Paris 4th Bistros

[R.G. Diamond]

Yes, we feel like an absolute rubes, but we have an excellent culinary excuse -- we just keep going to Italy. We're finally managing to tear ourselves away. At least we're foodie enough to, on this eve of war, be angling for restaurant recommendations near the apartment we've rented, a couple of blocks from the Bastille. We could be sitting, glued to CNN, and freaking that our plane will blow up, or the Parisians will stone us. But no, food first.

We are a couple with a kid who can be brought, or left with the other family accompanying us, depending on the hauteur of the place. However, know that our 7 year old is a major food fan, contemptuous of MacDonald's, wants to be a chef when he grows up, etc. When I smuggled a white truffle home from Piemonte in my suitcase, whipped it out and started to shave it over his pasta, little Tom said, "This is the happiest day of my LIFE."

So. He's game for most food. But his tired little legs may not be able to walk as far as we can for dinner, so...

What's good in our area? We're interested in cafes, bistros, starred restaurants, whatever. No budget limitations, but will sometimes opt for casual out of sheer tiredness.

You all sound intimidatingly knowledgable, sophisticated and, well... Parisian.

But we're quick learners and eat everything under the sun. Take pity on us and post.

Suggestions?

R.G.

[mogsob]

Where to begin?

A list of some of the best bistros in Paris with a few notes. As the 4th is not one of my favorite dining areas and the Paris metro is one of the most comprehensive in the world (and extremely reasonable), I have taken the liberty not to limit myself to the Marais. As a caveat, my tastes run to traditional bistros so no cutting edge modern bistros here.

Allard

41 rue St-André-des-Arts (6e)

43-26-48-23

One of the most famous Parisian bistros. Allard's signature dish is Canard aux Olives, duck roasted with olives. The Coq au Vin, chicken in a dark, thick wine sauce, is also superb, as is the simply roasted Bresse chicken. The escargot starter is considered to be one of the best in Paris.

A Sousceyrac

35 rue Faidherbe (11e)

43-71-65-30

Classic southwestern cuisine.

Auberge D'Chez Eux

2 av. de Lowendal (7e)

47-05-52-55

Also a classic southwestern bistro. Perhaps the friendliest restaurant in Paris and supposedly a favorite with Chirac.

Au Moulin A Vent (Chez Henri)

20 rue des Fosses-Saint-Bernard (5e)

43-54-99-37

THE bistro for beef, including a divine boeuf a la ficelle, a fillet of beef that is tied with a string, then cooked quickly in boiling water. I also love their entrecôte with shallots. For non-meat eaters, they also make a classic sole meuniere.

Benoit

20 rue Saint-Martin (4e)

42-72-25-76

Best dishes are the beef salad, blood sausage with apples, tongue with herb sauce, and the dense cassoulet. Very expensive.

Chez Catherine

65 rue de Provence (9e)

45-26-72-88

Perhaps a bit far, but may be the best frites in Paris.

Chez Georges

1 rue de Mail (2e)

42-60-07-11

This is what everyone pictures a Parisian bistro to look and taste like.

Chez Gramond

5 rue de Fleuris (6e)

42-22-28-89

Only 10 tables in this tiny bistro, serviced by only the Gramonds themselves. Unflinchingly traditional, and boasting a wine list full of well-aged Bordeaux and Burgundy, Jean-Louis Gramond makes two weekly trips to the Parisian markets before settling on his nightly menu. Game in the fall is a speciality, especailly the hare stew. The Grand Marnier souffle is the best in class. If I had one meal in Paris, this would be it.

Chez L'Ami Louis

32 rue de Vertbois (2e)

48-87-77-48

This world-famous bistro offers great foie gras, snails, beef, lamb, chicken, and game. Extremely expensive, as you could just as easily go to a two star restaurant for the money.

Chez Michel

10 rue de Belzunce (10e)

44-53-06-20

One of the best, and the most reasonable. Classic Brittany cuisine (veal chop pan fried in fresh Brittany butter and served with a potato gratin, cod served on a bed of tomatoes and onions and tapenade, unbelievably good turbot etc.) Don't miss the rich koug-amman for dessert.

