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Archive for the ‘Places to eat in Paris’ Category

Many Paris travelers limit themselves to the Paris defined by the inner 8 arrondissements. Some will not even consider venturing beyond this self-imposed limit. What a pity, when you know what lies beyond! Our mission at ParisSharing is not to convince the rigidly conventional crowd to leave their comfort zone, but rather to encourage those of you who, by reading our blog, have already demonstrated your travel savvy.

This introduction explains why you should venture 10 minutes from the crowds of Montmartre, to the backside of that legendary hill where you will experience a “restaurant-oasis”. After a troubled history, the Square Mercadet has been reinvented by a team of three, notably a very talented South African cook.

A dinner with six friends gave 100% satisfaction to all. The cuisine was inventive and savory, with particular mastery demonstrated in the cookery of the meats and fish: not a second too much nor too little. We dare you to find a better swordfish or burbot dish.

Before becoming absorbed by our taste-buds, we felt the coolness of the early April evening fall upon us as we sipped Chardonnay on the secluded terrace, nestled among  blooming vines and far from the noise of the city.

Of course, you can find comparable quality  in reknown Parisian restaurants, but not at these prices: 15€ for a lunch menu, 24€ for a dinner menu (appetizer + main dish). Lucky readers, that probably won’t last for long.

227 bis, rue Marcadet 75018 Paris

tel: 01 53 11 08 41

See more ParisSharing restaurant recommendations in our online guidebook.

And check out the nearest ParisSharing accommodation.

The Cinnamon Tree–it even sounds appealing in English. We recommend this restaurant for a wet and cold day in Paris, combined with an exploration of all the covered passages that make the 2nd arrondissement seem like architectural Swiss cheese. Perhaps after your outing to one of the numerous theaters in the district or after paying a visit to your favorite waxed celebrities at the nearby Musée Grévin.

Our recommendation isn’t based on the entire menu, but specifically on the quiches and deserts. The red fruit crumble is fabulous, as is the “café gourmand”. Above all, the decor is worth the detour–an authentic relic from the nineteenth century. It used to be a chocolatier.

Reaonably priced : quiches for 8,50€, deserts for 5,20€.

Address: passage des Panoramas, 2nd arrondissement

See video:  L’arbre à Cannelle

and more ParisSharing restaurant choices here.

photo credits: Eric Tenin. Do you wonder why there is a table set in the middle of this Paris street? That is just one of the secrets revealed to PariSharing members!

The new MICHELIN Red Guide France for 2011 came out this week.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Guide, it is considered by some to be the“bible”of French restaurant guides.

The MICHELIN Guide has three categories of restaurant ratings:

●        Stars (1-3) – for outstanding restaurants, three-stars being the ultimate in gastronomy

●        Charming Restaurants

●        Bib Gourmand – affordable restaurants with good cuisine

Three-Star Restaurants

No surprise here.  There were no new restaurants awarded the ultimate three-star rating this year.  If you can afford it, or want an extraordinary, once in a lifetime dining experience while in Paris, here is the list of three-star restaurants in Paris:

Le Meurice hotel

L’Ambroisie

L”Arpège

Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée Hotel

Le Bristol hotel

Ledoyen

Pierre Gagnaire

L’Astrance

Le Pré Catelan

Guy Savoy

Reservation Tips

If you arrive in Paris without a reservation, you probably will not be able to have a three-star experience.  It’s extremely difficult to get a reservation at these restaurants, and you generally need to book months in advance.  So, if you are planning a trip to Paris and would like to experience a three-star meal, then make sure you look at the guide for any special reservation instructions and call or e-mail the restaurant as soon as you can.

If you aren’t sure you want to make the type of investment needed to enjoy a three-star meal, a great way to experience a three-star restaurant is to go to lunch.  Most of these restaurants have fixed priced tasting menus at lunch that are a fraction of the dinner price.  For instance, Guy Savoy has a special Internet rate of 110€ for lunch.  Look at the restaurant’s Web site for details www.guysavoy.com.

