On the strong recommendation of a friend, I ate recently at the Sichuan “street food” restaurant Atelier Mala. I put “street food” in quotes because it seems to me that street food is food sold in the street, not in a restaurant. The fact that it is sold in the street is the only thing that makes it street food; it could be just about any kind of food from anywhere in the world. Ever since street food became trendy in Paris about a decade ago, however, restaurants have been using the term as a selling point and often even adding it to their names.
Wherever it came from – the streets of Chengdu or the kitchen of the restaurant in Paris’s ninth arrondissement – the food at Atelier Mala was excellent.
Before you order, you are asked what level of heat you want in your food, from zero (none) to five (very hot). We were going to go midway with three but wisely decided to take it down to two, which turned out to be our limit.
We began with an array of starters to share. They were all delicious, but the standout was a luscious dish of pork dumplings with ginger and the “secret” Mala sauce.
With it, we had a few other small shared dishes to raise the vegetable count, including a cucumber salad. I usually love the Chinese version of this simple dish, but I have had better. This one was rather bland, without that nice sweet, vinegary flavor. The bok choy sautéed in garlic and ginger was fresh and perfectly cooked, but could have used a little more of the two latter ingredients. The Sichuan-style eggplant wasn’t exactly what I expected, but it definitely grew into a favorite the more I consumed.
For our main dish, we shared the dandan mian, Sichuan wheat noodles with minced pork, chili oil, house-made sweet soy sauce, sesame paste and peanut butter, a warming, comforting dish bursting with wonderful flavors.
Atelier Mala, which has two branches in Paris, and a few in other cities, was founded by a Frenchman, Stanislas Denieau, who lived in China for five years and collected his favorite recipes from the Sichuan province. He has done an amazingly good job. This branch of the restaurant attracts a crowd of happy young people who can get a bit noisy, but the food made up for it. The noodles are made in-house, as it should be, the decor is simple and appealing, and the servers are friendly and reactive.
If you want to be sure of total authenticity, go to the nearby Xi’an (44, rue Lamartine, 75009 Paris, tel. 07 78 80 86 69; open daily), a simple, hole-in-the-wall restaurant specializing in the food of the Chinese province of Shaanxi, cooked up by the motherly owner, whose homemade biáng biáng (belt) noodles are a pure delight but can be a bit challenging to eat, having no beginning or end. Before the bowl of noodles, we always order the stunning eggplant dish and the wonderful sautéed green beans with fried chili. Another delicious specialty is the rou jia mo, a kind of sandwich made with a flatbread similar to pita and stuffed with shredded pork, chopped cucumber and coriander.
The food at Xi’an always induces a happy mood – and the prices are extremely reasonable.
See our Favorite Restaurants by Arrondissement page to find a good restaurant in the neighborhood where you want to eat.
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