We’ve been checking out some new places in Paris and revisiting a few from the past. Here’s where we’ve gone, and what we’ve eaten…

Sensation

We have every reason to be wary of fusion restaurants, which often end up falling under the umbrella of confusion. When you don’t understand the foods and cultures that you’re trying to riff off of (or as some consider, rip off of), you get all sorts of weird combinations that don’t always work. But food changes, and immigration means people who are coming to another country learn to adapt and make do with local ingredients. And in some cases, sublimate the food to local tastes.

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Another barrier is the expectation that cuisines from certain cultures should be dirt cheap. I wince when I read people say, “But I can get a plate of potstickers for $3!” when they see someone charging more than that. I, too, eat inexpensive dumplings.

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I don’t really subscribe to anything being called the “best” because, A) It’s subjective, and B) Things change, and what’s great today may be gone tomorrow.

As for the “experts,” I ran into a friend who’d judged the best baguette in Paris contest and shortly after, I stopped her on the street carrying a baguette from a different bakery. I asked why she didn’t go to the place she said was the “best” and she replied, “When you taste over a hundred baguettes, after the first few, it’s hard to taste the differences.” So even the experts don’t know - although I’ve never been asked to judge, so you might not want to listen to me either.

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We’ve been eating out more and more since so many new places, or at least new to me, are popping up. Some have been really good and others, not so much. When I’m eating out with friends, I’ll often ask at the end of the meal, “Would you come back?” That, to me, is one barometer of me recommending a place. Another is, “Would you have fun there?” Here’s a mix of restaurants I’ve been to recently in Paris that I liked. A few come with caveats, which are mentioned…

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Bonjour, Emily here. While David’s away I’m stepping in with a guest post to share some places over in my neighborhood, the 6th arrondissement, where I’ve lived for nearly ten years. It’s popular with tourists and when I first moved to Paris with stars in my eyes, I fell into almost every trap, lapping up bad meals and underwhelming experiences, but over the years I shadowed the locals and eventually discovered a constellation of wonderful places hidden in plain sight.

Here’s where I take my friends and family when they visit:

Michalak, 8 rue du Vieux Colombier, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 45 49 44 90

It’s almost impossible to be more qualified than Christophe Michalak, who was Chef Pâtissier at the Plaza Athénée under Alain Ducasse and won the title of World Pastry Champion before opening his first boutique, which has cabinets full of treats you’ll remember forever, made with natural coloring and raw sugars. Try the brioche feuilletée that’s as big as your head, the tarte crème brûlée, or the ingenious mango.

Arnaud Larher, 93 rue de Seine, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 43 29 38 15

From the street you’d never guess this unassuming boutique is the home of one of the most talented chocolatiers of a generation (the only thing my mum wants for Christmas each year is a box of his orangettes). But once you’re inside it’s almost impossible to decide which of his elegant pastry creations to try. It’s the perfect place to gather gifts or just get an entire box of treats for yourself.

Chapon Chocolaterie, 34 rue Saint-Sulpice, 75006 Paris. Tel +33 (0)1 42 39 57 92

As an ice-cream maker with a love of chocolate, Patrice Chapon realized the natural fit was to create a chocolate mousse bar (trademarked!), which you’ll easily find by the crowd of people outside with their noses pressed against the glass. Choose between six varieties served in either a paper cone to eat immediately or a take-home jar for later.

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L’Ambassade de Bourgogne, 6 rue de l’Odéon, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 43 54 80 04

If you’re a fan of Burgundy wines, this is a can’t-miss, with an incredible selection of wines available by the glass or the bottle alongside a small selection of snacks. True connoisseurs, they’ll even sell your collection for you if you ever find yourself with too much in the cave.

Avant Comptoir du Marché, 14 rue Lobineau, 75006

This lively tapas bar has the biggest blocks of butter I’ve ever seen, and the staff are committed to helping you pick the perfect glass of wine, no matter how many tastes it takes. There’s an ever-changing menu of French specialties and if you exhaust the menu, you can head down the street to sister venues Avant Comptoir de la Terre and Avant Comptoir de la Mer, where the oysters come with a side of sausages.

Le Bon Saint Pourçain, 10bis rue Servandoni, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 42 01 78 24

With only the freshest produce and cheerful staff, this is the kind of neighborhood gem that makes you want to move in next door. Hidden on a cobblestone side street tucked behind Saint Sulpice, it has only a few tables where lucky diners can choose from the small but perfectly formed menu that changes with the seasons.

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La Méditerranée, 2 Place de l’Odéon, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 43 26 02 30

Since 1942 this quiet restaurant has served up fresh seafood delights with swoon-worthy décor (Jean Cocteau designed the original logo and Christian Bérard created the murals in the dining rooms) and discreet yet attentive service, making it an ideal choice for a refined celebratory meal.

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Compagnie Française des Poivres et des Epices, 7 rue de Furstemberg, 75006. Tel +33 (0)9 54 75 06 05

This tiny chocolate box of a store is filled with varieties of salt, pepper, and a wide range of spices from around the world. I make sure to never run out of their roast chicken mix and am longing to buy one of their big salt crystals and grater to match. While you’re there, check out the Musée National Eugène Delacroix across the road, with its secret garden.

Coopérative Laitière du Beaufortain, 9 rue Corneille, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 43 29 91 07

This store is the sales point for a dairy cooperative of 184 farmers who produce Beaufort cheese and are happy to talk to you about it at length. They also offer a range of other products from the Savoie region (charcuterie, wine, jam, honey), and it’s where we go to pick up supplies for fondue nights or when we host friends for apéro.

L’Arbre à Café, 15 Carrefour de l’Odéon, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 85 09 01 17

As the coffee scene in Paris blossomed, this company was behind the scenes supplying their ethically sourced beans to professionals for years before eventually succumbing to pressure to open to the public. Now with six boutiques and counting, they serve the perfect cup of joe that’s just as good whether you sit in or take away.

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San Francisco Book Company, 17 rue Monsieur le Prince, 75006. Tel +33 (0)1 43 29 15 70

A secondhand bookshop packed to the seams with English tomes, it’s exactly the right size for cozy browsing. You’ll find everything from an introduction to X-Ray Spectroscopy to well-thumbed cookbooks, such as Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I’ve never left empty-handed.

Jardin du Luxembourg, entrances on rue de Medicis, Boulevard Saint-Michel, rue Vaugirard, rue Fleurus, rue Auguste Comte, and rue Guynemer

The jewel in the crown of our neighborhood is this park covering 23 hectares, home to the Luxembourg Palace, which houses the French Sénat (our upper house of government), and some of the most beautiful gardens in the world with a team of 80 full-time gardeners tending daily to the flower beds. Settle into one of the iconic green chairs by the Medici Fountain to soak up the atmosphere before exploring the greenery, seek out the miniature Statue of Liberty, spectate the endless games of pétanque, pass by the orchard planted by Carthusian Monks in 1650, who gave us Chartreuse liqueur (the company offers historical tours), or take a spin on the oldest carousel in Paris, designed by Charles Garnier, the architect of the Opera House. If you need a break, there are kiosks selling crepes and ice creams, as well as two restaurants, La Terrasse de Madame and La Table du Luxembourg.

Of course, the real magic of Paris is what happens in between the schedule, those moments spent wandering aimlessly, and I hope you’ll discover all the other places I don’t have space to list here, like window shopping on rue Tournon, picking up a new piece of art in JC Martinez, grocery shopping in Marché Saint Germain, people watching at La Palette, or walking the cobblestones shaped by the passage of time in Cour du Commerce Saint-André.

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I can’t tell you how many times people want to eat “where locals eat.” I get it. But if you’re going to a major city, like New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, San Francisco, or Paris, most good restaurants will have a fair number of visitors (aka, tourists) in them. I live down the street from Septime, which is considered one of the 50 best restaurants in the world, and whenever I walk by, a good number of diners I see in there aren’t locals. (We can’t get in!) Cheval d’Or is also excellent, and when I went a few months ago, I’d say at least half of the diners were people from out of town.

But locals don’t always know the best places to eat. There’s a café near me that I’ve never seen a tourist in. A houseguest came back from lunch there one day and told me the croque monsieur she’d ordered was inedible. When the waitress saw that she barely ate it, she told her it wasn’t good, and the waitress took it away and brought her something else. That rarely happens in France. Often you just get an “Ah, bon?” - the French equivalent to “Oh, really?”

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So when I ran into a French friend heading into the same café to meet a friend a few weeks later, I told her about my guest’s experience and she said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m just meeting a friend for a simple lunch.” I texted her a few hours later to see how it was, and she replied, “The people sitting behind us complained to the waiter that their croque monsieur was still frozen inside.”

Pardon my French, but it takes a pretty sh*tty café to serve pre-made frozen sandwiches. The point is, where the locals eat isn’t always better. Especially nowadays when diners post favorite places on social media and word gets around.

I’ve been making it a point this year to go to more restaurants. I have a running list of them and keep ticking places off as I go. Here are some I’ve been to lately…

Café Singuliers

I never thought much of this café that I’ve walked by a lot, tucked into a newishly trendy part of the 11th, where there’s a bakery with a wood-fired oven (although I haven’t been back there in a while so can’t say for sure if they still fire it up), and Reyna, a restaurant that serves “la nourriture d'origine philippine et sud-est asiatique avec une touche française,” Filipino and Southeast Asian food with a French touch. That’s been on my list of places to go, too.

We took seats outside of this friendly café at dinnertime and started with panisses (above) made by chef Mahir Atia who is from Marseille. He veered a bit from authenticity, adding what tasted like a hint of cumin to the batter, and the garlic in the aïoli was likely toned down for Parisian palates. But the panisses were delicious, and a copious start to the meal.

Another starter, above, were moules de Bouchot from Brittany, served with shrimp bisque, tomatoes, and peppers and topped with a lemon foam (chefs here are still intrigued by foam), which we enjoyed quite a bit.

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Well, one of my resolutions for this year was to eat at a different, and new-to-me, restaurant in Paris once a week. But like most humans, I’m also only human, and a creature of habit. And we tend to go to the same places over and over again. Sometimes new places that get a lot of press, and have people posting on social media about them, have dynamic press agents, so they pop up a lot. Often, however, they’re not very good.

Last year, everyone was raving online about a new place that opened in Paris, anointing it as “The place to be.” We had a less-than-stellar meal there, which made me wonder about all that positive press, until a reviewer from a major newspaper wrote about it, who had the same experience, and meal, that we had.

I’ve been invited to places too, but whether I’m paying (I pay 98% of the time) or not, my barometer for sharing is whether I liked it. So here are some places that I think might resonate with you…

Le Cornichon

Le Cornichon is an old PMU, a corner café you’ll find in almost every city, town, and village in France, with its signature green sign, where they sell cards to bet on PMU races, and men who don’t have a lot else to do sit around the TV, glued to the screen to see if the horse they bet on wins.

