When I walked into Ibrik café the other day and sat down in the upstairs dining room, I saw this scenario next to me. After spending the morning rummaging through an unruly restaurant supply salvage yard out in the suburbs (I didn’t buy anything, but they gave me three cake pans as a gift), it was nice to sit somewhere that was clean, organized, and dry….
Abruptly, it’s fall. The weather turned brisk this week, and I’m starting to wonder which box my scarves and gloves are in? When I lived in San Francisco, where the weather is notoriously fickle, the joke was that the only way to tell what season it is, is to hit the market. True, not everybody is concerned with seasonality. I was recently asked during a…
A stalwart of the “old guard” of classic Paris bistros has been revived. The reliable Rôtisserie du Beaujolais, across the street from the Seine, had been remodeled and refreshed as Rôtisserie d’Argent, the new name giving a nod to its famous cousin just across the street, the Tour d’Argent. [UPDATE: I posted this write-up in 2017, over six years ago (and pre-pandemic) and since then,…
It’s a great day when a new bakery opens up in your neighborhood. I don’t mean to brag, but there are six bakeries in my neighborhood. One of those “great days” was when a particularly lame bakery closed, and a really good one opened up in its place. And although I don’t like seeing people go out of business, another bakery that was, for lack…
News of a favorite classic French restaurant, Moissonnier, closing from a reader (thanks for the tip, Annette) reminded me of the challenges of running a good restaurant. The food was traditional French, done right, prepared with care by the chef/owner, with his wife tending to the details in the dining room. A drive-by location, and a younger generation not as interested in quenelles in cream sauce…
Two things have surprised me recently*. One is the sudden surge of small-scale ice cream shops that have opened in Paris. Which means my ship has definitely passed on opening my own place as others got to it first. Shops like Senoble, Glaces Glazed, Une Glace à Paris, Sucre Glace, and La Paleteria are churning out ice cream across Paris, some even staying open in…
Middle Eastern restaurants that focus on freshness and quality of ingredients have been proliferating in places like London (Ottolenghi and Honey & Co.) and in the U.S. (Glasserie and Zahav) over the last few years. And now, we’ve got a spate of new ones arriving in Paris. The foods of the Middle East had mostly been relegated to kebab and falafel stands, but new places are…
There’s no shortage of chocolate shops in Paris. Many of them are concentrated in areas like the Marais or Left Bank, which are swankier places set up shop, but offer easy access. So in what are called the “double-digit” arrondissements, you’ll find more quirky places, and you’ll never know what you might come across if you wander around them. Having dinner one night at Churrasqueira…
I often wonder where people will go when they tell me they want to dine somewhere “out-of-the-way” in Paris. Do they want to go to the outer reaches of the 20th or 15th arrondissements for lunch? And if they want to go somewhere where “only locals” eat, will they be happy with a standard plat du jour? Or do they want more creative cooking, with an accent…
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