What’s New in 2011

What we think is the most interesting development in the 2011 guide is the increase in the “Bib Gourmand” (or good food at moderate prices) restaurants.   The Guide added 117 new restaurants in this category.  If you choose a restaurant from this section, you will get a fabulous meal for less than 35€ in Paris.  Everyone can enjoy an excellent meal in Paris, and this section of MICHELIN let’s you in on the secrets of where to go if you don’t want to spend a fortune.

Also new this year, MICHELIN is organizing a special Spring event in France called Printemps du guide MICHELIN. From March 21 to June 21, one thousand restaurants across France are offering deals for readers of the French edition of the MICHELIN Guide. When you eat at one of the participating restaurants, all you need to do is present the special pass inserted in the MICHELIN Guide France 2011 to get the deal.  The list of participating restaurants and their offers are posted on www.viamichelin.com. Special offers are also listed on the Web site, but unfortunately, the site is only available in French, which is really too bad for tourists if they don’t speak French.

The Guide and Our Picks

In case you’ve never seen the actual MICHELIN Guide, it’s a list of carefully selected restaurants and hôtels throughout France.  For Paris, the guide lists restaurants alphabetically by arrondissement (districts) as well as a quick list by cuisine type and rating.  The guide also has some helpful features including listings of restaurants open on the weekends and those open in August.

Some of our favorites are listed in this year’s guide including Yam’tcha, which earned one star, Chateaubriand and Frenchie.  Joel Robuchon has done it again with his recently opened Atelier Etoile earning two stars.  The MICHELIN Guide France 2011 also features 571 starred restaurants: 470 with one star (of which 46 new), 76 with two stars (5 new) and 25 with three stars.

If you do not want to carry around the MICHELIN guide while you’re walking around Paris (it is huge and only available in hardcover), you can find all of the hotels and restaurants on the MICHELIN Web site – www.viamichelin.com.   The MICHELIN Guide is also available for iPhone on the app store

http://www.viaMICHELIN.co.uk/static/iphone/restaurants.htm

Remember, a big part of what we love about Paris-Sharing is getting to share our tips with you on experiencing Paris as a local.  We already offer you a list of great value eateries and we’d be happy to help you make reservations or share our restaurant recommendations with you.  Drop me a note on donna@paris-sharing.com.

On one of the three most beautiful days the year 2010 had to offer, it began as a quest for the best terrace café within 2 minutes of the Luxembourg gardens. There are millions of people looking for exactly that, so part of what we do at Paris-Sharing is…to share such priceless advice. By luck, we got in on this opportunity early on. The Charivari only opened this year, replacing a rather tired and disappointing café called O Poivrier.

Let’s not be mistaken, this is not a Michelin three star, it’s just a brasserie that doesn’t count on its prime location and sunny terrace to satisfy customers. The cuisine is tasty and carefully prepared. Particular mention in the photo below goes to the homemade bed of whipped potatoes.

The servers are friendly (remember this is worth a premium in Paris),  and we immensely appreciated the offer to taste the wine before ordering (we were hesitating between two). More about the brasserie Chivari on the Paris-Sharing restaurant guide.

A good hour tanning on the terrace allows one to reflect  on what “charivari” is all about. First discovery : charivari is orgininally a French word meaning (in English) ”A mock serenade of dissonant noise done with kettles and tin horns meant to annoy. Generally when an older person married a very young person.”  That’s from Webster’s 1913 Dictionary. In French, the word continues to designate an uproar or hullabaloo. After almost 20 years of learning French, I hadn’t come across that one yet.

Second discovery : “le charivari” was also a satirical journal founded by Charles Philipon in 1832, famous for its subversive treatment of life in the July Monarchy and the Second Empire.

With those tidbits of culture added to your collection, go enjoy a lunch at the Charivari before it becomes over-popular!

If you would like to stay nearby, consider some of our current and exclusive offerings on Paris-Sharing:

- Chez Anne on the boulevard Saint Germain

- Vast Hauseman-style home next to the Bon Marché

- A loft come true

L'As du Falafel

Why would you settle for Middle-Eastern street food when you are in the culinary capital of the world ? For a start: because you’re on a tight budget, or you’re on the go, and/or you don’t dig McDonald’s (we at Paris-Sharing don’t dig McDonald’s). But have you ever considered that simply enjoying a falafel-style sandwich on a park bench in Paris might actually be the very thing you’ve always wanted and have never had?

