What an incredible place! And what an endearing owner!

There are only three 2-top tables at this dinner-only bistro run by big-hearted Mamie, which is French for Granny or Nan. Six seats in all—maybe seven or eight if Mamie feels like rearranging something, but don’t count on it.

Mamie (Susanna/ZouZou) grew up in the business. Her parents had run a café. So had her grandparents. At 16, she went to work at Bouillon Chartier (rue du Fbg Montmartre) and stayed there for nine years before moving on, eventually operating her own bistro. A shady landlord, she says, led her to quit her previous address. She and her husband, Christian, a fireman-cum-chef, then stumbled upon this place, formerly held by a certain Germaine for 50 years. They took over in 1990 and named it for the sand/desert roses (roses des sables) that Christian collects, some of which can be seen in the window. Christian is now unable to work due to ill health, so Mamie runs the place herself, as a one-woman show, preparing dishes in a miniscule alcove kitchen, taking orders on a slip of paper, bringing drinks, serving dishes, cleaning up, and adding up the bill on the paper placemats. She chats as she works with those capable of chatting in French. I was the only one in that category on a recent evening.

Since few Parisians would be willing to stand by a restaurant door at 6:30pm in the hopes of getting a seat when the owner first slowly opens the curtain and the door at 7, and since few would wait around without knowing when the second or possibly third seating will begin, La Petite Rose des Sables attracts foreign diners. Come alone and you’ll be seated with another solo diner from who knows where. Groups in odd numbers may be split up. Anyway, the place is so small that you may be talking with everyone else before long. Chinese, Korean and English turn out to be the main languages of her guests, though Mamie doesn’t speak any of those. No matter. Good old-fashion patience and gestures will suffice.

Upon arrival, Mamie pours guests a small glass of sangria as a welcome aperitif and tears open a small packet of potato chips as the appetizer. Don’t care for sangria? Mamie (she often speaks of herself in the third person) will bring something else. The three or four dishes of the menu are simple enough to understand. That evening there was a chicken dish, two pork dishes, and beef bourguignon, served with rice, fries, or coquillette elbow pasta (kids’ favorite in France), and/or salad. It’s simple, long-stewed in big pots, hearty and filling. Dessert (whatever Mamie feels like serving—meringue, a slice of pie), mint tea and a shot of alcoholic punch are included for 12€-16€80.

The food isn’t rave-worthy, yet when combined with the surprisingly limited seating, the personalized bistro decor (photographs, gifts from clients, and plaques with heart-warming sayings, along with the checkered tablecloths and curtains), and especially Mamie herself, La Petite Rose des Sables deserves kudos for existing at all.

When we entered, Mamie warmly announced that we could only stay for an hour or an hour and a half so that she could turn the table, but she wasn’t actually watching the clock. If you’re happy, it appears, she’s happy. She even gives out gifts (I got a pair of Paris socks) and willingly poses for photographs. We stayed for two hours despite my efforts to pay so that others could come in. “There’s no rush,” she said. “I have plenty to do before they come in anyway. Have some more punch.”

It would be easy to dismiss all this as Tik-Tok touristy since the bistro primarily attracts non-French visitors. Mamie doesn’t seem to mind that her clients of today are not her clients of 20 or 30 years ago. She nevertheless treats everyone like a local—a local who’s a bit slow on the up-take.

It would also be easy to dismiss the place as not being a bistro in the strict sense of my purist friends because it has neither an active bar counter nor opening hours beyond meal time. But no other term fits for such a personally decorated setting where one enjoys inexpensive, long-stewed dishes, and the grandmotherly kindness of Mamie.

A surprising bistro find that’s been here all along! And when it’ll be gone, it’ll be gone.

La Petite Rose des Sables – Chez Mamie. 6 rue de Lancry, 10th arr. Metro République or Jacques Bonsergent. No reservations.

Cash and credit cards are accepted but not mobile and contactless payments. She places tips in a piggy bank resembling a camera, saying it’s “for the grandchildren.”

© 2026, Gary Lee Kraut

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© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut, All rights reserved.

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In this first in a series of Paris cocktail bar expeditions we sipped our way through a sliver of the 10th arrondissement with stops at three very different bars located just off Boulevard Saint-Martin, between the metro stations République and Strasbourg Saint-Denis.

For some cocktail travelers any one of these bars will be enchanting enough for an evening’s excursion into cocktail-land, for others the contrast of two will raise the spirit before dinner, while the devoted cocktail explorers will enjoy a delightfully varied journey by taking in the three, all without walking more than 600 yards.

These bars can be visited in any order, at any time in the evening and into the night, but our preferred order progresses from Lavomatic, where we found recipe, to CopperBay, where we enjoyed chemistry, to Baranaan, where we discovered alchemy.

Come before 7pm if you want a relatively quiet cocktail, otherwise enjoy the crowd, either before, after or instead of dinner. Anyone over 40 may feel a bit over the hill as these bars fill, but all are welcome and will soon feel at home. None takes reservations.

Recipe: Lavomatic

Lavomatic
30 rue René Boulanger, 10th arr.
Metro République
Open Tues. and Wed. 6am-1pm, Thurs.-Sat 6am-2am

What may well be the world’s smallest laundromat is also the front to Paris’s most secretive cocktail bar. Well, it would be secretive if this bar, which opened in 2015, weren’t already such a hit. Still, not all comers know which button on which laundry machine gives access to the cocktail cycle.

Find it and a door will open to a staircase leading to a compact and lively cocktail scene. Fellow launderers sit on Brillo cubes, swings, bar stools and leaning ledges. Get your suds up with contemporary cocktail recipes for the start of your evening whether out for a quick rinse or the full cycle, cool, warm or hot. 10-12 euro cocktails and nice little appetizers won’t take you to the cleaners. Rinse, repeat if necessary.

Best seat in the house: the corner ledge of the bar area.

Chemistry: CopperBay

CopperBay
5 rue Bouchardon, 10th arr.
Metro Strasbourg Saint-Denis or Jacques Bonsergent
Open Tues.-Sat. 6pm-2am

The faraway name and the clean-lined décor of CopperBay may be mildly evocative of the bar of a New England yacht club, but as watched Aurélie and Julien measure out doses, dashes and dollops of the elements of fine mixology we immediately recognized them as highly skilled cocktail chemists.

