Non-French (including Ethnic) food in Paris

[John Talbott]

Host's Note

I split this off from the Vegetarian one because it seemed to have legs of its own.

About Indian restaurants: the real vegetarian ones are in the La Chapelle area, top of rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. Most of them Tamil or Sri Lankan. There is one on rue Cail that serves truly delicious food.

A vegan option that might be interesting to some: Green Garden (yes, in English) on rue Nationale near the porte d'Ivry is an Asian, totally vegan, restaurant. Classics of Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese cooking are interpreted with soy protein in place of meat or fish.

Some friends of mine rave about the place, so there must be something to it, which is why I mention it. But personally it leaves me cold, for two reasons: an excess of — vegetable-based — taste enhancers compensates the blandness of most dishes, and the problem is that this compensation is quite noticeable. Also, there is nothing exciting, far from it, about soy protein except that it imitates animal protein. But when I want to eat vegetarian, I crave a good dish of vegetables and I am not interested in finding a substitute for meat. I think the Indian vegetarian places in Northern Paris are more satisfying because they treat vegetables and pulses for their own sake, not for imitation or as substitutes.

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I think this verges on the OT, but Pti, having eating Indian in the Indian subcontinent, the UK, France and the US, what's your take on the differences?

My pre-opinion is that because of the products in France, one can cook Thai, Indian, even Japanese food and it's different than it is in the Mother country (But maybe this deserves a new thread).

[Ptipois]

I think this verges on the OT, but Pti, having eating Indian in the Indian subcontinent, the UK, France and the US, what's your take on the differences?

My pre-opinion is that because of the products in France, one can cook Thai, Indian, even Japanese food and it's different than it is in the Mother country (But maybe this deserves a new thread).

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If this deserves a new thread, you might want to move this message.

Anyway: if you will excuse me for the truism, there are two main conditions for cooking any native cuisine abroad — first the availability of ingredients, second the cooking skills and knowledge of that cuisine.

The availability of Japanese ingredients in Paris (which is the French place I know the best) is more limited than the availability of Chinese and Thai products. Indian products stand in-between, with a few shops in Passage Brady and rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis South of Gare de l'Est and, more importantly, a whole neighborhood (upper part of Faubourg-Saint-Denis, La Chapelle and Western part of rue Louis-Blanc) devoted to commerces (grocery shops, butcher shops, DVDs, fabrics, etc.) catering mostly to the Sri-Lankan and South Indian communities. There you may find everything you see in the ingredient lists of Indian cookbooks, and much more.

My idea is that the state of each cuisine in a French context has to be studied individually. The main supples for Japanese cooking, for instance, are available in a few shops near the Opéra (and the Japanese aisles in supermarkets like Tang and Paristore are growing), but this cuisine relies so much on high-quality fresh ingredients that it is not easy to duplicate successfully in Paris. Some restaurants do a very good job, but if you want to cook Japanese at home you will spend more time and energy searching for the right ingredients than actually cooking. Besides Japanese cooking (IMO) is by no means easy; it requires a "touch" and sureness of hand that not everybody can duplicate.

Given the development of food imports and the adaptation of large markets like Tang Frères to the wishes of their Asian clientèle, I think it is possible for Chinese people to cook up something relatively close to what they'd make at home. Of course many ingredients are still missing but the main basics are there. And it shows in some restaurants, especially some Wenzhou places near Arts-et-Métiers and some recently-opened Sichuan and Shandong places who are run by professional chefs, where you can take a bite and say "it's just like China" — which is a new thing.

When it comes to Indian food, the problem is more complicated. Many ingredients are now available (including goat meat at halal butchers) but what has regularly been missing in Paris is the cooking skills. Some 20 years ago, there were very few acceptable Indian restaurants and most of them were expensive. The situation still goes on with Indo-Pakistani restaurants in every neighborhood, complete with tons of wood carving, whose method generally consists in tandoorizing or just stewing meat or chicken and splashing one of three bland, fatty green, brown or orange sauces over them depending on the order. Sometimes chicken is stale under its coat of sauce, which makes you wonder if stewing happens only once a week. If you haven't choked on the 5-cm thick pakora before, that is. Add a half-liter of cloyingly sweet, fluorescent pink lassi and a Vache-qui-Rit cheese nan to this and you've got the average Indian meal in Paris.

Except in the right neighborhood, that is. Which is why I insist on the Sri-Lankan/Tamil area past Gare du Nord. Not only you may find a great variety of products and imported foods, but some of the restaurants, snack shops and pastry shops are really good. Simple but spicy, and a few interesting vegetarian options, with the right use of chilli, grated coconut, asafetida, curry leaf and methi leaf that gives Indian vegetarian cooking its delicious flavors (these ingredients are totally absent from the restaurants mentioned in the previous paragraph). And apparently the cooks in that restaurant have no trouble getting that taste, it feels like they probably were already doing that in Sri Lanka before coming to France (whereas, in the Indo-Pakistani places, you really feel that they first decided to open a restaurant and then to learn cooking). So, to answer your question, I think Paris is probably not to the level of London regarding Indian food (I have never been to India) but things have improved a lot in recent years.

