Paris restaurants

Pitzman is a good alternative to L'As de Falafel in the Marais - does a lot of good Kosher food, too.

there used to be a lot of terrific kosher North African restaurants in Belleville but they've been chased out by gentrification. I miss those places.

I'm a huge fan of Sunday oysters at Le Baron Rouge, just a few steps into the 12th, next to a great flea market.

highly recommend bistroy les papilles which is linked upthread

and also yeah you have to go to l'as du felafel even if it's v. obvious

In Bellevile La Cantine is good for cheap, delicious but unflashy meals (entree and plate for 12 euro)
Renee and Gabin is a great Kosher Tunisian also in Belleville

Restaurant Bouillon Chartier on the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre is reasonably priced classic French food. Lovely, huge space. Old school. Gets crowded and
there's often a wait to get in so early dining is prob your best bet if you want to avoid the queue.

I think René et Gabin is closed?

Can't figure it out from google yet.

Thanks all for the great ideas.

Does anyone know Le Porokhane (3, Rue Moret) or Chez Aida (48, Rue Polonceau -Metro Barbes or Chateau Rouge)? they are both Senegalese

No, I don't know either. I've been to Moussa l'Africain, near the Cité des Sciences up in the 19th, which is sort of a pan-sub-Saharan African restaurant. I thought it was great (the lemon crème brûlée and banana tarte tatin were fabulous) but I see that it gets kinda panned by reviews, so I dunno.

Kamukera is a good Afro-Antillaise place on the rue du Chevaleret, close to the BNF. I've eaten there several times, you can get some standard Cameroonian dishes but also some West Indian stuff. cheap too!

also in that area: I dearly love Auberge Etchegorry, a Basque restaurant near Les Gobelins. oh man I want to head up there since it's getting on dinner time! start with the rillettes; their spin on cassoulet is epic; but it's the gateau basque that I really love.

& I've eaten next to it, at La Touraine, more times than I can count, but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. mostly I go there for offal. good times, but nothing extravagant.

no René et Gabin was open last week when I was there!

Nice!

in a dresseur brasserie in grim Porte de Versailles right now. Liverpool v RM on tho which is creating an enjoyable atmosphere. ordered lamb and gratin dauphinois.

lxy - v possibly be around for pints. will post here.

that's dreadful rather than dresseur as it happens.

obv L'As de Falafel is a cheap classic in the Marais

this was my husband's favourite place to eat when he lived in paris years and years ago - it just so happened that the apartment we stayed at when we went back this year was practically around the corner, and it was the first place we ate at. i don't really like falafel but even i thought it was really good.

i don't really have any good recs though bc we ended up going to a lot of random places that were terrible.

(sic) and I were there last year and really enjoyed the eats we got at Le Marché des Enfants Rouges. It's a semi-open market with lotsa food vendors. He stood in line to get us Moroccan food while I went off to procure a bottle of wine. The family that owned the stall then escorted us to a table and poured the wine.

hi fizzles. let us know if you want to meet up! we will be in paris monday-tuesday-wednesday.

bollocks - wd've been good but I haven't been keeping up with ilx recently and missed this. got drunk with french office colleagues on Monday at a murky bar in the 15th a. just under the peripherique and had a dismal Vietnamese on Tuesday.

hope you had a good time!

one more night in paris tomorrow (friday jan 2) if you're around still/again

anyone got any recent tips for places to eat, or just things to do? going for the weekend - mainly going to just relax pre-christmas but any recommendations for things to see or unusual sites of interest would be good. i've been to the big main things over the years.

i'm staying near pigalle metro.

Next time I go to Paris I'm going to visit the Church of Notre Dame de Raincy - 20s modernist concrete, looks incredible.

Our household is on a bit of a Bauhaus kick at the moment and would definitely be heading for the show at the Musee d'Arts Decoratifs which looks vg.

From Bauhaus to steak house

Good advice.

haha, indeed.

