Le Rubis and Le Baron Rouge

Since this is still winter, maybe we should think about oysters. Evidently this is when the oysterman comes with his truck to the Baron Rouge to sell them on Saturday and Sunday. Girls' Guide to Paris has a nice posting on Le Baron Rouge and his oysters, and then goes on to mention a similar restaurant Le Rubis, which is a wine bar. They say "The food is as unpretentious as the wine. Saucisse with lentils, hot saucisson, sauté of lamb with white beans, tripe and tête de veau."

The Girls' Guide says:
In a nutshell: Le Rubis is where to fulfill your fantasy of old Paris while refilling your wine glass.
Price check: Main courses are no more than 12 euros. The only way to overspend here is by drinking too much.

Bon Appetit's Snob-Free Guide to Paris

I just picked up the March issue of Bon Appetit, the one with the Macaroni and Cheese on the front, and I should ask here if anyone out there subscribed me to it because I don't think I did. But to return to the subject at hand, Bon Appetit has an article on Paris restaurants highlighting a "new generation of fine spots with drinks (natural wines preferably), snacks (from well-sourced ingredients), and a relaxed ambience." Fortunately it is written by Clotilde Dusoulier of the Chocolate and Zucchini blog; unfortunately there are no prices. But it looks like most of them are wine bars (caves à manger) for the young and fashionable crowd and 3-4 of them are further out than one would walk - one might actually have to take a taxi (she doesn't give a metro station). Clotilde doesn't mention that experimental cocktail bar and the strawberry alarm clock so I don't know if we can trust that it is really truly her list. The website has a downloadable pdf to print out and take with you to Paris, which is actually just the magazine pages. I think I'd rather have pastries... or an assiette de fromage.

Choucroute Garnie

So I've decided to take Penny's recommendation and search by the food I want to eat rather than the restaurant. I've always liked sauerkraut and sausage so maybe I should try the Alsatian version. A search for choucroute garnie brought up some recommendations in ChowHound, which led me to a search for the restaurant "L'Alsaco" which led me to this 1995 New York Times article by Patricia Wells: Choice Tables: A Winter Favorite in Paris: Tasty Alsatian Choucroute. (I also have Well's The Food Lover's Guide to Paris, published in 1999, and I see that quite a few of the restaurants have closed.) Wells reviews L'Alsaco, Cafe Runtz (which is closed), Brasserie Lipp, La Coupole (in Montmartre), Baumann-Ternes, Chez Jenny (which a poster on ChowHound didn't like), and Bofinger (which Wells didn't like and which consistently gets bad reviews for lousy service).

Or we could just make choucroute in the apartment a la Jacques Pepin. That way we could choose our own sausages. But it might have to cook for several hours -- maybe overnight and we could have it for breakfast. Paris Perfect says that Davoli, the Italian delicatessen on Rue Cler, sells the best Choucroute. And from the photo at the right, it looks like choucroute and sausages are sold in openair markets all ready to take home (or to the park) and eat.

I would like to go to a brasserie but all the reports of horrible service are quite intimidating. But wait! Now I remember that Au Pied De Cochon that Penny wants to go to for onion soup is a brasserie. The one that is owned by Le Groupe Frères Blanc, along with Flora Danica and 28 other restaurants. Oh my. I don't see much on their menu besides pigs trotters. DON'T read the reviews on Trip Advisor. Maybe we should really skip the brasseries and stick to bistros, markets, and cafes! I'll just pick up my choucroute at the Italian delicatessen - unless there's a Jewish delicatessen that has it nearby - ah, but it wouldn't have pork sausages.

Bistros (or do I want a Café?)

We've already got around 20 Bistros on our Google Map of Paris and we aren't going to be in Paris 20 days. Nor are we going to double or triple up on days like Jane and Michael Stern do on their road trips. Maybe this Guardian article from 2008 will help us select just a few: Top 10 Paris bistrots on a budget. I like the budget part of the title. I thought that bistrots were homey little neighborhood restaurants but at some point it appears that bistros became meccas of gourmet food. John Brunton of the Guardian gives the following pointers: "Lunchtime is the best time to find bargain set menus. Prices will inevitably be more expensive in the evening, but most of these bistrots offer a €25-30 (£20-24) set menu for dinner, which is still excellent value considering the quality of the cuisine."

The first one they list, L'Ebauchoir, has a fancy website in flash but fortunately they also have a blog on blogspot that has the menu. They still have the prix fixe menus: 2 course for lunch is 12€, 3-course is 13.50€. Dinner is 22.50€ for 2-courses and 25€ for 3. They have photos of their dishes and they look quite delicious. It is located in the Quartier d'Aligre and the characters in the frescos on their walls also appear on their website.

Maybe what I'm really looking for is a café, not a bistrot. Le Pause Café, located near the Bastille, appears on the Guardian's Ten top Paris pavement cafes, and it says that "Ever since it featured in the cult Parisien movie, Chacun Cherche son Chat (Everyone's Looking for their Cat), the Pause Cafe has attracted a fashionable Bobo (Bourgeois Bohemian) crowd." (Neither the library nor NetFlix has the movie which is supposed to tour the quartier looking for the cat.) The Foody Froggy says Le Pause Café is her favorite in that quartier. The “plats du jour” are written each day on the blackboard and they have steak frites -- how could you go wrong? When we go to the Marché d'Aligre perhaps we can stop by and check it out.

Let's Go BoBo

BoBo is a term for the fashionable Bourgeois Bohemian crowd that frequents places like the shops in the Marais and outdoor cafes. If we want to go BoBo, here's a list of the Top 10 Paris Pavement Cafes from the UK's Guardian. Unfortunately it is an April article and Paris probably doesn't put out the chairs and tables in March. But the Guardian does have another article on Parisian Cafes: Top 10 Paris cafes for sipping vin chaud. "In Paris, mulled wine isn't just for Christmas – it's served until early spring." So maybe we could do that instead and although it would be cheaper to heat up vin in the apartment, you wouldn't get the architecture of Cafe Marly in the Louvre, that's for sure.

