Restaurants and meals we enjoyed in Paris

The first night we were in Paris we had dinner with our friend Cricket from California. She suggested a Lebanese restaurant in the Marais called Aux Fleurs deThym. It's at 19, rue François Miron, just off the rue du Pont Louis-Philippe, and is listed here.

Aux Fleurs de Thym, a Lebanese restaurant in the Marais

We were excited to see Cricket — it had been three or four years since I had seen her — and we didn't think much about taking pictures of the food. What we ordered was called a mezze. It was a selection of 12 hors-d'œuvre plates for the table. Six were cold dishes, and six were hot. There were so many dishes and we were so busy tasting and talking that I can't remember everything we ate. Lentil salad, hummus, samosas, little shish-kebabs, etc. We also had a bottle of Lebanese wine that was very good.

By the time dessert arrived, we thought about photos (for our friends who enjoy such photos, and you know who you are). The restaurant is very small, by the way, so reservations are a good idea. The mezze tasting menu was 58 euros for three people. Wine was extra.

Cricket showing her dessert to the camera

After dinner that first night in Paris, we were already thinking about the next meal. Walt and I had walked past a little Moroccan restaurant earlier in the evening and thought it looked promising. Cricket said Moroccan sounded really good to her. So after the Lebanese sampler dinner, we walked the few blocks up to the Moroccan place and made a reservation for the next evening. It is called La Rose des Sables and here's a review in French. I haven't been able to find any reviews of these two restaurants in English.

La Rose des Sables, 103 rue Vieille-du-Temple, Paris IVe

The dishes we enjoyed at La Rose des Sables were the salads we had as starters: Cricket had marinated eggplant, I had tomatoes and cooked green peppers, and Walt had grated carrots with a dressing that included orange juice. All three salads were refreshing and tasty. And we enjoyed the main courses as much if not more. I had a tagine of lamb with onions, prunes, and almonds that was excellent. Walt had a lamb tagine with green peas and artichoke hearts. Cricket had a chicken tagine with seven or eight vegetables. Again, all were amazing. The lamb and chicken were totally succulent.

La Rose des Sables is a place I can recommended highly. It's very small, with room for maybe 25 people, so you have to reserve. For three, with a bottle of nice Moroccan wine, we paid just over 100 euros for dinner.

Before we ever got to dinner that day, we had already had an afternoon snack of oysters (on the half shell, as we say) and a nice bottle of Muscadet white wine at the Au Pied de Cochon restaurant near Les Halles. The oysters were expensive, I thought, but it was fun, and we were in that neighborhood shopping for kitchen items at DeHillerin anyway. It was a rainy day.

DeHillerin, a store full of great kitchen stuff

Au Pied de Cochon, an institution at Les Halles

One other restaurant Walt and I really enjoyed was a little old-fashioned Parisian bistrot in the XIe arrondissement recommended by Dave (Happy in Paris) of the Slow Travel forum on the Internet. We met Dave for lunch there last Monday.

La Ravigotte, 41, rue de Montreuil, Paris XIe

The "full" menu at La Ravigote was 13 euros per person, plus wine. That includes entrée, plat principal, and dessert. For 10 euros, you could have entrée + plat or plat + dessert. Here's what it looked like.

The menu at La Ravigote

The salade de chèvre chaud was very good, as I can attest. As a main course, Walt had joues de porc au gingembre — "hog jowls with ginger" doesn't sound nearly as good, does it? I guess a better translation is "pork cheeks". He said the lean pork was very tender and flavorful. Dave had the poulet fermier aux pruneaux — farm-raised chicken in a sauce with prunes. (If you don't like prunes cooked in sauces with things like rabbit, duck, chicken, pork, veal, or lamb, all I can say is: Get with the program! California prunes and French prunes are both excellent.) Oh, and I had onglet grillé — a grilled beefsteak with pan-fried potatoes. It was tender and cooked just right. We all had dessert too, but I can't remember what. We also had a nice bottle of Bordeaux. The tab came to about 23 euros per person, with apéritifs and coffee.