PMUs are often worn down by time, neglect, and disinterest by the owners, but they’re institutions in France, not known for their great food or wine lists, but rather for their cheap draft beer, rank coffee, and access to cigarettes since they’re often Tabacs — stores that can legally sell cigarettes as well as timbres fiscaux (tax stamps) that you can buy to pay parking tickets, visa fees, and other fines. (For some reason, they also sell poppers.) The physical stamps are being replaced by electronic “stamps,” but as long as people smoke, the tabacs aren’t going anywhere. Even during our strict pandemic lockdowns, tabacs were allowed to stay open, considered “essential businesses.”

The owners of Le Cornichon took on an old PMU, polishing it up, gently rehabbed it into a café and restaurant that’s a lot of fun, and serving good food.

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I started this post a few months ago, then a lot happened. I added some places to it, seasons changed, and it’s position in my Drafts folder kept going further and further away from me.

Yet the city kept going, and restaurants, chocolate shops, and bakeries continued to open, each wave bringing more talent to the forefront. In related news, I recently saw that the French are the third-largest consumers of spices in Europe, which isn’t a big surprise due to all the cultures and colonies, although to the surprise of many, spicy (as in spicy-hot) cuisine is taking off in Paris (video in French):

In the meantime, about a month ago I decided to hit more of the new places that have opened up, or places I’ve wanted to go but haven’t gotten to yet. You can find previous places that I’ve written about in my Paris Dining Archives here in the newsletter, and more in the Paris Favorite Restaurants section of my website.

As the dining scene in Paris, and tastes, continue to evolve, here are some of the places I’ve eaten at recently…

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Gibon

The best way to experience Paris is by bike or by foot, because you get a feel for what’s going on in the streets, and see what’s opening and where people are eating.

Located not far from where I live, Gibon is on a side street, and like many side streets in Paris, it’s used by cars and motor scooters to test out how fast they can accelerate, so they can get to the next stop light faster. Riding in the bike lane on my bike (many bike lanes in Paris go in the opposite direction of traffic), I’m often face-to-face with cars gunning it toward me, and it’s a constant game of chicken on that particular street to see who will move first. So I’m usually not looking at storefronts but fearing for my life. But I noticed Gibon and decided to go in when a friend came to town.

Just one year old, we ducked into Gibon on a(nother) rainy night for a glass of wine and a little something to eat. We had a mineral-rich Macon, then, sticking with the mineral theme, followed that up with glasses of muscadet, a wine from the Loire-Atlantique that is a natural pairing with oysters.

While there weren’t any oysters on the menu, we did have an excellent sausage in brioche, fried until golden brown, hot, and crispy, and their take on tarama (known as taramasalata elsewhere), made with haddock, with thickly cut levain bread to dip into it. My friend had dinner plans elsewhere, and I vowed to go back.

Which I did when the food styling team and photographer came to town to work on my next book (out next Fall), and we had mackerel rillettes (below right), a spread enlivened with capers and lots of fresh dill, an herb that doesn’t get enough use in France, except with salmon. There were also thin slices of fennel-scented dried sausage, bulots (sea whelks), a very nice bowl of crisp sardines tempura with ponzu sauce, and Gnudi with ‘nduja (shown above), which was one of the spiciest things I’ve had in a French restaurant. Which isn’t a complaint!

From the looks of things, most customers are from the neighborhood, and I even ran into my friend Jennifer while there, who leads cheese and wine tastings and who recently moved to the neighborhood, and she likes it too.

One of the owners often waits tables, and the last time I was in, he offered us a taste from a bottle of wine he received from a new vineyard, which was their very first bottling. We agreed it was drinkable and had potential, and Gibon is certainly living up to its potential as being a nice, neighborhood wine bar and restaurant.

Gibon
52 Rue Richard Lenoir (11th)

Datil

When I started writing cookbooks and was getting asked to describe my style, someone in the media told me not to say “local and seasonal.” Their reasoning was that everybody was saying their cooking was “local and seasonal,” whether they were doing it or not. And you’d get lumped in with those people.

Datil bills itself as local and seasonal:

Our menu wholly aligns with the natural harvest of the seasons, whatever the climate conditions may be. The connection is almost automatic: ideas for our recipes always spring from discussions with our producers. Their stories and our visits to their farms are an integral part of our cuisine. (Translation from the Datil website.)

Having worked at one of the pioneering farm-to-table restaurants, I’m probably more sensitive that others about what the term really means, since we had farmers coming through the kitchen door with persimmons, pears, and lemons from their trees; mushroom hunters bringing in baskets of mushrooms they had foraged locally; and cases of produce delivered to us from the farm at Chino Ranch. The evening’s menu was often decided by what was in the boxes. So it’s just natural to me to cook with the seasons, and I don’t even think you should have to say it anymore — it should a given.

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I’ve been wanting to eat at La Tour d’Argent ever since I was about 10 years old. My family had an oversized book, the Picture Cook Book, published by Life magazine in 1958, which had a picture of people dining at the top-floor restaurant overlooking the Seine with Notre Dame cathedral lit up in the background. That whole book fascinated me, and I loved flipping through the pages, showing everything from California’s open-air barbecues to layouts of the fine dining establishments of Europe.

I don’t know what happened to that book, but I found a copy of it a few years ago at a bookstore in the States and gave it to a French friend, who’s interested in vintage French recipes and cookbooks. I don’t see it on his bookshelves, though, so I suspect he was less interested in global cuisines than I am.

So I can’t confirm if that’s where I saw the picture of La Tour d’Argent, since my parents’ copy is long gone, but there’s a picture taken in La Tour d’Argent in my copy of Salvador Dalí’s cookbook, Les Diners de Gala (above), which I lugged to Paris with me, originally published in 1971. I see it now selling for $13,500, which is still less than Mark Zuckerberg’s $900,000 watch, but Taschen reissued an edition of the book that’s $50 and worth it.

(But if anyone wants my copy, I’ll give you a deal…at $13,000.😂)

My friend Jane Bertch, owner of La Cuisine Paris cooking school, and I made an agreement last year to take ourselves out to a nice restaurant for our birthdays, which fall a few days apart at the end of December. Since most restaurants are closed during that period, and everyone’s pretty much worn out from all the food and festivities in Paris that month leading up to Christmas and New Year’s, we go out in January, when we can give each other the full attention that two people with birthdays deserve.

Last year we went to Le Clarence, set in a 19th-century private mansion, and this year, to La Tour d’Argent, known for its spectacular view (and its pressed duck, of which they’ve sold a total of 1,178,727 orders as of October 2023, and you’re handed a certificate with your number on it after you’ve had it) and which has undergone a complete remodel and transformation and recently reopened under the guidance of Chef Yannick Franques, who’s refreshed the menu in the last few years. (So it looks a little different than when Salvador Dalí ate there.)

The restaurant evolved as dining tastes and traditions have changed. (They were also reeling after a substantial wine theft last year.) But I liked the new, bright open space with an expansive open kitchen.

And to tell you the truth, I’ve eaten at some multi-starred restaurants, including some three-starred, and I’m generally disappointed. Some of it is that it’s not really my style of dining. I don’t care about being fussed over, or waiters hovering, or tiny bits of food that I’m supposed to savor. And to be honest, again, the food is generally better at smaller restaurants. But as a French friend told me when I moved to Paris, “In France, we eat to be with our friends first, the food is secondary.” So there we were.

I’d been warned about the wine list, which is something like 800 pages. It’s huge and neither one of us is a wine expert, so it took a while to peruse it and figure out what we wanted. I’ve stopped telling sommeliers or waiters that I want a “dry, minerally” white wine since they tend to steer you toward something relatively standard. And you may be missing out on some truly outstanding white wines, such as Chablis and the rounded white wines of the Jura.

It’s fashionable to say that you don’t like sweet wines, but I’ve had extra-dry, zero-dosage (no sugar added, as in “aggressively crisp and tart, the sort of thing that brings tears to your eyes”) Champagne, and it’s too steely for me and lacks finesse. Just a tiny sprinkle of sugar in a bowl of sliced strawberries brings out their natural sweetness and voluptuous flavor.

The sommelier came by to give us some help. We told her what we liked, sort of, and our budget, and she led us to two wines, one from the Jura and another, a Mâcon from Burgundy, so we chose the latter.

We’d selected the four-course fixed-price lunch (€160), which you choose when you reserve. They brought out a succession of small tastes, which began with warm Peanut-Emmenthal gougères, then came tiny little sardine tartlets, an excellent kalamata olive enrobed in something green and wonderful, and a few other savory treats, to kick things off. The flavors were bold and direct, and we were off to a good start.

The first dish was Egg Mystery, an egg slow-cooked sous-vide (above), generally at a low temperature (60ºC/140ºF) for about an hour. This one had a crust of toasted brioche breadcrumbs, a sauce they called a “mousse” of roasted celery root, and black truffles, which they certainly weren’t miserly with. It was really delicious and a miracle of culinary engineering, with the cooked egg whites separated from the yolks, which are revealed when you slice the dome open.

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Next up were Scallops, each topped with little seeded biscuits served on a pool of Jerusalem artichoke cream with roasted Jerusalem artichokes. It was a lovely, seasonal dish with a rich, flavorful sauce that unexpectedly paired perfectly with the scallops. Root vegetables have taken off in Paris, which were often referred to as légumes oubliés, forgotten vegetables, and it’s nice to see they’re being fondly handled and remembered.

The dish was also close to perfect. My only suggestion would have been a few roasted, coarsely chopped hazelnuts added for a little more crunch; their earthy flavor would have married nicely with everything else on the plate. But it was very good without them.

The next course included their famous duck, here roasted with Assam pepper, along with red currants and a red cabbage and chestnut confit, which was sort of like a chutney, but without any acidic component.

Once again, it was nice to see a dish that truly reflected the season (people often say they’re cooking seasonally, then you get a dish with blackberries on it in January), with chestnuts and lowly cabbage, elevated into something special. A nice touch was the whisper-thin biscuit in the shape of a duck feather lying on top.

(No need to leave a comment that cabbage isn’t lowly. I love it too. But it’s considered a very common ingredient.)

The only downside of the meal was that we didn’t love the wine. A friend in the wine world told me there were some gems there, but for an amateur like me, it’s hard to know what those gems are in an 800+ wine list. When the sommelier suggested a Macon from Domaine Comté Lafon, whose wines are invariably good, we ordered it.

They make some of my favorite wines, but I was a bit overwhelmed trying to order wine from the massive list. This one was from 2011—I wasn’t quite paying attention to the year—and was a tad old and had a slightly oxidized taste. It hadn’t turned, but it was definitely aged. It became better the longer it sat in our glasses, but we weren’t thrilled with it. We did allude to the fact that it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for but, and was a bit odd, but no one on the staff made any moves to change it.