South Pigalle is a popular neighborhood right now. Have you been to the Musée Gustave Moreau? If you like À Rebours then this is relevant to your interests. It's in south Pigalle.

ah I've never read that - I probably should!

i'm guessing pigalle will have decent bars, like places with nice music or maybe house/techno? i am travelling solo but might still have a yearning for a bit of liveliness in the evening.

I don't know but I think so? I live just three metro stops away but I just moved to this apartment a couple of weeks ago. I haven't yet learned anything about the music scenes here

au passage was really good when i was there a few years ago & seems to still be? really fun vibe, great food & wine - http://parisbymouth.com/our-guide-to-paris-au-passage/

i havent been to clown bar (which is a restaurant) but i always see photos from it on instagram & makes me wish i still lived in europe - http://wendylyn.paris/eat-drink/city-guide/the-clown-bar/

I spent a very short time in Paris but Cafe Michel was a ridiculous dining experience and the food was great.

it looks amazing - think it might be closed at weekends tho.

i'm going to be near Arc de Triomphe / Champs Elysee this wkend (!?)

I could walk to Chez L'Ami Jean I guess? (Tho it will be cold and I am old)

Any other recs? (Euler?) It's so dispiriting trying to read between the lines of awful TripAdvisor reviews.

what sort of thing are you looking for? i found some good spots on the visit upthread.

Nothing too traditional - but still vaguely French - and not silly money - tho maybe just slightly irresponsible money. Around Champs Elysee it seems like either super fancy (and trad) or just sort of standard brasseries of varying quality, neither of which I'm really after

The best place I went to in my extremely limited experience was called La Cantine Du Troquet, but it looks like that's too far away (it's close to Montparnasse cemetary).

I'm going in a few weeks (to see the Bauhaus show mentioned upthread) - any recs from yr trip appreciated LG.

Around the Champs Elysees is not a good place to eat - full of expensive tourist joints etc. Luckily you're on a metro line that will take you to points east in a matter of minutes though

yeah I've never eaten over there. Batignolles / Porte de Clichy is "happening" now but that's probably further than you'd like to walk.

Yeah. I get in pretty late and want something close to my crash pad. I think I'll walk to Chez L'Ami Jean, it's only like 20 mins!

I will be in Paris for a couple of nights later in the month; we've lots of things planned by way of looking at galleries / architecture but we're trying not to be too precise about what we do when (it'll accord to what we feel like). Any recommendations for places to eat in any of the following categories? Generally speaking, with an eye to the exchange rate, places which aren't terribly expensive much preferred
1) for lunch in the 16th, roughly near Jasmin (though we're happy to walk within reason)
2) dinner anywhere we wouldn't have to book (ie we can decide to go there at the last minute if it makes sense, given we'll be mobile)
3) breakfast within sensible walking distance of Grands Boulevards metro

Happy to hear about anywhere any of you might particularly love though.

the XVIème is like a foreign country to me, out of my price range!

I went to L'Ami Jean. It was fantastic! Very home-style stuff. Dessert was particularly amazing. Also it was Very Expensive. Mains for like 40-60 euros. Wayyyyy out of my price range. But it was great :) Shabby tables, diner style service, but very attentive, the staff all incredibly salty - "Can I have another carafe of water?" "No" *wink*

Last night we went to Le Sot L'y Laisse which was just astonishing. A Japanese chef doing French food, basically. It was out of this world. We had a long comical moment with the staff where we couldn't decide which wine to get - there were 5 of us - and she kept bringing out different bottles, putting a taste in each of our glasses, we'd try it, she'd push us to try another.. I think we tried 5 different bottles! Everything was bold and fresh and good. No heavy rich sauces. There was pigeon and veal and sole. I really recommend it. In common with Chez L'Ami Jean the interior and decoration were perfunctory, slapped together, as if it had been inherited from whatever the previous place had been. Didn't matter. It felt like a privilege to get to sit and eat there (and it was).

