Pho Banh Cuon 14

129 Avenue de Choisy, 75013 Paris

Métro:  Tolbiac

I’ve always been lucky to live in places with excellent Vietnamese food. Growing up in Denver, we often went out for phở on Federal Boulevard when we would ditch class in the afternoons in high school (for the record, I still really like Pho 95 in Denver, popularity be damned.) Moving to Orange County for graduate school yields a few perks, including access to gorgeous beaches and close proximity to Westminster and Garden Grove, where you can take phở eating as seriously as you might in Saigon. While I know that it’s traditionally a breakfast thing, to me phở is most appealing when I’m fighting a cold or when it’s cold and dismal outside. As it’s basically been the latter situation for the past four months in Paris (why, oh why do all the best cities involve WINTER?), I’ve took my phở-finding in this town quite seriously.

I assumed (warning:  political correctness lapse forthcoming) that France’s colonial history in Vietnam would yield a serious wealth of Vietnamese restaurants in Paris. To be honest, so far I’ve been rather disappointed.  I (like my fantasy-friend Mark Bittman), was excited to eat bánh mì in Paris, as it seems like the classic ingredients of phở served on a baguette (with the addition of lovely French things like good pâté) would be the ultimate in French-Vietnamese street food. And my conclusion? Eh. They make some decent bánh mì at Thieng Heng (to the left of the Tang Frères supermarket at 50 rue d’Ivry in the 13^th) and Saigon Sandwiches (8 rue de la Présentation in the 11^th). Predictibly, the baguettes are better and so is the pâté – though they are closer to the consistency of rillettes at both locations. But compared to the tangy, spicy bánh mì I’ve eaten in New York and Los Angeles, the French versions are bland, bland, bland. Where are the bird chiles or the jalapeños?  Where is the vinegary bite to the carrots and the daikon? Actually, where is the daikon?! This isn’t exactly surprising – the French palate is entirely intolerant of spicy food. The French family that my friend B lives with nearly died when he served them a pretty tame chili con carne. And before anyone starts getting agitated about this minor criticism I’m making of the French palate (I can anticipate the Angry Reader before he even shows up now!), I’ll acquiesce and say that I’m sure my tastebuds have been so damaged by my spicy-food promiscuity that I’m numb to the kind of nuance the average French person takes for granted.

But seriously guys, grow a pair.

Obviously, I’m a terrible food writer because I spend half my entry talking about my preferences before I get to my actual review of the restaurant in question. So anyway, to get to Pho Banh Cuon 14. It’s pretty good! It’s definitely the best phở I’ve found in Paris! And the crowds seem to agree – this place is always packed and you can anticipate standing in line for about ten minutes outside, especially if you are in a larger group of people (I definitely wouldn’t go on a weekend if I was with more than three people). They have a pretty standard list of phở meat options, including rare steak, beef meatballs, tripe, and chicken (no tendon, which is disappointing, and no seafood options, but maybe that is a California thing?). Their phở is served with white onions, greens that resemble dandelion greens, Thai basil, Thai chili peppers, lemon wedges, bean sprouts, and cilantro, as well as the requisite Sriracha (the only thing standing between this spicy-food addict and madness in Paris). The broth is hearty and satisfying, and I believe that they make their rice noodles in house.  In every possible way, this phở gets the job done. They also have some pretty killer fried spring rolls (a bit of a misnomer, as they are entirely filled with pork) and an assortment of drinks involving sweet azuki beans, coconut milk, and tapioca pearls if that is your thing. The staff is friendly and efficient. Would I recommend that you go here if you were in Paris for a weekend? Absolutely not. But if you are spending an extended period of time in Paris and you’ve got certain needs, Pho Banh Cuon 14 is a pretty great place to get those met. Incidentally, how bobo am I to feel like I need decent phở on a regular basis? Talk about a First World problem!