Jane and I mentioned later to each other, and a few friends we mentioned it to in the wine world, told us that they should have explained the qualities of such a wine in advance.

And at that level of dining when they saw we weren’t enamored with it, offered to change it. It’s not an expensive wine; it retails for €24. Being polite Americans we didn’t say anything, but if Romain were with us, he would have brought it up and asked for something else.

At €130, it was one of the lower-priced wines on the menu, but you should likely plan on spending at least €160-€200 (and up) for a bottle here, although on the lunch menu, they had a bottle of red for €90 and some whites in the €150 range, as well as wines by the glass.

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They wheeled over the cheese cart, which featured cheese from nearby Laurent Dubois (€37 supplement), and there was an Exceptional Comté that’s been aged for 36 months (€23), which we didn’t indulge in. But the cheese selection was quite lovely.

Desserts started off with a small dish of mango compote with chestnut ice cream, accompanied by a little bâton of meringue. Then they brought out the final course, a roasted pear tartlet with tonka bean ice cream.

The restaurant does ask if you have any food aversions when you reserve, and when you arrive they confirm them, but I never think of telling them that I don’t like tonka beans. They’re banned in the U.S. but are popular in France, and whenever I taste anything made with them, the flavor (which tends to linger long after you eat them) reminds me of shoe polish.

A friend with a chocolate shop in Bordeaux told me that the reason I don’t like desserts made with them is that people always use too much. He made me taste one of his chocolates infused with tonka beans, and he was right. The flavor didn’t bother me at all. It was the same way with the ice cream served with the tartlet; it was just right and the mark of a very good pastry chef.

We finished with a plate of little sweets (along with Jane’s commentary on how she wants me to look at her like I look at mignardises), which included house-made chocolates and jam-filled mini madeleines.

We also had coffee, which wasn’t as memorable as the rest of the meal. But the food was really great, and when the owner made the rounds of the dining room, visiting each table, he seemed a little surprised when I said how much we liked our meal. (That’s my American enthusiasm for ya…) And I’d definitely go back, although we’re already trying to decide where to go next year for our birthday, and we’re open to any suggestions in the comments ~~!

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La Tour d’Argent
15 quai de la Tournelle (5th)
Reservations obligatory

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Notes:

There’s also an apartment you can rent in the building (€1800/night), a nod to their beginnings in 1582 as an inn (although I’m certain it was more modest then), as well as a rooftop bar, Le Toit de la Tour, that’s open to all.

More down to earth is their pastry shop and bakery, La Boulanger de la Tour, on the corner just across the street, where you can get their breads and pastries to go.

Prices mentioned in the post are subject to change.

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Paris has changed quite a bit, even over this summer (!), when new places opened or changed hands, and I tried a few places in other arrondissements, notably the 19th and 20th, which are taking over the mantle from the 10th, then the 11th, where young chefs were opening places. It’s been exciting to see the changes that continue to swirl in the Paris dining scene, and here are a few places I’ve been to recently.

Soces

I met a friend at Soces, owned by the former chef, Marius de Ponfilly, of Clamato (the seafood restaurant owned by the Septime team), and just after we sat down, my friend announced that he isn’t a big seafood fan. He’s a pretty good eater and dines out a lot in Paris, so I was surprised he agreed to eat here, where three-quarters of the menu focuses on seafood. But if you don’t love seafood, you can certainly find something on the menu, although he was game for trying certain things.

We started with oyster shooters and mini-margaritas, above, which were fine, but it would have been nice to have some sort of juice or sauce in the oysters to tie them to the mini cocktails. (On the other hand, oysters are pretty sacred in France, and a majority of people can’t imagine putting anything on them, except lemon.)

We moved on to œufs mimosa with buttermilk and trout roe, a riff on the French bistro classic of hard-cooked eggs served with mayonnaise, which were delicious. And instead of the usual three halves you get when you order œufs mayo in France, it was nice that they give you four.

We also shared white tuna with smoked tomatoes, served on little puddles of tomato jelly and nasturtium leaves. (For those who dislike the foam that’s frequently used in Paris restaurants, rest assured, there was nary a bubble of the frothy stuff in sight at Soces.)

We also had a tartare of aged beef à la Provençal, topped with green (underripe) almonds and roasted peppers, whose flavor I found a bit too strong and threatened to overwhelm the beef. As soon as I pushed the pepper to one side, separating the two, my appreciation of the dish improved. It was an inventive twist on ratatouille, and my only suggestion would be to feature the eggplant over the peppers rather than putting them in such a prominent position.

We had the steamed cod, which the kitchen kindly (and without asking) split onto two plates, with a “minestrone” of beans, topped with a mint, fava bean, and garlic condiment served on top, which was quite tasty.

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Dessert was roasted vanilla apricots with hazelnut praline and orange blossom cream, which tasted better than it photographed.

And even though I’d woken up at 6am that morning to wait for the oven repair person to come, who said he’d come between 7am and 3pm, before I nodded off, I wanted to taste La Gauloise, a French herbal liqueur in the same vein as Chartreuse, made in Burgundy. My friend had a snifter of Armagnac Morning Dew, V.S.O.P. The wine list leans toward non-manipulated/natural wines, with some exceptional wines from the Jura. We went with aligoté from Fanny Sabra that was full-bodied with a nice minerality that went well with the seafood.

Soces
32, rue de la Villette (19th)

Dandelion

Before I went to London earlier this summer, a few people warned me about sky-high restaurant prices. I’m used to New York and San Francisco prices, so I didn’t find them excessive (especially considering the high quality of the food we had), but prices at some restaurants in Paris have climbed to those levels too. And I’m not talking about Michelin-starred places, but restaurants in modest neighborhoods.

Twenty years ago you could get a 3-course meal in Paris for €30-35 in a bistronomique restaurant. Nowadays, that’s close to the price of a main course at a restaurant like Dandelion, which overlooks a sweet little square in the 20th arrondissement. Most restaurants don’t make a lot of money, and it’s hard to fault places for higher prices, especially since the cost of labor and ingredients have risen substantially.

Dandelion was recommended to me by the owner of one of the best-known restaurants in Paris, so I reserved a few weeks in advance. I know from reader reactions, whenever I post a photo from a Paris restaurant with foam, it gets quite a few negative comments. Romain isn’t fond of it either. While the rest of the world seems to have left it behind, it’s frequently used by chefs in Paris. It showed up in both our first courses, atop Romain’s raw veal tonnato with sunflowers and piment, spiced peppers.

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Bread must be eaten fresh is, some say, an alternative fact. But I don’t think there is any one “right” way to eat or buy bread. While it’s true that people in France buy bread fresh daily, even when we buy a baguette for dinner, we eat the rest of it demain. (Tomorrow.)

The phrase “What’s leftover bread?” is often tossed out for a chuckle (similar to “What’s leftover wine?”…or “What’s leftover cheese?”), but leftover bread (pain de la veille) is no joke and is a problem for bakeries, whose food costs have risen sharply in the last few years. And bread prices have gone up, which hits consumers. Raising the price of a loaf of bread by a few cents is cause for alarm. One baker in France remarked, “In France, when bread prices in the corner bakery rise even 5 centimes, people notice it immediately.”

Having leftovers isn’t just the butt of a joke, it’s wasteful. So there’s now Demain (Tomorrow) bakery in Paris, which sells only leftover bread, culled from 23 local bakeries.

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We’ve been doing our best to eat out more lately, hitting some new places and returning to some favorites. Here are a few that stood out…

Pompette

Pompette recently remodeled and reopened. Jordy Robinson is back behind the bar à manger, wine bar with food (that’s the “à manger” part). And what great food it is! The menu changes often, but the œufs mayonnaise with bonito flakes and bird’s eye chilis and the cauliflower with yogurt, black garlic, and anchovy dips are a delicious way to get your protein and vegetables, respectively. I also loved the palourdes (clams) with gochujang beurre blanc and sorrel, as well as the pork (above, left) with salsa macha and kuri squash puree.

[UPDATE: It was announced that Pompette will be closing May 17, 2024.]

Just a note that much of the seating is on barstools, with some banquette-style seats, and the place gets pretty crowded (at least when we went on a Friday night) with younger folks eating and drinking in the aisles during second seating. So if you want a little more calm around you, reserve for the first seating. (Although, when the terrace opens in the spring and summer, the crowds will probably gravitate outside.) The short wine list is a godsend to those of us who are happy to have the restaurant edit the selection for us, and the servers are friendly. If it was in my neighborhood, I’d be here at least once a week.

Le Clarence

I rarely go to Michelin-starred restaurants for a variety of reasons, but one is that I don’t really want to sit anywhere for four hours, unless I’m on a plane to a tropical island. And this probably isn’t a popular opinion, but I often find the food isn’t as good as the “experience.” (I prefer the former over the latter.) However, when a friend and I decided to celebrate our birthdays together, belatedly, we decided to go to Le Clarence, which is definitely in the “splurge” category.

There are three options at lunch: Three courses (€150), four courses (€250), and six courses (€380). While the least expensive of those options is the more appealing, financially, after batting back-and-forth between us, I made the executive decision to go for the four courses since I was with a friend and we were celebrating our birthdays together. And what they mean by four courses is four main plates, with lots of extra side plates alongside everything. So the three-course meal ain’t entrée, plat, dessert, like at your local café.

Chef Christophe Pelé is from Brittany, so the food is seafood centric. There are no printed menus, but you can tell them about allergies or aversions when you reserve, and they’ll take care of you. Highlights were the langoustine (above, left) with coriander sauce and the grilled eel with caviar (lower right). The restaurant is located in a swanky 19th-century hôtel particulier (private mansion) and covers several floors. The top floor is a salon with a fireplace, and you’re welcome to take your after-dinner coffee and mignardises (sweet bites, above right) by the fire.

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Le Colimaçon

Who knew that one day influencing would become a profession? I never call myself an influencer, even though I’m sitting down right now gently influencing you to check out some of the restaurants I like in Paris. Go figure.

One person who is a good influencer is Cécilia Jourdan who runs the very popular Hello French NYC Instagram account. We’d never met, but she dropped me a message and suggested we meet at her dad’s restaurant, Le Colimaçon, in the Marais. And I was happy to join her.

The Marais is a beautiful neighborhood but isn’t necessarily known for great restaurants. There are a few, but with so many tourists, a number of them aren’t focused on quality. But that’s changing, with places like Parcelles (which is good, but hard to get into) and Bistrot des Tournelles (which is good, but has gotten crowded and prices have gone up; roast chicken is now €39 and steak-frites is €43).

