2 Timelessly Romantic Restaurants in Paris | EUROtoday

Alexander Lobrano explores corners of Paris which seize the romance of the previous, and Sylvia Edwards dines on the Riviera…

AT THE RENAISSANCE, PARIS

Tucked away in a residential nook of the very residential eleventh arrondissement – the popular precinct of youthful, arty Parisians – this café with an enormous zinc bar, pink neon signage, picket banquettes and a cracked tile ground has been successful ever because it opened in 1919. Open every day from 8am to lam (the kitchen is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays), the explanation the locals cherish it’s that it feels unselfconsciously like Paris – the actual Paris, and never some irritating, treacly model of it as seen by means of the eyes of an American film studio or streaming firm.

This can also be why there was a collective shudder amongst its regulars when phrase acquired out that Régine Robert, who had run it for the final 32 years, was passing it alongside to a brand new workforce. “God, I hope they don’t ruin it. I mean, it’s my café, I’m in and out of it all day,” fretted a good friend who lives close by. And then she known as again a number of days later. “So I think everything’s going to be OK. Régine sold to Carina Soto Velásquez and Joshua Fontaine of Quixotic Projects – you know, Candelaria and the Mary Celeste, or the kind of hipster places we actually like. So let’s have lunch.” On my solution to meet China for the noon meal, I ended to stare at a wall with 4 completely different ranges of splendidly ghastly, old style French wallpaper uncovered in the middle of an ongoing demolition. Seeing these intimate slices of another person’s life uncovered in broad. daylight introduced a pang for the exhilaratingly international Frenchness of Paris as I discovered it after I moved right here from London to take a job with a New York model journal in 1986. So a lot of it has blurred and vanished..

China was already sitting on one of many picket banquettes at a desk within the hidden again eating room. “It’s heaven to be back here,” she stated. “Ever since I walked through the door I’ve been seized by a desperate desire to run next door and buy a pack of Marlboro reds. This place makes me want to smoke, because it shoots me back in time so unexpectedly, back to the days when I did smoke, like most people, and we drank wine at lunch, which was always an hors d’oeuvre like marinated leeks, grated carrot or celery root salad, followed by a plat du jour like hachis Parmentier (French shepherd’s pie) or a bavette (flank steak) with shallot and red sauce. Then a crème caramel or apple crumble and a little espresso and it was stealthily slipping back into the office at 2.30pm in the hope that no one noticed.” I informed her concerning the caterer within the rue Cambon the place the proprietor wore a pink Vichy smock each day, smoked massive hams within the hearth of her nation home and made the whole lot from scratch, together with the lashings of mayonnaise she utilized in her Piedmontese salad (potatoes, ham or sausage, hard-boiled egg, tomato and chopped pickles) and Russian salad (a macédoine of finely diced greens). She additionally made stunningly scrumptious terrines. Everyone within the workplace I labored in went into shock once we returned from our month-long August vacation to search out that the caterer had been gutted and become a luxurious shoe store whereas we had been mendacity on the seaside.

In these days, nobody ate at their desks and the guts of town was a hive of teeming café-bistros at midday. Now takeaway burgers, salads and sandwiches rule the roost as a relentless work tradition had throttled the Parisian custom of a correct scorching meal at lunchtime.

At A la Renaissance, they’re decided to relive the great instances once more, which is why there is a €23 chalkboard lunch menu that will get you a move or two on the buffet of hors d’oeuvres sure, grated carrot salad, lentil salad, and so on. and you then get to decide on between two mains and desserts. We each selected the pork braised in cream sauce spiked with mustard and cider, and the apple crumble for dessert. The meals was genuine and homey, easy and soothing, and the flavors constellations had been profoundly and eternally French.

The good new proprietor poured us a juicy pure Chiroubles to begin, after which a surprisingly good natural Pinot Noir from close to Cahors. So the restaurant will stay well-known for its glorious and pretty priced listing of pure wines, and China and I agreed that we’ll undoubtedly come right here quickly for dinner, when the menu is way more bold, together with sautéed cepes and a thick faux-filet (sirloin) with tarragon sauce, an ideal pretext to get right into a bottle of wine or two.

The French have a world-weary phrase: The extra issues change, the extra they keep the identical, and typically that is an excellent factor certainly.

87 rue de la Roquette, 2nd arrondissement.

Such. (33) 01 43 79 83 09. www.alarenaissance.com

Lunch menu €23, à la carte €45

PANTOBAGUETTE, PARIS

Despite the centrifugal of gentrification, Paris remains to be a metropolis the place it is simple to discover a sensible hole-in-the-wall restaurant, or a laid-back place serving glorious and actually authentic meals in an off-the-beaten-track nook of town.

An ideal instance is Pantobaguette, which deliciously expresses the frisky, fun-loving, artistic character of the north-facing slope of Montmartre, or the a part of this storied neighborhood that only a few vacationers ever discover their solution to. An outdated good friend lately ended up residing right here after a divorce, and when he known as me one evening to say he’d discovered an ideal canteen just some doorways down from his new flat, I fortunately joined him for dinner a number of nights later.

I preferred the whole lot about this curious Basque-Asian place from the second I stepped within the door, for the reason that servers had been pleasant and the menu, by Rodolphe Graffin, a French chef who’d labored in Korea for a number of years, fascinated. Since Sven knew the ropes, I let him order, and so we started with an exceptionally luscious pâté en croute of duck and scallops and oeufs ajitsuke (soft-boiled eggs marinated in candy soy sauce and mirin). Next up, cauliflower tempura with gochujang mayonnaise and a Thai salad; a taloa (Basque flatbread made with corn flour) garnished with broccoletti, Fourme d’Ambert cheese and fig ketchup; and sea bream with white beans from Paimpol in Brittany, a kombu (seaweed) sabayon and peppery nasturtium leaves.

All of those dishes had been scrumptious, and intriguing as they confirmed off simply how cosmopolitan and open to international flavors, components and cooking strategies modern French cooking has turn into. If younger French cooks are desperate to usher in these new parts, additionally they impose a rigorous technical precision when it comes to cooking an ingredient to perfection and likewise insist that these intriguing new international components respect the subtlety that’s the essence of Gallic gastronomic seduction. Pantobaguette is a captivating restaurant that is nicely price discovering your solution to on this quiet nook of Paris.

16 Rue Eugène Sue, 18th arrondissement, Paris.

Such. (33) 01 88 48 40 70. www.pantobaguette.fr

Average à la carte €40

From France Today Magazine

Lead photograph credit score: Photo: AT THE RENAISSANCE, PARIS Instagram