Josphine (Chez Dumonet)

117 rue du Cherche-Midi (6e)

45-48-52-40

Another classic bistro with great souffles.

Le Petit Marguery

9 bd. de Port-Royal (13e)

43-31-58-59

THE place for game. Note the imminent ownership change will likely have a major impact here.

[Sandra Levine]

A very traditional, even old-fashioned, restaurant in the 11th is A Sousceyrac, 35, rue Faidherbe. This is the place where, on his first trip to France, my husband was wondering aloud about the difference between foie gras and pate de fois gras and the man at the next table, overhearing, gave him a slice of foie from his own plate to taste! (Keep this story in mind when people start telling you how nasty the French are.)

Be warned: there's nothing "light" about the food here.

[Steve Plotnicki]

R.G. - If you follow Mogsob's very excellent list you can't go wrong. The only thing I'd add is a place where you can get a good choucroute. Your seven year old might like a hot dog while in Paris. The place I like best is l'Alsaco in the 10th arr. Don't have the address handy.

[mogsob]

Steve P -- great call on L'Alsaco.

L'Alsaco

10, rue Condorcet 10e

45-26-44-31

Enjoy!

[Louisa Chu]

Bring the kid! Parisians unabashedly love two things - dogs and kids. With truffle-loving Tom you have entree into a world you otherwise wouldn't. After school - around 4 o'clock - is the witching hour in Paris. When moms take their kids to the park - especially now that it's gorgeous outside - to play and picnic and take le gouter - the Parisian afternoon tea. I'd imagine that Place des Vosges is the center of activity in the 4th - as is the Champ de Mars where I am in the 7th. Grab a pain au chocolat - or a warm afternoon batch baguette and chocolate bar sandwiched within - and head to the park and partake in an idyllic Parisian ritual.

[Claude Kolm/The Fine Wine Review]

R.G. - If you follow Mogsob's very excellent list you can't go wrong. The only thing I'd add is a place where you can get a good choucroute. Your seven year old might like a hot dog  while in Paris. The place I like best is l'Alsaco in the 10th arr. Don't have the address handy.

Steve and I had a discussion about this on another board a few years ago. It bothers me and has kept me from going to Alsaco, as much as I love the food and wine there, but it apparently does not prevent Steve from going there. I post this in case the news is something that would make you want to avoid the restaurant.

A few years ago, neo-Nazis in Paris chose Alsaco as the location to celebrate Hitler's birthday (April 20). The event made news because anti-Nazi graffiti was painted on the outside of the restaurant the night before the event exposing it to the neighborhood, and there may have been some other damage. Other inquiries in Paris apparently confirmed the truth of the story and the views of Alsaco's owner. Web searches also revealed that the owner is a big Le Pen backer (including monetary donations).

Patricia Wells recommends Alsaco. I e-mailed her with the news about Alsaco and asked what she knew about it, but she never replied. She continues to recommend the restaurant.

Friends in Paris tell me that Chez Jenny, another Alsatian brasserie (Alsaco is really a wijnstub and not a brasserie) in Paris, also is notorious for the views of much of its clientele.

These days I'm inclined to go to Boffinger or to search out other new places when I'm in Paris and want Alsatian food.

Best regards,

Claude Kolm

The Fine Wine Review

[David Bizer]

Here are two of my favorites near your place:

Le Repaire de Cartouche

8, Boulevard des Filles-du-Calvaire

01 47 00 25 86

Metro: St. Sebastien Froissart

This is a quaint French bistro. It was written up a while back as one of the new hot bistros in Paris. The downstairs part of the restaurant (ask for a table "sous-sol" when you reserve) has a great atmosphere, and the food is excellent.

