Clarence Gets Down and Dirty with the Kimchi: Hang-A-Li

Let’s talk about Korean food in Paris, shall we?

Many moons ago I recommended one Han Lim as a possible venue for getting some “spare but functional” Korean food in Paris. It was kind of a throwaway entry – stock photo of some kimchi, a few offhand remarks about how sick of French food I was, and some rather lukewarm praise of the place. Would you believe that this is one of my highest ranked entries? I literally can’t tell you how many people arrive at this site from googling “Korean food in Paris” or “kimchi.” If Han Lim has seen any kind of spike in their Anglophone business in the past six months, it’s entirely my doing. I can be thanked in soju.

Worse yet, I believe the picture of kimchi that accompanies that totally lackluster few paragraphs is now one of the top Google images that comes back from searching “kimchi.” I stole it from some poor (now-anonymous) bloke’s Flickr or something and never even thought of giving credit where credit is due. I’m a jerk, you unnamed-yet-brilliant photographer of spicy fermented cabbage! Contact me and I’ll send you a special Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background thank you gift!

As an aside, I keep telling readers to contact me for their special Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background prizes and they never do. And it’s a shame, because all of these amazing champagne stoppers and lenticular postcards are just gathering dust, when they could be keeping your leftover Prosecco bubbly and your children amused.

All of this is to say that I’ve since found much better Korean food in Paris since I started frequenting the Asian district of the first arrondissement. I’m still nuts for Higuma, but have started branching out to other restaurants off of rue Sainte Anne since their kimchi ramen left me a little bit cold (I’m still a rabid loyalist to their yakatori, however). Anyway, a recent stroll led B and I to discover the nearby Hang-A-Li (7 rue Louvois, 75002 Paris, Métro Quatre-Septembre), a warm and friendly Korean restaurant that is doing some serious and scrumptious cooking.

First of all, their banchan is much closer to what I’m used to from eating Korean food in Southern California. While it’s varied from night to night, you can expect to see baechu kimchi, dongchimi (cabbage in a white brine), oijangajji muchim (pickled cucumbers), sigeumchi namul (blanched spinach dressed with soysauce, sesame oil, and garlic), kongnamul (bean sprouts with sesame oil), and musaengchae (julienned white radishes in a sweet vinegar sauce).  A rather thick, but lovely pajeon (savory pancakes with spring onions) can be ordered as an entrée.

Our first visit, we launched headfirst in the barbeque and weren’t disappointed.  We shared the bulgogi, which was everything that you want it to be and satisfyingly so, and a spicy, peanutty pork dish that uses samgyeopsal (unsalted strips of pork belly).  I’d never eaten anything like it in the States, and oh man, was it delicious.  It was all of my favorite things in one dish:  salty, spicy, nutty, and fatty. For about 14€ a dish, with soup, banchan, and a lovely little dish of lychee-heavy fruit salad included in this price, Hang-A-Li is a good bargain, especially compared to Han Lim (which is much more expensive and not nearly as tasty).

Last night we returned to Hang-A-Li with M.  It was a chilly night and we were all still dressed for late summer. By the time we were arrived, nothing sounded better than a cold Hite beer and a kimchi jjigae (kimchi-based hot pot with pork and tofu). This is one of my comfort foods par excellence, and Hang-A-Li’s version lived up to my high expectations. M, who also ordered one, kept quietly murmuring “I love this soup. I love this soup.” She has much less bombastic, and far better taste than I do, so I’ll leave you with that as the best review imaginable.  B ordered his spicy pork samgyeopsal and spent the rest of the evening with what I’ll call the “blissed-out pork belly face.”  We’ll definitely we spending a lot of time at Hang-A-Li as the weather gets colder, and so should you.

Details: Disregard everything I’ve said about Korean food in Paris until now and scoot over to Hang-A-Li for dinner.

Hungerdome: Will “la vraie gastronomie mexicaine à Paris” please stand up? (part one)

I bet you thought I forgot all about you.