It has been recorded that on June 24th 2005, an English tourist by the name of Jane Campbell felt a sudden surge of unprecedented bliss while diving her tongue into the warm hummus of an Israeli-style falafel. This occurred while she sat upon a sun-warmed bench in the Square George-Cain, facing the bronze nude sculpted by Aristide Maillot. The unique moment in the life of Jane is memorialized by a tiny but highly ornamented “F” engraved on the trunk of the Square’s most prominent fig tree. It is not known whether she ordered her falafel with extra harissa or not.

Such bliss is not accessible through just any sandwich. That’s why it’s worth the trouble to present you with the best Paris has to offer, in several variants. The first is the undisputed king , “L’As du Fallafel” located on the rue des Rosiers in the Marais. As reported by the New York Times, this authentic Jewish middle-east style falafel “contains the requisite super-crisp, garlicky chickpea fritters, with creamy hummus, lightly pickled red cabbage (something between slaw and kraut), salted cucumbers, fried eggplant and just-hot-enough harissa. This is all piled into a pita in such quantities that eating it is an adventure in napkin management.”

Lebanese fallafel, Bastille market

The next step in the falafel journey brings us to Lebanon, or rather the Bastille market, where you can enjoy the cheapest fallafel in town at 3,50€. At that price you would have to be pure Parisian to gripe, but my modest suggestion to the chef would be to add a bit more sauce so as to avoid any heimlich maneouver on the public market place–potentially very embarrasing. Frankly, they’re good (some days better than others–I’ve been back over 10 times). Using the same fried vegetarian chickpea balls as the starting point, the sandwich includes garlic sauce, tabbouleh (parsley, tomato, onion), pickled “I’m not sure exactly what”, and comes fully wrapped in pita bread, making it somewhat more practical to eat than the Israeli version while riding a Vélib in heavy traffic . That being said, the French government has recently passed a law against munching falafels when crossing busy intersections (such as the place de la Bastille). The law is applicable to cyclists , pedestrians, and poodles.

Rolling back the years, I enjoyed my first  falafel-style sandwich in 1994 at a mom and pop Greek delicatessen called Appolon, located 64 rue Raymond Losserand in the 14th. Basking in the late-autumn sun in the nearby Square du Cardinal-Wyszinski, I also experienced an epiphany of sorts, though not as historically significant as Jane’s. I returned to this place 16 years later to find the same Greek owner with his meek but friendly manners, but considerably more “salt” than pepper in his well-groomed mustache. The inflation-defying (4.20€) sandwiches were every bit as delicious, their distinctive feature being the fresh tzatziki and tabbouleh. For the purists, a Greek sandwich cannot of course be classified as a falafel. Too bad this delicatessen is somewhat off the beaten track, but maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find a Paris-Sharing.com apartment nearby.

The final stage of our journey brings us to a strikingly contemporary break with tradition, and a subtle transition from falafel-style to kebab sandwiches. Paris is eternally modern, even when it comes to street-food, and this joint is destined to revolutionize the Paris fast-food scene. On top of it, the owner is a Facebook buddy (you should become Damien’s fan immediately after becoming a fan of Paris-Sharing). I’m happy to make a humble contribution to the massive media coverage he has already received for his clever “chic kebabs”.

Glam-OUR kebab

Located in the very stomach of Paris (95, rue Rambuteau, in the Forum des Halles), a district notorious for mediocre street food, the restaurant OUR has hired an acclaimed chef, Philippe Genelettiais,  to re-invent the kebab as a chic, imaginative, healthy, and efficiently replicable dish. Here we showcase the “Glamour kebab” composed of lemon-grass chicken, fennel, ginger herb sauce.

Whatever your Parisian street-food preference may be, and wherever in Paris you may choose to enjoy it, consider at that very moment… you may have found what you’ve always been looking for.

>Other suggested eateries from Paris-Sharing