I Prefer Paris

Lunch with Lynn/Paris Under 20 Eats: Cafe Lafayette

 Lynn was on a strict budget this month so she said that the 6th floor restaurant at Galeries Lafayette had some good lunch deals with an added bonus of panoramic views of the city. We arrived about 12:30 and it was already packed. The thriving, bustling cafe crowded with hungry shoppers trouncing shopping bags with their latest treasures was more like an upscale cafeteria than a cafe. It had the usual stations of a modern cafeteria including a salad bar, a grill with hot plats du jour, a fruit salad bar, a section with composed salads, a petit dejeuner section with croissants & pastries, and a most yummy looking dessert bar.

Lynn chose the salad bar and heaped as much as she can on her medium sized plate for 4.70 euros (3.80 euros for the small). Her towering plate had black olives, lots of veggies, some salad, and hard-boiled eggs and she said it was fresh and tasty. I opted for the Indian-style composed salad plate with spiced chicken, cucumber & yogurt, and a curried remoulade salad for 8.90 euros. It was a tender, sizable portion of chicken (I find they many times on plates like this they skimp on the meat portion) and the other things were nicely spiced. In the end it was decent but not a must-eat Paris restaurant to rave about to your friends back home . However the sweeping views on the hazy sunny day and most special birds-eye view of the Opera Garnier more than made up for the mediocre food. After lunch we walked two flights up to the roof that's open to the public to get a 360 degree view.

If you want a quick, simple lunch with some great views of the city without paying an arm and a leg at the Eiffel Tower or other tourist places with views, Lafayette Cafe is a good find. Make sure you take the main escalators so you can see the magnificent dome when riding them.

Lafayette Cafe
Galeries Lafayette- 6th fl.
40 Blvd. Haussmann, 9th arr.
Metro: Chaussée d’Antin or Opera 

Is that my Xmas gift floating in the atrium of Galeries Lafayette?

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 3 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Francois the Paella Man

Twice a week at Place Baudoyer where my local outdoor market is, Francois makes the freshest, most scrumptious, and authentic paella. He sets up his truck on Saturday mornings and Wednesday afternoons and makes the paella from scratch with spicy sausage, jumbo shrimp, fresh mussels,red & green peppers, bay leaves, rice, peas, and the most tender chicken parts. A huge portion for one, which is actually enough for two, costs only 7 euros. My Saturday morning ritual is to buy his paella for lunch. I salivate as he scoops the steaming hot paella into the container and then I run home, ripping open the plastic wrap and stuffing my face as fast as humanly possible.

Francois also prepares excellent beef Bourguignon, chicken fricassee, chicken stew with white beans, and big sausages with lentils, but for me his shining star is the paella.

Francois's Paella Truck
Baudoyer market
Place Baudoyer, between rue de Rivoli & rue Francois Miron, 4th arr.
Metro:Hotel de Ville, St. Paul
Open Saturday 7AM-3PM- Note: paella is not ready till about 11:30AM
Wednesday 3PM-8:30PM

Beef Bourguignon

Sausage with lentils

Chicken with white beans

Francois the master chef preparing his famous paella

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 3 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Restaurant Review: Pho Dong-Huong

Pho Dong-Huong by Emily Monaco

When you up and move yourself from New York to Paris, you tend to get a lot of visitors. Since I moved to Paris in September 2007, I’ve been visited by my parents, both of my mother’s sisters, a handful of friends and even a few people I hadn’t heard from since we played in the sandbox together. Without fail, each and every one of them has the same expectations: they want to climb the Eiffel Tower (which I banned as an option after my seventh or eighth trek—my friends are perfectly capable of climbing the tower themselves and meeting me for a drink afterwards). They want to shop. They want to take pictures from the top of Montmartre. And of course, possibly most of all, they want to eat.

Finding appropriate places to take them for the quintessential Parisian dining experience is extremely difficult, and I end up perusing the same guidebooks they tote along with them and ignore in favor of following me, “the local.” But as far as eating out is concerned, I’m a fairly useless local. Why? Because contrary to popular belief, I do not eat cassoulet every day in a cute café.

 If I do treat myself to dinner every once in awhile, it’s definitely not going to be at a place I would take my friends: my favorite restaurant in Paris is decidedly un-French, but maybe that’s why I love it so much.

Directly above the Belleville metro stop is a small, unassuming place called Pho Dong-Huong. This is not the sort of place where you bring out-of-towners. Until recently, the menu was pasted on the wall in a series of pictures, and the tables are more a reminder of plastic cafeteria tables than those in a cute brasserie.

France is not known for its international cuisine, but Paris is, in fact, a multicultural city, and there are Vietnamese and North African restaurants dotting nearly every street here. If you’re willing to step outside the box and take a day off from soupe à l’oignon gratinée and salade niçoise, choose this place as a location to venture forth into the world of Vietnamese food. You’ll know you’re in the right place if you’re the only non-Vietnamese person there—this is the place where immigrants come for a taste of home.

The menu reminds me of diner menus from back in the States: all of the choices are illustrated with photos. The plastified pages are thick and seem unending, but there’s no real reason to turn past the first page, home to an assortment of traditional pho, the Vietnamese rice noodle soup that the restaurant is named for. I don’t even touch the menu anymore: by now, they know me here, and I can quickly order my haricots rouges—a drink made out of gelatin, sweet red beans and condensed milk—and P5—the fifth pho soup on the list, with meatballs and raw beef that slowly cooks in the piping hot broth.

