Haute cuisine it's not

Here in Saint-Aignan we get all the good French food you could ever want to eat. There are a dozen or so restaurants within six or seven miles of the house. But all the food is French. We lived in San Francisco for nearly 20 years, so I think we can be forgiven if we occasionally have a hankering for Chinese, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, or ... even ... American food.

A trip to Paris is an opportunity to eat other cuisines. As I said in my last posting, we had dinner at a good Lebanese restaurant one night, and at a good Moroccan the next. Last Sunday, we had lunch in a little Indian restaurant on the rue de Miromesnil, near St-Augustin, called Sanna. I didn't take any pictures. We know people who live in that neighborhood; otherwise, we would never have found the restaurant. It was very good. I remember that there was a 16 euro menu and a 22 euro menu. I had tandoori chicken as my first course, and a curry made with little meatballs of lamb as my main dish. Here's a review in French. As the reviewer points out, the room is very French, the service is very discreet and very efficient, and the food is very good.

I mentioned before that one of the places where we had lunch was an American restaurant that specializes in U.S.-style breakfasts and burgers. It's on the rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter, near Cardinal-Lemoine métro. Here it is — Breakfast in America.

An American joint in the Latin Quarter

It was warm enough that day for us to sit outside on the sidewalk and have our lunch. We ordered burgers, of course — a bacon cheeseburger for me (very dietetic) and a mushroom-Swiss cheeseburger for Walt. We each got cole slaw on the side, and we ordered a basket of fries to round it (and us) all out.

Bacon cheesburger with a stray mushroom on the edge of the plate

You want fries with that?

Authentic? You got it!

The only American thing we couldn't bring ourselves to order was the wine. On the menu it said "California wine" — no other details. We decided to go for the Côtes du Rhône. The woman who waited on us seemed to speak perfect English but also perfect French.

While we were eating, three 20-something Americans came up and took the table next to ours. I got the impression one of them lived in Paris. He seemed to speak French and had a cell phone. The other two, in my estimation, were short-term visitors in Paris on vacation. A different woman, this one clearly American by her accent and look, waited on them. They had studied the menu quite intently for some time, and they had a discussion about whether or not to have wine. The guy with the cell phone kept saying, "So, can we have a bottle of wine with the food?" The other two, a guy and a gal, weren't enthusiastic. They all ended up having Coca-Cola with lunch. When the waitress took their order, the tourist guy asked her, in a familiar-to-me, laid-back, flat-yet-lilting American tone: "The patty melt... What's that about?" She looked at him and said, surprised: "Haven't you ever had a patty melt before?" His answer: "Yeah, but not here." I don't know if "here" meant in Paris or at that particular restaurant.

Another day, we had pizzas at our favorite Paris pizzeria, Pizza Sant'Antonio on the place du Bourg-Tibourg in the Marais, near Hôtel de Ville. We've been stopping in there for years now. French pizza is very different from the American version, and Walt and I both prefer the French version: less overcooked tomato sauce, less heavy melted cheese, a fresher taste.

The Sant'Antonio has been remodeled over the past year or two. It's all stainless steel now, and it feels very clean. Here's the look.

Outdoor tables at the Pizza Sant'Antonio in the Marais

Bottles of water and spicy pizza oil on the tables

The pizzas at the Sant'Antonio

I didn't think about taking a picture of the pizzas until after we had started eating them. Sorry. As you might be able to tell, my pizza had an egg on top. That's common with French pizza. I had broken the yolk and kind of spread the egg around. Walt's pizza had cheese, ham, and mushrooms on it. The pizzas cost about ten dollars per person.

Okay, here's one place where we didn't have a meal while we were in Paris. It's called Ami Louis (aka Chez L'Ami Louis), and it was on the same street as the apartment we were staying in, just a couple of hundred yards further down. It's famous as one of the best old-style Parisian bistrots, serving huge portions of rich food and heavy sauces, all of the best quality. The waiters are reputed to be surly and the décor is shabby chic with walls stained yellow by years of tobacco smoke. American celebrities, it seems, are regular customers.

Le Restaurant Ami Louis, 32, rue du Vertbois, Paris IIIe

Here's the menu. Note the sky-high prices. Asperges for 58 euros! That's $70 or so. (This reminds me that while we were in Paris we were shopping a food market at Les Halles. One man was selling beautiful globe artichokes from Brittany. I asked him for two, and the price came to 30 euros— close to forty bucks. For two artichokes. I said non merci — c'est beaucoup trop cher. I don't know what that man was thinking.)

Ami Louis. Roast chicken for €70, or about $85.

Grilled veal kidneys: $55. A piece of chocolate cake: $25. Fresh raspberries: $27. If I win the lottery, I might have dinner at Ami Louis one night to celebrate. Until then, I have other priorities.