Choose from the brief description on the wall, from the chemistry cards on the menu rung or simply present your tastes and requirements to the owner-lab techs behind the bar.

While Julien’s hand ballet executes state-of-the-art formulas, Aurélie selects, stirs, shakes and shimmies with such self-assurance that she can also simultaneously offer a warm welcome to newcomers while offering advice to a return traveler. Meanwhile, Elfi, the third partner in this smooth-running experiment, largely works behind the scenes.

Canned, jarred and wrapped nibbles can be ordered, but the focus is firmly on beverage at this second stop on our cocktail tour.

Alchemy: Baranaan

Baranaan
7 rue du Faubourg Saint Martin, 10th arr.
Metro Strasbourg Saint-Denis
Open Tues.-Sun. 6pm-1:30am

An unmarked door at the back of the vegetarian Indian snack joint Elaichi opens to a subcontinental speakeasy where cultures cross from one cocktail to the next.

Owners Raphaël and Krishane and their team of multiculti alchemists lure us out of Paris and into a joyful world of spirits, infusions, essential oils, spices and liqueurs. This is the cocktail traveler’s passport to nearly mystical concoctions. Booths—rather, compartments—along the wall offer a train journey into the Tamil heartland. Gaze through the one-way mirror in the rest room to reflect on your fellow traveler before returning to your seat.

Naans and other noshes allow 10th arrondissement cocktail explorers to ignore dinner and continue their spirit-fueled journey into the night.

(c) 2016

Want to partake in a France Revisited drinking or eating expedition?
France Revisited occasionally enlists readers to join on cocktail, beer or wine bar expeditions as well as on gastronomic adventures, particularly in Paris, sometime beyond. Expeditionists and adventurers are expected to be willing to try different food or beverages (i.e. you won’t be forced, but please don’t be difficult) and to give honest opinions that may be integrated into an upcoming article. Expeditionists and adventurers pay their own way or a pre-defined cost. These are not tours but ways in which you help us in our research and we help you enjoy (re)discovering Paris and beyond. Write to gary [at] francerevisited.com if you’d like to join the exclusive list. Another way to be sure to join is by supporting France Revisited, as explained here.

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That’s my motto when selecting restaurants for many visitors. And there’ve been a lot these past few weeks: friends, relatives, friends of friends, friends of relatives, classmates, fundraisers, writers doing research, travelers taking most excellent tours. We’ve had lunch together, dinner, we’ve been to wine bars, had picnics, stopped for pastries, chocolate, Bertillon sorbet.

“How do you/they stay so thin,” they ask, causing me to suck in my gut, “eating like this all the time?”

Now here’s a secret the food-bloggers won’t tell you: We don’t. At least I don’t.

Paris can be visited as a perpetual all-you-can-eat deluxe buffet but it’s lived as a city with countless venues for a shared meal or drink with friends, colleagues, clients and assorted visitors. Eating well implies choosing well, ordering well, buying well… enjoying good company. There is a form of Parisian self-control in matters of food and drink. One gets a hang of quickly enough. Spending two hours à table doesn’t mean consuming four times the amount of someone who sits for 30 minutes. And we actually eat at home sometimes. We have access to good fresh produce. We walk to shops. We do our 10,000 steps, including frequent staircases. We cook in our little kitchens. We may even exercise, gently.

However, there are times when some combination of visitors, work obligations, journalist events, birthday celebrations and ordinary social life lead me on an extended period of wining and dining. And no matter how much I protest when the dessert menu is handed out, there are quite a few crème brulées, moelleux au chocolat, pies and tarts placed on the table with an extra fork or spoon. “I’ll just have a little taste,” as my grandmother would say.

That period of indulgence can last a few days or a week or, with my most recent schedule of visitors, events and travelers on most excellent tours, a month. Indulgence, however, is not the same thing as overindulgence. Indulgence is a knowing pleasure. Overindulgence is loss of control. Admittedly, there’s a fine line of distinction at times.

A friend, in Paris for business, unsure of which side of the line we were on, said during our third straight high calorie wine-infused meal together, “My wife’s gonna kill me for putting on weight. I’m gonna tell her it’s your fault.”

If shared good living is my fault then guilty as charged. I don’t know what you’re during this afternoon, Scott, but I’m going for a run as soon as I finish this article.

10 Venues for Shared Good Living—Simple Food, Simply Good

What follows is a selection of simple, simply good restaurants and shops that have been on my eating trails of the past few weeks during this most recent bout of shared good living. It’s my food diary of the past few weeks, minus the less appealing, the less well served and the more gastronomic meals consumed along the way.

Simplicity is the theme, meaning relatively straightforward fare, meat and potatoes and the like yet unmistakably French. Some will call this restaurant fare “borrrrring,” others will call it “just what I was looking for.”

All are moderately priced, here meaning 25-50€ for 2 or 3 courses without beverages. All have good to excellent service. None require much, if any, advance reservation, though no harm calling ahead.

1. Le Sully
6 boulevard Henri IV, 4th arr. Metro Sully-Morland.
Tel. 01 42 72 94 80. Closed Sunday.

It’s easy to overlook this daytime café-brasserie (it closes at 8pm) because the intersection out front appears to be a place of transit only and not of pause. But here—between Ile Saint Louis and the Arsenal quarter of the Marais, between old blocks from the Bastille and a statue of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, between an equestrian center for the Republican Guard and the Center for information, documentation and exhibition for urban planning and architecture of Paris—Le Sully is a place with roots. The same family has operated it since 1917 and their roots still run deep into the Aveyron region of central France. Le Sully is old reliable when it comes to enjoying the café-brasserie experience in Paris thanks to the generous spirit of Robert and Dany Vidal and their son Romain and to their sense of quality. Le Sully proudly sports the government label Maitre-Restaurateur, which signifies that dishes are made in house essentially using fresh ingredients. Aubrac rump steak and other nice lunchtime brasserie fare, Languedoc wines. We linger into the afternoon.