I won’t bore you with a tedious account of what I’ve been up to, other than to say, man, writing a dissertation is really hard. Once I’ve stared at the blinking Word cursor for hours doing that, it’s really tough to get motivated to write a blog entry that isn’t just like “whine, whine, whine, woe is me, I’m the pitiful scholar.”And is there anything more grating than listening to a graduate student bitch about their “work”? It’s annoying whenever anyone complains about their deadlines and their stress level, but there is something uniquely agitating about it when that person is a graduate student. I slept until eleven today, people. I don’t get to complain about my life, like, ever. So I won’t, and anyway, I’m sorry to be such a deserter.

ON TO BRIGHTER THINGS:

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the French release of Carlos Cuarón’s Rudo y Cursi, starring the überdreamy Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.  A quick gander at IMDb suggests that everyone in the entire world who has wanted to see this movie has probably already seen it, as the French release date was the very last one in the list of international premieres. That said, if you haven’t seen it, you really should. It’s fantastic. We’ve been giddily anticipating it, being big fans of everything Gael García Bernal does, from his acting right down to his face sweat. Seriously, I love that man like a sickness. Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control left me with months of sweaty Mexican cowboy dreams. Recently, I rather uneasily discovered that B’s enthusiasm for Gael rivals my own, and couldn’t help but wonder who both of us imagined we were making out with after the movie last night.

At any rate, we decided that Rudo y Cursi demanded a fully Mexican-themed evening, so we made reservations at Hacienda del Sol (157 bd du Monparnasse, 75006 Paris, Métro Vavin), one of two Mexican restaurants in Paris that receives a fair amount of gastronomical acclaim. I had first read about it on the New York Times’ In Transit blog, where it was lauded by someone who was supposedly originally from California (had it been a New Yorker, I would have ignored it entirely). It’s kind of a trek from our place in the Marais down to Montparnasse, but this is the way that Gael would want it, we reasoned.

I’ll cut immediately to the chase: the food is pretty good! If you are a European, you’ll probably totally dig it. If you are an American in Paris, or god forbid, a Mexican, I’d give yourself about a year in Paris until you start checking out restaurants that advertise themselves as “la vraie gastronomie mexicaine.” By then, you’ll be so psyched to see Bohemia and Negro Modelo on the menu that you won’t even blink at the fact that they cost as much as a few six packs in the States.

I guess that part of my problem stems from the fact that Mexican food seems like it shouldn’t ever be fussy, and Paris isn’t particularly good at doing anything that isn’t fussy. There are a few (wildly popular) exceptions to this rule, including the abysmal Ave Maria (1 rue Jacquard, 75011 Paris, Métro: who cares, the food is terrible), where huge sloppy platters of the equivalent epicurian value as “world music” are eagerly gobbled up by the “sophisticated” palates of the French hipster public. Hacienda del Sol is marketing itself as a refined take on Sonoran food, and I suppose that is how you’d have to market yourself if you wanted to make a living in this town. But for an American accustomed to big bottomless baskets of hot chips and sloppy bowls of spicy salsa, the tiny dish of cold chips and the miniature spoon that accompanied our little puddle of hot sauce felt, well, heartless. As did our kindly server’s warning that our salsa was “dangerously spicy,” which I suppose it is, if you’re French.

For our entrées, we shared a serving of (rather bland) guacamole and some beef chimichangas. The presentation cracked me up, because, really, chimichangas? This is a food item that I associate most clearly with the microwave at a gas station. They were pretty good, I guess.

I’m terribly homesick.

For our main course, I got the pollo en salsa de mole poblano and B got the tamale plate. My chicken in mole was quite good, even if the mole wasn’t quite as spicy as I’m used to it being. The flavor was nuanced with that medley of sweet and smoky that I love, and the corn tortillas were fresh and homemade. Yes, those are bananas, not plantains. Sigh.

Even better were B’s tamales, one filled with tomatoes, cheese, and roasted chiles in a banana leaf, and one filled with red chile cooked beef in a corn husk. I was immediately overcome with jealousy when they served our plates, and wished that we had both ordered tamales and been done with it. They were tender, flavorful, and moist, and I wished that the two bites B generously doled out could have been bigger. In an ideal world, I could have smothered them in Chimayo red chile sauce and made a glorious feast, but we’re in Paris, and they got the job done admirably.

For dessert, we shared a dish of ice cream, which our server proudly noted is made in-house.  We selected scoops of tamarind, hibiscus, and lime, and the combination was perfectly sour and refreshing.

