Paris’ favorite eats 2

As I am sure you have your Zagat’s and Michelin guides to restaurants, I wish here to go back to the traditional way of getting restaurant recommendations: I asked a few friends of mine to name their favourite restaurants and cafés or brasseries in Paris (Check out also an older post of mine that mentions restaurants that are good and cheap). As usual, I try to get names of cheapish or non expensive restaurants (though there might be exceptions, not all my friends here are poor, luckily).

For French food, I have these recommendations: L’ebauchoire (métro Faidherbe Chaligny, yes I know a mouthful to pronounce) is French traditional in food, décor and ambiance and has good French wine selection. For crêpes, a friend recommends la Creperie de Beaubourg near Centre George Pompidou. I also like the one on rue du Temple in le Marais towards rue de Rivoli (all kinds of crepes, salty to sweet). Café Féria in Place de la mairie in le marais is great for before dinner drinks (happy hours all is half price) and if you want tapas or hamburgers.

When you think of Paris restaurants/cafés, you might think of Brasserie Lipp, Café Flore and Café Deux Magots and le Zinc, the most famous foursome for Anglophones. Brasserie Lipp with its décor from the 19th century and traditional French dishes still banks on its historical significance as a place where Sartre, de Bouvoir, Hemingway used to dine. It’s not that cheap, but the food is good…and though many have said that the service is not friendly, I have had nothing but very friendly service (and here you find traditional French waiters…older men in black and white). Try their Blanquette de veau (veal in white sauce with rice) or confit de canard (duck confit, though the brasserie is known for its choucroute of course). The meals can be followed, of course, by the Mille feuilles, the dessert they are known for, though I could actually think of more exciting desserts than this. Get a table in the main room with gilded mirrors everywhere and a décor that helps imagine those great minds discuss all and everything oh so deeply...
Restaurant le Marché in Place St. Catherine has a nice heated terrace and French food with a couple exotic dishes thrown in among the choices (eg. Curry chicken). But better stick to French ones, I reckon. Le Zebre in Montmartre (Metro Blanche) has fun ambiance but also good food (le moelleux, a mixed of meat and ingredients refried is their most known dish,...try it!). Great beef tartar too.

For Thai food, a friend swore by Ruean Thai (I identified it in another post) in Belleville. I love especially their dried beef in lemongrass and the green curry. For simple but good Vietamese soup and traditional Asian dessert, try Dalat in Belleville. Restaurant Djakarta Bali is an Indonesian restaurant in a small street near Les Halles. You could try the different rijstafel combinations (composed of different dishes with rice and soup) so that you get to try many Indonesian dishes if you don't know them....very friendly service and this is one of just two Indonesian restaurants here (the other is a cooperative restaurant near le theatre d’Odéon).

For African food, here is a recommendation from a friend (I have not myself it myself): the Senegalese restaurant at 7 rues Poissonnier (18th) where you could eat excellent dishes for apparently very cheap. For Antillais, there is les Montagnards in rue Championnet, also in the 18th that I recently went to. I loved it: ambiance antillaise authentic....many friendly not so young Antillais men who easily conversed with you, great rhum for apperitif, and super banane flambée for dessert. The restaurant area is just to the left of the always crowded bar (and crowded outside too where there are a couple tables). I myself still recommend le Petit Dakar in le Marais (4th district). I love their chicken yassa (lemon and onion sauce) but also maffé (in peanut sauce). You should try their jus au gingembre (ginger drink) with these meals.

So I say you: Bon Appetit !

Paris - LA : Tradition, Sex and Food

One of my best friends lives and has always lived except for when we were in school in Berkeley, in the LA area. Though during these years he seems to be moving further and further south (Orange county, yuck! and now San Diego, much better) and I fully expect him to someday be over the border in Mexico. Not going to surprise me given his taste in men.
A tradition that has developed throughout the years since I left LA is for him to pick me up at LAX whenever I make my yearly visit from wherever I happen to be living. This is not solely for love for me that he does that. As soon as I landed and through immigration/customs, bags would be secured in the trunk and we would head straight to the adult bookstore near the airport that we have known since we were, euh, a lot younger. The storekeeper is a chain smoking old lady who lets you do whatever you want in the cabins as long as you don’t create troubles. The two of us would cruise there and most of the time we would find our brief but nonetheless memorable happiness with nameless strangers. One Xmas eve, my flight had arrived late and so it was late in the evening when we made it to the bookstore which meant the bookstore was closed (it was open til early evening). So my best friend decided to be a gentleman and walked the two blocks to see if the other bookstore in the hood was open. I got out of the car to smoke a cigarette in the parking lot when a pickup truck arrived, parked and a big black man got out. He walked towards me and asked very politely if I knew where he could get a blowjob. Hello? Am I in heaven? With my best Colgate smile I said Right here and we went in his car. By far this was the best welcome to the United States I ever had….don’t you just love this kind of welcome? Felt such enormous love for the US just then.