Happily, Cécilia is just as nice in person as she is online, and I started things off by ordering Salade Frisée, the classic Lyonnais salad with frisée, bacon, and eggs. I was expecting more of a traditional version of Salade Frisée, but the version on the menu here takes liberties with it, with the ingredients chopped and fitted into a small bowl. It was fine, but if you’re expecting the original, this isn’t it.

Living in Brooklyn, where it’s an issue (as it is to some in France), Cécilia ordered Foie gras with caramelized pain perdu (French toast), which was very, very good—and rich.

She was kind enough to let me have a bite of the dish, which was thick slices of caramelized bread with sautéed foie gras on top, along with pickled fruit and a touch of cumin.

I hesitated between the stuffed braised rabbit for my main course and the duck confit. I ended up going with the rabbit, which was very good, but after seeing a few plates of duck confit coming out of the kitchen, next time I’m having that.

The “revisited” tarte Tatin for dessert (shown farther above, top left) was a deconstructed caramelized apple tart. If you eat out in France, lately you’ll see (or read on menus) a lot of desserts being revistée (revisited, or revised), deconstructed, served une farandole (as a selection), or in déclinaison, a “declined” dessert, served in bits and pieces of sorts. It was a good dessert and a fun evening with new friends (which included her father), and it fortified me for the bike ride home.

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Sellae

After I ate at Sellae, a friend in the journalism business sent me a text: “How was it?” She’d gotten some mixed reviews from friends and readers—as we both had, regarding Rôtisserie d’Argent (which neither of us had been back to to verify), but I brought up Bouillon République, a place that used to be fun and extremely affordable.

But my last meal at Bouillon République was disappointing, the worst part being the tepid Brandade (salt cod and potato casserole), scattered in chunks across my plate, which looked like someone in the kitchen had scraped the last bits out of the pan before it landed in front of me on my plate. If any dish needs to be served piping hot, it’s Brandade. And it’s really easy to serve. I was a little embarrassed as I’d brought visitors there, and they politely poked their way around their plates too.

Paris Eating & Drinking

Located in a neighborhood where probably not many visitors find themselves, Sellae calls itself a néobistro, a contemporary bistro where the food isn’t necessarily “revisited,” but the menu reads more like the way people in Paris are eating now, with a mixture of traditional French dishes with influences and ingredients here and there from other cultures.

Known for its wine list, the wine we’d ordered was…well, fine (I’m not a wine expert, but I do like being delighted by a good bottle of wine), and I thought the œufs mayo (above left) was pretty ordinary, served with just a little pile of mâche. The dish doesn’t need to be reinvented, as others are doing, but it was kind of a let-down compared to the other food.

The restaurant is known for its beef, and the carpaccio of smoked beef with olive oil and Parmesan starter (above, middle) was excellent. Luckily, the serving was big enough for two, so I didn’t feel bad about sharing.

For main courses, Romain had the aged faux filet (above, left) with herb butter and decent frites, but my duck confit (yes, finally!), above, right, was outstanding, served comme un cassoulet with braised Tarbais beans, the bean that makes the classic cassoulet a classic. It was just right.

The Île Flottante for dessert (above, bottom left) wasn’t quite what I was expecting, with pralined nuts and caramel laitier, an ice cream of sorts. But the star of the show here is the Mousse au chocolat tiede (warm chocolate mousse) with vanilla ice cream underneath it. It was as smooth as warm ganache and — although I generally decline to use the word — it was exceptionally comforting and elicited oohs and aahs from us.

We were a little jealous that the couple at our neighboring table opted for the sole for two, which was priced at €70 per person and seemed like a lot. But watching them serve it, expertly boned tableside, along with various accompaniments, which softens the blow of the price, and they said it was great. The other diners in the restaurant seemed like they were really into eating (as opposed to people who are just going somewhere for dinner), which led them to this unassuming corner of the 13th arrondissement. I’d like to go back, although I might try it for lunch, which is offered on weekdays for €25-28, depending on how many courses you want.

Clamato

It’s a little difficult to recommend Clamato. On one hand, it’s easy. The food (and wine) are very good. The difficulty is that the restaurant, which is the seafood-based sister restaurant of Septime, doesn’t take reservations.

But there we were the other night; it was Saturday night and we hadn’t made reservations anywhere for dinner*. So we were thinking about going to the local dumpling place, and just by chance, I said, “Let’s swing by Clamato and see how long the line is.” It was a few minutes before opening, around 6:55pm, and the line wasn’t that long. After they opened at 7pm and started seating people, I calculated there were enough seats, and sure enough, when we got to the front of the line, we snagged a table for 2.

Unfortunately, it’s hit or miss because if you get there at 7:10, the restaurant might be full, and you have to wait for the next table to open up, which’d be 1 1/2 to 2 hours later. You can put your name on the waiting list and head over to their wine bar, Septime Cave, and spend some time there. (Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s quite small and fills up fast.)

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That said, a better strategy is to go for lunch during the week when there are fewer people.

The menu changes often, and everything is meant to be shared. The tarama (fish roe spread), with some of the best olive oil you’ll ever eat, is always a good choice to start with, along with sourdough bread from Ten Belles. There’s always a well-chosen selection of raw oysters and clams to choose from (the ones from Utah Beach in Normandy tend to be excellent), and there are ceviches. We had one made from lieu jaune (pollack) flavored with spruce tips and another made with mulet and seasoned with kimchi. Another small plate was a delicious wedge of cabbage with house-made XO sauce, and we ended the meal with mandarin sorbet and mezcal dusted with piment d’Espelette (Basque chili powder)…although the restaurant is known for the Clamatart, a maple syrup tart that’s also available in their bakery, Tapisserie, across the street. So if you haven’t had that, you don’t want to miss it.

Clamato is not the place to go if someone in your party doesn’t eat seafood (and it’s not the kind of food they can substitute another ingredient on the plate), and note that many dishes feature raw seafood, although some don’t. The young staff is very nice, and the natural wine list is intriguing. We like/love the Domaine de Marnes Blanches chardonnay from the Jura, which is a mid-priced wine (€65/bottle) on their list, but you can find wines starting at €32 and going up from there, as well as wines by the glass. Another time we tried a Greek wine made from muscat grapes on the recommendation of the host, which was medium-bodied and had an earthy-fruity taste, and was fun to try.

Mokonuts

If I had my way, I’d eat at Mokonuts every week. But it’s so small that you can’t just walk in, although they’re now taking reservations online as many places in Paris (finally!) are. I had a great lunch with baker-pal Fany Gerson, otherwise known as La Newyorkina for her homemade pastries and Mexican-style ice creams and paletas in New York.

We shared first-of-the-season white asparagus with a gently cooked egg and wild garlic, which was superb, as well as a bowl of labneh topped with various chicories (winter lettuces). I didn’t taste the grilled octopus with chickpeas since anything with tentacles scares me, but my tablemate loved it, so I’ll have to take her word for it.

I didn’t snap a pic of the grilled pigeon, which was excellent and showed off the talent of co-owner chef Omar Koreitem, served with stuffed artichoke, Swiss chard, and garlic, but I got a pic of the Ricotta Cheesecake for dessert with buntan (above, center), a citrus fruit I wasn’t familiar with, and one never can go wrong with a plate of Moko Hirayama’s cookies.

Favorite Paris Restaurants

Kubri

It’s hard to suggest Middle Eastern food to visitors as many are coming to Paris for French food, and sometimes they need some convincing. But everyone I’ve suggested Kubri to has thanked me. And when Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen came to town, I knew she’d love it too.

Cheffe Rita Higgins works magic with flavors of the Levant, using (mostly) French ingredients. I crave her Hispi Cabbage with Aleppo pepper, peanuts, pickled apricots, and shanklish, so I always have to get that. But the Cauliflower Tabbouleh with feta, pistachio, herbs, and lemon-sumac vinaigrette was bright and tangy. Not all visitors (and locals) are enamored of the falafels on the rue des Rosiers, but it’s hard not to love the extra-crisp ones at Kubri, served with three different dipping sauces. Another standout is the hummus with charred broccolini with smoked almonds and za’atar chili crunch. (Note that the menu changes by the season.)

While it’s easy to make a meal of all the méza starters and small plates, the braised lamb shank with freekeh (smoked wheat), pistachios, and spices is one of my absolutely favorite dishes in Paris. When I asked how Rita made it, she told me the long process she goes through, which made me glad I don’t live too far away from Kubri. (You can buy the freekeh here in France, which is also sold at Sabah, 30 rue d’Aligre.)

Fulgurances L’Adresse

You need to be the kind of diner who’s willing to take a leap of faith at Fulgurances L’Adresse. The restaurant, which now has a sister restaurant in Brooklyn, changes chefs every few months, so you’re not sure what you’re going to get. I started going eight or so years ago and have had food by wonderful chefs. Then I had a few meals that were just okay, and it fell off my radar. But now that I live just a few blocks away, it’s back on my list, and I have been blown away by meals there.

Late last year, Chef Nazareno Mayol, who worked at some of the best restaurants in France, was in residence (above). (He’s currently cooking at their restaurant in Brooklyn.) Then I had a crazy-good vegetable-based dinner by Estée Strooker that kind of knocked me for a loop…

So when I saw Nicolas Tamburo was coming to Paris to cook at Fulgurances, who was the opening chef at Claud in New York, I quickly reserved a table.

Our dinner started with raw scallops bathed in tangy rhubarb juice, wild garlic leaves, and calendula. Chef Tamburo really wowed us with bowls of clam chowder that were so concentrated with flavor, it felt like he’d managed to get ten bowls of the best clam chowder of our life into two little bowls. (As an aside, chowder may actually be French; the name might come from chaudron, or cauldron, a vessel for making soup over a fire. The chef, and the servers, were surprised when I told them that.)

I’m not a huge fan of monkfish liver, but I’ve never had it fresh (only canned), and this version was really great, served warm with hazelnuts toasted in sherry-spiked brown butter, squash puree, grapefruit, and charred leek vinaigrette. Other courses included white asparagus with house-cured mackerel and rouget, a small Mediterranean fish, with green asparagus tips and ail des ours (wild garlic).

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It’s hard to pull off desserts with savory ingredients, but both were excellent: Celery root ice cream with celery cream and coffee oil and preserved cherries was pretty and a great transition from the main courses to dessert. You can add on a cheese course for a supplement, which we did because we had a wonderful bottle of rich Chardonnay from the Jura from Domaine de la Tournelle that was begging to be paired with cheese…and who were we to refuse?

The meal ended with a Napoléon of sorts: layers of silky vanilla custard and candied citrus sandwiched between “leaves” of dried nori, which sounds weird, but was very good. I wouldn’t say so if I didn’t mean it.