The only thing that soured the meal a bit for me was the check. Look, I get it. Many of these ingredients have to be imported from across an ocean. The 29€ menu of entrée + plat + dessert is indeed the magic number in this town. But 76€ for a meal that involves chimichangas and Mexican beer? That’s $96.32 as of today’s conversion rate. When I pointed out to B that were spending about a hundred bucks on this dinner, he turned slightly pale. Sometimes it’s best if you can dwell in the stupidity of the unconverted tab.

Anyway, why am I calling this a Hungerdome? Well, because now we are on a quest, and date night next week will be at Anahuacalli, the other Mexican restaurant that everybody can’t say enough good things about. We even had a Real Live Californian say that their enchiladas verdes were the best he’d ever had, immediately rousing my suspicions about him as a human being. But at any rate, it’s on, and while two Parisian Mexican restaurants may enter this battle, only one leaves.

Finally, I’d like to give a Cinéclub shout-out to Le Nouveau Latina (20 Rue du Temple, 75004 Paris, Métro Hôtel de Ville) where we saw Rudo y Cursi last night. I’ve kind of abandoned the Cinéclub theatre review section of this blog, probably because there are only so many things you can really saw about a movie theatre (There are seats! And a screen! Sometimes they play movies you might want to see!). But in addition to the fact that it is literally next door to my apartment building, Le Nouveau Latina is really one of the more charming Cinéma d’Art et d’Essai in Paris. Specializing in Spanish, Portuguese, Latin American, and Italian films (though they also show a healthy dose of other classic and contemporary independent films from France and the US), Le Nouveau Latina reliably has a lot of great stuff showing on any day of the week on their two well-maintained screens. It’s also a darling place to hang out, with a large café and a well-edited selection of books and DVDs for sale. I’ve even heard that they sometimes give salsa lessons upstairs. I have a personal soft spot for this theatre, as it was the site of both my first date with M (we saw Antichrist together!), as well as a midnight screening of Alien that was one of my first “ah-ha” moments about B. He held my hand during the scary parts and seemed only mildly amused by my histrionics. As I’m widely acknowledged as the most annoying person in the world to see movies with, B’s seeming cool made me suspect that he might be a good person to keep going to movies with for a long time.

Dearest reader, I’ve missed you. I hope your autumn is shaping up splendidly.

Docteur Papa Update!

Remember this little Freudian nightmare?

Well, looky-see what we found at the used bookshop yesterday!

Apparently a diet high in carrots, bat wings, and magnesium will help you have a boy, that is, if you think genetics are a load of baloney (who doesn’t!). Your progeny might end up looking like this guy, however:

I don’t do drugs, I am drugs: Montmartre and l’Espace Dalí

My only obligation as of late—and this is a testament to how low-key my life has been recently—is to make sure that my dear M’s plants don’t die while she is gallivanting around the United States like a regular jetsetter. I normally don’t take such obligations very seriously (“They were alive the last time I was here!”), but she was such an attentive nursemaid to my little window box herb garden when I was island-hopping on the Mediterranean that I feel kind of guilty.  So I’ve been making regular trips up to Montmartre, where she lives on the more residential side of Butte Montmartre.  You know, the mountain with Sacre Coeur at the top?  Perhaps you remember this little gem from a much earlier entry:

Anyway, I don’t love the hoards of tourists that frequent Montmartre, recreating scenes from Amélie and taking in overpriced burlesque shows at the Moulin Rouge. But the views of Paris from up high can’t be beat. I also really enjoy a stroll around the neighborhood that surrounds the Abbesses métro, especially if it involves ducking into the Librairie des Abbesses (30 rue Yvonne Le Tac, 75018 Paris), a smart and well-stocked bookshop with a drool-worthy selection of novels and poetry from small presses, books on psychoanalysis, and cookbooks. I know that list isn’t everybody’s bag, but man that bookshop gives me butterflies whenever I step out of the métro at Abbesses.

