Eating in Paris

What's one of the best things about vacationing?  Eating at good restaurants!  Yes, sometimes it's hit or miss. Yes, it can be quite expensive. But what is Paris supposed to be famous for besides scenic foods?  French food! 

I've made an attempt on this page to document our many food adventures - most of them for lunch since we found that to be a cheaper strategy. Most of the time, we ate in for breakfast (besides a pastry or two from one of the nearby bakeries) and we almost always ate in for dinner (most of us being tired out by then anyway). 

If we went out to a restaurant, I tried to grab a business card so you'll see snapshots of those cards. That is in case anyone who reads this and visits Paris in the future can then look up one of the restaurants to try on their own.  I also tried to take pictures but often forgot. I have quite a few pictures of half-eaten bowls or empty plates which is unfortunately often when I remembered to take a picture. I've spared you from viewing most of those pictures.

One of the great things of this apartment that we are renting is the outside patio.  We can sit and have our breakfast or read and drink tea, milk, coffee. It actually can get somewhat chilly especially due to the wind. And we're on the 10th floor (the 11th really since the French call the ground floor - floor 0.

 John made a great salmon the other day. The vegetables just seem to be more fresh here. Not picked months earlier and shipped via truck to the Giant Eagle.  Yesterday, we had spaghetti.  Another day, we picked up a roast chicken and potatoes.

Here are some of the restaurants we've tried so far:

6/30

Le Tabarin on rue Amelot. This one is near our apartment. Traditional french food but nothing special.

7/4

L'Auberge Avegronnaise on rue Gabriel-Lame in the 12th district was awesome.  Our waitress (who was also Asian) had lived in England for 5 years. This restaurant is near Parc de Bercy - one of the parks we visited. The special here is aligot which is a mashed potato dish with a raw cow's milk cheese called laguiole.  When the waitress was scooping out the aligot from a large pot, you could see streams of it stretching from the bowl to plate.  The portions here are big for French standards and the sauces excellent. We had a steak with pepper sauce, a chicken and mushroom stew, and the aligot with sausage.

Aargh!  I'm adding to this post today 7/5/2011.  We got snookered into eating rognon today. Look it up!  It's veal kidney.  The first time we were here, the word didn't come up in my dictionary on my phone or something and we ordered that plus some other local andoillete sausage. Both turned out to be the less eaten parts of the cow. Well, I was going to avoid having to eat that again now that I knew what rognon was, but no.... Today we ate a Cafe L'industrie. Our intention was to eat at an american BBQ on rue Sedaine but for some reason it was closed today, so we went to Cafe L'industrie a block away. I had written it down with a thumb's up from 2 years ago.  I think we really like the decor more than the food, that's what John remembers.  The place is somewhat like an old time speakeasy - old pics on the wall with themes of music, etc.  Our plan today was to order the special of the day which looked like chicken skewers. We thought that was the special - what they call the formula - where you get an appetizer and an entree or an entree and dessert or all 3 for a special price but only from a select menu.  So this is what we though we ordered:  appetizer of the day - goat cheese with figs. Entree of the day - chicken skewers. Add to that an entree of sea bass. John also wanted to try escargot (aka snails). Finished with a chocolate cake dessert.  What did we get?  Cucumber soup (tasted more like goat's milk with a some crushed basil but was pretty off-putting). White fish with sauteed vegetables. One skewer of chicken with a small fruit salad and rice. AND a bowl of rice with veal kidney and mushrooms in a brown cream sauce. Plus 6 small snails covered in butter. And a chocolate cake plus the special of the day - milk pudding (something like sugar-free yogurt with whip cream on top).  So we ended up getting much more than we ordered and a lot of what we did not want to order.  It was not a satisfying meal. I think they though we wanted one of each formula special of the day or something. I don't know. Asia ate most of the kidney. We didn't tell her what it was.  John also did eat most of the snails. At least the chocolate cake was pretty good.

7/6/2011

I had to get my steak tartare. Yes, you heard me - tartare as in raw meat!  And it really does look like a raw hamburger patty with spices. Everyone tried it and actually thought it was good, but there's only so much raw meat an American can take. Especially when it just looks too much like ground beef.

The food wasn't that great. The decor was really nice though. Dark wood floors, panelling, seemed very old folksy though. In contrast to some of the other restaurants down the street that were packed with young people.

Basserie Flo. 7 cour des petites ecuries. in the 10th district.

7/7/2011

Today for lunch we had Ethiopian. We were the only ones in the restaurant. John thinks perhaps the food is too spicy for the normal Parisian?  Anyway, we loved it. It reminded us of this great Ethiopian restaurant in Pflugerville, TX.  The restaurant in Paris is called Restaurant Ethiopia.  Original title!  Address 89 rue du Chemin Vert.  http://www.restaurant-ethiopia-paris.com/. Right in our neighborhood in the 11th district.  The kids especially like the fact that they can eat with their hands!  When we were ordering, the waitress made a point to ask if we were familiar with Ethopian food.  I wonder if she has to explain how to eat the food to most customers.

