To round up my posts about Paris, I'd like to share with you some of the Parisian yumminess we enjoyed that weren't quite big enough for a whole blog post, but were too good not to write about.  If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I've been home now for 2 weeks, and feeling totally nostalgic for my holiday already!

Crêperie De Port Manech
52 rue Montparnasse
75014 Paris
Ph: 01 43 21 96 98

On our first night, Clarice took us to a lovely little crêperie on the rue Montparnasse, an area full of Breton restaurants.  We enjoyed a bottle of Breton cidre in cute little mugs, and delicious savoury buckwheat crêpes.



Le Diamant
56 Rue des Cinq Diamants
75013 Paris
Ph: 01 53 80 19 02

Le Diamant was a small bar in the 13th arrondissement, which was full of locals and had a relaxed atmosphere.  We stopped in here before our dinner at L'Ourcine.

Mojito, Kir Cassis, sweeeet cocktail

Service was slow but friendly: it took ages to get a waiter's attention, but we weren't in any hurry, and it was nice to sit on the pavement and just relax.

Cider at the back, citron pressé at the front.  Just like my beloved soda zitrone from Vienna, this sharp mixture of lemon juice, sugar and water is just the ticket for a hot day.


I'd never seen choux pastry used as a sandwich; I just had to try it.  Cool idea, non?

Gougère poulet caesar - 8.50 €

Quiche legumes - 7.00 €

So pretty...

Apart from their celebrated pastries and macarons, Ladurée also have a range of beauty products, all in stunning packaging. I've heard that their beauty products were only a recent addition, to capitalize on their involvement with the film Marie Antoinette.  Ladurée was chief pastry consultant to the film!


I loved the Oriental decor of the tea-room and all the natural light.

Seeing as we'd just come from inhaling pastries at Pierre Hermé, we just had some tea.  I had the house blend, a light and fruity, refreshing drink.

There didn't seem to be many other cafes or shops on the same street, so we weren't sure we were in the right spot... and then we smelled the coffee roasting.

The interior of the cafe felt very 'Melbourne' to me, its low key decor and intense focus on the provenance of the coffee beans.

Check out the big yellow roaster!  I also loved the little toy of the Brazilian dude carrying sacks of coffee. Cute!

It was too hot for normal coffee, so I had an iced coffee.  It was intense - a double shot of unsweetened espresso, shaken up until frothy.  I loved it.  The perfect afternoon pick-me-up!

Includes a free Michel Cluizel choccy!

The second time we came to the island, there was no salted caramel to be found (boooo), so we tried other flavours.  In the picture below, my mandarin ice-cream is on the left, and on the right is Clarice's nougat miel (honey nougat).

The mandarin flavour was incredible! Such a pure, clean mandarin flavour.  I don't even like mandarins that much, but I loved this ice-cream.  Underneath the mandarin was another flavour which I, ashamedly, no longer remember.  I know it was a nutty one though, and I know it was beautiful.




Pierre Hermé - Tarte Infinement Vanille (in the white box), giant Mogador macaron, sablés infinement chocolat avec eclats de chocolat et fleur de sel, a block of Mogador chocolate (the white/pink box at the bottom)

Sadaharu Aoki - Maquillage chocolats (skinny white box at the top), 2 chocolate covered macarons (framboise and cassis), sesame sablés

Jean-Paul Hévin - salted caramel chocolate coins (in the brown paper bag)

The Bakery of Clarice & Sarah - Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies (wrapped up in foil).


And you know I couldn't finish my series on Paris without another bizarre sexy Orangina animal!  Clarice e-mailed me this picture after I left Paris. Argh! It's a scary sexy frog!!!

... or "How I chose an awesome Asian restaurant in an unfamiliar city".

Tricotin 2
15 ave de Choisy
75013 Paris
Ph: 01 45 84 74 44

When not in the comfort of my home town - heeeey Melbourne, you rock! - I can find it really hard to choose a good restaurant.  Or, similarly, to find a good coffee, an excellent bakery, the market with the cheapest and freshest vegetables.  Without an intimate knowledge of the city, friends' recommendations, and indeed, the luxury of time and repeat experience, more often than not it's just guesswork, really.

On my fourth night in Paris, Clarice and I really felt like Asian food, and weren't quite sure where to go.  Despite living in Paris for a few years now, Clarice hadn't had a chance to explore the different Asian neighbourhoods and choose her favourites, so we hit up Clotilde's book for some general recommendations, and made our way down to the Avenue de Choisy to try and find a good place for dinner.

Walking down the street and staring at the many Asian restaurants, I was even more indecisive than usual, fearing I'd lose my Asian-street-cred (hah!) in front of my fellow food-obsessed friend if I were to choose a dud.  There were heaps of different restaurants - slick, modern Vietnamese ones with slate-grey walls; old-school Cantonese restaurants with white tablecloths and leather-bound menus; Hong Kong style barbecue joints with ducks hanging in the windows; and more than a few grungy pho houses with super-bright neon lights.  Outside of my beloved Melbourne, I had no idea if my usual indicators of good Asian restaurants would be applicable.  (In case you're wondering: it has to be full of Asians, preferably in the Eastern suburbs, and it should specialise in one cuisine.  But to make things even more complicated, the rules don't always apply.  White hipster haven Pho Chu The on Victoria street and Neil Perry's Spice Temple are two notable exceptions - I love both of them).

