Le Loir dans la Théière

3 rue des Rosiers, 75004 Paris

Métro:  St. Paul

Upon my first encounter, I wanted to hate this place.  The décor—with wallpaper of old theatre announcements, twee paintings of bug-eyed anime children, mismatched vintage furniture, and big communal bowls of brown sugar lumps—is so self-consciously bo-bo that it’s painful.  The well-heeled crowd is actively torn between the desire to dine there (often waiting in lines down the block on Sundays) and the affectation that they don’t desire anything at all.  The pacing of the Le Loir is tense with the contrast between those slowly brunching (or enjoying a gros matin, as my friend B informs me) and those hungrily waiting for a table.

However, I’ll readily admit:  the food is good.  I mean, really good.  If you are a fan of tartes (sucrées or salées) this place is for you.  I’ve so far sampled the zucchini/goat cheese, shallot/goat cheese, and the camembert/spinach/walnut ones at the savory end and the pear/almond custard and lemon meringue at the sweet.  They are all perfect.  The lemon meringue is a feat of egg-white architecture and requires about three people to effectively polish off.  For sheer sophistication, I died over the combination of almonds custard with perfectly ripe and caramelized pears.  I’m told that there is occasionally a rosemary and wine-stewed peach tarte, but it has regrettably not made an appearance during any of my visits.    They also make a lovely omelet, especially the one filled with goat cheese and fresh mint.  I haven’t tried the “brunch” formule, which involves croissants and bread, eggs, yogurt, compote, coffee and juice.  Sounds like a 20 euro “Continental” breakfast to me, and that is only impressive when it’s free.

Despite what I read on the internets, I wouldn’t say that the service at Le Loir is especially bad.  It isn’t especially good either, but I think that it is right on par with what you might expect at any busy Marais restaurant.  Le Loir is a lovely place for an afternoon coffee or delicious Darjeeling and they won’t hassle you if you bring a book and stay for a few hours, provided it is a weekday.

Details: Open everyday until 7 p.m.  You must order something to eat if you come in before 3 p.m. on weekends. They will not hesitate to kick you out of you occupy valuable brunch real estate and only intend to drink coffee.  Savory tarts and omelets are about 9 euro; sweet tarts (more than enough to share) are 7.  Get there before noon on Sunday and you’ll have the table of your choice; arrive any later and be prepared for a long wait.

Sometimes Clarence likes his hedonism a little more refined than takeaway falafel.

Huîtrerie Régis

3 rue Montfaucon, 75006 Paris

Métro:  Saint Germain des-Prés or Mabillon

One of the best things that has happened to me since moving to Paris is that I met M, one of those truly superlative individuals that causes you to regularly reflect on why the hell someone so cool deigns to hang out with you.  What she and I don’t have in common I envy terribly, from her elven features to her gorgeous photography to her canny ability to mix and match print fabrics.  The things she and I do overlap on are quite remarkable, including a deep love of late 19th century French decadent novels, Muji products, marginalized Surrealists, and oysters.  Fittingly, both of us planned to take the other to a fancy oyster place for our respective birthdays and found the same gushing reviews of Huîtrerie Régis on the internets.  She won, to the extent that my birthday came first and I was forced to cede credit to her for finding the place (something that anyone who knows me will attest that I am loathe to do).  Delightfully, when I asked her at the end of my birthday dinner what she wanted to do for her birthday in a month, she replied with “this exact same thing.”

Twist my arm.  Régis is this clean-freak oyster-fiend’s personal version of heaven.  The tiny whitewashed room seats less than twenty people and is fresh-scrubbed to the point that I would happily eat off their floor.  Oysters are not only the main attraction, they are the whole show, with the exception of poached shrimp that nobody orders anyway.  If you visit Régis’s website, you can read an extended spiel about the Brittany farm where their oysters originate, including a lot of fascinating details about the size of the beds and the duration of the growth of various grades of oyster.  I’ll spare you those highbrow details (this is Clarence in Paris, after all).  I’ll warn the American oyster eaters acclimated to piles of horseradish and Tabasco that this is a different breed of oyster bar altogether.  These beauties are served on a bed of seaweed with only wedges of lemon and mignonette sauce as an accompaniment, with rye bread and artisanal butter on the side.  I am usually completely skeptical when people take away my condiments—pity the poor fool who encourages me to drink my coffee black—but I’ll say it for the record:  these oysters are perfect on their own.  One taste and you’ll be wishing that you had a sommelier’s adjectival bank at your disposal.

We returned to Régis for M’s birthday with another friend in tow and I enjoyed it even more because I was able to make a Flaubert reference that I’d been spit-polishing for a month to a sympathetic audience.  One of my favorite parts of Salammbô is the description of the Unclean Eaters:

Outside the fortification there were people of another race and of unknown origin, all hunters of the porcupine, and eaters of shell-fish and serpents. They used to go into caves to catch hyenas alive, and amuse themselves by making them run in the evening on the sands of Megara between the stelae of the tombs. Their huts, which were made of mud and wrack, hung on the cliff like swallows’ nests. There they lived, without government and without gods, pell-mell, completely naked, at once feeble and fierce, and execrated by the people of all time on account of their unclean food. One morning the sentries perceived that they were all gone.