Here's a link to an article written in January in the Intl Herald Tribune, Patrica Wells:

Le Repaire de Cartouche

Au C'Amelot, 50 Rue Amelot, Paris 11; tel: 43-55-54-04. No credit cards. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Here is a link to a very old Patricia Well's article. http://www.iht.com/IHT/DINE/pw0308.html

It's also written up in the March issue of Paris Notes if you have access to that publication.

Let me know what you think if you decide to go. Also, there is an exhibit on the Titanic at Cite de la Science. Your son might like it.

http://www.cite-sciences.fr/francais/ala_c...anic/index.html

[R.G. Diamond]

Thank you, thank you all for taking pity on us. Despite our reasonable sophistication level, the spectre of Paris makes us feel like trailer trash.

And thank you for including suggestions for a precocious kid's entertainment -- he happens to be a Titanic nut.

I often think he ought to be raised in Europe -- his interests fall so much more along European lines (classical music, fine dining, dressing up, hanging out) than American (fast food, baseball, hitting). And moving overseas is a fantasy I've had. And our jobs (writers) would even permit it. But oh, the effort! The language lessons! The unknown! Still, the fantasy gnaws.

This is off-subject. Can you tell I'm getting excited?

R. G.

[Bux]

R.G. Diamond, enjoy Paris. I regret to say it's no longer the place it was when I first went there in the sixties. Today, it is possible to get a bad meal in Paris and certainly easier than in most places in Italy -- Venice perhaps excepted. As Lou says, the French love kids although I've often thought they prefer to see dogs in restaurants than kids. I'm kidding -- mostly -- I have seen large families with youngsters in restaurants as posh and formal as the old Robuchon. T

he hardest problem with children in restaurants maybe the length of a meal in a very formal restaurant. If your son can say "bonjour," "bon soir" and "merci" with a half recognizable accent and smile broadly while eating enthusiastically, he's likely to charm the French very much.

I don't know that neighborhood very well, but have found the place du Bastille very lively. There's a contemporary interpretation of a brasserie, Les Grandes Marches, there. It offers a more interesting contemporary menu than what one might expect in a brasserie and we enjoyed it very much a few years ago. I believe there's an interesting market along blvd. Richard Lenoir, but don't know what day it runs. Mostly, you'll be drawn to the west, but there's the market at pl. d'Aligre a metro stop (walking distance, I assume) to the east that's also interesting. On rue Roussel leading to the market there's a little bar called Baron Rouge. (?) It's a smokey little bar unsuited for that reason perhaps for kids, but they serve oysters on the street to an overflow crowd. If your son likes oysters, this is an amusing scene. If you want a beer or glass of muscadet to accompany the oysters, one of you will have to belly up to the bar, but you can bring the glasses out to the street. Every available building ledge and car hood seems to serve as a table.

We're on our way to Spain having made two trips to France last year plus one that took us to both countries. We find ourselves splitting our time between these two countries more and more.

[Bux]

Have you read Gopnik's From Paris to the Moon? His son was younger during the period he and his family lived there and which was documented in the book.

I'd also note that I've found Europeans every bit as absorbed with pop music as we are.

[Moondog]

The terrasse of the Brasserie St Louis on a fine sunny day is a good spot. The waiters are fun and they do a great jarret with lentilles. It also kid-friendly, especially with Berthillon's ice cream across the street.

In the 4th, everyone's nuts about the 18 tables at Hiramatsu, where they do a franco-japanese fusion thing. I haven't been - it's one of the toughest reservations in the city. Pricey, too, though not as expensive as the truly exceptional l'Ambroisie at Place Vosges, also in the 4th. Not too far afield is Le Pamphlet, in the 3rd on rue Debelleyme in the new art gallery district: tasty bistro food, not on par with Chez Michel et al but good value for money. And further up Debellyme there's a little worker's cantine run by a very sweet couple; the fare is straight-up, no thrills, but the ambience and welcome is wonderfully parisian. Remember, you can find good French food in most major cities nowadays, much of it much better than what's commonly available in Paris. What you won't find is what Arletty describes in the film Gare du Nord: "Atmosphere, atmosphere!"