A bowl of soup may not seem like an adequate meal, but the combination of rice noodles, bean sprouts, meatballs and beef that can be dipped into sauce served on the side or slurped from a spoon fills me up every time and is easy on the wallet.

It’s hard to wait for your order to appear: the entire restaurant smells of cilantro and beef broth, so appetizing and wonderful when you come in out of the cold. I arrange my chopsticks and spoon in anticipation, grasping the bright red bottle of Sriacha sauce that I will use to tinge the translucent broth orange, allowing the heat of the traditional chili paste to warm my mouth.

When it finally comes, I savor every spoonful: this may not be the Paris that American tourists expect, but this is the Paris that I call home.

14, rue Louis Bonnet,11th arr.

Phone: +33 01 43 57 42 81

Metro: Belleville

Average Cost: 10-15 euros

Hours: Daily 12pm-11:30pm, closed Tuesday

Emily Monaco is an American student/expat from New York who has (hopefully permanently) moved to Paris. She spends her time in Paris seeking out artsy movie theaters, eating in amazing restaurants and trying to figure out how to use the Vélib.

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 3 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Cheap, Quick Eats: Used Book Cafe at Merci

It's been more than a year since I wrote a post in this category and I am sorry to have been so neglectful. Truthfully, there hasn't been a place worthy of the title but I unexpectedly came upon a new delight last week and was compelled to share it.

I was with an Eye Prefer Paris tour client for a Marais tour and the last stop was the boutique Merci. Standing in front of the shop and contemplating lunch, as I was famished ( it was after 2PM, way past my feeding time), I saw a an appetizing sandwich being served outside of the used book cafe at Merci. I decided this was perfect and I sat and ordered the fresh buffalo mozzarella sandwich on toasted baguette with yellow and red tomatoes and basil. It came out quickly and it was perfectly presented on a silver rectangular tray. The open faced sandwich looked beautiful and soon as I bit into it, it was delicious. Creamy and crispy at the same time, it fulfilled two important taste sensations. It was pleasant sitting outside on the wide, not too noisy Boulevard Beaumarchais  savoring my lunch and I was in and out in less than 30 minutes. The menu also includes a smoked ham sandwich on baguette, cakes and pastries, coffee, tea, and soft drinks. Indoors the ambiance is dark and cozy with mismatched antique furniture.

Cost: 7 euros
Experience: Most enjoyable!

Merci
111 Boulevard Beaumarchais, 3d. arr.
Metro: Chemin Vert
Tel: 01.42.77.00.33
Open 10AM-8PM, Monday to Saturday

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 3 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Cheap, Quick Eats: Pat's Hot Dogs

You can’t get a quicker or cheaper lunch then a hot dog. Pats’ Hot Dog is the cutest, little hole-in-the-wall serving le chien chaud smothered with onions and mustard or ketchup. At 2.50 euros, it’s the best food buy in town. Pat also serves another American classic, spaghetti, and tops it with Neopolitan or Roquefort sauce for only 3 euros. Wash it down with a Coke or Orangina for 1.30 euros, and lunch is under 5 euros.

Pat’s Hot Dog
Rue de roi de Sicile, between rue Vieille du Temple & Bourg Tibourg,4th
Metro: Hotel de Ville

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Cheap, Quick Eats: Cosi

Every once in a while I will feature Cheap, Quick, Eats, which is a review of a restaurant or café that serves good, inexpensive food (under15 euros) in less then 30 minutes.

Cosi is a small, hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop on the rue de Seine, and specializes in freshly made sandwiches on just baked focaccia bread. If the Cosi name sounds familiar, that’s because it is the name of the hugely popular chain in the U.S. and the concept is based on the original Paris location. The menu categories are simple: Meat, cheese, fish, & vegetarian, but some of the sandwich names are inventive & funny: Rocket Scientist (rocket, tomato, and basil), Cheesy English (roast beef & cheddar), Flipper (tuna), and Naked Willy (ricotta cheese, and roasted vegetables).

The sandwiches are made to order and besides the set menu choices, you can customize your own. I chose the Salmo- smoked salmon, ricotta cheese, lemon, and chives. The bread was still warm (the focaccia is baked on the premises in a pizza type oven) and the combination of the salmon with the tangy lemon and the subtle layer of ricotta slightly melted from the bread was light, delicious, and filling.

They have a 9.50 euro & 11.50 euro formule that both include drinks and dessert. Soups and salads are also served. Food can be taken out or eaten in the small dining room upstairs.

Cosi
54 rue de Seine, 6th arr.
Metro: St.Germain de Pres, Odeon
Tel. 01.46.33.35
Open 7 days, 11:30AM till 12PM

I Stand Corrected(actually I'd rather sit): On last Thursday's post, Quirky Montparnasse, I identified the building with the red stencil as an apartment building but it is in fact the Hotel des Academies and is located on rue de la Grand Chaumiere, not rue Vavin. Thank you Stephanie at New Yorkaise Parisienne for pointing that out.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com