Frequent trips to Montmartre also increase the likelihood that I’ll be making an ill-advised stop at A.P.C. Surplus (20 rue Andre del Sarte, 75018 Paris), the outlet store of the iconic French brand with markedly lower prices than the main stores (and an accordingly odd selection of sizes). Barring such retail indulgence, a trip to M’s will usually involve a stop by Au Relais (48 rue Lamarck, 75018 Paris), a 106-year old café and restaurant that serves solid takes on classic French bistro food.  The food isn’t particularly remarkable, but the staff is always friendly, and Au Relais’s location on the corner of rue Lamarck and the San Francisco-evoking Mont Cenis is a lovely break from the tourist circuit just a few blocks up the hill. Their cheeseburger is delish and their crisp yet pillowy fries can’t be beat.

B and I have been on a quest to visit some of the smaller museums in Paris, and decided that watering day would be a good excuse to visit l’Espace Dalí (11 rue Poulbot, 75018 Paris, Métro Abbesses or Anvers), a small museum just a stone’s throw from Sacre Coeur that houses a permanent collection devoted entirely to Dalí’s work. Here we arrive at another installment of “another museum you might not be visiting on your trip to Paris.”

First of all, this is not St. Petersburg, Florida, and l’Espace Dalí houses mostly minor works in bronze and glass as well as a handsome collection of lithographs, engravings, and other original works on paper. The visitor is quickly made aware of what a hustler Dalí was in his lifetime, often producing or commissioning large numbered editions of each individual work, some of which seem rather rushed or glib. The space itself is rather funky and could use a serious paint job.  I’d been wondering who buys all those stick-on mirrors at Ikea, but now I know. The kitsch factor is high.  The museum includes a gallery with works for sale (mostly poorly-executed limited edition prints of Dalí major paintings), a gift shop with an assortment of Dalí perfumes and knick-knacks, a plaster trompe l’oeil reproduction of the medieval church that used to be on the site, and a delightful Dalí photobooth that allows you to insert your head into works from the museum or mustachioed portraits of the master himself.  There is also a small collection of Dalí’s furniture and home furnishing designs, including the iconic couch modeled on Mae West’s voluptuous lips and a swoon-inducing set of exquisite silverware.

Okay, so it’s funky and filled with minor works.  Why bother?  Well, if you’re a literature buff, you’re going to love looking at the many works on paper that Dalí produced in response to or to accompany classic texts, including the Old and New Testament, The Quest for the Grail, Alice in Wonderland, Tristan and Isolde, Ovid’s Art of Love, Romeo and Juliet, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Freud’s Moses and Monotheism.

There is also a terrific selection of original photomontages that Dalí created for his tarot series (real enthusiasts can purchase a working Dalí tarot set in the giftshop for 79€).  I particularly enjoyed the 1971 gouache series entitled “Memories of Surrealism,” a wonderful mishmash of textbook art history images and the surrealist imagery that Dalí made the stuff of many college dorm rooms.

I’ve been reluctant to like Dalí in recent years, probably because his work has become the stuff of pop culture cliché. But his deep interest in allegorical texts and his nuanced reading of Freud were news to me, and I found the many works on paper at l’Espace Dalí to be serious and fascinating.

It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and if you’re after the popular oil paintings that everyone knows and loves, your time and money would be best spent on plane fare to Florida. But if you’re in Paris and looking for a different angle on the artist (and have a high threshold for kitsch), l’Espace Dalí might be worth a visit.

Oh, and the photobooth is lots of fun, especially if you’ve always had mustache-envy like yours truly.

Taco Mardi!

If I were making a list of things I miss about the United States, Mexican food would be numbers one, two, and three. I know it sounds kinda hysterical, but I really can’t tell you how much of a shift in my diet I had to make coming to live in Paris. I know, cry me a river made entirely of Camembert and Roquefort, right? But seriously, I miss Mexican food in a nearly elemental way. When my mother was pregnant with me, she constantly craved green chile smothered burritos, a decision that left her with a happy fetus and a lot of heartburn.  We joke that I’ve loved New Mexican food since I was in utero and we usually make it down to Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque at least once a year for a serious chile fix.  Let’s just say Clarence in New Mexico would make Clarence in Paris have an aneurism.  The rule of these vacations is that we eat chile at every meal until our gastrointestinal systems mutiny.  Barring a trip to New Mexico—or a couple of coolers filled with chiles from Hatch Chile Days and a couple of bags dried red chile pods from the now (sob) extinct Chimayo ranch—my hometown of Denver has some nice stopgap options for excellent New Mexican style food.  I’m planning a whole Clarence in Denver feature when I go home at Christmas for the first time in a year and a half.  That is, of course, if I’m not too busy warding off culture shock and binge shopping at Target.