Details: Open everyday from 9 a.m to 11 p.m. They don’t take reservations (obviously, it’s a phở place). Be prepared to wait in the evenings, and avoid bringing a large group. They don’t accept bank or credit cards, and there isn’t an ATM nearby, so come with cash in hand.

Les Diables au Thym

35 rue Bergère, 75009 Paris

www.lesdiablesauthym.com

Métro:  Grands-Boulevards

March already?  When exactly did that happen?  If anybody ever tells you that moving to Paris will be good in terms of progress on your graduate degree, don’t believe them.  You need to live somewhere like Orange County to be that breed of productive. Give me a cultural wasteland filled with chain restaurants and I’m a higher-learning machine.  Here I’m an unproductive imbecile that spends hours wandering around random neighborhoods muttering to myself about “the light,” stoned on endless glasses of red wine and various forms of animal fat.  It’s pathetic.  I mean, I guess my French is getting better and I know a lot more about wine now and I’ve watched more Italian cinema than you can shake a stick at in the past few months. So I’m not saying I regret it, exactly, but it’s really March?  Huh.

Sorry we’ve been so myopic over here at Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background. I was reading over the last week of posts and every single one is about my crankiness or my sadness or my liver.  How fun for you that must be!  Seriously though, I don’t know if it is more fun for you to read about the things I eat, but I do think that poor little Clarence needs to come out to play.  The detox has turned him into a dour little mope.

Among the many lovely gifts that A gave me during his month here, one thing I’m particularly amped about is my copy of Le petit Lebey des bistrots parisiens 2010.  A downsized version of the Le Guide Lebey, Le petit Lebey focuses entirely on the wealth of bistro cooking available in Paris, making it better suited to my sensibilities and budget.  If a restaurant makes it into the guide, it’s good.  From there, restaurants are given between one and three marmites (those sort of miniature dutch-oven things), indicating bonne cuisine, très bonne cuisine, and un des meilleurs bistros de Paris.  Each entry gives a description of the chef’s style and the general ambiance of the bistro, a detailed list of the types of dishes you can expect to see, and a breakdown of the meal that the reviewer ate (including the wine they chose).  Instead of some ambiguous system of dollar or euro signs that designate abstract ranges in price, Le petit Lebey gives you something like this (sample from the entry on Les Diables au Thym):

Notre repas du 19 mars:  Galantine de viande et confiture d’oignons, poitrine de veau farcie et gratin dauphinois, crème au chocolat.  Prix:  44 € pour ce repas avec un verre de haut-médoc et un verre de côtes-roannaises.

I suspect that my readers are the type of people who would finds this kind of detail incredibly comforting.  I don’t mind spending some money on a meal, but it’s nice to go into a situation with a sense of what that is going to look like.  Moreover, wherever you find yourself in the city, Le petit Lebey is likely to have some recommendations nearby.  It’s broken down by arrondissement and even in areas I wouldn’t have imagined, they list several seriously delicious-sounding places. A’s rationale for buying it for me was that in addition to all of the above, it’s also purse-sized.  Sadly, instead I’ve been keeping it by my bed and reading it with the same kind of late-night fervor that I imagine a 14-year-old boy might use to peruse a porno mag.  To each their own.

When my friend O was in town for the theater, I was pleased to bust out my new guide when looking for a restaurant close to the theater.  I quickly found the two-marmite ranked Les Diables au Thym, the work of Chef Eric Lassauce.  They have a wonderfully laid-out website that also allows you to make reservations online, a nice feature when you are trying to make dinner plans for that evening but are stuck in that midday rut in which restaurants don’t answer the phone.  When I exited the métro at Grands-Boulevards, I had a moment of skepticism when I was confronted with a large Hard Rock Cafe.  My stomach sank as I searched for the restaurant as I was convinced that I was a Big Fat Failure of a Parisian resident who managed to pick a shitty restaurant in a shitty part of town for one of my friend’s only evenings here.  The area seemed to be crammed with every tourist trap available to the discerning Parisian palate, including Leon des Bruxelles (with their Denny’s-style Technicolor pictures on the menu) and Indiana (because when I think Tex-Mex, I definitely think Indiana).  To my surprise, however, Les Diables au Thym is a darling little place tucked away on a side street and sparely decorated with an eclectic collection of lamps and some nice collages.  We were the first people there (when exactly DO people eat if they are going to the theater in this town?), but they were incredibly welcoming of us.