Due to the style of service, everyone gets the same menu for dinner at Fulgurances, but you can alert them when you reserve if you have aversions or allergies. You can also choose a wine pairing to go with your meal, although I’m not a fan of trying four to six different wines during dinner. But I am a fan of sommelier Adrian Ruois who is a really sweet guy and will lead you to some very interesting wines from their excellent wine list if you want a bottle or just a few glasses.

Comice

This past weekend we had an exquisite dining experience by husband (chef) and wife (sommelier) team Noam Gedalof and Etheliya Hananova, at Comice, with Noam talking the reins in the kitchen and Etheliya in charge of the dining room, guiding and selecting the wines.

The fixed menu is a lovely presentation of dishes using well-chosen ingredients that represent the best of France. (The restaurant is happy to make menu adjustments, with advanced notice.) It was a pleasure to have contemporary cooking without any silliness, such as foam or stone plates, that was brilliantly cooked and let the pristine ingredients shine.

A recent meal started with warm cheese-filled gougères, then a bowl of chilled sweet pea soup with bacon and crème fraîche, sea scallops with preserved citrus, lobster poached in beurre blanc with sweet potato and chard ravioli, and a stunning chocolate soufflé for dessert, which were served along with carefully-chosen wines from small producers. The house-made bread (and salted butter!) were both extraordinary.

Bernadette

Before we moved last year, our neighborhood crêperie was Bernadette. I am always up for buckwheat galette (crêpe) and met a friend from New York here, who is a pastry chef, so I knew he’d appreciate a well-made crêpe. He followed my lead and also went for a complète, a buckwheat galette filled with ham, cheese and and a sunny-side up egg. Of course, glasses of sparkling cider are the obligatory accompaniment, although they have an excellent list of ciders from Brittany and Normandy. If you want a treat, try a bottle of Herout sparkling hard cider. (Although their non-alcoholic sparkling apple cider is also excellent.)

If you’re looking for a pleasant place to have lunch in the neighborhood, stop by!

*Two Paris Dining Notes

• Restaurants in Paris have gotten very busy, and for most places that you want to eat in Paris, especially on the weekends, you should reserve a minimum of one week in advance, but in some cases two or three. It’s very hard to find a place where you can make a same-day reservation on a weekend, and the few places that are open on Sundays and Mondays fill quickly. Fortunately, many restaurants now take reservations online, which is helpful, and if you need to cancel, be sure you do so, so they can fill the spot.

• More and more point-of-sale credit card machines in France have a screen that asks if you’d like to tip and suggests 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%. Service is always included in France and waitstaff are paid a living wage, comparable to other workers; there’s no “special” (i.e., very low) minimum wage for tipped workers as there is in parts of the U.S., where a server can be paid as little as $2.13 per hour, and tips are expected to make up the difference.

  [As an aside, the custom of tipping originated in Europe. It came to America as people wanted to emulate European habits, and was considered elitist.]

  You’re never required to tip in France. However, if the service is good and you’ve enjoyed yourself, and if the server went out of their way to accommodate a special request, you are welcome to show your appreciation with a tip. A tip in the 5% to 10% range is acceptable, but some of it depends on the cost of the meal, rather than a fixed percentage. If your meal was €300, a €40 tip would be considered extremely generous. (€20 would be fine.) If the check was €200, €10 would be considered nice, but you could leave €20 if they were especially helpful. If the server was unfriendly or you had problems, there’s no need to leave anything.

  Those are just general guidelines, and you can do as you wish. Note: Even French people are a little confused by about how much, and who to leave a pourboire (tip) for. All French restaurant employees have healthcare and retirement benefits provided by their employers (who pay the equivalent of about 40% of the employees salary to the government, for them), although no one minds a little extra money in their pocket at the end of the day.

Le Servan opened in 2014. It got a lot of press when it opened as it came on to the scene when Paris dining was bouncing back from some less-than-stellar press.* Younger chefs stepped up to the plate, opening smaller restaurants in outer arrondissements, and began changing the narrative, successfully rebooting France’s reputation.

I ate there a few times. The first time I went, the food was exciting, a mix of French cooking techniques and ingredients, seasoned with spices and flavors that reflected cheffe Tatiana Levha’s multicultural heritage. I took some pictures, but when I asked the cheffe if I could take one of her for a write-up, she demurely declined I wrote about another meal I had there, here — along with a picture of Romain after he’d accompanied me to a government meeting that hadn’t gone well.

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I hadn’t been back to Le Servan for a long time, even though it’s a short walk from where we live. Since it opened, so many other good restaurants have opened in Paris, and it’s easy to forget ones that no longer get a lot of press. But when a friend who used to live in Paris suggested that we go, I said, “Why not?” We had a great meal, which was so good, I couldn’t wait to go back with Romain. (This time, under better circumstances.)

I started with an excellent sparkling Divona cider from Johanna Cécillon. (Shown at the top of the post.) The neighboring table had ordered the Sardines served on toasted Ten Belles brioche. I wanted it too. The near-perfect square came to the table with the bread still warm, topped with a thin layer of gently spiced red pepper butter, with filets of raw, fresh sardines on top. I wanted another order. But we had blood sausage wontons coming, so I didn’t.

Happily, Parisians are acclimating to spicier foods and authentic flavors on menus, and chefs are incorporating more ingredients that were formerly verboten. But there’s still a reluctance to dive into anything that will pique too much. Cheffe Levha was born in the Philippines (she’s also opened a restaurant called Double Dragon whose food leans much more into her Filipino roots), and while the spicy items are marked on the menu at Le Servan, the condiments that provide the spiciness are generally separated from the main dish on the plate, so one can decide whether to eat them or not. I ate them.

The spicy condiments are robustly flavored, without overdoing it. And they were all very tasty. The chili chutney served with the pretty (but poorly photographed by me, due to the fading light, and I cut off the chutney in the bottom right corner🤷🏻‍♂️) winter squash tartlet with Mimolette cheese cream and marigold petals, was complimented well by it.

Romain loves wild mushrooms so had the girolles with potatoes and savagnin (Jura wine) cream, topped with shaved truffles.

For the main, I ordered the large ravioli which was filled with wild mushrooms, sauced with butter, and topped with crumbled toasted nuts along with dabs of mascarpone. The filling changes daily and is often vegetable-based. This one also had a runny yolk inside, which makes it an outstanding main course in the winter—a little carbs, a little fat, earthy mushrooms, and crisp nuts, because some are now saying we could dial up the protein in our diets.

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We’re mostly white wine drinkers these days, and almost every dinner party table in Paris seems to be set with bottles of heavy, tannic wines from Bordeaux, which I find overwhelms food (and can cause headaches) and prefer lighter red wines, when we go with reds, which provide a better balance between food and wine...at least to me.

Wines from Beaujolais (south Burgundy) fit that bill and the AmalGamay, a blend of Gamay and Aligoté grapes, was recommended by the sommelier that evening, and she was spot on.

Wine prices have risen in Paris at other mid-priced restaurants around town, but Le Servan has plenty of wines in the €32-€55/bottle category, and glasses remain reasonably priced at €6 to €9 per.

Desserts are often an afterthought in smaller restaurants because of the expense of having a pastry chef. (Harrumpf!) The tarte Tatin (above) was truly one of the best I’ve had. It tasted freshly baked, still warm from the oven. Some purists say it shouldn’t be served with anything, but who can complain about a little dollop of crème cru (raw milk crème fraîche) on the side? Pas moi…

The other dessert was equally sensational (maybe they should open a bakery next?)— a citrus tart in a crisp, buttery shell, which also tasted as if it had been baked to order and cooled just enough to be filled with a tangy lemon/lime filling, topped with fresh citrus suprêmes and pistachios. It was the perfect finish to the meal, and I’ve decided to become a regular again.

Le Servan
32 rue Saint-Maur (11th)
Tél: 01 55 28 51 82

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*Food writer Alec Lobrano eloquently wrote about this in 2014 in his write-up of the restaurant.

A friend who I made friends with while writing Drinking French brings small groups to Paris with his company. It’s not a tour group, per se, and he’s kind enough to include me in some of the dinners he plans in Paris. Thankfully, his business is spirits so we often have cocktails at one of my favorite bars in Paris before, which I had to decline this time around as I had too much to do. But when I found out they had oysters at L’Avant Comptoir de la Mer, a stand-up place with a long counter that you pull up to for very fresh shellfish—accompanied by good bread and a startlingly large heap of Bordier butter, ready for spreading—I was irked that I didn’t clear my schedule to join them.

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My friend, who lives in New York, often asks me for advice on where to dine with his coterie (and me), but this time he’d already reserved at Chez Fernand Christine. People often ask me if I’m afraid if I’ll ruin a place if I write about it, but it was pretty obvious when I walked in that the word is out there, somewhere: It was completely full on a Monday night with people sitting at tables with traditional checkered tablecloths, flipping through the leather-bound wine list that features over 1,300 bottles, sharing a massive Côte de bœuf, or digging out snails, baked with garlic and plenty of parsley butter.

The food is very old-school French, with a young staff and a great wine list. The Lucien Aviet & Fils Arbois from the Jura was a pleasure to drink and pretty much went perfectly with what we were eating.

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We did start with glasses of Mersault, a lovely, gentle white wine from Burgundy that I mentioned reminded me of fresh violets. Which prompted someone to rib me, “Fresh or dried?” So I shot back (as a joke), “Fresh…from Toulouse…picked in the southeast quadrant of the region, from a small patch of land behind a quaint farmhouse.”

I didn’t taste the Os à moëlle, beef marrow served with toasted levain bread and fleur de sel (it’s a little too rich for me), but the briefly sautéed razor clams were excellent …and copious. Parisians aren’t big clam eaters, but les couteaux are a different story. And it’s a treat to see them on a menu.

I generally steer away from salads that aren’t a simple salade vert—the basic lettuce salad with mustard vinaigrette—at restaurants in France (although I do love frisée salad with bacon and soft-cooked egg), but Americans who come to France always crave salads and vegetables, which I gently try to talk them out of. Okay, I also like salade chèvre chaud, but as a restaurant owner in France once said to me, “What is it about you people from California? You do salads so well.”

Paris Eating and Drinking Posts

Vegetables don’t figure heavily on menus in Paris, except for haricots verts (green beans), but the spinach salad my tablemates wanted (and I didn’t talk them out of) was pretty good, with large chunks of sharp Roquefort cheese and pine nuts. The inevitable haricots verts are indeed on the menu, served with fried pigs foot, which sounded good, but we didn’t get them. When I saw Camembert d’Isigny (baked in a little copper saucepan) on the menu, I thought it was worth them trying (which it was), since the milk and cheese from Isigny in Normandy is so delicious and not something you get in the States. Everyone scooped it up with the toasted bread until it was gone.

