75001 Paris

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This restaurant is very well located (behind the Louvre, and near the Forum des Halles) and has the advantange of very good salads. For example this one with extremely tasty smoked ham and goat cheese on toast:

And that one with some kind of strange but very good meat, I forgot what it was exactly (gizzard? liver?):

They also have the interesting concept of a hamburger with foie gras!

Very tasty ingredients and nice surroundings. Give it a try! Salads around 12 euros, dishes around 12-16 euros.

22 Boulevard Saint-Germain

75005 Paris

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The noodles are home made and the room where the chef makes the noodles is open to the main room (through a glass). They also have other dishes (haven’t tried them, though) but they specialty is obviously noodles, sautéed like these with vegetables and beef, 12 euros (see the small beer bottle and glass around the plate for scale — pretty substantial):

or the same with vegetables and chicken, 11 euros:

or in a spicy soup, 9.50 euros (again look at the glass for scale — that’s a large bowl!):

I wouldn’t say these are my absolute favorite Chinese dishes but as far as noodles are concerned I wouldn’t know better in Paris, especially with home made noodles. Safe choice!

Update: some more dishes from the same restaurant.

23 Boulevard des Capucines

75002 Paris

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We have our usual addresses for this kind of restaurant but we try and experiment new places, and this one is a little further north, on the Boulevard des Capucines, away from the rest of the restaurant “crowd”. The surroundings are nice, with a few tables on an interestingly placed second floor. We had a couple of noodle soups, one of which was part of a menu with a half curry rice:

The total was 17.80 euros = 9.30 (menu) + 8.50 (noodle soup).

Overall it was a very nice experience. Nothing really outstanding, but definitely slightly above the average in this district. My favorite will still be Naniwa-Ya, which I’ll be writing about in the future!

34 rue Saint-Anne

75001

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Nothing astonishing with this restaurant, it’s a safe bet for a casual lunch if you’re in this district and don’t want to eat Japanese. Of course we couldn’t skip on the couscous, this one is a vegetarian couscous (9.50 euros):

And I took a “Cairo plate” (assiette du Caire, 12 euros):

One thing that’s worth mentioning, I think, is that even though all that’s on the plate was really good (different types of hummus and other creamy things, the two deep fried sticks are filled with cheese), the bread on the side, served hot and fairly soft, turns cold and dry very quickly when taken out of its plastic bag and at this point it’s really just like a large cracker. Better bread would be a notable improvement.

Now I confess that I’m not familiar enough with North African food (though love it!!) to have enough reference points to compare this with, but it seems like an okay choice, nothing astonishing but a fair deal for the price.

4 rue de Budapest

75009 Paris

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I didn’t actually write down the price for each dish, but total (with the dishes below, two bowls of rice – their bowls are large enough for two in my opinion – a large bottle of Chinese beer and another small bottle) we payed about 70 euros. Now the dishes.

We started with this (cold) cucumber dish:

and this was surprisingly good. The cucumber was raw but marinated in a light lemon sauce, probably with a bit of white vinegar and maybe a little bit of sugar, so that these thin slices were still deliciously crunchy, fresh and with a perfect taste. The red ones are peppers and there are also some raw sliced onions in there. Now officially one of my favorites!!

One of this restaurant’s specialties is to serve a wok on your table and keep a slight fire under it, we got the chicken one (about 20 euros):

Their shrimps are also pretty good and tender, nothing really special about them though:

Another one of my favorites from now on is their tofu, cooked in some kind of skin, fairly different from all the kinds of tofu I’ve tried until now:

We also had a dish of deep fried red beans, very interesting although maybe not a strong enough taste for me (but other people on the table loved them):

Lastly we tried a dish of sweet deep fried corn, not sure it was designed to be a desert but it’s very sweet so it’s probably a perfect desert (avoiding the usual artificial deserts to fit Western taste, like litchis or bad ice cream):

Overall a very good choice! I will definitely come back again and I’ll be sure to order the cucumbers and the tofu again!

75016 Paris

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Here’s a fairly authentic sushi shop in the fancy 16th district of Paris. It is recommended to come for lunch as menu prices are cheaper.