Okay, here’s the part I know you’re hot for:  what we ate.  In addition to some killer-sounding dishes à la carte, Les Diables au Thym has a lovely menu that allows for you to select an entrée, plat, and dessert for 28 € (22 € at lunch).  I chose the salade de lentilles, haddock, œuf mollet; the poitrine de porc braisée, aux carottes; and the marquise au chocolat noir aux oranges confites.  My entrée of lentils were cooked with lardons and topped with iridescent, salty hunks of smoked haddock and a poached egg, whose yolk spilled deliciously over the whole affair.  My pork was arrived on a beautiful slab of stone and had a golden, caramelized layer of skin over the falling-apart and perfectly moist meat.  It was served with candied carrots and pearl onions that had a strong flavor of chili and anise in addition to the sweetness.  Really killer.  Finally, my marquise au chocolat noir, which I can sometimes find to be texturally uninteresting, was filled with pistachios, making for a lovely crunch in addition to the sweetness of the chocolate and the tang of the bitter orange sauce.  O had an entrée of galantine de canard, chutney de mangue; a fricassée de calamars au “Rigatoni” for her main course, and a baba au rhum, crème chantilly for dessert.  She seemed underwhelmed by her meal and said that the galantine de canard was especially bland.  The calamari in her pasta dish was lovely, however, and her baba was light and effervescent.  We shared a nice Saint-Émilion, I don’t remember which, but the wine list is excellently curated.  I keep using “curated” to describe these culinary decisions – is that food-writing blasphemy?  Oh well, I like it.

Details: What a nice place this would be to go for a peaceful lunch or dinner, especially if you were foolish enough to endure shopping in the enormous crowds at the big department stores on Boulevard Haussmann.  Certainly beats most of the other options in the area.  You can make reservations online.  Closed on Saturdays for lunch and all day Sunday.  The menu in particular is a wonderful nosh for the money (like I said earlier, 28 € at dinner, 22 € at lunch).

Le Hangar

12 Impasse Berthaud, 75003 Paris

Métro:  Rambuteau

I live on the border of Beaubourg and le Marais, but more often than not I find myself heading east into le Marais when it is time to go out to dinner.  Why?  Because the whole area around the Centre Pompidou is glutted with overpriced tourist traps. So I was skeptical when I heard rave reviews of Le Hangar, which is tucked just off of rue Beaubourg on the dead-end Impasse Berthaud.  Getting there is a rather strange experience.  You turn immediately from the hoards around Beaubourg onto the deserted Impasse Berthaud, a street that houses little besides Le Hangar and a mildly terrifying-looking doll museum. But despite my reservations about the location, I did hear enough good things about Le Hangar that I decided to take my best friend there during her visit to Paris for the New Year.  It ended up being a perfect night, probably the best one we had during her visit.  Some places don’t even warrant being dressed up in all my fancy adjectives.  I just really, genuinely love Le Hangar.

The décor is neither faddish nor overdone, just clean and simple.  The place is family-run and everyone is extremely friendly.  They bring a small crock of a olive tapenade and toasts while you look over the menu, which is probably not fussy enough to actually qualify as an “amuse bouche,” but it’s nice.  The menu is handwritten and filled with pasted-in additions and subtractions that reflect the season.  When my best friend M visited, we shared an entrée of tender escargot in a black truffle cream sauce.  I had the evening’s special for my main course: a sweet and creamy langoustine risotto.  M had the exquisite escalopes de fois gras, which are essentially fried slices of foie gras served on a bed of olive-oil whipped potatoes and drizzled with duck fat.  When it arrived, she declared that there would be no way she could possibly finish all that liver.  After she took a bite, however, I could barely get in there for a taste.  For dessert, we split the chocolate soufflé, which is served with a spicy cinnamon gelato.  Everything was perfectly executed, right down to the lovely assortment of petits fours that accompanied our coffee.