Another tradition is that we got to do what I have missed the most during my time away from LA. Once, for some reason, I thought about Denny’s a lot. Maybe remembering college days when we used to hang out there at 3 am drinking cups after cups of coffee (refills were free and free flowing then). I used to also wolf down Grand Slam breakfast at any hour of the day it was a miracle that I did not turn out like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. This time, I wanted that Grand Slam breakfast. Now, my best friend is sort of a refined eater (doing sex in the cabins of adult book store not withstanding), so going to Denny’s to him is like going to Queens for Carrie Bradshaw. But he relented and said that he would go and sit and watch me eat my Grand Slam (actually, the new GS is nothing like the old and is probably better left as a memory not to be relived). He chickened out though when we got to the restaurant and I ended up getting a takeout that I wolfed down while speeding down in southerly direction on the 405 freeway. Our next stops to satisfy my longings: Taco Bell for tacos and the gas station shop to get a couple Reese’s Peanut Butter and I was as good as anyone could ever be (If I wasn’t gay, I am sure I would have patted my tummy and belched loudly right there).

One thing that I would still have to do during my yearly LA stop is a visit to a KFC.
Now I know that there are KFCs in France, but going there in Paris is just not the same as in LA. First, I would have to go alone. None of my French friends ever contemplated going for original recipe or crispy chickens of the Colonel’s. Such is the social pressure that I would have to put on a hat, sunglasses and a big scarf to go to a KFC and hide in the most obscured table to consume my meal (Or I would bundle the box in a plastic bag, hide the whole thing in my backpack and eat it at home). Why is it that my French friends look down on KFC? American junk food, of course, that one poo poos. And I guess eating with your fingers just seem so barbaric to them…the French even eat their hamburgers with knife and fork! (For your information, Carrie Bradshaw and a dude she met did eat KFC chickens in one episode of Sex and the City!) (OK so they were stoned).

Paris comfort food: Soul food and cupcakes.

Soul food
When I started to write this entry, I was going to let you in on a well kept not so secret place called Chez Haynes, a restaurant serving soul food that could be found in the 9e arrondissement in Paris and was unofficially a place of reference for black Americans, American artists and singers, or simply Americans feeling homesick for things such as BBQ ribs or friend chicken in honey and corn bread. Unfortunately, this institution of American soul, southern US, American artists etc. closed its doors just over a month ago.

Googling Chez Haynes you could find its long and illustrious history (founded by African American Haynes, apparently with a varied career from wrestler, actor to sociologist! who made good in France….friend of many French artists, actors, politicians whose photos could be seen in the unpretentious restaurant with a small stage that used to feature, for example, visiting jazz singers who would sing accompanied just by a piano). But I think each person could also tell a story associated with Chez Haynes. Mine was marked especially by meeting a personage in one of my favourite films when I was younger: La Cage aux Folles. Personable, still recognizably La Cage, he no doubt contributed to pull people into the restaurant to its ambiance.
Chez Haynes was also the place where you might encounter unexpected rencontres. Hosting an American college friend (blond as blond can be blond) who is crazy about soul food, we decided to go to Chez Haynes. Having come to dessert (Real banana split like we get in the US), I turned to the people in the next table, a group of African American young men to come face to face literally with my ex boyfriend from days long gone by! He was visiting Paris and of course he did not know that I have been living in Paris (OK, the separation was not that amicable). We looked at each other unbelieving what we saw….it was a good, as we say in French, retrouvaille …. Any regrets have been erased by time so there was just joy in finding each other again (though his then boyfriend might not think so!).
Now, helas, Chez Haynes is no more….another Parisian institution that is gone contributing to the longing that many long term residents feel for old Paris.

Cupcakes
Having left the US, I sometimes have cravings for things that I have not thought of for ages amid the varied and delicious French food. To the uncomprehending look of my French friends, I long at times for Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast, Reese’s peanut butter, and Sara Lee’s strawberry cheesecake. Luckily, a new place in Paris has brought “home” cupcakes, a food that I associate with happier insouciant time in my life. The cosy place can be found in rue Rambuteau in le Marais. Here you can find cupcakes, cheesecake and typical American snack food.

And what cupcakes!!! Forget the cupcakes that you ate when you were a child which was just sugar sweet and not very beautiful to look and either chocolate or strawberry. Here you would find beautiful looking cupcakes and all kind of flavours that you probably never imagined before. My favourites include carrotcake cupcakes (great icing), rose (yes, the flavour of the flower…it is sooo good), or violet (again, the flower). The price of course matches the presentation and the taste of these heavenly cupcakes (and the cheesecake too! I love especially the chocolate
cheesecake) and has nothing to do with the price we pay in the corner shop for 4 cupcakes in a plastic container. But here, the French touch (in presentation and in flavour) has been successfully integrated into what can be considered an American product much like the pyramid is now an integral part of the Louvre! (Ok I am going over the top here, but I am on a sugar high here). The cupcakes thus are to be eaten and appreciated much like other delicacies in France…slowly, admiringly, and with a lot of memories (of childhood) and emotions that they may evoke in you! With a cup of espresso, you could almost say that you don’t care that your Paris lover has gone off who knows where again for the afternoon…

Note: The shop where you can get cupcakes, called Berko, is located in Paris' 4th arrodissement (Le Marais), rue Rambuteau, metro Rambuteau. Another store (Berko's) is also now open near metro Blanche (on rue Lepic just above the Moulin Rouge).