[R.G. Diamond]

Yes, I read "Paris to the Moon," and particularly enjoyed the chapter about Adam's doomed attempts to organize a revolt against the hostile takeover of his favorite restaurant by a conglomerate.

Off topic, but as to bad food in Italy, we are also going to Venice on this trip, where I've spent time before (and so know how to avoid restaurant pitfalls) and Shannon's restaurant list, on Slow Travelers, is recently updated and very reliable. I had despaired of getting good food in Venice until then.

This board is great.

R.G.

[hollywood]

Go to Saint Chappelle on a sunny day. Here's what it looks like from the outside.

http://www.smackfu.com/photos/france/paris...G_0387.JPG.html

Pretty ordinary, eh? When you get to the second floor, it's like being inside a kaleidoscope. Magical.

[Bux]

The conglomerate that took over the Balzar, the brasserie in question, was the Flo Group named after their first brasserie purchase, is also the owner and operator of the new Les Grands Marches I recommended earlier. I won't defend their take overs other than to say that the brasseries were all for sale and without the interest of the Flo Group, it's quite possible that each and everyone of these places would have suffered a worse fate. There are few of the fine old brasseries still independently owned and operated. I heartily recommend the andouille at any of the Flo Brasseries and like le Vaudeville. Note that this is a sausage of tripe or chitlins with a barnyard aroma. First time travelers should be warning that it is not the spicy sausage of Louisiana and may be an acquired taste. In fact, it was at the Balzar, which did have a great many American diners, that the waiter asked my wife if she had eaten pig's feet before when she placed her order. Her indignation warded off a similar question to me when I ordered an andouille. The andouille was excellent, my wife was less pleased with the pig's feet. I hope you enjoy Paris and that you've done some searching here for older threads on Parisian restaurants.

[fresh_a]

Mog--Chez Catherine has moved address since a long time, having taken over Guy Savoy's bistrot "Version Sud" in the 17th...no longer at rue de Provence, and definitely looking for a richer clientelle..

[Moondog]

On the Flo front-- the conglomerate also own the Hippo and Bistro Romain chains, both to be avoided. They also own Bofinger and Petit Bofinger. They have wisely decided to maintain Balzar's independence from the basic Brasserie Flo concept. The best Flos are Vaudeville, Terminus Nord, Julien, Coupole (late at night) and the original Flo in the 10th. Avoid the plat du jour, especially fish dishes, and stick to the raw oysters, seafood plateaux, andouille, and choucroute. The house wines are good value, as is the late-night "coup de faim" menu (after 10.30 pm I think).

[saveur]

R.G.,

Greetings from someone who has also just moved to Paris, in the 3rd but still the Marais. I too have been preoccupied with finding great places to eat in the area, and although I've lived in the Marais before for a couple of months about 3 years ago, I've only discovered the tip of the iceberg. In the Marais, one of my faves is Les Philosophes, for their Cuisse de Canard Confit. I'm sure you've had a duck confit before, but if you haven't, you'll be tasting a French classic. Les Philosophes is very popular especially on a nice day (and so is the confit), as it has a great location in the middle of the Marais, near the famed falafel joints Chez Marianne and L'As du Falafel, and it's particularly great on a sunny day to eat or drink al fresco, while you watch the quartier walk by.

Les Philosophes

28 rue Vielle du Temple

01.48.87.49.64

Metro Saint Paul

By the way, I've really enjoyed the Timeout Paris Eating and Drinking Guide, which is available at most larger news kiosks. This guide's got an opinionated edge that I really appreciate.

-rl

[saveur]

R.G.,

Imagining your 7 year old marvelling over fresh truffles, or enjoying a great meal in Paris, and it makes me smile, coz I was that kid too. My parents have always loved travelling around the world and eating their way around the world, and I think that that has been one of the most marvellous influences my parents have had on me. When people ask me why I enjoy cooking and eating so much or how I've become such a foodie, I must attribute it to my parents influence. I must say that I pay them back every time I go home to visit, with days of cooking and sharing my cooking.

