3 things your stomach doesn't deserve in Paris

1. pre-made crepe
INSIST on a crepe stand that makes it fresh ala:

2 cool twin Persian brothers making fun of each other simultaneously in French/English helps, but are not necessary.

2.
there are http://www.hippopotamus.fr/ restaurants all over Paris. no matter how late it is, and how tres faim you are, do NOT enter a restaurant with a pix of a hippo logo outside. ditto to Leon's or whatever chained shenenigans you see advertising in the RATR metro stations... the food's worse than TGIF, and the service... well let's just say it's worse than the typical French 'bistro'.

3. Chinois Vente emporter (take out/togo) restaurant.
even if you're dying for Chinese food after 5 days of croque madam and escargo, do NOT enter a Chinese take-out restaurant selling food by the grams. that curry fried rice @ 1eur/100g is NOT a good deal, and it tastes like crap because the display case is cold so they must nuke your food before serving.

WARNING: Fresh-made take-away crepes filled with, say gruyere or nutella will be hot! Lava-like filling may explode across face and hands leaving you with a painful, but delicious snack.

The prevalence of instant-made crepe carts and street-facing windows throughout paris made it so that you'd rarely go hungry.

I didn't eat a la chinoise in Paris (I did have Morrocan though, and Indian in Bordeaux, the former outstanding, the latter just OK), but had a giggle fit over "oeuf foo yong"

A couple other french/english cognitive dissonance moments:
1) Crepes crustillant avec noixelles(sp) et miel
Hmm... crusty crepes with nuts and honey? Crusty crepes.... oh, Baklava!

2) Arcachon is literally strewn with ice cream shops in the summer. The menu in one kept listing chantilly as an ingredient in their confections. My phrasebook was no good in the food section, but it turned up as "clouds" in the weather section. Oh, yeah, whipped cream, bring it on. I've since seen chantilly listed as a french sauce of mayonaise with whipped cream. Ugh, not on my gelato! Luckily, this was not the case.

And snootiness of the French? Not to be had, except for one waiter who seemed insulted by my not ordering wine (I was dehydrated and headachy, not a good combo to add wine to).

Funny that this turned out to be crepe day on LTHForum. I love the way they have crepe stands everywhere, I love watching the guy squeegee the crepe into a circle, if I were Mayor Daley the cutesy thing I'd add to the city would be crepe stands (but then being Mayor Daley, I'd be anti-food carts, so I don't know where that leaves me).

I have no particular point, just... crepes... mmm. Close your eyes and if you smell crepes, you're in Paris. If you smell chestnuts, you're in New York.

One thing your stomach does deserve in Paris is a chicken from one of those street rotisserie stands. On Rue Cler, there's an African man and his Vietnamese wife who operate a rotisserie, selling buttery, fat, roasted chickens with side orders of French Vietnamese noodles and vegetables for around $8-9 US. It's been almost two years since I was in Paris, but I still remember this as one of the best meals I had there.

I spent nearly a year in France, mostly in Paris, and from time-to-time would REALLY get the hungries for Chinese. Talk about frustrated... Yikes!

But there's one place I can heartily recommend:

Au Bonheur du Palais
74, r. Paul Louis Land
Bordeaux 33000

Great chef and his family, pretty decent food, not tooo Frenchified.

Should be able to find them on:

http://abdp.free.fr/


The beef in Sichuan pepper is nice.

Geo

I know I'm resurrecting an old thread, but thought this might be a good place to try and find the name of a restaurant I went to in Paris several years back in my student days. It was a family-style couscous place in the quartier latin that was simply outstanding. We sat at long tables with red and white checked tablecloths, and they brought out the couscous and sauce in big bowls to pass around. I ordered merguez with mine, and had a delicious cup of pine nut tea at the end.

This is probably searching for a needle in a haystack, but does this ring a bell with anyone?

Yeah, I've either eaten there, or a place exactly like it: on, I think, r. de Bievre, east side of the street, about 4-5 doors down from the quai. If not on Bievre, it's on the next street, Maitre Albert, but I'm almost absolutely positive that it's not on M. Albert, bcz of the restaurant on the corner taking up so much of the east side of the street.

Anyway, there's a couscouserie right there.

And I've got a better one to recommend: in the 10th, in the middle of the Pas du Marché: crowded tables, separate servings, but really good food. And yes, the merguez is excellent!

Geo