We had the Chirachi royal (19.5 euros for lunch):

and the Mixte royal (19.5 for lunch):

both accompanied by a small salad (with a bit of seaweed) and a miso shiru:

There’s some interesting fish in there, including some ikura (salmon eggs I believe?) in a maki or some other unidentified (at least for me!) fish.

An interesting desert is the sesame ice cream, pretty tasty:

We also tried the aloe vera (oops, blurry):

You can also have these to go, for example the Mixte Royal (to go) and go and eat those on the chess tables in the nearby garden on Place Rodin:

Overall, I would say that these are a little bit above the average in Paris, but maybe slightly overpriced and still far behind what I had in Tokyo. The restaurant itself doesn’t have a very nice setting, with very little space and high-placed, bar-like tables where you sit on high stools; one could argue that it tries to imitate (though poorly) the atmosphere of certain restaurants in Japan.

50 rue François Miron

75004 Paris

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We started with a plate of antipasti (11 euros) that we shared between two people:

Nothing amazing, but they were nicely seasoned and tender (the vegetables in the dark are dried tomatoes). Then, two plates of pasta, the Fusili Fuxia (12 euros):

and the Rigatoni Funghi (11 euros):

On the whole it’s a pretty safe choice, but if you don’t need to be in this particular place of Paris I’d rather recommend “Little Italy” (search on this same website), where I find the pasta slightly better even though Fuxia’s environment is a bit nicer (bigger terrace, more spacious).

8 rue Thénard

75005 Paris

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The guys there always have very original ideas of mixing ingredients together in an unexpected way. I promise you will be surprised.

They have a rotation of dishes that they keep inventing so you won’t find the same dishes if you go there again a couple of weeks later. That also means that you only have ~5 or 6 dishes to choose from at any given time (plus 5 entrées and 5 desserts), but I can guarantee you that you will want to try each and every one of them just by reading their name.

If you go there for lunch, they have a menu for 13.50 euros where you don’t get to choose anything (but, again, it changes all the time) with an entrée, a main course, a glass of wine and a coffee (they also have red wines).

For dinner or for lunch, the full menu is 28.50 euros for entrée, main course and dessert.

I keep going there again and again so here are a few examples:

Raspberry soup:

Baby pork:

Carrot and cumin soup:

Turkey and polenta (forgot what the orange spice was):

Half-cooked tuna:

Beef with smoked purée (yes, smoked mashed potatoes, divine!):

Beef with beetroot sauce:

Pork with tagliatelles:

Now a few desserts.

Blackcurrant mousse:

Dessert with chocolate and sesame:

Cooked banana with mango ice cream:

Some other kind of ice cream and rhubarb:

And something that I completely forgot:

Enjoy!

1283 9th Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94122

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They have sushi and noodle soups so we tried a bit of both worlds. I didn’t write down the price of each dish but the total (two noodle soups, the two small salads that came with them and a plate of sushi) was 26.70 dollars total. The nearest soup is a Shoyu Ramen (soba), I forget exactly what the other was (was udon, though):

They came with two small salads:

And the plate of sushi was called “Cherry Blossom”:

Overall, I really wasn’t very impressed. I mean, the soups and sushi were about the same level, pretty decent for an “exported” Japanese restaurant, but I found the whole experience fairly unauthentic and while I wouldn’t have expected more from an average Japanese restaurant that I’d walked into half-randomly, that one had been recommended to me as one of the best in town. In that respect, it was clearly disappointing. As a side note, it was pretty crowded and we had to wait for half an hour in a queue, so it all pretty much fell flat. Apart from that, a very fair quality / price ratio for an average Japanese restaurant outside of Japan.

86 Carl Street

San Francisco, CA 94117

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The meister burger + fries was 13 dollars, the tropical chicken salad was 10 dollars, and an extra order of sweet potato fries was 5.75 dollars. Total with tax: 32.35 dollars. Here’s what all this looked like:

I am nowhere near a hamburger expert, but I found this one pretty good! Tasty ingredients, well cooked, nothing to complain about! Obviously would have enjoyed fresh pineapple instead of canned in the salad, though.