Eating Our Way Through Paris by Lucy Burdette

LUCY BURDETTE: You know how much Hank loves it when a week turns out to have an unexpected theme? This week has two, searching for a place and food. Today you are going to eat with me in Paris, a trip that pushed me to really think about both food critics and chefs.

I was determined—some might say obsessed—about not wasting time on bad meals. You can’t imagine how much I researched where to eat before we set off. I’ve been collecting blog posts for years from David Lebovitz, Dorie Greenspan, Meg Zimbeck (who writes Paris by Mouth and puts out a yearly list of what she believes to be the top 50 restaurants in Paris), and many more.

To make things even more complicated, Lindsay Tramuta published a book with Eater (an online zine) called the Eater Guide to Paris right before we left. I was overwhelmed with possibilities! I had every kind of question circling through my mind: what kind of food do we want to eat? Should it only be French? Should it be fancy French or casual? Should it be confined to the center of Paris where we’d be staying, and if not, how far would we be willing to travel? Could we eat two big meals a day? Estimates of the number of restaurants in Paris fall around 40,000. How could we possibly choose the best when we were there for only eight days? How could anybody make a list of top 50 restaurants, not just in Paris but anywhere? This adventure gave me new insight into the challenges of restaurant critics.

(If all this is making you a little queasy, you might want to skip the rest of this very very foodie post🤪)

Luckily, my traveling companion (John) was relaxed about the whole adventure. He offered opinions when I asked him, but did not try to meddle with my ongoing obsession. I’ll share with you some photos of the meals we really loved. Stay tuned in the future for how some of this will end up in a book…

Pizza is not easy to find in Paris, good pizza that is. We took one of David Lebovitz's suggestions and traveled out to the 11th arrondissement to eat at Oobatz. This was a white asparagus and wild asparagus pizza, alongside a lovely salad. 

We eschewed the suggestion to have the chef's specialty. 

What is the chef's special? John asked.

Nothing specific, it’s whatever he feels like putting on your pizza, the server said.

Since we’d just read that some of his ingredients involved innards, we stuck with the asparagus.

I’d been dreaming about dinner at Café des Ministères which I regretted missing on my last visit, but it was too hard to get a reservation. This time I stalked the site until I grabbed one. I had been dreaming about their stuffed cabbage for years! Here it finally was and I swear to you, it was as big as a human being’s head! They brought it to the table, sliced it open and then poured on crème fraîche. We couldn’t even eat half of it. John ordered a cassoulet which was divine, filled with sausage, duck confit, and molten hot white beans.

Juveniles Wine Bar was the only restaurant we repeated from my last visit and as far as I know, it’s my favorite place in Paris. I had a roast chicken with potatoes and vegetables in an amazing sauce, whereas John ordered sausage in a pool of cheesy mashed potatoes. I could not pass up the rice pudding with caramel sauce on the side.

The next day went on a market tour of Rue Montorgueil, which is known as a foodie street, run by Amanda from Jane Bertch’s La Cuisine Paris. Everything we tried was amazing but this goat cheese was a standout, rolled in beautiful dried flowers and stuffed with a rose coulis. (I don’t even like goat cheese much, but this will definitely become a plot point…)

This was a lunch we had at Le Cornichon. I had what was essentially fish and chips on a homemade slaw (do notice those gorgeous frites in the background) and John had a little steak with a big glob of melted fois gras on top. 

Holy cholesterol, Batman! Fortunately, we were walking miles and miles a day.

This was another astonishing lunch at a Lebanese restaurant called Kubris. The best thing I ate was roasted cabbage with Aleppo pepper butter, shanklish, cri-cri peanut, pickled apricot and oregano. So many flavors! 

And then a stuffed eggplant shawarma. John once again enjoyed the sausage. 😂. 

I will stop there to give us all a break! And maybe give you time to grab a snack. One regret is that we barely had the chance to order dessert because we ate so much of the other food. This calls for another trip...

How does a normal person go about choosing a restaurant in a strange place? Inquiring minds want to know…