I had to acclimate to Southern California style Mexican food when I moved to Orange County in 2005. I’m sure that it is much more authentically Mexican than the “Mexican” I’m really nuts for, which isn’t TexMex either.  There are more big square states out West than most people are aware of, and the kind of food I like best is in New Mexico (with nods of recognition to Colorado and Arizona). Anyway, one thing I did really get to like in California is the ubiquity of taco stands and trucks. There aren’t very many taco trucks in the soulless part of Orange County that I inhabited (though the one that hangs out in front of the Santa Ana courthouse on weekdays is killer and sure takes the edge off of traffic school).  There are, however, a lot of prime brick and mortar locations for my very favorite alliterated holiday: Taco Tuesday.  Mix bargain tacos with drink specials that encourage getting blitzed before midweek and you’ve got yourself a routine. My best friend N and I made a near-religious habit of Taco Tuesdays in the past few years.

Should you find yourself in Orange County on that oh-so-wonderful day of the week, you should definitely check out the bargain eating and boozing options.  In Costa Mesa, you can hit Taco Mesa (647 West 19th Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92627), where they have a particularly diverse selection of yummy and healthy tacos, a serve-yourself salsa bar with killer escabeche and salsa verde, and dollar cans of Tecate.  Their heated outdoor patio overlooks the parking lot of the DMV, so you can revel in your culinary indulgence while watching your fellow citizens’ brains explode with frustration.  Maybe you can invite a DMV-disgruntled stranger over to your table! At a mere two bucks for a taco and a beer, everybody can afford to be generous!  Make sure you splurge an extra buck and get yourself a blackened chicken taco. You won’t regret it.

Should you find yourself coast-side in Laguna Beach, treat yourself to a few fish tacos at Taco Loco (640 California 1, Laguna Beach, CA 92651). If you can get over the tacky tourists, the screeching traffic on Highway 1, and the kind of annoying teenagers that spawned an entire generation of reality television shows, Taco Loco has some of the lushest fish tacos in the area. Served with little more than a chucky avocado salsa, the blackened fish, swordfish, shrimp, and calamari can’t be beat.  Skip the chicken and beef variations, and splurge on the seasonal lobster taco when it’s on the menu.  The prices are steeper, but it will still be the cheapest thing you’ll eat in Laguna.

Finally, if your main goal is to just tie one on and eat some tacos in the process, I can’t recommend enough the John Wayne airport-adjacent El Torito (951 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92660).  Taco Tuesday is a real institution at this rather tragic locale, where Irvine corporate worker drones and tired business travelers converge every Tuesday for dollar tacos and enormous bargain margaritas and beers. It’s got everything you want in an Orange County Taco Tuesday:  an assembly line of skillful chefs who make the tortillas to your order, a light rock soundtrack, a hearty helping of bad plastic surgery, a parking lot full of BMWs, and the stench of quiet desperation. Swear to God, N and I were once debating if we should call a cab outside of El Torito and a strange woman asked us if we wanted to use the breathalyzer that she had recently picked up at Costco.  The more you know, I guess?  Anyway, it’s a real train wreck of a place and I miss spending my Tuesday nights there.

Every Tuesday since moving to Paris, I forlornly remember that somewhere in the world people are eating bargain tacos and getting sloppy. Since such an item isn’t on the agenda here in France (c’mon Chipotle! You could make a fortune on the drunk study abroad kids alone!), I woke up today with a clear sense of purpose: fish tacos and beer for dinner, dammit.