I was about to segue this into dumb joke about how you ought to get to Régis before the oyster season is over and your own chances at some excellent Unclean Eatin’ diminish, but that seemed painful even to this blogging neophyte.

Details: They don’t accept reservations and the place fills up fast.  Fortunately, you can outsmart the frogs by simply arriving before 8 p.m.  You will likely have the place to yourself for thirty minutes before the people in line outside start giving you the stink-eye.  For the budget-minded, you can order one of the formules dégustations, which include a dozen oysters, a glass of Sancerre or Muscadet, bread and butter, and an espresso.  We ate the cheapest formule of les fines de claires for 21 euro and were thrilled.  Big spenders can knock themselves out with les belons, which run about 60 euros a dozen.  Nota bene:  Régis requires that every diner order a minimum of a dozen oysters.

I hope that Clarence in Paris can become a regular installment here at Keeping the Bear-Garden in the Background. Over the years, I’ve come to regard my burgeoning foodie self as a separate being. This inner fat kid is named Clarence.  While he is most definitely an American child, he resembles Augustus Gloop. His stained polyester pants are strained at the seams. He likes big buffet brunches, taco trucks, and Korean barbecue. This kid is pure Id, baby. It is in his honor that I inaugurate this series of restaurant reviews.

L’As du Falafel

34 rue des Rosiers, 75004 Paris

Métro:  St. Paul

Upon moving to my Marais neighborhood I was informed by many concerned graduate students that while rue des Rosiers was the place to go for falafel, it was important that I go to the right falafel place on rue des Rosiers, lest I want to find myself with stale pita or carrots in my falafel.  Nobody seemed to know exactly which falafel place was the right one, so I did like any good detective and trailed a group of drunk American study abroad kids one night.  The loudest of the bunch, “Nathan,” claimed to have been subsisting on rue des Rosiers falafel for over two weeks.  “Nathan” steered his boisterous clan to L’As du Falafel, where they forked over their parents’s hard-earned cash to one of the two rotating cashier-barkers, both of whom are pretty dreamy if you like a certain type of leather-jacket-wraparound-mirrored-sunglasses-beefy-Israeli-guy (I do).  Never had I imagined that I could be so grateful for the guidance of a wasted Wesleyan fratboy, but L’As is most certainly the spot.  I marveled at the artistry that is the L’As sandwich construction:  hummus smeared all over the inside of the pita, multiple layers of hot falafel, tomatoes, salted cucumbers, white and purple cabbage, and roasted eggplant, all topped off with a hearty dose of tahini and, if you like, “sauce piquante” (harissa, not really all that “piquante” and worth asking for extra).  The trick of the L’As sandwich, in addition to the hot-from-the-fryer component, is the layering.  None of this business where you eat all the best stuff at the top and then are stuck with a limp pita full of cabbage at the end.

The restaurant inside is also quite nice if you like your décor from the Tel Aviv school of kitsch (I do).  The basic sandwiches are marked up two euros if you eat inside, a worthwhile investment if (a) if it is too cold to trek all the way down to Place des Vosages with your sandwich, (b) you have a soft spot for Israeli Maccabee beer, or (c) you want to gorge on unlimited harissa from the small jars that reside on every table.  The large vegetarian falafel plate is lovely, though I’ll admit to never branching out further on the menu than the namesake dish.  I’m vaguely creeped out by L’As’s honesty regarding the mixed-animal constitution (turkey + lamb) of their shawarma.*  I don’t know why this bothers me, as I’m a prolific pressed and tubed meat eater.  The New York Times says something about L’As’s falafel being so good that even the most dedicated carnivore might flirt with the idea of being a vegetarian.  I scoffed when I read that, but it is actually quite true.

The catch, especially for the late-night drunken crowd, is that these boys observe the Sabbath, which means that they are closed from dusk on Friday night through Saturday.  The upside is that they are open on Sundays, along with every other restaurant in the Marais, which becomes glutted with tourists on the weekends.  For those stuck with few options on Christian holidays, I can attest that my mother and I had a lovely Christmas dinner at L’As, chortling about how we probably approximated Jesus’s diet more closely than anyone eating a baked ham.

As for the other rue des Rosiers falafel places:  in a moment of weakness one Saturday, I made the mistake of trying the falafel from Chez Hanna.  I don’t want to slander anybody here, but I would advise you strongly to avoid it.  My friend M tells me that the place across from L’As, which makes its money by capitalizing on the long lines at the latter, served her moldy pita bread.  I’ll admit to having never tried Chez Marianne, which looks nice enough from a walk-by and has a pretty devoted following.  I’m loyal as hell, and my heart belongs to L’As.

French language dorks take note:  l’as means “ace” or “whiz.”  Judging from the logo, I think they are aiming for “The Ace of Falafel,” but I  think “The Falafel Whiz” also has a nice ring to it.

Details: For 5 euro you get a takeaway falafel sandwich and the smug sense that you are in the know, at least compared to the bewildered Kansans going across the street.  Sometimes the line is long, but that’s because it is the best, so don’t be seduced by any of the other falafel barkers on the street.  Google is a dirty liar and says L’As is open on Friday night and Saturday during the daytime.  It isn’t, nor is it open on any Jewish holidays.

* Addendum:  For the sake of scientific research, I finally got around to ordering the schwarma sandwich.  Skip it.