My tablemates also ordered cèpe ravioli in a foie gras sauce, which needed a bit of salt to perk them up and wasn’t my favorite dish of the night. There also was a sauté of girolles (chanterelle mushrooms) on the blackboard that sounded like a better use of wild mushrooms, rather than hiding them in pasta and blanketing them with a very thick, very rich, and very creamy foie gras sauce.

The coquelet rôti was an entire young chicken that was okay, but their plat incontourable (emblematic dish) is bœuf Bourguignon, made with beef cheeks and cooked with small potatoes and carrots and served in a heavily reduced red wine sauce, is the dish to get if you like beef. I forgot to take a picture of the bowls of French fries at our table, but they were good, and crispy, and I was glad we ordered three dishes for the 10 of us.

The highlight of the house-made dessert menu was the excellent tarte Tatin with crème fraîche from Isigny mounted on top, with a little extra caramel to finish it off. Served warm, I would go here just for that. In fact, I may return next week for it.

Menu prices fall at the higher end of the spectrum—first courses €14-€26, mains €30-€49, desserts €14.50—due to its location and the fact that they don’t seem to have trouble attracting customers. People dining earlier were mostly English speakers, and later on, the conversations at neighboring tables were in French. I was surprised to see on the website how happy they were to let people know they were welcome to come and converse in another language: “No problem if you don’t speak French: Here, the clientele is international and the service is bilingual.” The staff was really charming and friendly, and I felt instantly at home in both languages.

To finish the evening, there’s an excellent selection of Chartreuse available, poured from magnums on a shelf tucked into the wall. I’ve been more inclined to order yellow Chartreuse, whose proof has recently been raised a few degrees (since France relaxed a tax law related to the percentage of alcohol), but I also like the Elixir 1605*, the bottle on the top left, which was introduced in 2005 and is meant to recall the original Chartreuse, made from a recipe the Carthusian monks were given in 1605, who then spent a hundred years figuring out how to make it.

Favorite Paris Restaurants

If you want to really treat yourself, they have an impressive selection of VEP Chartreuses, which are bottles of the herbal liqueur—which the monks felt were especially good after distilling—that they age for a few years in oak barrels before bottling. They’re pretty special, and specially priced, but you can’t go wrong sticking with the original. Especially when the staff is so happy to pour them.

Chez Fernand Christine
9 rue Christine (6th)
Tél: 01 43 25 18 65

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*The small bottles of Élixer Végétal de la Grande-Chartreuse, a high-proof elixir based on the original preparation and use of Chartreuse (which was as a restorative herbal tonic) are now available in the U.S. You can find it at liquor merchants such as Astor Wine and Spirits, K&L, and Bitters and Bottles. A website like Wine Searcher or Google can help you find it elsewhere.

When you come to France, you’re probably not coming to buy dishes. Or are you? A reader once wrote that I posted too much “insider” information about Paris. But my take is that it’s easy to find intel on well-known shops (and I don’t know about you, but I like insider tips when I travel…), but a place hidden away in plain sight, in the 14th arrondissement, might be worth your attention. Especially if you’re anything like me, who loves iconic French bistro and café cups. And boy, does M. P. Samie have ‘em.

A lot of people extoll the virtues of heading “off the beaten path,” and no offense to the 14th, but it’s not an arrondissement that I go to often. Like most people in Paris, I don’t leave my arrondissement unless I have to…although we did make it across the river last week, which was both exciting and scary, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I made it back to the Boulevard Henri IV, the road that leads to the Bastille.

However, I had to go to the 14th to see a medical specialist over there, so I was biking back and forth several times a month. We used to drive past M. P. Samie when heading out of town, and I listed it in places of interest in my book, Drinking French. And I was happy that my doctor’s office was near the store so I could stop in and get some plates. As you can see…it’s the place for plates, in Paris.

For those of us who miss the much-missed La Vaisellerie chain of shops, which had a mad jumble of plates, serving platters, butter dishes, cocktail and wine glasses, café au lait bowls, and lots more, you might want to put M. P. Samie on your radar.

Café au lait bowls in different sizes are around €4 each. Interestingly, someone also once told me—or corrected me—that a French person told them that French people don’t drink coffee from bowls, which I found odd since they’re called café au lait bowls. It’s like telling people that British people don’t use teapots for making tea.

Café au lait bowls are used for drinking coffee at home, in the morning. Although, if you want a coffee with frothy milk in a café in France, you want to ask for a café crème, not a café au lait or even a cappuccino (which is Italian), which may come out served with whipped cream and dusted with cinnamon or chocolate. That’s not a bad thing, but it may not be what you had in mind. And it will generally cost you more than a café crème.

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(Contrary to popular belief, it’s no longer odd to drink a café crème at a café in the afternoon. I see a lot of people in Paris doing that. But it’s not normal to order one after a meal. A café noisette, an espresso with a touch of milk and foam, is what to order if you want to ‘live like a local’…but only sort of😉.)

I love these rectangular baking dishes, below. I bought one at a flea market for €10 and thought I got a deal. But it’s nice for everyone else that they are affordable, as well as available in various sizes.

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They’re super useful (and beautiful) for everything from a fruit crisp to roast chicken. The square shape also fits more neatly into a compact oven, which is appreciated in France. They are super heavy, and if you dropped one in your sink, you’d probably break the sink before you broke the baking dish.

While I’m not a tea drinker, people in France enjoy a spot of tea every now and then. So yup, there are teapots, although another tip is that herb tea isn’t called tea in France, it’s called tisane or infusion, which is why you might get a confused look* if you order camomile or lemon verbena tea.

It can be quite a learning curve just ordering something to drink here! But whatever you drink—here or there—if you want to bring a touch of French café to your home, you can do so for only €1 or €1,50.

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M. P. Samie
45, Avenue Générale Leclerc (14th)
Tél: 01 40 47 59 21
Métro: Mouton-Duvernet or Denfert-Rochereau

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*I am the king of getting confused looks, which is why I’m sharing my experiences with you—so you can avoid them.

As a public service (and because I love ice cream), once upon a time, I listed several favorite ice cream shops in Paris, which, at the time, were just a handful. But things have changed with many young people opening shops, number of legacy pâtisseries and chocolate shops upping their ice cream game, and ingredients and flavors from other countries and cultures getting some well-deserved time in the spotlight. It’s hard to keep track of what’s new…and delicious, but someone has to do it. Right? So I figured it should be me.😋

A few notes:

-The classic Berthillon remains very popular…and closes for August. But not to worry, other cafés and shops on the Île St.-Louis are authorized to scoop their ice cream.

-Some of the upscale pastry shops, such as Pierre Hermé, Jean Paul Hévin, La Manufacture, À La Mère de Famille, and La Maison du Chocolat, offer ice cream in the summer in many of their shops, but not all. Check their websites to see where they’re serving ice cream.

-Many ice cream shops have several addresses so check their websites for locations, as well as up-to-date information such as closings and flavors on offer. In this list, I’ve linked to their websites, as well as posts on my website, davidlebovitz.com, where I’ve written more about certain shops. I did add addresses where the venues either don’t have websites and/or don’t list their address on their social media pages. Use Google maps, or another mapping app, to find directions as well as the closest métro station.

-If coming during the summer, check websites and Instagram pages for any business listed to find opening hours and closings. Most smaller businesses post hours and updates on their Instagram pages.

Favorite Paris Pastry Shops

Glaces Glazed

Henri Guittet explores the wilder side of ice cream with creative flavors like Caramel Corn-Pepper, Vanilla with hemp (called Smoke on the water), Blackberry-Côte de Rouissillon (red wine from the sun-drenched south of France), and Glace & Confused, a bright mélange of fresh citrus and lemongrass in one refreshing scoop. Skimos, or popsicles (which is shorthand for esquimaux, or “eskimos” in France), change with the seasons and the whims of Henri. (website/davidlebovitz.com)

Une Glace à Paris

A rather elegant shop in the Marais (with another in Montmartre) featuring ice cream by Emmanuel Ryon, the renowned French glacier who has a coveted MOF (the best in France) designation. Flavors like caramel croquant with crunchy bits of caramel, smoked chocolate, and buckwheat-nougat ice cream are featured, as well as elegant ice cream cakes and confections. Note the vibe here is more ‘elegant pastry shop’ than “Let’s get ice cream!” (website)

[The two Fou de Pâtisserie shops (45 rue Montorgueil, 2nd, and 36 rue des Martyrs, 9th), which highlight pastries from various Parisian pastry chefs, offers their ice cream creations as well.]

La Maison du Chocolat

Many upscale chocolate shops in Paris start scooping in the summer, and La Maison du Chocolat, which knows chocolate better than anyone else…has an extra-special collection of chocolate-covered popsicles (sold at these boutiques) created in conjunction with award-winning glacier David Wesmaël. My preference from the summer of 2023 line-up is the Bâtonnet Givré Tout Chocolat, a triple chocolate popsicle made with an extra-dark chocolate center, chopped chocolate chips, toasted almonds, and enrobed in dark chocolate couverture. (website)

JJ Hings

Pastry chef Julia Bell turned her talents to ice cream at JJ Hings (5 rue de la Grange aux Belles, 10th). It’s located by the Canal St. Martin, and shares space with the Ten Belles office team—hence the taped-up sign, but perhaps in the future she’ll have a space all to herself—and locals line up for Melon-Pastis and Beer-Picon amer ice pops or Café au lait soft serve. I love the Salted Butter Caramel with bits of chocolate-covered ice cream cones in the mix, which looked so good, the woman behind me asked about it, and she ordered the same thing.

The cones at JJ Hings are handmade with hearty einkorn, believed to be the oldest strain of wheat, which adds 50¢ extra to the price…and is well worth it. On the handwritten menu, you’ll also find floats made with homemade soda, which might be made with rhubarb or elderflower, and Cookies ‘n Cream ice cream sandwiches, although like everything else on the menu, it all changes daily. (Instagram)

[Also near the Canal St. Martin, Plan D vegan sandwich shop serves up delicious soft serve vegan “Snickers” ice cream sundaes with chocolate, caramel, peanuts, and sea salt.]

La Glace Alain Ducasse

It may seem like Alain Ducasse is taking over Paris. In addition to owning quite a few restaurants and bistros, he’s added chocolate shops, coffee shops, and cookie shops to his list. And now there are ice cream shops, too. (For a moment, there were also vegan burgers, which didn’t quite catch on.) The best scoops on offer are the ones made with chocolate from La Manufacture, Ducasse’s bean-to-bar chocolate shop, which includes chocolates from Madagascar and Peru, as well as vanilla ice cream made with three types of vanilla and another churned with house-made chocolate-hazelnut paste. (website)

Plaq and L’Instant Cacao

These two excellent Parisian bean-to-bar chocolate makers unpacked their ice cream machines in the spring to prepare for summer. Plaq offers up chocolate ice cream and a bittersweet chocolate sorbet topped with just-roasted chocolate nibs, as well as an icy-cold granita to sip. (For those missing ice in Paris, get thee to Plaq!) There are also chocolate-dipped ice cream sandwiches for eating on the go.