2. La Poule au Pot
9 rue Vauvilliers, 1st arr. Metro Louvre-Rivoli
Tel. 01 42 36 32 96 Open 7pm-5am. Closed Mon.
Ever true the bistro tradition, Paul Racat has for 40 years now maintained this relaxed yet classy home for rustic bistro classics, attentively served, and an atmosphere of unpretentious chic that develops as the evening and the night move on. Come the later the better. Soupe gratinée à l’onion, blanquette de veau, white Sancerre. We linger into the night.

3. Boucherie Roulière
6 rue des Canettes, 6th arr. Metro Mabillon or Saint Germain des Près.
Tel. 01 84 15 04 47. Open daily.

Having long associated this street between Saint-Germain and Saint-Sulpice with creperies, pizzarias and pubs, I thought it a bit risky to head here for beef. But the risk paid off: the sliced rib just right, attentive service, elbow-to-elbow seating that offered up a mix of good cheer and Parisian sophistication. Mille feuilles de tomate et artichaut à l’huile de truffe; côte de boeuf, bone marrow and steak fries; Saint-Estèphe (Bordeaux).

4. 750g La Table
397 rue de Vaugirard, 15th arr. Metro Porte de Versailles.
Tel. 01 45 30 18 47. Open daily.

If I lived on the southwestern edge of the city or frequently attended trade shows at Porte de Versailles, I’d be happy to consider Damien Duquesne’s Table my neighborhood restaurant for good chicken, good beef, homey side dishes, much freshness, a judicious wine selection and friendly service. But I don’t, so I consider 750g La Table as a sign that no quarter is immune to honorable food and wine.

5. Les Petites Ecuries
40 rue des Petites Ecuries, 10 arr. Metro Château d’Eau or Bonne Nouvelle.
Tel. 01 48 24 02 90. Open daily.
Walking by on a sunny day, it was the sight of the pleasantly odd alcove lined with a living green wall that gave me pause for coffee. Though suspecting that the place might be too young and hip for the food or service to be anything but an afterthought, I nevertheless returned for dinner with a visiting friend the following evening. And good thing, too: my duck was delicious, my friend enjoyed his steak, we were kindly served and we barely noticed that we were among the oldest ones there.

6. Le Plomb de Cantal
3 rue de la Gaîté, 14th arr. Metro Edgar Quinet.
Open daily.
Why waste your waistline on the meat and potatoes at an ordinary greasy spoon when you can do some delicious gut-busting in this joyful restaurant in the Montparnasse quarter with Auvergne comfort food, from deep in the center of France? Sausage served with aligot (mashed potatoes with cheese and garlic) or truffade (sliced potatoes, cheese, garlic) is king here, but duck, tripes or beef are also options. Hearty salads as well. It’s simple, it’s delicious, it’s caloric, it’s cheerful, it’s Paris without needing to be hip or sophisticated. There’s an extension around the corner and another outlet across the city near metro Strasbourg-Saint Denis, but come evening the greatest joy is on aptly named theater- and restaurant-filled rue de la Gaîté.

7. Terminus Nord  
23 rue de Dunkerque, 10 arr. Metro Gare du Nord.
Open daily.

While the Auvergnats accompany their sausages with cheesy potatoes, brasseries of the north, wonderfully exemplified by this large and brassy restaurant across the street from Gare du Nord (the train station that links Paris with London, Lille, Brussels and Amsterdam), serve theirs with sauerkraut. But upon returning from Amsterdam (Café Loetje for lunch) we came here for the other specialties of northern brasseries: fish (cod, sea bass, salmon, sole) and seafood. A reminder that simple fare, simply good, isn’t just a beefy affair.

8. Le Village Ronsard
47 Ter Boulevard St Germain, 5th arr. Metro Maubert-Mutualité.
Tel. 01 43 25 07 95. Open daily.
There are many like it, but when in this quarter come lunchtime I’ve always felt comfortable at this perfectly, excellently ordinary café-brasserie in the Sesame Street of Paris market areas. Poulet-frites, steak-frites, salads, omelets, etc.

9. Fil’O’Fromage
12 rue Neuve Tolbiac, 13th arr. Metro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand or Quai de la Gare.
Tel. 01 53 79 13 35. Open 10am-7:30pm Mon.-Wed. 10am-10:30pm Thurs.-Sat. Closed Sunday.

Past the loud brasseries, the cavernous cafés and the undesirable restaurants that first assault the rare explorer of the new Rive Gauche quarter of the 13th arrondissement, Clément Chérif Boubrit (“I’m the Sheriff,” he says), philosopher, photographer, cheesemonger, oenologist, operates an off-beat wine and cheese shop and eatery where I recently organized a tasting for a group of eight bloggers/writers. Don’t worry, you needn’t be eight or even organized to enjoy the Sheriff’s approach to tasting wine, cheese and cold cuts vertically, horizontally, blindly or what the hell let’s just share-ingly.

10. My kitchen. Leftovers from last night’s party. Open 7/7, by invitation only.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

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Paris – In a year during which the French calendar is highlighted with festivities and commemorations surrounding the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of France, 1944—from D-Day (June 6) to the Liberation of Paris (Aug. 25) to the Liberation of Strasbourg (Nov. 23)—the reopening of the Medem Yiddish Library 70 years ago this week, on October 14, 1944, was noted by few.

The date nevertheless resonates as a marker of the return of Jews from hiding in France and their first steps toward reclaiming an identity and a language that Nazism and its allies, including in France, sought to wipe out.

Though relatively small and discreet compared to the world’s major Yiddish centers in New York and in Israel, the Medem Library’s 30,000 volumes (of which 20,000 are in Yiddish) and 7500 recordings, along with the classes, workshops and events of the Paris Yiddish Center (together with the library they form a single entity) make this the largest Yiddish cultural center in Europe.

