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

The post Paris Restaurants: 10 Ways to Keep It Simple and Simply Good appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

In a remote yet happening Seine-side quarter of Left Bank Paris, Corinne LaBalme checks out  the chick-pea hot-dogs and cheese-less cheesecake at MOB—the Brooklyn-inspired HQ for a new wave of vegan fare—with “recovering carnivore” Cyril Aouizerate.

* * *

Toulouse-born Cyril Aouizerate didn’t grow up with veggie credentials. In fact, his father’s family ran a kosher butcher-shop in Marseille. But what a difference a vegan girlfriend can make—enough to make a man switch the philosophy in his fridge.

Philosophy is Cyril Aouizerate’s home-turf, even if he gave up teaching it at the Sorbonne after one semester.  He trended towards commerce and became (with Patrice Trigano and Philippe Starck) one of founding fathers of the Mama Shelter phenom, the rapidly-expanding chain of affordable hotels that are both fashion-forward and budget-downward.

But that wasn’t enough. If no one has trouble believing that Woody Allen finds inspiration in Paris, why shouldn’t a Frenchman find his mojo in Flatbush? A trip to Brooklyn in the 80s was “transformational,” says Cyril. And that’s why the first MOB (Maimonides in Brooklyn) was founded on Atlantic Avenue.

MOB is a burger and hot dog joint with a twist: it’s vegan (végétalien in French)—no animal products: no meat, no butter, no eggs, no cheese, no milk… yet burgers and dogs nonetheless. In New York, the Daily News praised MOB for its “natural” cuisine. But what would the cholesterol-philiac French think?

MOB made an 8-month test landing in a small space on rue Charlot in the Marais before reopening large in the decidedly non-central Cité de la Mode and du Design at Les Docks near the Gare d’Austerlitz.

Since its Seine-side opening in June, MOB has found a new following with people who have no problem believing that his culinary alchemy can transform coconut milk into cheesecake.

And the cheesecake is very good (if a trifle tropical island-ish), as are the chick-pea hot-dogs which get their frankfurter-appropriate orange tint from minced carrots and a dash of saffron. The burger deluxe is Fourth-of-July delicious. Indeed, this French vegan fare is steeped in Americana, beginning with an image of the Brooklyn Bridge on one wall, part of the restaurant’s graphic design for which Cyril worked with the singularly named Moossa. And you can soup up the burgers with Heinz ketchup and imported French’s mustard then wash it down with a designer fruit juice although Aouizerate is French enough to include a tri-color selection of wine and champagne (Ruinart) in the beverage fridge.

The Cité de la Mode et du Design is ensconced in a 1907 warehouse, one of France’s first experiments with re-enforced concrete, which got a green-colored “plug-over” makeover by the Paris-based architectural team Jakob+MacFarlane, best-known for the Georges restaurant in the Pompidou Center. It’s an offbeat space known as Les Docks with open terraces, a warm weather lounge bar, exhibitions and a fashion school. Through October 2, hula hoop lessons are given on alternate Wednesday nights.

[View the 48-second video intro to this review]

Tuck this address into your notebook for vegan (and proto vegan) pals, but you may not need to direct them this far afield for high-falutin’ (Alain Senderens consults on the recipes), eco-falafel for long. Cyril Aouizerate is already scouting future MOB outlets in Saint-Germain-des-Près, Montparnasse and the Garnier Opéra district.

© 2013, Corinne LaBalme

MOB, Les Docks – Cité de la Mode et du Design. 34 quai d’Austerlitz, Paris 75013. Metro: Gare d’Austerlitz. Open daily noon to midnights. Burger €4, burger deluxe €8.50, hot dog €8.

For information about Les Docks, visit  www.paris-docks-en-seine.fr.

For more on Seine-side developments of the 13th arrondissement on France Revisited read Paris Rive Gauche: a 21st-century Left Bank.

The post MOB Scene By the Seine appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

North of the Seine in this corner of the city, in the 12th arrondissement, construction in the 1980s was focused on the Bercy and Cour Saint Emilion quarters, with Parc de Bercy at its center. Those quarters are now well established. Far more interesting from an urban planning point of view and thus of particular interest to the exploring Parisphile is the zone south of the Seine, in the 13th arrondissement, a project that goes under the official name “Paris Rive Gauche.”

