of this Montmartre restaurant during the hot Paris summer is its terrace on a quiet, narrow street only a block away from Rue Steinkerque, where endless torrents of tourists stream up and down the hill as they head to or leave the Sacré Cœur.
Mid-July is never a good month for new French movies. Almost always at this time of year, distributors tend to release the films they know are complete stinkers, usually “comedies” involving middle-aged men going on vacation. So this week’s movie … Read More
Summery weather and an evening reading at Shakespeare & Co (Zadie Smith and Nick Laird), could lead to only one conclusion: dinner at one of Paris’s top terraces, the nearby Beaurepaire. A meal there was also an occasion to check on the evolution of a restaurant first reviewed here in 2012.
Paris has lost a wonderful little Italian restaurant, Caffè dei Cioppi, but has gained La Dispensa. Sicilian chef Fabrizio Ferrara has closed his trattoria in an alleyway of the 12th arrondissement and opened a lunch spot/Italian deli on an equally obscure side street in the 10th, where I treated myself to lunch the other day.
Paris is seriously lacking in restaurants with quiet terraces where one can have a meal in peace on a summer evening. And, when such a place does exist, the restaurant is often not up to par – it’s almost as if the owners figure they don’t have to make an effort because they know they will fill their tables anyway.
One aspect of the popular international sport of France-bashing involves attacks on the country’s collaborationist record during World War II, so it is refreshing to be reminded occasionally that collaboration was not the whole story and that there were many … Read More
Last week I trekked out to Fontainebleau with two friends to test L’Axel, a restaurant they had heard great things about. When we walked in, I knew we weren’t in Paris anymore