I think that the easiest cuisine to duplicate at home is Thai cuisine. Because the availability of products directly flown from Thailand is very satisfactory (recently they have even begun to fly in "burnt" fresh coconuts, coriander with the roots on, and little-known fruit like the delicious longkong). Now, if you master the basics of Thai cuisine (which is, IMO, not based on complicated techniques but on a methodical mind), there is no excuse not to cook up a good Thai meal in Paris.

Which is not to say that Thai restaurants in Paris are worth jumping up and down for, just that most conditions for success are gathered.

[pennylane]

I think this verges on the OT, but Pti, having eating Indian in the Indian subcontinent, the UK, France and the US, what's your take on the differences?

Hailing from the Indian subcontinent myself, I can say that certainly the typical North Indian fare in France is sadly well below the standard that I've seen in the U.S. and of course England. There is a tendency towards bad substitutions (La Vache Qui Rit for paneer!!), garish food colouring etc. I would agree with Ptipois that the Sri Lankan/Tamil eateries in La Chapelle are more authentic, but they are a little... er... "budget". I know the restaurant on rue Cail (Dishny?) and I like it, but still think it's not quite up to the standard you find in London. I went there with a South Indian girl and she said the sambar was very good... the rest just okay.

[Ptipois]

Hailing from the Indian subcontinent myself, I can say that certainly the typical North Indian fare in France is sadly well below the standard that I've seen in the U.S. and of course England.  There is a tendency towards bad substitutions (La Vache Qui Rit for paneer!!), garish food colouring etc.  I would agree with Ptipois that the Sri Lankan/Tamil eateries in La Chapelle are more authentic, but they are a little... er... "budget".  I know the restaurant on rue Cail (Dishny?) and I like it, but still think it's not quite up to the standard you find in London.  I went there with a South Indian girl and she said the sambar was very good... the rest just okay.

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It is true that the South Indian/Sri Lankan eateries around rue Cail are "budget". I wrote they were distinctly better than the average (horrendous) North Indian-Pakistani restaurant in Paris but that isn't saying much, really. Dishny is a good example: some preparations are good (the sambar, a few others) but you don't expect a feast when you go there. Restaurants and snack shops in that area are of variable quality. It can go from very poor to pretty good. There is a vegetarian restaurant on rue Cail, facing Dishny, and I suggest you try it. Since you are from India, I would be interested to hear what you think of it.

At the other end of rue Cail, corner of rue Louis-Blanc, there is a snack shop called Ganesha Corner and although I have been staying away (for no clear reason) from their more ambitious dishes like curries and birianis, I do like their rotis, parathas, meat rolls and idlis.

Edited August 9, 2007 by Ptipois (log)

[John Talbott]

Anyway: if you will excuse me for the truism, there are two main conditions for cooking any native cuisine abroad — first the availability of ingredients, second the cooking skills and knowledge of that cuisine.

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Actually I was thinking of places that have either used French products cooked by natives of another land or had French chefs cooking the products from another land. For the former, we had a Thai restaurant in the 18th, that used French products and served some of the best Thai food I've had, including in Thailand, and for the latter, the ill-fated Bertie's in the Baltimore Hotel that served English products, including wine from Surrey, cooked by French hands, a great idea (say Brit lamb undercooked by skilled French chefs instead of massacred by Brit chefs) that failed in the execution.

Edited by John Talbott to put words in correct order (eg no words changed).

Edited August 10, 2007 by John Talbott (log)

[Ptipois]

Actually I was thinking of places that have either used French products cooked by natives of another land or had French chefs cooking the products from another land.  For the former, we had a Thai restaurant in the including in Thailand, and 18th that used French products and served some of the best Thai food I've had, and for the latter, the ill-fated Bertie's in the Baltimore Hotel that served English products, including wine from Surrey, cooked by French hands, a great idea (say Brit lamb undercooked by skilled French chefs instead of massacred by Brit chefs) that failed in the execution.

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Hm. I don't have clear ideas on that. Do you mean — to simplify —, on one hand, French products prepared according to non-French techniques, and, on the other hand, non-French products prepared according to French techniques?

Could you give me more precise examples of French products prepared by that Thai restaurant?(I suspect some part of your sentence popped up and landed where it shouldn't have.) All Thai restaurants in France use French products. French meat, birds, fish, seafood, French-grown herbs and vegetables... The true question is, was this restaurant serving Thai cuisine or a hybrid of French and Thai, as is partly the case with Oth Sombat at Le Banyan?