L’Instant Cacao presents a seasonal range of flavors made with Marc Chinchole’s handcrafted chocolate, sold in containers to go. Flavors change with the seasons, and he pairs white peach with chocolate chips or raspberries and chocolate in his sorbets and makes his single-origin chocolate ice creams with chocolate from Madagascar, Belize, and the Ivory Coast, where Chef Chinchole goes to source his beans. (Plaq/L’Instant Cacao/davidlebovitz.com)

Mary Pastelli

After opening her first gelateria in Paris in 2009, and being overwhelmed by ice cream lovers (then closing for an undisclosed reason), Mary Quarta has found her footing in her quirky shop in the Marais (60, rue du Temple), featuring a changing array of Italian gelati made with organic ingredients.

Her most famous flavor is coffee, which has won a prestigious award—the Cono d’Oro, the “Gold Cone”—in Italy. But don’t hesitate to get a caffè affogato, ice cream doused with warm espresso. The classic ice cream to use is vanilla, but while it may sound odd, Avocado gelato with espresso is a delicious combination (popular in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam), which surprised me when I first tasted it. But it works. (Facebook/davidlebovitz.com)

Maison Aleph

Maison Aleph makes ice cream seasonally (i.e., only in the summer), and I wait each year to see how owner/pastry chef Myriam Sabat successfully blends flavors from the Levant using French pastry techniques into ice cream as deftly as she does with her pastries. Ice creams and sorbets change with the season but Fleur de lait (“flower of milk”) is a favorite of mine with crisp tidbits of pistachios, orange flower water and mastic.

The Glace citron (Lemon ice cream) is remarkably refreshing, and tangy, and made with just milk - no cream or eggs - to let the brilliant flavor of the Sicilian lemons used to make it shine through. Other flavors that they rotate through include Iranian Pistachio (which is vegan), Halvah (sesame paste), Vanilla-Saffron, Za’atar-Apricot-Honey, and Strawberry-Orange Flower Water. (website/davidlebovitz.com)

Bachir

Bachir is a family-run ice cream shop in Lebanon that opened its first shop in Paris in 2017. They feature flavors like Extra-dark Chocolate, Toasted Almond, and Achta, made with clotted cream and orange-flower water. (Which is the star of the show here.) Ice cream at Bachir is made with organic ingredients and thickened with mastic, rather than eggs, which is traditional in the Middle East. Getting your cone rolled in pistachios and topped with whipped cream is a must. (website/davidlebovitz.com)

[Another Lebanese ice cream store with a few shops in Paris is Baltis.]

Folderol

Folderol has attained a cult following, with folks stopping by from afternoon to evening for scoops of ice cream and sorbets made by pastry chef/owner Jessica Yang. Flavors come and go, depending on what’s in season, and may include Olive Oil, Persimmon and Cream, Sesame Brownie, Fresh Mint Chip, and Apricot-Chaï.

This shop does double duty as a wine bar and has become a hit with the natural wine crowd, so you might have to wade through a few people to get to the ice cream counter at night, although they are one of the few ice cream places in Paris that stays open until 11pm. (website/davidlebovitz.com)

Grom

The famed Italian gelateria has three shops in Paris since its debut in 2008 in the St. Germain area. The Crema di Grom features crumbled gluten-free polenta cookies and is what “in the know” Italians order in Italy. (At least according to my Italian friends… and I like it too.) I love the Pistachio, made from vibrant green nuts, and Gianduja, a traditional Italian paste made of roasted hazelnuts and chocolate ground together. In very hot weather, one of their frosty lemon or pink grapefruit granitas will cool you down quickly. Note that Grom is a completely gluten-free ice cream shop. (website/davidlebovitz.com)

La Glacerie

Steps from the BHV department store in the Marais, glacier David Wesmaël churns up uncomplicated (yet expertly made) ice creams such as Caramel-Fleur de Sel, Arabica Coffee, Provencal Nougat, and Almond Milk. Sorbets range from “Très” (very) Cocoa to Green Apple. (website)

Pozzetto

From the north of Italy, Pozzetto (39 rue de Roi de Sicile, 4th) specializes in flavors of the region using best-quality ingredients. Don’t miss the hazelnut and gianduja; both feature the famed hazelnuts of Piedmont! This place is a local favorite…and with good reason: The gelato is excellent. It’s also open late in the evening since the area attracts a lively bar and café crowd. (Instagram)

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Berthillon

Berthillon is known for small scoops, but ones that pack a lot of flavor. My favorite combination is extra-bitter Chocolate sorbet paired with Pear sorbet (their sorbet was the inspiration for my Chocolate sorbet recipe, which is here), but other flavors dazzle, such as Fraises des bois (wild strawberry, when available), Agenaise (prune-Armagnac), Caramel (which I like better than their Salted Butter Caramel), and Cassis sorbet, made with inky, flavor-packed blackcurrants. A French friend told me that two scoops was normal…but getting three scoops was “Très américian.” However, if you think you’re getting funny looks eating a 3-scoop cone from others...my take is that it’s because they’re jealous. (website)

Café Isaka

Café Isaka specializes in ice creams infused with Asian flavors, such as Pandan, Ebe, Black Sesame, Kinako (soybean powder), and Matcha—as well as scoops of ice cream deep-fried in panko crumbs. (website)

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• Other ice cream shops in Paris to note:
  
  -Martine Lambert: 39 rue Cler, 7th
  -Reÿs: 4 rue de Bourg Tibourg, 4th
  -Le Bac à Glace: 109 rue de Bac, 7th
  -Raimo: 59 Boulevard de Reuilly, 12th

  -La Tropicale: 7 rue de Prague, 12th

  -La Combine: 44 rue Lancry, 10th

  -Gerard Taurin: 27 rue de Lévis, 17th, and 48 rue des Martyrs (9th)

G. Detou is my happy place in Paris. When I first wrote about it, I said I couldn’t live in Paris if it wasn’t here. And while that’s still true, the shop has evolved since then, offering an even wider array of products than before, and it now offers a more spacious (and more efficient) shopping experience.

G. Detou was a jewel that needed to be preserved, but polished. The previous owner, who I featured in my book The Sweet Life in Paris, did an admirable job of keeping the place alive, especially as online shops eclipsed retail shopping and the cookware stores in the area struggled to adapt to a new retail environment. Visitors from other countries are now able to get the same things at home but without the schlepping. And some shops resisted the changes even further by not shifting to being more customer friendly. Fortunately, that’s changed.

Cookware Shops in Paris

But new owner Benoît Bourloton, who’s worked extensively in the field of vanilla, has gently remodeled G. Detou so it’s an easier place to shop in. He spent most of his career traveling the world, visiting chefs, pastry shops, and people who make ice cream, teaching them how to use vanilla beans, extracts, and pastes.

He knew the previous owner, Monsieur Thomas, who shared his passion for sourcing excellent ingredients and assembling the best of France (and select products from elsewhere) all in one shop. But he was ready to retire and wanted to hand the business to someone who would continue the legacy of G. Detou, so Benoît stepped in to buy it.

He’s kept most of the favorite items, such as tinned pâtés, Trablit coffee extract, flavorful nut oils, an array of French mustards, jars of delicious French honey, and added lots of new products, filling out their other shop next door with fresh and some slightly exotic products as well. If you like things that explode with flavor, do not miss the salted green peppercorns from Cambodia.

In addition, new help has been brought in that’s—well…helpful. The store layout is easier to maneuver around in than the old-fashioned former one, although when it’s busy, elbow room remains at a premium. But you no longer have to stack your items on the counter, stand in line at the cashier window, pay, get a receipt to prove that you paid, then head back to the clerk with proof of payment to get your stuff.

The shelves and shelves of chocolate are still there, in all their various guises, shapes, and origins: bars, pistoles, chips, nibs, powdered, liquid, and even bonbons from the most esteemed chocolate manufacturers in France. I am sure I’ve bought enough chocolate here to have paid several months of their rent.

G. Detou is the only place I know of in Paris that sells chocolate in professional quantities, which for bakers like me who use chocolate frequently makes more sense (and are better quality) than the Nestlé dessert bars that people buy at the supermarché. (Although the recipes inside the wrapper are pretty foolproof, and a lot of home cooks in France find them reliable.)

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They also sell Valrhona cocoa powder and cocoa nibs in quantity, which I don’t know if anyone appreciates more than me. Valrhona cocoa powder is one of the few products that I mention the brand name in some of my recipes because it really does make a big difference in flavor, and it’s not cheap, so buying in bulk is the way to go.

An example of G. Detou becoming more “user” friendly: Previously, the cocoa powder was available only in boxes of three 1kg (2.2 pound) bags, and 6 1/2 pounds of cocoa powder is a lot of cocoa powder…even for me. Now they sell it by single kilo bags, so you don’t need to buy all three bags.

[If kept in a cool, dark place, I’ve found cocoa powder will keep for a number of years without a noticeable change in flavor.]

An especially unique product just turned up there, Wholefruit Chocolate from Cacao Barry, unsweetened chocolate made from 100% of the fruit of the cocoa pod, including the pulp and peel, which I’m curious to try.

You can also pick up things like brilliant-green Iranian pistachios (shown farther above), hazelnut flour, a myriad of candied fruit, jugs of sirop d’érable (maple syrup), tart candied Amarena cherries, and lots, lots more.

I’ve had my head buried in remodeling this past year, doing most of my shopping in hardware stores rather than grocery stores. And I had to débarrasser (clear out) a lot of stuff during the move, including a dozen kitchen cabinets full of everything from jars of smoked cherries and smoked sugar to sorghum syrups and butterscotch-flavored chips, things that I’d collected over the years, which I’ve yet to use.

Paris Remodeling Apartment Stories

Now that I’ve caught my breath after a year of reassessing what to stock in my kitchen, I was happy to go back to G. Detou to rekindle and restock.

G. Detou was originally established in 1951 as a professional supply shop due to its proximity to the old Les Halles market, which was torn down in the ‘70s. For a while, it was more of a place where the domestiques (housekeepers) shopped for the households they worked for. Professionals still shopped there, but when you’re a pastry chef, you don’t really have time to go shopping for a few blocks of chocolate and a couple of kilos of nuts every few days. You order from a distributor, who delivers.