http://lefooding.com/en/restaurants/restaurant-le-sot-l-y-laisse-paris

jealous

was there also a prix fixe menu at l'ami jean? i think thats what we got

might depend on where you're staying, tim, but i ate at a place called ambassade auvergne one of my evenings, it was v traditional but enjoyable, i had aligot and sausage, nice atmosphere, amazing chocolate mousse. another evening i went to a place in montmartre called mascotte montmartre, gigantic bowl of mussels with frites. i guess as a solo traveller and someone who hadn't been in paris for a while i was sort of looking for the classics done well, both of these places fitted that bill.

xpost

in my neck of the woods there's a place called En Vrac which sells fabulous wines "en vrac", that's to say you fill up your own bottles (like growlers for beer in the States). the wine is excellent & inexpensive since you do the bottling; they also have a lovely selection of already-bottled wines, mostly natural, as well as some spirits en vrac as well. You can eat there too and have wine by the glass.

Thanks all of you. Now I want to go to all of the places you mention. Euler, en Vrac sounds fab (I really like the sound of these caves with limited but good menus; do you think I'd struggle there with very limited French? (I mean, I can roughly mke myself understood but I'm still well short of decent conversational French, shamefully.)

To be fair it's pretty hard to learn a language!

At En Vrac they talked to my brother in great English.

We didn't make it to En Vrac this time, hope we do in the future.

We did go to Le Sot L'Y Laisse, which we enjoyed as much as Tracer did: the food was spectacular throughout without being flashy (a bit of judiciously-applied foam was the closest it got to being techniquey), and the room was a pleasure to be in: the staff were so ridiculously nice and everyone in the tiny place seemed to be having a good time. Us included. It's not often I go to a restaurant and think that it isn't really like any other restaurant I've been to (at least, I rarely think that in a positive way) but this place seemed really unique.

Other places we enjoyed this weekend: Au Passage, which is the familiar (for London) concept of small plates, which (in London) can involve a lot of mediocrity inbetween a few really good things; not so here, where everything was delicious and the staff seemed very happy to accommodate my terrible French and slip comfortably into English as soon as they needed to. We were very pleased with the place.

We also walked into a place called Racines for a late lunch after our train arrived too late for us to wander about, largely because it was super-close to our hotel and I had half a memory of reading a good review. This too was delicious, I had some lamb dish which seemed more or less perfect, J was just as pleased with her sole PLUS the wine we drank, after having asked for a glass of house white, was probably the best thing we drank all weekend. That's in a weekend which involved tremendous cocktails in Pas de Loup and The Red House amongst others.

I'm pretty sure the Parisian food and drink trade is much, much more tolerant of bad French than it was 20 years ago.

(The concrete church in La Raincy which I mentioned upthread is an absolute marvel, by the way, and justified the trip on its own, but that's off-topic I guess.)

I'm pleased to say this was overall the best weekend in Paris I've had, even in the cold and the wet. Well done Paris.

There you go

i went to chez janou last night. it was great! i was there quite early but it was extremely busy, tourists eat early i suppose, my excuse was i travelled through lunch. initially it looked as tho i wouldn't get in but then the barman (possibly owner) said i'd be okay if i was happy to eat at the bar, which obv was what i wanted. ended up meeting a few people who were sitting beside me - the atmos generally was great, the barman was ridiculously rude to some people but once you braved his initial greeting it was all pretty genial. he was pouring free glasses of wine and stuff for us by the end. really great communal atmos and the food was nice, fairly classic stuff. thanks for the tip, tracer and emma b.

Is it rude to ask you if you specifically went to Paris to get some writing done? (read your trimming down a story tweets)

Asking because France has been extremely kind to me in this respect: I go away at least once a year on my own, to have a couple of good writing days, coupled with good food and an inspiring feeling. Paris is hard to beat when it comes to my specific needs that way, though it can be hard to ignore all the diversions. Was just wondering if your trip was of the same make more or less.

sort of a combo of things. my assignments for college are due on monday, it's nice to get away somewhere after xmas, and i didn't want to spend a week in my apartment trying to write, can be kind of cabin fever. also just nice to visit paris, food and wine etc. the change of scene was p good actually - kind of forced me to work in compact segments of time.