Just the layout itself is beautiful. And that's Zach's hand reaching for food and he's really picky!

7/8/2011

For lunch we returned to one of our favorites from last visit- L'ebauchoir, 43 rue Citeaux.  It's in the nice shopping district near our apartment.  The place was packed when we got there at around 1:30 PM but we were able to get a table way in the back. For appetizers, we got the white tuna tartare and the herring with sauted potatoes. They were delicious. Unfortuately I don't think they sat well with John and I because within 1/2 hour, I had to make a trip to the bathroom and it hit John maybe an hour later.  We shopped for a little bit and got Zach a haircut afterwards but basically had to spend the rest of the day in the apartment. The kids were unaffected but they only tried a bite or so of the appetizers.  The two entrees we got were lamb and chicken. 

Here's a picture of one of the desserts - ice cream with banana and chocolate. The other dessert was goat cheese with olive oil. 

  7/9/2011

Today, the food was mostly great Asian food.   For lunch, we went to China Town - near rue de Belleville.  We ate at Restaurant Asiatique.  We figured if you saw lots of Asians eating in the restaurant, it has to be good. And it was. We ordered a beef noodle soup, a pork rice noodle soup, and beef rice noodle dish and potstickers.

For dinner, we had Korean food. This was our second time to this restaurant - Tae Yang, Restaurant Coreen, 10 rue Alexandre Dumas near the Metro stop - Rue des Boulets.  It's actually only 2 train stops from our apartment. I see us going here quite often.  This is actually our second visit already. The first time, we had bulgogi we grilled at the table and cold bibimbop.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the food - bibimbop in a hot stone bowl with sizzling rice, bulgogi soup, vegetable tempura, and potstickers.  And wine comes with dinner!  We didn't know that until we heard the people next to us speaking some English and talking about the wine. John asked them if it came with the dinner and they said it depended on what menu you ordered. We confirmed with our waiter that our orders came with a 1/2 pichet.  We had no idea what a pichet was and it didn't come up on my downloaded French dictionary or the culinary dictionary I had.  I just looked it up online - a pichet is a jug.  So your dinner either came with a 1/2 jug of wine or 1/4 jug of wine. The jug was a little carafe of wine - enough for about 4 glasses of wine which was plenty. And there's a choice of red or white!  Great deal.  Clean plate club!  I ate all the kimchi sides too.

Along the way, the kids also had several snackes of crepes and corn on the cob!  In different street corners along Montmartre, you find these corn vendors - put a little metal pail with charcoal in a shopping cart and you're a corn vendor!

Oh and I can't forget dessert!  There's always lots of little places to stop for coffee and dessert. One secret I haven't let the kids in on yet is drinking hot chocolate!  Not like the powdered Swiss Miss we usually get!  We'll have to order hot chocolate for them as a special treat.

7/14

Chinese food again!  We seem to eat a lot of really good Asian food here in Paris. A great contrast to French food. And definitely not something I can easily get in Pittsburgh. 

Today was free entrance day to the Louvre. After visiting the museum, John wanted to eat as far away from tourists and touristy restaurants as possible.  We found a little Chinese restaurant down one of the alleys. Fusion Cuisine.  Why it was called this, I have no idea. I was thinking it would be more new age Chinese.  Here's a snapshot of the menu specials for the day.

We chose the dim sum sampler (which Zach ate most of), this great spare rib dish, fried rice, and beef with onions (also great but way too many onions). 

 

7/16

Today we went to the Clignancourt Flea Market in the 18th district.  We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch just a short walk away from the Simplon exit on the Metro's line 4.   I had heard some good reviews of the place. 

I was a little hesitant when we first entered the restaurant because it wasn't in the best area and the restaurant didn't seem packed full of people.  Of course, perhaps Vietnamese food isn't that popular with the French?   We ordered a beef caramel dish, a vietnamese crepe, beef pho, and porc ravioli.  Everytime we've ordered ravioli at an Asian restaurant, it's been our faithful potstickers.  This time, not so much.  When the raviolis came, I thought perhaps it was there version of a crepe. It was a grayish color which turned out to be delicious ground pork and spouts wrapped in rice sheets with a sweet and sour dipping sauce.  We didn't know this wasn't the crepe until the crepe actually came. Here's the Vietnamese crepe. We ate everything else before I could get a good picture. The flavors were amazing. The beef dish didn't even look like it would be enough but it packed some much flavor into each bite that it was quite satisfying.  The pho broth was great though it missed the usual additions such as putting in your own sprouts, basil, sriracha and hoisin sauce.  The waitress did ask if I wanted hot sauce and instead brought these incredibly hot raw sliced red peppers. I ate one sliver and knew that if I ate any more of those peppers, I wouldn't be tasting any more of my meal.