I thought the term "BoBo" was a French invention but BoBos have been around for some time, as you can read in this New York Times article from 2000: In France, a New Class Reinvents the Good Life: 'Bobo' Style Has It Both Ways, which claims that the term came from David Brooks' book "Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There." (Yes, "our" David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour). Apparently the normal Frenchman or woman does not consume as much as Americans except for these BoBos.

OH, OH, and look at this third article from the Guardian: Top 10 traditional Paris bars à vins for quality wine, cheese and charcuterie. Penny, the first one they show is Le Baron Bouge, the quintessential Paris wine bar.

Brasseries

I'd like to go to a Brasserie in Paris just so that I can eat choucroute garni. But after reading a slew of negative reviews on Trip Advisor about Bofingers (horrible service), I want to be careful in the one I select. The Guardian has an article on The Best Paris Brasseries but it is from 2002 and a lot can happen in 9 years!

Fortunately the Guardian lists Penny's Les Halles choice first: Au Pied de Cochon, where Penny is going to have Onion Soup and Fernando is probably going to have La tentation de St Antoine. That is a mix of pig's tail, ears, trotters and museau -- the snout. John Whiting in Whitings Writings says: "the pig’s offal, which is what I really came for, was superb – every wicked morsel had been deep fried into total submission. It came with a finger bowl which, by the time I had finished with it, would have made a tasty starter for the next punter."

But Au Pied de Chochon doesn't have a menu up and I don't see any photos of choucroute garni. The Guardian next recommends Brasserie Flo and Bofingers and Brasserie Balzar, which are now all owned by FloBrasseries. John Whiting tells the story of how Jean Paul Bucher bought up the various brasseries in his posting on Brasserie Flo. So he wouldn't go broke, Whiting ordered the 24.50€ prix fixe menu whose options included Marbré de canard au foie gras, compotée de rhubarbe and Choucroute Spécial, including ample portions of good saucisses de Frankfort and Montbéliard, poitrine fumée and carré de porc. I think that is what I am looking for.

More of John Whiting's Writings can be found in his list of Paris Bistros. Evidently he is 90 years old!
The Guardian article also talks about "Getting the best from brasseries dining": Rather than be tempted by the gourmet-sounding dishes, which rarely live up to expectations, stick to classic brasserie fare: a vast plateau of fruits de mer, a steaming plate of choucroute garnie, steak tartare with crispy frites, a tasty andouillette sausage, or a simple sole meunière.

I think I'll leave the "tartare" off my steak frites.

How are we going to choose the restaurants?

I've added a few bistros today to our google map of Paris, trying to stick around our neighborhood. And I ran across this posting from The Independent: France: There's a great place I know ... that interviews famous Francophiles about their favorite restaurants. As long as they are inexpensive bistros that might be a place to start. And here's the Belly of Paris article from Saveur, where they mention Chez Clovis and Chez Denise near the old Les Halles.

I'd also like to go to a Brasserie, which they say means brewery and so I interpret it as a German Beer Hall since they are supposed to be large and loud... Here's a list of Aveyronnais bistros in Paris, which sound to me a lot like brasseries. Aveyron is a department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in the southwest of France.

I'm reading a book by one of David Lebovitz's friends, Alexander Lobrano, called "Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City's 102 Best Restaurants". I usually don't like reading restaurant guides but this one has actually interested me in going to every other restaurant that he tells a story about. Especially the ones with regional French food like L'Ambassade d'Auvergne where he tells you not to miss the country-ham smoked over a chestnut wood fire, the pounti (terrine of pork, swiss chard and prunes), the lentil salad seasoned with goose fat and bacon, the stuffed cabbage and the aligot (potatoes whipped with Tomme cheese and garlic). I guess we'll just have to go after we hit the Pompidou on Sunday evening. How can you say no to a restaurant whose website plays Bach (isn't it)? Although Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne would have been more appropriate, or am I the only one that likes them? Or maybe we could go there for lunch since they have a menu for 20 euros IN CASE OF LITTLE HUNGER AND LITTLE THIRST.

John Whiting has a short review of L'Ambassade d'Auvergne.

Alexander Lobrano also has Gourmet articles on Eight Great Places for Roast Chicken in Paris and another one on A Remembrance of Things Present (A Paris transplant decides to revisit some old-style restaurants where they serve the soul-satisfying food on which French cuisine was built.)

Flunch

So when we are really desperate for inexpensvie food we can check out the Flunch in Forum Des Halles. (Except that I don't know what those things in the plat du jour are: fish? lobster tails? chicken? larvae?) And if we don't like that, we can skip over to McDo instead, where they have free wifi...but the menu seems just the same as in the U.S. No petit-dejeuner on a croissant. Or there's a starbucks or a Hippopotamus. In fact it looks like the Forum des Halles is just like any other shopping mall but with a big FNAC.

Or we could pick up frozen food at Picard...

I do wish the French didn't love flash on their websites.

Top Restaurant Lists

OK, OK, I know this is not how we operate, and we really don't trust guidebooks atall but I couldn't resist.

• Paris Notes: Top 20 Restaurants
• Sally Berstein: Top 10 Restaurants
• NY Times: Paris Restaurants - good for readers' suggestions for budget bistros
• Best Restaurants in Le Marais
• David Lebovitz's Favorite Parisian Restaurants - Read more about A la Biche au Bois and about The Breizh Cafe Creperie located in the Marais. Even more about the Breizh Cafe