Paris Rive Gauche? But isn’t that the Saint Germain Quarter and the Luxembourg Garden? Doesn’t Rive Gauche mean famous pastry shops, baby Diors, boutiquey hotels, cute little restaurants, and a café for every mood? Referring to a recent construction zone so far removed from the well-known charms of the 6th arrondissement may indeed sound like sacrilege. This, however, is the Rive Gauche of the 21st century, another Left Bank.

The new Paris Rive Gauche

It may not be quaint or charming or picturesque, it may not have buzz or hype or chic, it may not have stellar chefs and famous chocolatiers, just yet, but ignore the existence of this quarter at the risk of holding an outdated vision of Paris.

Covering a zone previously defined by docks and industry and rail yards, the Paris Rive Gauche project stretches 1.25-mile (2-km) along the Seine from Gare d’Austerliz to the edge of the city and several hundred yards uphill. The project is divided into a half-dozen “quarters” with forgettable names like Austerlitz Sud, Tolbiac Nord, and Masséna-Chevaleret, so for the time being it’s best thought of the National Library or BNF quarter, even though that library is the least appealing part of the area.

Inaugurated in 1996, the François Mitterand National Library (Bibliothèque Nationale de France – François Mitterand) was built as a beacon to the intellectual grandeur of France, but architecturally it comes across as an empty conversation. The library space itself is practical enough, and there’s an attractively foreboding otherworldliness to the inner garden/woods that’s at the heart of the complex, but the vast esplanade within the four corner towers is a sad, windswept zone. And the view of the complex from the river isn’t the least bit inspiring. Perhaps something will be done to make the esplanade more welcoming in the coming years.

What is Paris without its old stones?

In the absence of notable history (architectural, urban, or otherwise), Paris Rive Gauche raises the question as to what Paris is without its old stones.

Paris Rive Gauche might actually be seen as an attempt to create a utopian quarter of Paris, a place where cultural institutions, government, residences (both subsidized and free-market), medical research centers, galleries, shops, café society, universities, fashion and creation centers, sports, cinemas, restaurants, shopping, nightlife, and residents and visitors happily and productively coexist in a zone that simultaneously connects with the historical center, with older neighborhoods nearby, with the close suburbs, and with the river.

That’s a lot to ask of a single development zone—which is precisely why it’s so interesting for the urban travel and the Parisphile to come have a look, even if, as noted above, the zone offers neither charm nor chic.

How to visit the 21st-century Left Bank

If approached as a waterfront area one might begin a visit to Paris Rive Gauche either from the Chevaleret metro station then by walking along the Seine or from across the river at Cour Saint Emilion then by passing through Bercy Park and over the seductive Simone de Beauvoir footbridge to the Left Bank and the National Library. Arriving by bike is another alternative.

But the most startling way to enter into 21st century Left Bank Paris is to enter directly into the heart of the zone by taking the RER C or metro line 14 to the Bibliothèque François Mitterand station and exiting onto Avenue de France.

Avenue de France, the wide, main street behind the library, naturally looks more like new Berlin than it does old Paris. Though it has existed for several years now, the avenue still feels at certain times of day like a street to nowhere or a street to nowhere or main street in an abandoned town. That impression will undoubtedly change though as the surrounding area develops and connects both physically and psychologically with the rest of Paris. There’s a crane in the distance in the photo above.

The riverbank

Already the riverbank attracts a trickle of visitors throughout the year. A steadier stream comes this way from May to September as the riverside has begun to earn its place on the warm-weather map of Paris due to its outdoor lounge-cafés, party boats (e.g.Batofar), the Josephine Baker floating pool (2006), and occasional outdoor summer activities.

Commerce is as yet relatively subdued between the river and avenue de France. Nevertheless there are movie theaters, live theaters, bookshops, bakeries, cafes, and brasseries, galleries and bookshops to remind you that this is indeed Paris. The zone’s busiest store to date—and a major Saturday draw to the area—is Truffaut, the large plant and pet business.