When A and I returned to Le Hangar last Friday, we shared an entrée of salmon tartare with olive oil and fresh basil.  I thought it was light and subtle.  He said it was “fishy.” I objected and said that I thought it was delicious.  He agreed.  Apparently A doesn’t think that “fishy” is a bad thing.  I guess adjectives are subjective.  His main course of filet de boeuf aux morilles, however, was objectively amazing.  Though I suspect Charlie Chaplin’s shoe would be delicious if you covered it in a morel mushroom cream sauce, Le Hangar expertly handled A’s saignant steak.  For me, the parmentier de confit de canard.  Duck confit is leg meat that has been cured in salt and then poached in its own fat.  Parmentiers are a kind of pseudo-Shepard’s pie made with a variety of meats.  Le Hangar’s potatoes were luscious and smooth, with a nice flavor of nutmeg and cinnamon that offset the fattiness of the duck. It was my first parmentier in France and I’m glad I saved myself for Le Hangar.

Details: So delightful I’m reticent to tell the internets about it for fear that it will get too popular.  Fortunately only six people read this blog and I’d take them to dinner here if they were ever in Paris.  Le Hangar takes reservations, but I haven’t needed them so far (it helps to arrive before nine on the weekends as the place will fill up).  The whole shebang for two (entrée and plat, shared dessert, and a sick bottle of wine) will probably set you back about 100 euro.  Be prepared to be wished a genuine “bonne soirée” by the entire restaurant two or three times when you depart.  Totally charming.  Can’t imagine why you’d eat anywhere else in Beaubourg.

Photo via google.fr

La Briciola

64 rue Charlot, 75003 Paris

Métro: Filles du Calvaire

I regularly talk about how Southern California has made me contemptuous of numerous features of life elsewhere in the globe. These include, but are not limited to: winter, farmer’s markets, and people with normal-colored, uncapped teeth. What can I say, except that Southern California does weather, produce, and cosmetic dentistry very well. One thing that Southern California does not do particularly well, however, is pizza. Moving to Orange County from New York, I was bewildered to discover that the thin-crusted, wood-oven fired, San Marzano tomato, mozzarella di bufala, and fresh basil based pizzas that are ubiquitous in NYC are virtually non-existent in the land of never-ending sunshine. I say “virtually” non-existent because there is a peculiar breed of born-and-bred Angeleno who knows the most amazing place in the most non-descript shopping center somewhere in the Valley where you can get every single delicious thing you could ever dream of eating from anywhere in the world. I’m not going to knock that guy – sometimes he grows up and becomes Jonathan Gold, sharing his adventures in eating and delightful turn of phrase with the masses. Mr. Gold, you are always near the top of my fantasy husbands list. More often than not, however, that guy ends up being one of those sneering SoCal natives who hoard their shopping-center wisdom as a kind of collective fuck-you to the millions of transplants who flood into the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area every year in the hopes of becoming famous just for being famous. Don’t get me wrong, I get tourist-loathing. Native Coloradans like myself have a lot of sneers saved up for Texans on all-inclusive Breckenridge ski vacation. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know where to get good pizza in Southern California, but I’m sure that there is someone reading this who does. I might ask that if you are such a person, you either share the wealth or keep quiet, otherwise I might have to put you in the corner with my Angry Reader. Oh, and if your suggestion is that I go to Pizzeria Mozza, I’ll beat you to the punch and tell you that I did and am going to give it a resounding, overhyped “eh.” It was fine, I guess, and the celebrity-to-normal-person ratio seemed pretty high if that’s your thing. But it’s pizza, for chrissakes. Shouldn’t there be a little bit of the Everyman in a pizza place? No Everyman has ever walked through the door of Pizzeria Mozza and ordered himself a beer and a slice. Pizzeria Mozza is one of those uncomfortable LA places where all of the striving that everyone is doing leaves the air fetid with desperation and greed. It’s not my scene, but I’m glad you like it. I’ll just say that I think it is a little too smug. As my ex-boyfriend always said, “don’t go breaking your arm patting yourself on the back.” Don’t go breaking your arm patting yourself on the back, Pizzeria Mozza.