In 1939, at the outset of the Second World War, it was common to hear Yiddish in certain quarters of Paris, particularly in the 3rd, 4th, 10th and 11th arrondissements. Yiddish, the language that most unified European Jewry before the Holocaust, had been spoken among some families and communities in Paris since the liberating effect of the French Revolution began drawing Jews to the French capital. Its presence was increasingly seen and heard in the northeast quadrant of Paris after 1880s, when greater waves of Jewish immigration began arriving from the east, waves that would also reach the shores of North America.

Over coffee and chocolate rugelach with members of the administration and the staff in the center’s little café in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, Gilles Rozier, author, translator from Yiddish and the Medem Library’s director from 1994 until June 2014, outlined the history of the library and cultural center.

At the time of its founding in 1929, during the golden age of Yiddish artistic and literary creation and publication, the Medem Library was just one of a number of Yiddish libraries and centers in Paris. Each Jewish political party or religious movement, Rozier explained, had its own library which also served as a form of social and cultural center, a gathering place where there was often a soup kitchen for those in need. Neither Zionist nor religious, the Medem was created as the library of the Bund movement, a secular Jewish socialist movement that had developed in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and spread out from there, eventually brought to Paris by immigrants fleeing pogroms and unrest in Eastern Europe. The library was named for Vladamir Medem, one Bundism’s major theorists.

Though now officially apolitical, the Medem Library and Maison de la Culture Yiddish (or Paris Yiddish Center as it’s officially called in English) as an institution remains distinctly secular. It’s even open on Saturday, though closed on Friday.

Foreign Jews in France, already targets of anti-Semitism and anti-immigration sentiment during the economic downturn of the 1930s, were increasingly treated, legally, as outcasts once the German Occupation began in 1940, at which time the rights of French Jews were also progressively diminished. Two years later, both foreign and French Jews were being deported to concentration camps. Authorities closed the Medem Library in 1943 but not before many of its books had been hidden in the basement of the building that then housed the Medem Library at 110 rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais. About 76,000 of the 270-300,000 Jews living in France before the war were killed between 1940 and 1945.

Following the Liberation of Paris from German Occupation and the removal of the Vichy Government, the Medem Library reopened on October 14, 1944. It was a small but significant step in a return to normalcy for Jews in the capital.

The number of Yiddish speakers in Paris after the war nevertheless continued to wane. Pogroms in the Soviet Union, particularly in 1956 and 1968, saw a small influx of Jewish immigrants who brought along their personal libraries, including books in Yiddish, eventually resulting in an expansion of the Medem and other libraries then still in existence. Yet the number of Yiddish-speakers was in steep decline as younger generations no long learned the language of their parents or grandparents. During the same period, the arrival of Sephardic Jews from territories formerly controlled by France in North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) meant that Yiddish, historically spoken by the Ashkenazi, was no longer the primary shared language of new Jewish arrivals in continental France.

That might have spelled the end of the Medem as a gathering place, as it did for other Yiddish libraries, but the 1970s brought with them an awareness of and desire to maintain contact with one’s roots. What was true for Breton and Basque, the languages and cultures of Brittany and Basque Country, respectively, was also true of Yiddish. Roots for Jews may also mean an attachment to prayer/the synagogue and/or to Zionism, but in the case of the Medem Library, one of whose pillars remained secularism, it was the language of pre-war European Jewry that brought people together. By the 1980s, with Yiddish classes in full swing, the Medem Library was becoming more a research library than a popular library.

By the 1990s, as other Yiddish libraries and institutions closed and publications ceased, the Medem was receiving some of their collections along with collections of citizens no longer capable of reading their parents’ or grandparents’ books.

Moved to its current location, it was less the books themselves that kept the Medem Library alive than the emphasis on learning Yiddish and the enjoyment and understanding of Yiddish culture (particularly klezmer, theater, song and cooking)—in short, on transmitting Yiddish heritage. Since 2002 the center has been called Maison de la Culture Yiddish – Bibliothèque Medem.

Asked if the center was associated with the Association for the Promotion of Foreign Languages in France, Fanny Barbaray, the center’s president, said that Yiddish couldn’t be considered a foreign language but was rather a “language of France” more comparable to Breton and Basque.

In the 85 years since its creation in 1929, the Medem Library has only had four directors: Kiva Vaisbrot, one of its founders, who assumed the position until 1979, Yitskhok Niborski, director from 1979 to 1994, Rozier, director from 1994 to June of this year, and Tal Hever-Chybowski, director since September.

The House of Yiddish Culture and Medem Library occupy 7000 square feet of the ground floor and basement of a building in the 10th arrondissement (near a nice little indoor food market). Only the ground floor is open to the public. Most of the books, recordings and documents are stored the basement, available for retrieval by the Medem’s librarian, Natalia Krynicka. A hallway exhibition space, three classrooms and a small café are open to the public, as are the reading room with membership to the library, the classroom for those registered and an 80-seat room where cultural activities and events are held.

Along with Yiddish classes for all levels, the center holds klezmer, dance, choral, theater and cooking workshops and has a choral group as well as programing for children. Concerts, readings, encounters with authors and film projections also take place. While Jews make up the vast majority of those taking Yiddish classes, Barbaray noted that there are a significant number of non-Jews in the klezmer workshops.

While visitors may encounter Yiddish speakers at any time at the center, its little Tshaynik Café especially becomes a Yiddish-speaking coffee klatch on Thursday from 2:30 to 4:30pm.

In addition to income derived though classes, workshops and membership, the center receives subsidies from the Paris region, DRAC Ile-de-France (a regional department of cultural affairs), the City of Paris, the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, the National Book Center, the Rothschild Foundation, the Rachel Ajzen and Léon Iagolnitzer Foundation, the L.A. Pincus Fund for Jewish Education in the Diaspora and the Unified Jewish Social Fund. The New York-based American Friends of the Medem Library also supports the center’s activities.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Maison de la culture Yiddish – Bibilothèque Medem, 29 rue du Château-d’Eau, 10 arrondissement. www.yiddishweb.com. Tel. 01 47 00 14 00. Contact: mcy@yiddishweb.com. Metro République, Jacques-Bonsergent, Château-d’Eau.

Open Mon., Tues., Thurs. 1:30-6:30pm, Wed. and Sat. 2-5pm. Closed Friday, Sunday, French holidays and Yom Kippur.