It's also my parents generosity in buying me cookbooks, as well as paying for cooking classes here and there that have helped to deepen this interest. And, I've continued to collect cookbooks and look for cooking classes whereever I might be travelling.

I've mentioned that I just moved here to Paris, and I'm happy to report that I've found a great cooking class, and one that may work well for your child. The Francoise Meunier cooking school has courses pretty much everyday. What's special about this school is that it is the antithesis of big formal cooking schools like the Ritz Escoffier, or Le Cordon Bleu, and it's run by Francoise Meunier herself (a graduate of one of these schools, if I'm not mistaken) in her extra large kitchen in an apartment in the 2nd arr. She's great- super friendly, and she's got a knack about making French cooking seem easy to learn. I made puff pastry with her the other day (and we used it to make mille feuille), and it's an achievement that's she's made this daunting concept so accessible and fun. Classes are small, and hands-on, and the atmosphere is tres sympa and relaxed. I've taken three classes with her and have signed up for a 5-class package deal (360 euros). She's got many regulars, and it's plain to see why. I think she does classes with or for children too, so this is perhaps one way your child (or anyone) can start to discover French cooking or hone cooking skills in an appropriate environment.

Call Francoise to get more info. Classes almost every day, I think.

(she also speaks English, (and I think Spanish... and some Japanese)!).

7 rue Lelong - 2nd arr. (a pleasant walk for those of us living in the Marais)

01.40.26.14.00

-ron

Edited March 22, 2003 by saveur (log)

[VivreManger]

One restaurant I have enjoyed -- ate there once about three years ago is

le DOME DU MARAIS, 53B r Francs Bourgeois 75004 PARIS, 01 42 74 54 17, FAX 01 42 74 54 61

Last time I checked it got a 14 in the Gault-Millaut. The chef, Pierre Lecoutre, who was formerly at l'Atlantide in Nantes has a distinguished reputation. In addition to being reasonably priced, lunch menu at about $25, dinner at $40, it also offers a discount for children, at least according to the following web-site:

http://www.parissi.com/ultrag/marais/ledom...omedumarais.htm.

I had a very good hare stew as well as a delicate scallop and crab nague.

The restaurant has a spectacular domed dining room, a remodelled 18th century credit union (Mont de Piété), with rich red walls, which is well-described and illustrated in Pairscope.

[Louisa Chu]

Has anyone tried Maison Rouge?

[anil]

Has anyone tried Maison Rouge?

The one by rue des Archives ? If that is the one in question then In all honesty when we there last time, I had gotten my shoes wet (it was raining) and the constant feeling of wet socks etc. spoilt the mood and enjoyment of my meal.

[Louisa Chu]

Yes, La Maison Rouge on rue des Archives in the 4th. Sounds interesting. Wondering if it's good.

La Maison Rouge

13 rue des Archives

01 42 71 69 69

Edited March 23, 2003 by loufood (log)

[R.G. Diamond]

We are here in Paris now. Kid has already pronouced the croissants "better than home," and gone into raptures over the cheese ("Can I have fruit aned cheese for breakfast?") And we just got here.

Thanks, all, for the suggestions. I'll slog my way through them. This apt. is a couple of blocks from the Place de Vosges. Seems like a great location. People are perfectly friendly -- if they hate us, they're doing a damn good job of concealing it.

So glad we came. Some people were having kneejerk panic and cancelling their trips. Not us foodies.

R.G.

[Jonathan Day]

R.G., you've already made an important step in taking an apartment instead of a hotel. I don't think you will regret it.

I hope you'll try a trip to one of the great street markets, bringing your food home. You don't have to cook very much: you can find salads, charcuterie, lovely roast chickens, breads, cheeses. The market I enjoy most is the one on the Rue Mouffetard, though we once had an apartment on the rue Jacob and discovered a daily street market outside our door: small but beautiful. There is one in the 4th, Rue St Antoine, but I don't know it that well. And the marché biologique, Blvd. Raspail, is worth a visit.