All of this is to say that the past few years of my life have seriously lowered my standards for pizza. My criteria have shifted from “Is that with fresh green manzanilla olives?” to “How many minutes did you say delivery takes?  Does that come with cheesy breadsticks or is that extra?” Moving to Paris, I knew that I would have to forget about a few things that I really enjoy eating, like Mexican food. I included pizza in the list of desires better left abandoned. I was thus pleasantly surprised to find La Briciola, a seriously decent Neopolitan pizzeria in my Marais neighborhood. I really appreciate a cohesive aesthetic vision in restaurant décor and they hit the mark at La Briciola with exposed brick, stacked cans of beautiful tomatoes, chalkboard menus, and unfussy furniture. One of the reviews I read online said that the crowd was an intimidating combination of “fashion and gay” (my friend S:  “You be fashion, I’ll be gay.”) Yes, while the neighborhood is a kind of Mecca for emergent fashion designers and gays, and the crowd therefore inevitably slick, La Briciola is a bustling, decidedly friendly place. The bartender is absurdly nice, making sure that you have a glass of wine and a dish of olives while you wait for a table. When we corrected our bill (they hadn’t charged us for our second carafe of their lovely house vino), the waitress brought over limoncello for the table. It’s stuff like that that makes you want to go back to a restaurant and La Briciola has it in spades.

And the pizza? It’s pretty damn good, excellent for Paris pizza, and it kicks the ass of anything I ate in Los Angeles. The crust is thin and foldable with beautiful little blackened bubbles on the bottom. The toppings are all natural and they are exactly what you would expect from a real Italian place (no pineapple here). I had the Romana, a gorgeously basic pie with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and anchovies. Some good eating and two carafes of their lovely house Chianti later, my friends and I found ourselves happily stuffed and inebriated at midnight, having whiled away the entire evening at the restaurant. If you asked me to list my favorite things about Paris, I would tell you that even at a hip, busy, people-waiting-hungrily-at-the-door joint you will never, ever be rushed away from your table. Sometimes that means you aren’t getting in that night and the hostess will probably tell you so. Sometimes that means a long wait. But I’ll happily wait for an hour for a table, especially if there is a bar. There is nothing I hate more than being served the check before your plates have even been cleared so that the table can be turned over as quickly as possible to a new party (I’m looking at you, Mozza). This simply doesn’t happen in Paris. I’m always bewildered that people complain about the service here. I don’t want to know my waiter’s middle name or what he thinks about the weather. I don’t need to be checked on fifteen times and interrupt my conversation with my dinner companion to explain to a stranger how much I’m enjoying my food. I can pour my own goddamn wine and water, thank you very much. And most importantly, if I want to make an evening of a meal, I should be able to. La Briciola is a lovely place to do just that and it deserves a visit.

Details: Open Monday through Saturday for lunch and dinner. Reservations accepted and encouraged, though not mandatory. Pizzas are around 15 euros each. Well-curated list of well-priced Italian wines. Anybody who can tell me what kind of olives they serve you to munch on (enormous, bottle-green, soft-flesh, milky, sweet, and vaguely waxy) gets an extra-special Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background reader prize (probably an obscene, animated, lenticular postcard). Hey, we’re on a budget here.