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So G. Detou is now a place where anyone can shop, but it has a special appeal to home cooks and bakers who are looking for items that are hard to find for home cooks, such as cocoa butter, glucose syrup, praline nut paste, non-stick spray (hard to find in France!), candied fruits, artisan vinegars, and frozen fruit purees, which the chefs used when I went to pastry school in France, mostly for ease and consistency. I don’t have a lot of use for those except the passion fruit one, since passion fruits are harder to find and pricey, and the pulp doesn’t lose any zing when frozen.

G. Detou was practicing “curated” before it became a trendy term. Every item on the shelf is carefully chosen and there for a reason. It’s nice to see old-fashioned French treats, like Crème de Salidou (salted butter caramel) and prune-stuffed prunes, which I introduced to a well-known Hollywood director who I met in Paris a few years ago, who swooned so much over them when I took her to the shop that I feel obligated to send her a tin every now and then.

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Not to brag about my brush with fame, but people who don’t know about France’s famed pruneaux d’Agen often turn their noses up at them, and they shouldn’t. If she likes them, the least you can do is give them a try. When I was looking up “pruneaux d’Agen” online to provide a link, I came across an article I wrote for the LA Times about them in 2008, titled, “Prunes: Better than the chocolates in Paris,” and I still stand by that.

But if I had to pick the star of the show here, while I’m a huge fan of the selection and varieties of chocolates on the shelves, many come to G. Detou to stock up on vanilla beans. Benoît took me into the room where they unpack the beans, which were wrapped in neat bundles, exuding the unmistakable aroma of sweet, oily, fragrant vanilla beans.

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Packed in tight rows, the vanilla was powerfully fresh, and the smell almost knocked me over. I wanted to dive into the box. The smell of those vanilla beans was heavenly, and Benoît just nodded in agreement when he pulled out a few bunches of beans and stuck them under my nose and saw me savoring and enjoying a “moment”—just between me and the beans.

No one is happier than me to see that G. Detou is thriving under new ownership, and every time I go, I see new products there from France and around the world. I’m glad it’s still here in Paris…so there’s no reason to leave.

G.Detou
58 rue Tiquetonne (2nd)
Paris
Tél: 01 42 36 54 67

Opening hours: Monday through Saturday, 8:30am to 7pm

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Visit the G. Detou website

I know you’re not supposed to use all caps on the internet, but EVERYONE is coming to Paris right now, and there are so many visitors here that I think French might become the second language of Paris. Some visitors think (or read) that if they don’t speak French, that people will be mean to them. Honestly, in over twenty years, that’s only happened to me once or twice.

(Even the French have trouble with French: At dinner with friends this weekend, a topic of discussion was whether one says les haricots, pronouncing the “s” in les, or if it’s silent. Le Figaro newspaper and L’Academie Française have had to explain it to the population.)

You shouldn’t be scared or timid to come to Paris. Parisians take vacations, too, and travel to other countries. So if you feel uncomfortable, just imagine that your waiter or clerk is coming to, say…America…and how they’d feel walking into an unfamiliar store or sitting down in a restaurant, especially if they didn’t speak the language or know the customs. Probably they’d feel a bit uncomfortable, too.

Get My Paris Kitchen!

So you can relax when you come to Paris. A lot more people speak English than they used to, and in my experience, more and more locals want to practice their language skills. Fortunately, food is the international language, and Paris is filled with bakeries, cheese shops, wine bars, cafés, bistros, and restaurants where everyone should feel welcome. I keep a longer list of favorite restaurants in Paris here (on my website) and here (the newsletter archives), but here are a few places I ate at recently and some thoughts about them.

[Note: At most places in Paris, reservations are highly recommended, including the restaurants listed here, except for Jixiao, which is very casual. More and more restaurants in Paris take reservations online, and if your plans change, please let the restaurant know that you won’t be coming…even if it’s at the last minute, so they can take other guests or walk-ins.)

Capitaine

When my friend Mat came to town bearing bottles of his distillations, made in the heart of Burgundy from local ingredients. It was nice to catch up with him and his wife at Capitaine, where chef Baptiste Day is keeping the food focused on very fresh ingredients. I had a plate of lightly pickled vegetables and sardines, and the chef sent out a few oysters with grapefruit and fennel to try, which were both very good. And yes, I loved the oyster plate, too.

My friends both went with the sweetbreads, but the côte de porc (pork chop) was calling me, and it was probably the best pork I’ve had in France. It seems like someone’s bred the flavor out of pork, so it was nice to dive into a really great, flavorful pork chop with carefully cooked vegetables with a sauce that was so good, I flagged down the busy chef to tell him how terrific it was.

Dessert was a brown butter–apricot tart with house-made coconut ice cream, which wasn’t picture perfect (which is fine as I’m wary of fruit desserts that look too perfect — fruit should be ripe, juicy, and a little messy), and since it’s the season for apricots, I was happy to indulge along with a few sips of Mat’s new apricot eau-de-vie. (Capitaine)

Jixiao’s Buns

There used to be a team of three Asian-American women who lived in Paris who called themselves the Chop Chicks in Paris. Their mantra was: “We need to eat Asian food every day.”

I followed the three of them online. When one moved to England, I applied for her position. I don’t think they realized I was serious. (I was.)

Their online outings seem to have sizzled out as they moved on to other things, but the Asian food scene in Paris continues to thrive. Back in the day, Asian food wasn’t always well-represented, but thankfully, that’s changed — as have local tastes, which tolerate more spice and seasonings, as well as the diversity of flavors at the city’s multitude of Korean, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants. Jixiao’s Buns (at 21, quai des Grands Augustins, 6th) was on their list and naturally went on mine…so we gave it a try.

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One of the jewels of Paris is La Buvette, a compact wine bar presided over by Camille Fourmont, who created a highly personal buvette (place to drink), with approachable but interesting wines, outfitted with antique plates, flea market–found silverware, and a blackboard menu scribbled with delicious things to eat.

I featured Camille in Drinking French, along with her recipe for the famous Giant Beans and her excellent, and easy, terrine. (Other recipes can be found in her book, La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, co-written with Kate Leahy.)

La Buvette website

Camille has a knack for breathing new life into abandoned spaces, restoring what keeps them resolutely French, yet winking at beloved French traditions, such as using vintage café ashtrays advertising apéritifs oubliés (forgotten), filling Le Parfait jars with homemade pickles, and filling a former glass case that once held chocolate bonbons with hay-crusted French cheeses.

Olga, her new café/wine bar/buvette (drinking spot), is another gem. Just after I arrived at Olga on my first visit, I asked Camille where the old candy shop was that used to be on the same street. She said, “David, this is the old candy shop!”

Paris Eating & Drinking

Adjacent to the Gare de Lyon, it’s a surprising neighborhood to open in. But like others in Paris, such as Franck Audoux at Cravan, Pierre Jancou who pioneered Vivant…

…and Antoine Goldschmid at Poulette, they’re less interested in being in a trendy neighborhood than finding unique spaces that haven’t been touched (or ruined) by remodels, and polishing them back to their former glory.

It was nice to see it lovingly revisited…and with good food and wine to boot!

A stack of bien cuites (well-cooked) baguettes sits on the counter, ready to be split open and made into sandwiches. We shared a sandwich inspired by the blue cheese–Amarena cherry bao at Yam T’Cha, which Camille confessed was her favorite of their baos. (It’s not my favorite combo in a bao but works better for me in a sandwich.)

The wines lean toward natural wines, but as Camille wrote in her book, she’s not militant about natural wines; she just likes good wine, whether it carries a certain moniker or not. True, natural wines have turned into a “thing,” and I like them. But some require an open mind and attitude to appreciate*.

We had glasses of aligoté, a white wine from Burgundy, which previously had a less-than-stellar reputation; it was known primarily as the wine used to make a kir. One theory goes that the kir was invented to get people to drink the formerly undesirable aligoté of the region (which was known for being acidic), by adding blackcurrant liqueur to it. But aligoté has come into its own, and it’s one of my favorite wines. Just don’t confuse it with aligot, the stretched cheese and potato dish. When ordering the wine, you pronounce the final “e” whereas in the potato dish, the final “t” is silent.

What really wowed me here were the cheeses, many of which I’d never seen before in Paris. If there’s a better pairing than cheese and wine, I haven’t come across it.

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The cheeses are available for purchase but wonderful to enjoy sur place, on the premises. We had a few, including a tomme from the Jura flecked with wild garlic (above right), another ripened with hay (above left — and nope, you don’t eat that rind!).

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There are a few elusive blue cheeses, such as an artisan sheep’s milk fromage bleu in the style of Bleu de Termignon, as well as a marvelously tangy Persillé de Tignes made of goat’s and cow’s milk.

In traditional dining, cheese in France is generally consumed after a meal, and the “nougat,” below, wasn’t quite dessert, but it was a nice bridge between the two.

Made in-house with leftover bits and ends of cheese formed into nougat-like cubes, and studded with hazelnuts and pistachios, it resembles its sweeter counterpart.

It’s also Camille’s wink and nod to classic French apéritif cheese snacks, such as Laughing Cow and Apéricubes, and I love that she’s having fun with popular supermarket snacks, but making them herself. (And combatting food waste.)

But when it comes to an actual dessert, Camille offers up fontainebleau, a whipped blend of fromage frais and whipped crème fraîche that is literally heaven on a spoon. Candied Amarena cherries come back here, in addition to Sicilian orange jam and apple compote.

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Olga
3, rue Michel Chasles (12th)

[Opening hours printed on the door, at the top of this page/post. For updates check out their Instagram page.]

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*I am by no means a wine expert, natural or otherwise, and adhere to the credo “drink what you like.” I do, however, scratch my head over those who express vitriol against chemicals added to wine but who smoke cigarettes. (The discarded mégots, an estimated 30 million cigarette butts are tossed on the streets each year, take 12 years to decompose, and each one pollutes 500 liters of water.)

I’ve made comments here and there on natural wines, including in Drinking French, mentioning some might not be for everyone. A few well-meaning folks tried to fuel a feud between me and natural wine doyenne Alice Feiring, who is a friend, who mentioned in her newsletter that she disagreed with me. I dropped her a message about it, and she was totally fine with me having a different opinion than hers, which are a lot more informed than mine. If only all so-called disagreements could be resolved so amicably and easily. : )

But the more wines that I drink, the more I appreciate the layers of flavors that you get in some natural wines. And if you come to Paris, there are many natural wine bars where you can taste natural wines and see for yourself if you like them. It’s all good.

**My proofer asked me about making Fontainebleau, as it sounded good to her, too! I linked to a recipe in the post, in French, but it’s nearly impossible replicate outside of France because the dairy products aren’t the same nor are they readily available elsewhere. Another credo of mine is that you just need to come to France to enjoy certain things, and Fontainebleau is one of them.

I did find recipes in English here, here, and here, which I haven’t tried because I can get the real-deal. But if you do give it a go, let me know in the comments how it turns out.