Yeah, that's the best. Cabin fever very much something bothering me when trying to write. I've plenty of time for blaming my home but in fairness it's me. Bonne chance, man.

ah that's great you had a good time at janou ronan. i haven't been there in years. i do remember a certain impressive surliness to the waitstaff, and the lovely emma b telling me that if you're rude back to them "the waiters sort of enjoy it" which i still have my reservations about. in any case it's quite rare to get a free drink in france so well done!

there was some free absinthe also - it was quite a friendly atmosphere until an extremely weird american joined in. when i said i was in paris for two days he said "that's awesome - well done you for choosing to give that gift to yourself"

last night i went to bistrot paul bert, it was full of other tourists, predictably enough, but the food was very good. really good steak tartare with salad and fries, steak, salad and chips all exemplary.

today with some time to kill near gare du nord i ended up trying this place: https://www.alexanderlobrano.com/restaurant-reviews/les-arlots-paris-a-stunningly-good-new-bistro-a-b/

it was fantastic - prob the best meal i had this time around. the menu was a lot more simple for lunch than in that article, i had an egg salad to start and onglet with potato gratin. the wine was mostly natural and the entire atmos and service was great. definitely worth a try for those of you using the eurostar.

ah that was the top recommendation i got from the winemakers I was talking to as well (les arlots have just started stocking their wine). will definitely try it when i'm out there next, hopefully at the end of the month.

Any good recommendations near Gare de Lyon or should I just trek in further towards Bastille/Charonne?

We just spent way too much time finding a public fontaine petillante. Totally worth it though. I should've had a party there.

There’s one in the Jardin d’Eole close to chez moi! There’s also one close to the BnF.

I went to the one near Chatelet. Although we mistakenly thought there was one near Republique (some weird thing on the map) so we were creepstering on anything that looked remotely like a fountain. Went to the one near the library F. Mitterand today.

Right BnF = bibliothèque François Mitterand

City is fun today! Just got back from Germany, and the streets are full of flags and songs.

Ah, that is the BnF! We had a little picnic by the quai de la gare today but it was way too sunny and already at 1pm it looked like it was going to be a madhouse soon. I realize that the thai restaurants I was trying to remember upthread are around Rue de la Butte aux Cailles. My spouse has been a sport about making sure I get my fill of foie, pulpo and pig ears this trip so I need to make sure he gets some tofu soon. He's super into the sparkling water fountains. We filled up my nalgene at them twice today and took pics.

That’s how you do it!

Going to be in Paris early December for a few nights, some really interesting recommendations from this thread (Les Arlots, Bistrot Paul Bert), anything else taken anyone's fancy since the last post?

I had a good experience at La Cave de Belleville this summer after hitting the Raviolis Nord Est. I am adding both to my set list of places I always go while in Paris.

This is probably lame, but the sushi is really mediocre where I live so we do go to the Matsuris in Paris and Lyon all the time, especially because of the La Fourchette 40% off deal. I love conveyor belt sushi.

Cool, I didn’t know we had conveyer belt sushi here! Are any of the locations in particular easy to get a seat at?

I find them all easy to get a seat at. But I also eat kind of early. I usually try to do 30 minutes after the lunch or dinner service starts so there is more stuff out on the belt. But you can also just order from the menu whenever. I think they all have slightly different menus.

I have absolutely never seen one full, but they also don't have the 30-40% off at primetimes I guess. You can see on la fourchette times when it's available.

Went to a place called Baieta (think it was in the left bank?) this summer and it knocked my socks off. Pricey but awesome. And another place called Petite Keller that was more boho and Asian fusion. Excellent as well.

La Fourchette is a great tool these days. I feel a little bad using the discounts at the Eritrean restaurant nearby, but on the other hand the discounts are how I found the place.

Yeah, i usually get embarrassed about groupon discount types of things but Matsuri is too pricey for the quality without it otherwise. And they are always really seamless in just putting the discount on. We used it to try an ethiopian restaurent near Jaures last time too.