Further developments

Along with the National Library, other institutional projects have begun opening their doors. The Institut Français de la Mode in the old docks by the Austerlitz train station opened in 2009. The Paris-Val-de-Seine School of Architecture and a research center of the Pitié-Salpêtrière university hospital and are now taking shape. A new university campus, Université Paris 7 – Diderot, began welcoming some students in 2005, with the number increasing each year and expected to grow to 30,000 students and staff when the campus is completed in 2012. That same year the tramway ringing the city will be arriving in this sector. As all of the above takes hold and new residential buildings are completed, more restaurants are sure to open.

Though development of the quarter has been steady for 15 years now, fall 2012 appears to be the time that everything will come together, making this zone in full-fledged and effervescent part of the city. New constructions will continue for several years beyond that.

No need to wait though. Twenty-first century Paris Rive Gauche, the other Left Bank, is already on the map.

* * *

For further information about the Paris Rive Gauche project visit the official site.

For return travelers looking for a stroll in one of the lesser-known 19th-century quarters, see this France Revisited photo-report about the Batignolles quarter in the 17th arrondissement.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

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Others might. Heather Stimmler-Hall and I went for pho, the Vietnamese kitchen-sink soup that is very much at home in Paris’s main Asian quarters.

Heather has a long list of guidebook and article credits to her name and publishes a spunky newsletter, which could make us jealous competitors were it not for the fact that we are earnest members of each other’s fan club. She lives just beyond the reaches of Paris’s Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement, and I lived in the same area in the 1990s, so a bowl of pho seemed a natural place to get culinarily acquainted.

Heather chose the setting for this our first joint restaurant test, Pho Banh-Cuon 14, a non-descript little restaurant that’s a five-minute walk from Place d’Italie (metro stop of the same name) along avenue de Choisy, at the entrance to Paris’s main Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement. But most any restaurant in the area with Pho in it’s name would have done.

By most accounts pho developed in northern Vietnam and was enriched in the south by northern Vietnamese who had fled the Communists. Many conveniently speculate that pho (pronounced fuh) is in fact the Vietnamization of the French feu (fire), as in pot-au-feu.

France’s steamy pot-on-the-fire stew of broth, beef flank, root and leaf vegetables (carrots, turnips, parsnips, leeks, celery) is indeed much like pho. Both are hearty and generous. Pho, however, pho is basically table-side fast food, though unlike most other Asian fast-food in Paris pho is generally fresh. Service is necessarily of the no-frills kind: you choose, you’re served, you throw some leaves and sauce in your soup, you eat, you ask for the check, you pay.

Actually, you don’t so much choose as renounce, which is why foreign eating can be such a religious experience. You will indeed find several choices of phos and Tonkin soups on the menu at Pho Banh-Cuon 14, as you will at other pho joints, but ask the waiter the difference between them and he may well answer, as he did to us, “C’est pareil,” which, for those who do not speak Parisian Server, means, “Just pick one, I’ve got tables waiting.”

The only true option then is between grand and petit, though the 1€ difference between the mama-size bowl and the papa-size bowl makes even that decision irrelevant. In short, when a restaurant has Pho in its name you order pho, and if you mistakenly point on the menu to the soup with tripes in it instead of meatballs, or meatballs instead of beef flank, or if those meatball prove to be a bit too tough, well, just fish out the unwanted protein and enjoy the rest. That rest is sure to please the easy-going traveler, particularly when your neighborhood explorations lead you near one of Paris’s Asian-leaning quarters around lunchtime. (In addition to the high-rise Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement, a second swath of Asian influence gathers around metro Belleville, at the juncture of the 12th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements.

One fundamental difference between pot-au-feu and pho is that when you order the former in France the waiter will likely tell you how to eat it whereas when you order the latter you’re on your own. The steamy pho broth contains flat rice noodles and the aforementioned protein and is served with a side pile of bean sprouts, cilantro, scallions, and basil, a slice of lemon or lime, chopped red or green chili peppers, a side dollop of hosin or “plum” sauce, and a bottle of fish sauce. It’s up to you to figure out how it all goes together. To taste, of course, but for those without much of a sense of pho taste I can only advise that you start throwing and stirring things into the bowl… and enjoy a warm and tasty lunch with chopsticks and spoon.

A bit of splattering may occur in the process, but as the saying goes: keep your friends close and your phos closer.

…

– Pho Banh-Cuon 14, 129 avenue de Choisy, 13th arrondissement. Metro Place d’Italie. Tel. 01 45 83 61 15.

© 2006, Gary Lee Kraut

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