A Grumpy New Yorker in Paris

If you’re going out to dinner with friends whom you hardly see, you will probably want to spend around 25 € a person max.

This leads to a bizarre scenario, where you are in Paris, and barely eating French food (outside of whatever version of “French food” you find at Monoprix). So what should you eat instead?

1. BMK Folie-Bamako

I fall hard for the aesthetics of BMK-Folie, I really think it is one of the most festive, intimate restaurants in Paris with a color play that makes my heart race a bit. It sits at Place de la Fontaine-Timbaud, which is both a panorama where the end of two streets meet at a boulevard, and is also a slab of Paris where the fall of sunlight is always gorgeous and everything looks like a vignette. The allocos are delicious and the smoky mafé not at all bad.

2. Le Grand Bol

Le Grand Bol is a bit controversial in the way of “really authentic” Chinese restaurants that exist in the metropolitan cities of the West, with its coterie of passionate fans, who think they know real Chinese food, defending another modest little place with fluorescent lights–until the day when these people inevitably complain that it just isn’t as good as before, and that it got very expensive. IMHO, it is as good as before; it did get more expensive but all of Paris did? Standouts: soft-shell crab in salt & pepper; any of its pork belly dishes; aubergines in a marmite, lamb fried in cumin (though the versions of this dish did not stabilize too much over the years). Go early.

3. Chez Magda

I love khinkali so much–Georgian raviolis in a milky, pale yellow garlic sauce. Khinkali is kind of like a robust ravioli with a chewier skin, and that chewy skin was a bit of an acquired taste for me. It took a while to understand that the dougheyness of the dough, in fact offsets and works marvelously with the creaminess of the entire dish. It is also a dish that needs coriander and makes coriander a coherent, key accent. But it is that sauce, it is the sauce that I imagine French cooking would have everywhere–and maybe it does, but in my daily life, Khinkalis give me the dreamy creaminess that I don’t always find in the everyday brasserie menu. If you’re ever by Bassin de la Villette, pop in–the atmosphere is great too.

4. Tuk Tuk

The border of the 8th and 17th arrondissement is a depressing one for me, but there is a fairly good chance that you, dear Reader, will find an apartment in the 17th, which will not be too far from this restaurant. If you can’t tell from looking at the photo that this is a very authentic Thai restaurant, then–I don’t know. The restaurant recalls Bangkok’s dark, vibey clubs — candlelit, with some cross-marketing going on with fashion events. This is a good place for a date, but the special of the night when I went was a salted, pickled vegetable and pork bone soup which was very very spicy, and very very good.

5. Touki Bouki

Up to about a week ago, Touki Bouki had a 5.0 rating on Google and from about a hundred review. That’s 5 stars not from your 6 friends! If you’ve ever dreamt of being a restauranteur, this restaurant will make you jealous. It is a tapas-style pan-African place, with a touch of French-inspired fusion with their take on oeufs mayonnaise (a play of pink, white and the lightest of green on the plate), and beef cheek stew, and their very well curated wine list (but I don’t know a goddamn thing about wine). Everything is kind of good, and you are so happy to be eating it that everything tastes kind of great. The service (and lighting) is warm, the atmosphere is very Julien-Lacroix while being at the same time, loose, warm, cheery.

So there you go, from Georgian to Malian, to good old Thai–this is the food you should be having, if you’re too cool (or too broke) for French food, in France.