For other articles about Jewish Paris on France Revisited see the March 2014 issue.

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* * *

There’s something about being a native English speaker that makes us want to connect with people sitting next to us in a foreign restaurant.

– Is that as good as it looks?
– Did I hear you say Boston?
– I just want to say that I love your bag!

That can be tricky business in places where we might not understand the code for “I know we’re nearly rubbing thighs but could you kindly just mind your own business?”

Not to worry, there are few codes, nor much in the way of a menu, at Matière à…, a delightful new restaurant in the canal quarter of Paris’s 10th arrondissement, where owner-chef Anthony Courteille plays host from behind the counter in his open kitchen to 14 guests at a single table (+ a 2-head in the corner).

I first met Mr. Courteille in 2011 when he was the executive chef at the Atelier Guy Martin, the cooking school of Guy Martin, chef at the venerable Le Grand Véfour and the force behind other culinary enterprises. He appeared in a France Revisited video when I took one of his classes. So there was no pretending that I could test this, his first restaurant adventure, anonymously. Instead I invited 13 friends and readers to join me.

Among the guests at the table that evening was Virginia-born, longtime Paris resident Allison Zinder, who teaches the culinary arts in schools, as well as privately. She held what I think of as the critic’s or student’s seat, the one closest to the kitchen, overlooking the chef’s shoulder. I asked her afterwards to send her opinion on the restaurant in less than 50 words: “Despite that open (tiny!) kitchen,” she wrote, “I found the atmosphere to be calm and luxurious and the food sublime: surprising yet harmonious flavors, home-made bread (so rare in Paris), and smooth, lovely wines chosen just for the meal. Bravo au chef!”

The trade-off for this bravo is a lack of choice on the menu. Those troubled by the thought of being limited to a fish dish and a poultry or meat dish for the main course or to the cheese plate or single dessert to end the meal would be better off seeking out longer menus. Also, if there are certain types of fish, poultry or meat that you refuse to eat then this might not be the place for you. Our group took the 4-course tasting menu, thereby eliminating the choice between main courses from the start since we got both.

The chef may be willing to accommodate with certain ingredients, as he did by transforming the announced crabmeat appetizer on our menu into a fresh salad for one in our party, but it’s best to come open to the possibilities. Of course, you can always come by to have a look at the menu to decide whether or not to enter on a given day (it changes daily), but with 16 seats (17 in a pinch), Matière à… may fill up with reservations before you pass by to case out the day’s menu.

Mr. Courteille’s cuisine is nevertheless quite recognizable, its ingredients spelled out on the menu, and there are no great risks to the willing appetite. Nothing is intended to shock or challenge your sense of what constitutes food. Our evening menu included a crabmeat (chair de torteau) appetizer, a spotted dogfish (roussette) fish course, a beef flank (hampe de boeuf) meat course, followed by cheese or strawberries, lemon cream and meringue for dessert. In our menu and in daily menus surveilled throughout the week, I found no search for novelty or an attempt to cook on the cusp of the latest food trends. Mr. Courteille’s dishes are graceful, polished and—take this as you will—French. It was as though we’d all been invited to a delicious meal in an elegant yet unpretentious home for dinner and each discreetly left 60€ (42€ for the tasting menu + wine) as a thank you.

I surveyed the group afterwards. One in our group lamented a less than exciting selection of cheese and another found the beef flank too flimsy but even they gave overall applause to the meal, the room and the atmosphere, as did we all. Our 14-guest restaurant review team therefore gives thumbs up all around.

In Paris it’s the rare new restaurant of late whose name isn’t readily understandable an international clientele, meaning by English speakers (e.g. a burger-heavy café at the next corner called American Kitchen). So hats off to Chef Anthony for calling his restaurant / chef’s table the untranslatable Matière à….

The ellipsis itself is used far more in French than in English to signal a continuation of thought in ways that the reader understands or that invite him to open his mind to the possibilities. With three little dots a timid “maybe we could get together tomorrow evening…” becomes an invitation for hanky-panky – unless of course you misunderstood…

Matière à generally means “grounds or matter or fodder for” and so is the lead-in to expressions such as matière à discuter = something to be discussed (matter for discussion), matière à rire = laughing matter; matière à réflexion = food for thought. For the purposes of this restaurant, the most appropriate translation may well be “Makes you want to…”

At a time when many new urban restaurants serve food for thought, for trend or for gullible hipsters or tourists rather than for enjoyment, it’s a rare pleasure to discover a restaurant that plays to a simple, un-convoluted sense of freshness, culinary skill and conviviality, leaving it to us and our tablemates—friends, perhaps strangers—to find common ground for discussion and for laughter.

Makes you want to… reserve.

* * *

Matière à…, Anthony Courteille’s chef’s table, 15 rue Marie et Louise, 10th arr. Tel. 09 83 07 37 85. Metro République or Jacques Bonsergent or Goncourt. Open weekdays 12-2:30pm and 7pm-1am. Saturday and Sunday 7pm-1am.

About 23 euros for three courses at lunch. A tasting menu of about 42-euro, served only in the evening, is comprised of 4 dishes: appetizer, fish/seafood, meat/fowl, cheese or dessert. A 3-course meal à la carte can be had at the same price, slightly larger portions, with a choice between the two main dishes. One can also select one or two courses. The wines selection, generally 25-40 euros, or by the glass, is easy-going and effective.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

Readers who would like to participate in upcoming Paris Revisited / France Revisited tastings, testings and other events can send a message to gary [at] francerevisited.com to get on the priority mailing list.

The post Paris Restaurant Review: Matière à…, A Harmonious Chef’s Table in the Canal Quarter appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

You peruse the right magazines, or so they tell you.

You read the best travel sections, as though any of them knew what was going on in Paris.

You read the most up-to-date blogs, or so they want you to believe.

And still you don’t know that Le Comptoir Général, a bar and events space across the street from Canal Saint Martin, is among the hippest spaces in Paris this spring.

