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.
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 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.
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
The first block of Avenue Parmentier, near Rue du Faubourg du Temple in the 11th arrondissement, once a no-man’s land food-wise, is turning into something of a gourmet strip now that “old-timers” Chateaubriand and Le Dauphin have been joined by a new restaurant, Tannat.
I have a vivid memory of buying a ham sandwich at a street stand on a gloomy day during my first trip to Paris and eating it while sitting on a stone bench in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre. It was a revelation. How could anything so simple – a baguette, a few slices of ham and some butter – be so incredibly good?
Those who, like my friend Helen (as mentioned in last week’s review of La Marée Jeanne), are allergic to foam and other niceties of so-called molecular cuisine, and those who just crave good old-fashioned French food now and then would do well to have a meal at Au Bon Coin, where the classics of French bistro cooking are still made up fresh, not out of the freezer or a vacuum-packed plastic bag.
Is the tide turning away from meat-heavy menus in Parisian restaurants? The Verre Volé, a meat lover’s paradise, recently opened Le Verre Volé sur Mer, a fish-and-seafood-only bistro, and the sublime Septîme has a fabulous fishy offshoot called Clamato.
