Paris Restaurants

Where we've been eating lately…

Roast lamb and frites at Grande Brasserie

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):

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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…

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.