Our Favorite Restaurants, Part 2

June 18th, 2018

Months have passed since my first post about our favorite restaurants.  Definitely time for an update, since there have been some really good ones.  (I still don't often remember/am too embarassed to take photos of my food, so I pulled some food photos off of the internet.)

Les Papilles, which I mentioned and described just a couple of posts ago, is certainly among my favorites I've tried this year.  I have gotten used to the few-days-in-advance planning that is adequate for many good restaurants in Paris, but this one requires a bit more:  reservations can be a little difficult to secure and must be made a few weeks in advance.  

Our friends Thomas Piketty and Julia Cagé introduced us to Le 52 on the rue Fauboug Saint Denis.  It is casual and friendly and modern, like a restaurant you might find in a hip neighborhood in some American city.  Also, it does not take reservations.  It has beautifully-plated and vegetable-centric dishes with unusual combinations of flavors.  I have been there twice and have tasted and shared many dishes, every one of which has been delicious.  A few that stick in my mind are a quinoa and root vegetable salad, a braised pork with homemade cannelloni and lemon curd, and an architecturally-arranged dessert with pineapple wedges and basil.  It is in northern Paris near Strasbourg Saint Denis, a bustling, active, diverse part of Paris (in contrast to our more sedate and, well, homogeneous neighborhood), so it's fun and interesting to just walk around there, too.  My friends Sheila and Nazanin also loved it.

La Maison du Jardin, just a short walk from our apartment, has a fairly traditional French-style setting and service, but the food strays a bit from the traditional.  I ordered the lamb pastilla, which was a tender braised lamb pie with a light, flaky crust served on a bed of roasted eggplant slices.  Desserts there were good as well. 

A few months ago we had lunch at Ellsworth, a restaurant near the Louvre run by the same people who run Verjus, my favorite place to eat in Paris.  The dishes were the perfect size for lunch (small), and everything was fantastic.  Especially noteworthy was the fried chicken with pickles, slaw, and a buttermilk sauce, or, rather, "poulet frit, légumes marinés, choux, lait fermenté."  I didn't order it myself, but I tried some of Derek's and it was great.  I would like to go back there.  

Finally, I'll mention two places that are on our short list to try, Fish La Boissonerie and Les Fables de la Fontaine.  I'll report back.  

Cooking nightly dinners has become a casualty of my busy work schedule over the past few weeks.  I often don't feel like shopping and putting dinner together after I get home at 7pm.  But the two-hour sit-down dinner at a restaurant won't always fit the bill, especially not on school nights.  So we have also been sampling some of Paris' fast food offerings recently.

None of us are interested in McDonald's or Burger King, both a three-minute walk away, but another American fast food institution has arrived in Paris, to Kate's great delight.  She loves Chipotle, and Glenn and I are happy getting a burrito there on occasion.  Our local Chipotle also has margaritas.  (Mexican and Tex-Mex food is pretty bad in Paris, so Chipotle does sort of fill a void.) 

Burgers are definitely having a moment in Paris now.  Two new burger places---think something like Five Guys in terms of both quality of food and ambiance---have opened within a couple of blocks of us recently.  One is the illogically-named Factory & Company and the other is the too-obviously-named Burger & Fries.  We tried both and thought they were ok.  Maison Burger and Frog Burger are both a bit further from us, but with somewhat nicer atmosphere.  Alternative burger places are big, too, like Ducky's for duck bao, Poulet Poulette for chicken burgers, and, one I especially liked, Shisho Burger for burgers with an Asian twist.  

(Updates:  We ate at Les Fables de la Fontaine and loved it.  Here's a post about it.

https://pariswiththeellisons.blogspot.com/2018/06/back-together-again.html

I thought it would also be useful to add a link to the first post I wrote, earlier this year, about our favorite restaurants.

https://pariswiththeellisons.blogspot.com/2018/02/our-favorite-restaurants-in-paris.html

Finally, here is a photo I took of a delicious lentil and eggplant main dish at Le 52 a couple of days ago.)