Not hip as in style or attitude, not age-related or attitude-bound or drug-induced. Commercial or non-commercial, doesn’t matter. This is the hip that money won’t buy and fashion won’t help you achieve. You’ve either got or you don’t.

By July it might still be a fine place to hang out for the evening but it’ll be old news, the kind you read about in those magazines and travel sections and blogs.

And please don’t expect me to actually describe the place to you or show pictures of what hip look like this spring or tell you what nights are best or take you by the hand to lead you down the dark alley that gets you there. Either you get or you don’t.

Either you’re in or you’re out.

Up to you.

Le Comptoir Général, 80 quai de Jemmapes, 10 arrondissement. Metro République or Jacques Bonsergent. http://www.lecomptoirgeneral.com/.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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Even when historians speak of Alsace-Lorraine they’re mainly speaking of the former, since all of Alsace was included in that once-disputed region but only a part of Lorraine.

Furthermore, there isn’t much of the way of distinctive Lorraine cuisine to promote outside of the region. Even in Paris, the only mention of Lorraine that you’ll ever find on a menu is quiche Lorraine.

Unlike L’Alsace, a winning, cliché-heavy restaurant on the Champs-Elysées that does an excellent job of promoting Alsatian cuisine, the brasserie La Lorraine, off the Champs on Place des Ternes, ignores its namesake in favor of brassy, upscale Parisian brasserie fare. And along the street in front of Paris’s Gare de l’Est, the East Station, from where trains to Alsace and Lorraine depart, the brasserie La Strasbourgeoise (named for the capital of Alsace) is another good choice for Alsatian fare while Le Bistro Lorrain is a…. pizzeria.

Truth be told, there isn’t much in the way of Lorraine cuisine even within the region, where the harsh soil has allowed for little culinary fantasy beyond pork dishes, including the pork-and-cabbage stew/potée Lorraine, and the famous, bacon-enhanced quiche Lorraine. There’s a good amount of perch and trout from the rivers but no special fish dish that has left a mark outside of the region. And with all due respect for its wine (vin gris de Toul and Moselle), its local beer-making traditions, and its spring water from Vittel, none of those drinks is cause alone to travel, as satisfying as they may be.

Lorraine as a name remains unevocative in part due to the historical incongruence of its cities: there’s photogenic Nancy, marked by Renaissance flourish, 18th-century refinement, and Art Nouveau curves; there’s Metz, which brings together French classicism and German monumentalism; there’s Verdun, which calls to mind the horror and sacrifice of the trenches of WWI. Each of those worthy destinations (to be explored in future articles in the Northeast France section this site) is easily accessible from Paris. Since 2007 high-speed trains from Paris can rush a traveler to Nancy or Metz in 1:30 or to Verdun in 1:40, but it’s unlikely that the traveler will think of himself as going to Lorraine but rather to Nancy or Metz or Verdun.

Nevertheless, inside Paris’s Gare de l’Est the boutique En passant par la Lorraine… attempts to evoke an unevocative region with what little there is to unify it: the mirabelle plum and a 16th century folk song.

En passant par la Lorraine is the name of that song. It’s a little ditty about a woman passing through Lorraine in her clogs and it has given the shop its name and its kitsch little clogs for sale. The mirabelle plum has given it most everything else.

If visiting France anytime mid-August through September, be sure to put on your list of food experiences a trip to any market to pick up some mirabelles, sweet yellow-golden plums that are likely to come from Lorraine, which assures about 80% of the world production. Also keep an eye out for mirabelle tarts in the bakeries.

Since En passant par la Lorraine… doesn’t sell fresh produce, you won’t find any fresh mirabelles here, or even a mirabelle tart, but you will find most anything else imaginable one can do with mirabelles. You’ll find them in jams, in preserved terrines, in canned stews, in mustard, in soap, in biscuits, in chocolate, in candy, in liqueur, in beer, and in brandy.

Two other traditional dry cakes from the region decorate the colorful shelves in this shop, Madeleines de Commercy and Marcarons des Soeurs, along with regional beer and brandy (eaux-de-vie), jams and preserves made from other regional fruits (particularly blueberries/myrtilles), and various fruit-flavored bon-bons (notably bergamots de Nancy), all with a regional bent.

For heated and/or refrigerated regional fare, you’ll have to go across the street from the train station and one region to the east to the deli-caterer Schmid, which considers itself “The ambassador of Alsatian gastronomy in Paris since 1904.” There you’ll find the staples of Alsatian culinary regional identity: choucroute (sauerkraut, served with potatoes and a choice of sausages, bacon, and/or pork), kuglehopf (a molded cake with raisins), Munster cheese, and strudel. Though 400,000 of Lorraine’s Mirabelle trees are “protected” by the appellation “Mirabelle de Lorraine,” plums don’t stop at the regional border, so Schmid offers the aforementioned mirabelle tarts. Canal Saint-Martin, a 10-minute walk from here, is the place of choice for a picnic in the area.

Both Lorraine and Alsace are known for their Christmas markets, which begin around December 6, the Feast of Saint Nicolas. An alleged relic of Saint Nicolas, his phalanx, was brought from Italy in the late 11th century to the Lorraine town that now goes by the name Saint Nicolas de Port. Eventually Nick was named patron saint of Lorraine. It’s nevertheless neighboring Alsace, evocative as it is, that most highly promotes its Christmas markets. In December stalls selling Alsatian food and products are set up in front of Gare de l’Est, led by sausages, Gewürztraminers, and Rieslings.

Lorraine is far more discreet. So the shop En passant par la Lorraine… is your best bet for information—and at least some bon-bons—if curious about the region or before taking the train east. Chances are 50-50 that you’ll come across manager Jean-Paul Lacroix, himself an excellent ambassador from the region. He can tell you (in English) the history of these various products, such as how candy made from bergamot oranges from Sicily came to be used in a specialty of Nancy. If asked politely, he might even sing a little song, as he did for me: En passant par la Lorraine/Avec mes sabots… oh oh oh, avec mes sabots.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

Practical information

-Boutiques

En passant par la Lorraine… Gare de l’Est, 10th arr. Metro Gare de l’Est. Tel. 01 40 35 47 80. Open Mon.-Sat. 7am-8pm. En passant… has other shops, all in the Lorraine region.

