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Posts Tagged ‘kebab’

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.

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