This was no small proposition. While there is a “Mexican” foods section at most large Monoprix in Paris, the offerings are horrifying.  Most stores will sell something they call “Mexican style chili powder,” usually with ginger and paprika as the first two items on the ingredient list (huh?).  It’s virtually impossible to find fresh hot chiles at the many vegetable markets in Paris, and I’ve found it’s difficult to use Thai and Vietnamese chiles you can buy in the Asian markets here in comparable proportions to my beloved jalapeños, serranos, and poblanos. I have discovered that you can buy some decent dried chiles and corn flour at L’Epicerie de Bruno (30 rue Tiquetonne, 75002 Paris) and Izrael (30 Rue François Miron, 75004 Paris), and I make a habit of requesting black beans, cans of roasted green chiles, and pickled jalapeños whenever anyone comes to visit from the States.

After some brutal run-ins with French packaged tortillas, I threw in the towel and gave up. Fortunately, among the many other skills he possesses, B is an avid home tortilla maker. I was skeptical at first, but now I can’t believe I haven’t been making tortillas from scratch my whole life. They are easy, stupidly cheap, and much more delicious than their shelf-stable brethren.  The proportions are simple:  roughly 2 parts masa to 1 part warm water.  In a bowl, combine your masa with a couple pinches of salt.  Then, slowly add the warm water, integrating it as you go along until you have a firm dough.  You may need more or less water, obviously.

Then roll the dough into little balls, and smoosh them between two nonstick surfaces.  We have fashioned a tortilla press out of a wooden cutting board wrapped in cling wrap and the back of a frying pan.  If you find your tortillas are sticking to the pressing surface, dust it with a bit of dry masa.

Heat up a nonstick pan until it’s super-smoking hot. Then drop your tortilla onto the dry surface and cook about 10-15 seconds on each side. It should be easy to flip them without using a spatula, as nothing should be remotely sticky. This is ideally a two-person operation. B and I had a rather nice rhythm going tonight where he pressed and I cooked and flipped. Stack your tortillas in a teatowel, rewrapping your little bundle after each addition to keep them warm.

While these buggers could obviously be the delivery device for a million different things, tonight we ate:

T’s “Take That France!” Tuesday Tacos

For the fish:

1 pound cod filets, skinned and cut into 1-2 inch pieces (sole, halibut, mahi-mahi, swordfish would all do the trick)

¼ red onion

1-2 large garlic cloves

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 large handful of fresh cilantro (stems are not a big deal here)

1 tablespoon of the hottest chili powder you can find (I used my dwindling supply of Chimayo red chile)

A couple of shakes from a rather old bottle of Tapatio abandoned by a fellow expat (untraditional in a marinade, but surprisingly delightful)

2 tablespoons olive oil

the juice of ½ of a lime

Combine everything except the fish in your food processor and pulse until smooth.  Salt and pepper to taste, then cover your fish with the marinade.

While this is marinating, you can make my ode to the Yucatan: green mayo.  This my attempt at a Parisian homage to the ineffable combination of mayonnaise and habenero salsa that you find in plastic squeeze bottles at every taco stand in the Yucatan. Obviously, if you have access to proper habenero salsa, you can skip this step (though my extemporaneous sauce was pretty fantastic).

Combine the following in your food processor:

4 tablespoons Maille or homemade mayonnaise (mayo snob!)

1 large handful of fresh cilantro leaves

1 large handful of fresh mint leaves

juice of ½ of a lime

1 teaspoon of dried cumin

a couple of shakes of cayenne pepper

salt and pepper to taste

Pulse until smooth, and refrigerate until serving.

Fry up your marinated fish in a hot skillet, cooking just until flaky. My cod was really delicate and fell apart, but who cares when it’s in a taco?  I served the warm corn tortillas and fish with homemade guacamole, strips of purple cabbage, and a drizzle of my green mayo. It might just be that I haven’t eaten fish tacos in over a year, but holy shit these tasted good. The spiciness of the fish against the creamy avocado and minty mayo with a bit of crunchy cabbage in a fresh warm tortilla – I wish I ate like this everyday. We cracked open two bottles of the one decent French beer we’ve found and dug in, quickly annihilating twelve tacos between us. Sated and blissed out, B declared “It’s a good day to be me!” which I took as a highest-order compliment of my fish taco skillz. Obviously this would be a bit labor-intensive if you are in a place where you can just go out for dollar tacos on Tuesday, but it’s a nice stopgap measure if you find yourself in taco-free Paris (read that last part so it rhymes, okay?).