Schmid 76 boulevard de Strasbourg, 10th arr. Metro Gare de l’Est. Tel. 01 46 07 89 74. Open Mon.-Fri. 9am-8pm, Sat. 8:30am-8pm.

-Restaurants

La Strasbourgeoise 5 rue du 8 mai 1945, 10th arr. Metro Gare de l’Est. Tel. 01 42 05 20 02. Open daily noon to midnight.

L’Alsace 39 avenue des Champs-Elysées, 8th arr. Metro Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tel 01 53 93 97 00.  Open 24/7.

La Lorraine 2 place des Ternes, 8th arr. Metro Ternes. Tel. 01 56 21 22 00. Open 7am-1am.

The post Looking for Lorraine in Paris and Finding Alsace along the Way appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Simply request directions to a pizzeria, however, and you risk getting pointed directly to mediocrity. Instead, ask for a good pizzeria—because nothing flatters Parisians more than an inquiry that treats them as arbiters of good taste.

Pas n’importe quelle pizzeria, mais une bonne=Not just any pizzeria, a good one!

If you ask me…
My own neighborhood on the eastern side of Canal Saint Martin in the 10th arrondissement has become one hip pizza party. My local favorite is Trattoria Gran Sasso due to the sincerity of the pizza, the friendliness of the owners, and the good omen that one of them is often at work at the oven in time-honored pizzaiolo fashion. There’s also Maria Louisa, a large, upbeat pizzeria serving classically thin-crusted pizza. And there’s Pink Flamingo, a largely take-away pizzeria shed, offering creative pseudo-ethnic pies that are too conceptual for me and taste a bit like a business plan. For pasta I would send you to Maria Louisa’s sister restaurant La Madonnina, though I tend to be onanistic when it comes to pasta dishes, preferring my own.

Don’t, however, mistake the above for recommendations, just friendly pizza advice for my neighborhood. There are a handful of notable Italian restaurants in Paris, but take anyone’s pizza suggestion as a reason to cross town and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Pizzeria da Carmine
Nevertheless, I was recently introduced to a pizzeria that I might consider going out of my way for—well, at least into the next arrondissement, the 9th. For a traveler that means a place to keep in mind when visiting Montmartre (18th), which begins a few blocks further up the hill.

Pizzeria da Carmine serves Italian comfort food with character and with a jovial and harried Neapolitan spirit. Though new to me, Carmine is in fact an old standard in the netherworld of the 9th arrondissement, just below Montmartre, between metro stops Pigalle and Anvers.

In truth, I can only speak for my own order that evening: the overstuffed pizze di Carmine. What this smorgasbord pie lacks in delicacy it more than makes up for in fresh and tasty excess: tomato sauce, mozzarella, Parma ham, pancetta (a cured pork), egg, eggplant, grilled zucchini, grilled peppers, artichoke, fresh mushrooms, sautéed onions, grana padano cheese, and arugula, all served on or in a partly folded, fluffy crust.

There are less ambitious pizzas on the menu, along with pasta and several carne dishes, but for my appetite the pizza di Carmine is the way to go for at least one person at the table—at the risk of pizza envy. The Carmine is a stretch for a single appetite. Still, it’s a selfish, gluttonous pizza that’s reluctant to be shared, except for stingy forkfuls doled out around the table so as to try my dinner companions’ pasta dishes, which, though fresh, will then seem too polite compared with this self-absorbed pie.

Caveat emptor
As we were paying the bill, I was reminded of a recent trip to Rome for not only was the pizza equally appetizing but, happily fed, every time left a restaurant in Rome I couldn’t help feeling that they’d somehow slipped in a 10% tourist surcharge into the bill.

I thought of that trip while standing at the cash register chez Carmine (one pays the manager-cashier rather than the waiter at the table) because coincidentally—or not— the four of us were handed a joint tab of 99 euros that included precisely 9 euros of whimsy. The ensuing conversation with the managing cashier went something like this:

“We didn’t have the glass of vermouth that’s indicated on the tab.”

“I know, the computer prints out ‘vermouth’ no matter what you have, but your aperitif still costs 5 euros.”

“But there was no extra aperitif, just the three Camparis.”

“But there are four of you, right?”

“Yes, but we only ordered 3 drinks.”

“Well how was I supposed to know?”

This was followed by a mock argument in Italian between the manager and the waiter, after which the manager told us, “His handwriting is so bad. I always tell him to write clearly… Alright. Then that makes it 94 euros.”

“And there’s a problem with the wine charge. The waiter told us that the bottle of Sicilian wine was 14 euros, not 18 as shown here.”

This was followed by a discussion as to which bottle we’d actually had (a hearty Sicilian that was surprisingly good for the announced price), some more Commedia dell’Arte with the waiter, and the manager finally showing us someone else’s bill as odd proof of the confusion being in good faith.

A caveat emptor that couldn’t spoil a wonderful, gluttonous pizza feast. Just be sure to check the bill.

Other comforts
If in this area just below Montmartre but not in the mood for pizza or pasta, two other hotspots for comfort fare are located on the food-happy Place Toudouze, one block away from Carmine. No Stress Café is a laid-back tight squeeze of a restaurant-bar where, among its hip mix of Franco-world dishes, I’ve fond memories of a nice dripping hamburger, an unusual treat in Paris. Kastoori, a well-established Indian restaurant, is next door.