As for Bertie's, maybe the execution was just bad and the idea itself is not to blame. English food and British products are still very far from getting, in France, the respect they deserve. I think what is relevant is not where the hands come from, it is what they are able to do.

Edited August 10, 2007 by John Talbott (log)

[John Talbott]

Hm. I don't have clear ideas on that. Do you mean — to simplify —, on one hand, French products prepared according to non-French techniques, and, on the other hand, non-French products prepared according to French techniques?

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Yes to both questions.

For the former say French tomatoes prepared by Thai chefs

For the latter, say UK lamb prepared by French chefs

As for product examples you've stretched my memory to the breaking point.

[Ptipois]

I cannot think of any general rules. Each case should be analyzed individually. UK lamb, French tomatoes, French chefs, Thai chefs, etc., do not mean much in themselves.

There isn't much difference between good UK lamb and good French lamb, while the use of a Thai ingredient or spice in the hands of an inexperienced French chef is not likely to produce anyhing of interest. For instance French chefs have never understood mango as an ingredient, and many of them do not get their spices right although they are supposed to, since spices are cool.

If you could describe the kind of food that was served to you in that Thai restaurant in the 18e, I probably could see what you mean more clearly. I suspect we are discussing two different subjects here: foreign cooking traditions transplanted in another country, and trying to duplicate themselves as well as they can using local products, or the evolution of the same cooking traditions through the integration of French elements, resulting in some sort of fusion cuisine?

[John Talbott]

I cannot think of any general rules.

If you could describe the kind of food that was served to you in that Thai restaurant in the 18e, I probably could see what you mean more clearly. I suspect we are discussing two different subjects here: foreign cooking traditions transplanted in another country, and trying to duplicate themselves as well as they can using local products, or the evolution of the same cooking traditions through the integration of French elements, resulting in some sort of fusion cuisine?

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The only general rule I've drawn in 50 years of eating non-French cuisine in France is that French products are generally of a higher quality than those in either the Mother country or say the US and thus, from Viet Namese to Thai, the dishes while made similarly, are better here. I don't think it's fusion cooking but rather adaptive cooking.

[pennylane]

The only general rule I've drawn in 50 years of  eating non-French cuisine in France is that French products are generally of a higher quality than those in either the Mother country or say the US and thus, from Viet Namese to Thai, the dishes while made similarly, are better here.

I can see what you're saying, but I don't think it's necessarily always the case. I can't really speak for Thai cuisine and I know we've already established that Indian/Pakistani cuisine is not very good here, but when it comes to fresh produce, especially ingredients used in Asia, not all of it is better over here. Mangos, for instance, are notoriously bad travellers. And even something as innocuous as carrots... the carrots in Pakistan are a different colour and taste different than the carrots here. So one just can't make carrot halwa and get it to look the same without adding food colouring. I know that's not such a big deal but it's just one example and there are probably others which I can't think of at the moment. Also, the fact that certain ingredients can only be obtained with difficulty makes them more expensive, so people tend to be stingier with them and it's just not the same.

Having said that, though, I have been to Indian/Pakistani restaurants in the UK and the US where the standard was definitely higher than almost anything one can find back home. But in this case it isn't due to the products used but the techniques which are aimed at a more discerning clientele. For instance, there's a tendency to drench everything in grease and overspice things in Pakistan and I think many dishes benefit from a slightly lighter touch in that department.

[Ptipois]

The only general rule I've drawn in 50 years of  eating non-French cuisine in France is that French products are generally of a higher quality than those in either the Mother country or say the US and thus, from Viet Namese to Thai, the dishes while made similarly, are better here.  I don't think it's fusion cooking but rather adaptive cooking.

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I don't think I agree with this, though I admit there are exceptions.

French products that will be of higher quality when used in Thai cooking are not many. I can think of beef, oysters, mussels, and not much else.

Canned coconut milk is a satisfactory substitute for milk extracted from fresh, ripe coconut that has not travelled thousands of miles in a plane, but it will never equal it. Frozen freshwater fish or shrimp are not the real thing. Mangoes, as Pennylane says, do not travel well. The same can be said about most fruit, vegetables, herbs, as good as Thai imports are.

Pork still tastes like pork in Asia. Asian pork dishes are not easy to duplicate in France, since pigs are bred to be as lean as possible, which produces a tasteless and watery flesh. There is a world of difference between pork satay bought on the street in Thailand and the same recipe made in a French restaurant. And I will not mention bananas, grassfish, grilled mackerels, sausages, chillies, etc. Even poulet de Bresse in Thai or Chinese dishes clearly does not make it. It is both too fatty and too tough. The farm-raised chickens I had in Guangzhou were both leaner and tenderer, with a delicious, wholesome taste.

I have noticed that when good Chinese chefs in Paris made steamed whole chicken with scallion-ginger sauce, they used Landes chicken, which is much closer to the Chinese equivalent.

Edited August 11, 2007 by Ptipois (log)