Five centuries after the beginning of his reign (1515-47), François I is remembered as an enlightened monarch, a man of letters and patron of the arts who imported great Renaissance arts and artists, among them Leonardo da Vinci, to France … Read More
It’s a sure sign of approaching gentrification when a restaurant like 975 opens in one of Paris’s quartiers populaires, in this case the area around Métro Guy Moquet in northwestern Paris, not far from the Périphérique.
For once, I beat the quick-off-the-mark food bloggers to a new Paris restaurant: A Mère. And what a find it is! While it won’t win any awards for decor, it ticks all the other boxes for a favorite restaurant: reasonable prices; high-quality, seasonal ingredients; great creativity; and attention to detail.
Summery weather and an evening reading at Shakespeare & Co (Zadie Smith and Nick Laird), could lead to only one conclusion: dinner at one of Paris’s top terraces, the nearby Beaurepaire. A meal there was also an occasion to check on the evolution of a restaurant first reviewed here in 2012.
Paris has lost a wonderful little Italian restaurant, Caffè dei Cioppi, but has gained La Dispensa. Sicilian chef Fabrizio Ferrara has closed his trattoria in an alleyway of the 12th arrondissement and opened a lunch spot/Italian deli on an equally obscure side street in the 10th, where I treated myself to lunch the other day.
Paris is seriously lacking in restaurants with quiet terraces where one can have a meal in peace on a summer evening. And, when such a place does exist, the restaurant is often not up to par – it’s almost as if the owners figure they don’t have to make an effort because they know they will fill their tables anyway.
The first block of Avenue Parmentier, near Rue du Faubourg du Temple in the 11th arrondissement, once a no-man’s land food-wise, is turning into something of a gourmet strip now that “old-timers” Chateaubriand and Le Dauphin have been joined by a new restaurant, Tannat.
I have a vivid memory of buying a ham sandwich at a street stand on a gloomy day during my first trip to Paris and eating it while sitting on a stone bench in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre. It was a revelation. How could anything so simple – a baguette, a few slices of ham and some butter – be so incredibly good?
About a year ago, a friend strongly advised me to go to the restaurant Cru. Although I greatly value her advice (it was Grace Teshima, a friend to many in Paris), I guess I was put off by the idea of eating a whole meal of only raw food, although it certainly could be excellent if done well.
Those who, like my friend Helen (as mentioned in last week’s review of La Marée Jeanne), are allergic to foam and other niceties of so-called molecular cuisine, and those who just crave good old-fashioned French food now and then would do well to have a meal at Au Bon Coin, where the classics of French bistro cooking are still made up fresh, not out of the freezer or a vacuum-packed plastic bag.