Pizza and pasta restaurants near Canal Saint-Martin
Gran Sasso, 13 rue Jacques Louvel-Tessier, 10th arr. Metro Goncourt. Tel. 0142457079. Closed Sunday. (A on map)
La Madonnina, 10 rue Marie et Louise, 10th arr. Metro Goncourt or République. Tel. 0142012526. Closed Sunday. (B on map)
Maria Louisa, 2 rue Marie et Louise, 10th arr. Metro Goncourt or République. Tel. 0144840401. Closed Sunday. (C on map)
Pink Flamingo, 67 rue Bichat, 10th arr. Metro Goncourt or République. Tel. 0142023170. Closed Monday. (D on map)

Restaurants below Montmartre, near Pigalle and Anvers
Pizzeria da Carmine, 61 rue des Martyrs, 9th arr. Metro Pigalle or Anvers. Tel. 0148782801. Closed Sunday and Monday. (E on map)
No Stress Café, 2 place Gustave Toudouze, 9th arr. Metro Pigalle Tel. 0148780027. Open daily and late. (F on map)
Kastoori, 4 place Gustave Toudouze, 9th arr. Metro Pigalle Tel. 0144530610. Tel. 0142012526. (G on map)

© 2006, Gary Lee Kraut

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I’m not sure whether to take that as a question, a comment, or a thought bubble, but the grammar seems sincere enough to warrant a response.

It’s been a while since I’ve received such a thought bubble. I used to get plenty in 2003, when, with perfect timing, my guide to Paris was published just as our troops were gathering on the Iraqi border, without a French platoon in sight. But our national psyche was unable to sustain the Freedom-fried outrage, and now I’m once again more likely to be asked what I think of a restaurant that’s just been written up in The New York Times. So I’m glad to have another shot at the anti-American bubble in less antagonistic times.

I look out the window to the people on the street, wondering if they are as scary or potentially dangerous as Sue might imagine. It’s a surprisingly warm and sunny October Sunday afternoon. From my 4th-floor corner apartment I have an unhurried view of browning linden leaves and beyond them Canal Saint-Martin, where tour boats pass by and where cobblestone quays stir with pedestrians flocking to the Sunday pedestrian zone that starts at the next block. From here there doesn’t appear to be much anti-anything out there.

I live in Boboland, one of several in the eastern arrondissements of Paris. Bobo is the millennial term to describe 30-40-somethings who work in the more or less creative fields of film, fashion, advertising, etc. and who seek both a bourgeois sense of comfort and a bohemian sense of lifestyle. (I moved to the area in 1998, so I don’t deny the attraction.) The term isn’t quite dated yet, but with real estate prices climbing, the balance between the two bos has definitely shifted to the former.

Change in the quarter seemed fast for a few years there, with a new café or restaurant or hip shop opening every month and ever increasing crowds coming to picnic, party, or promenade along the canal. But for most people la bohème is just a way station en route to responsibility or resignation. Oh, we’ve still got the spirit in this quarter, but we’ve also now got the babies. The number of children in the neighborhood has, by my unofficial count, now surpassed the number of dogs. Come to think of it, I haven’t been stepping in much dog doo at all lately, which leads me to suspect not that the city’s threat of a 183 euro fine for failing to curb one’s chien has been a successful deterrent but that there might be a connection between the arrival of babies in the quarter and a recent report of overcrowding at the SPCA.

Meanwhile, the battle between strollers and bikes in the tiny entrance to my building was won by the strollers over a year ago. For a while that banished our bikes upstairs, which caused track marks along the circular stairwell as though it were the scene of a roller derby. We were eventually given keys to a room on the ground floor where we could store bicycles and strollers, though I notice that tricycles are now taking over. My neighbor still blames me for all the track marks on the stairwell, but I don’t think that has anything to do with me being American or him French, Sue. I think it’s just because he’s an asshole.

In fact, as I look out my window it’s hard to imagine anyone out there being dangerously anti-American when they’re all so busy looking for an open café table, or photographing ducks or telling their children to look straight ahead as they pedal their tricycles. But I know that isn’t an adequate response, Sue.

At least Sue’s thought bubble leaves room for an answer. During the they’re-either-with-us-or-against-us heydays of 2003, when I was giving lectures and holding book events in the US, people would actually come up to me to receive my blessing for not going to France that year. One woman practically pleaded with me to accept that she loved Paris but couldn’t go because “what would the neighbors think?” Once, a couple approached me looking as though were making a condolence call, and the man said, “We were going to go to France this year but the time isn’t right.” They were going to Italy instead. I didn’t tell them that in Rome alone they would see a million rainbow flags flying from windows reading PACE (PEACE)—anyway, they had such kind, sad, pasty faces that they’d probably think those were get-well messages to the Pope from the TGLB community. I was invited to speak at a country club in the Philadelphia area that year, only to have the invitation withdrawn because a talk about France would be, in a word, “inappropriate,” followed by a country-club smile saying, “You understand, right?” And then there were the American Jewish travelers who told me that they couldn’t travel to anti-Semitic France (home, nonetheless, of Western Europe’s largest Jewish population) “as a matter of principle,” which I would accept as a bar-mitzvah boy myself were it not for the fact that their principles then tended to steer them to England, European capital of radical Islamic politics.

Bon voyage, I say.

But these are different times on both sides of the Atlantic. The French are as much at a loss about what to say about Iraq and the world order as we are. We remain amusingly different cultures, yet their left-wing opposition has no more umph in it than our own; they, too, need economic or natural disaster to put some wind in their sails. And their right wing is as focused on maintaining power for power’s sake as our own; they just don’t pray for it as loud.

To be sure, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism exist in France. I make no apologies. Yet most travelers have so little contact with anyone outside of the service industry that they should consider themselves privileged if they actually get into a conversation with someone on either topic.

Safety first, of course, but since when did we require so much certitude when traveling? Since when did we need to be loved on the road? What happened to curiosity, to discovery, to individuals encountering individuals, to finding yourself so bursting with thought bubbles that you want to engage?

Engage, Sue, that’s my advice. Engage—then deal with it.

The linden leaves are now blowing in the evening breeze. Car traffic along the canal has picked up. Sweatered dinner picnickers are gathering on canal’s edge. Men and women are carrying kids and tricycles home.

On their way they may overhear Americans walking nearby. They may look on us kindly. They may want to help us find our way. They may shake their heads at the thought that ours are the faces of the Superpower. In any case, they will invariably find us naïve, overcheerful, and overfed. So be it. For Parisians, we are easy to notice and easy to ignore, and when it comes down to it they don’t believe that we, as individual travelers, have any more influence over government’s policies than they do over theirs.

Now that, dear Sue, is something to be afraid of.

© 2005 by Gary Lee Kraut

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