In the end, we chose Tricotin 2 (and yes, Tricotin 1 is right next door).  They serve a mixture of Hong Kong barbecue meats, steamed yum cha dumplings (that's "cuisine à la vapeur"), Vietnamese dishes like phở and bún.  Ordinarily I'm suspicious of mixed-cuisine restaurants, but this one was absolutely full of people (both French and Asian)...


... and most importantly, had the best looking ducks I'd seen in all the restaurants in the whole neighbourhood. As soon as I saw them, I was convinced.  So yes, it seems obvious, but the quality of the food is the best indicator of the quality of the food!



And here's the food!  It was a bit of a mixed bag of cuisines, but it all tasted great and we wolfed it down ravenously.  No exaggeration here, we literally stuck our heads down and ate, and said nothing to each other the whole time apart from:

"Oh my god, this is amazing!"
"Sarah, did I eat all of your duck?" (that was Clarice)
and
"Oh crap, I totally spilled rice down my chin!" (that was me).

I'm not sure if it was because we were starving, because we were exhausted from walking all over the city, or if it was because Sandra had already gone back to Germany and no-one was being an adult and making non-food-related conversation.  Whatever the reason, the food was awesome.  We ordered two dishes and two small plates to share.  Let's go.

Roast duck on rice, or siew nap fan as I know it.  The French know it as "rice with lacquered duck".  In any language, it was a fantastic.  Check out those meaty pieces of duck!  Superb.

Riz avec canard laqué - 6,80€

Next up, a plate of bún with pork and spring rolls.

Vermicelles avec légumes aux couennes de porc et Nem (bi bún chả giò) - 7,50€

Rouleaux printemps aux crevettes (froid) - 3,30€

Ravioli aux Crevettes "Ha-Kao" - 4,10€

Har gao!  I hardly ever go to yum cha anymore, and love har gao so much.  What a treat!  Especially in Paris!  I desperately wanted to order woo kok (a flaky deep-fried taro dumpling, shaped like a football) too, but Clarice doesn't eat deep-fried food, and I was already really full by that stage.

I don't think I've ever had har gao and siew nap in the same meal, let alone with bún and rice paper rolls!  Still, they were all well made and very tasty.  I was so glad we chose Tricotin 2!

Unfortunately they didn't have what I know as Vietnamese iced coffee (strong coffee with condensed milk), so I'll simply have to introduce Clarice to the joys of that coffee if and when she comes to Australia.

Look at what we saw on our way back to the train station - Chinese maccas!  Apparently this is the only maccas in Paris (or perhaps France) with Chinese signage.

They sold croissants, pain aux chocolat, macarons, chocolates, biscuits and many beautiful pastry creations - think things like matcha mille feuille, black sesame eclairs and more.  The pastries were incredibly gorgeous.  I love the Japanese interpretation of French pastries - so pretty and perfect!


This was also where I was the most useful on the trip: although my French has become woeful since finishing high school, my Japanese is, thankfully, still pretty decent!  On our first visit, the lady behind the counter didn't speak much French, so to save Clarice from doing the "big-hand-movements-and-talking-louder" thing that people do when communicating cross-culturally, I ordered in Japanese.  Yay for contributing!


So, for our first breakfast, Clarice and I each had a matcha croissant, and shared a tart and a pot of houjicha tea.

The breakfast!

Here is the matcha croissant:

And let's look inside!

I totally loved it!  The croissant was so moist and fluffy, with a clean matcha flavour.  It was wonderfully buttery without being greasy, and no jam or spreads were needed - it was perfect just as it was.

And here is the tart we split!

The base was chocolate sablée pastry, filled with adzuki beans, and topped with a matcha-flavoured creme chiboust with a crackly caramelized sugar topping - just stunning.

Café Crème (AKA a Japanese café au lait)

In addition to our matcha croissants, we ordered the famed black sesame eclair.

Mmm... beautiful!

"I'm the king of the patisserie!"

As this was the last day of the trip, I also bought some goodies to bring home:

Chocolate-covered macarons: Cassis (front) and Framboise (back)

I was surprised by how good the chocolate-covered macarons were - the chocolate coating was extremely high quality, dark and intense.  It complemented the sweet interior well!  As a bonus, the chocolate kept the macarons fresh for ages.  I only ate them about two weeks after purchase, (kept refrigerated most of the time), and they were still good!

Maquillage bonbons: Blueberry, Bamboo, Wasabi, Lemon, Orange, Raspberry

Whilst I didn't have any destination restaurants I absolutely had to visit in Paris, I most certainly had some pâtisserie destinations!  I first discovered Pierre Hermé macarons in 2006, when Clarice brought a box back from Paris to London for us to try.  (Blogged here and here).  The last time my parents went to Japan, they also brought back some Pierre macarons, cakes and biscuits for me.  I know, I'm a lucky girl, right?

As I previously mentioned, on our first day in Paris, we visited one of the Pierre Hermé stands in Galeries Lafayette, to pick up a couple of Mogador chocolate pralines and macarons - fuel for shopping and sightseeing!

On the second-last day of my trip, Clarice and I visited the Bonaparte boutique to try some of his famous pastry creations.

Pierre Hermé
72 rue Bonaparte
Paris 75006
Ph : 01 43 54 47 77
Website

I was surprised to realise that PH doesn't have any salons de thé in Paris, but rather just stand-alone stores where you can buy your pastry goodies to take away.  We made our purchases, and then took them to the nearby park to enjoy them.  (Lots of people must do this as well; the bins were full of PH boxes!)

Usually there's quite a bit of a queue, hence the below sign asking customers to form an orderly queue, not to disturb the Kiehl's customers, and indeed, to discover the les formidables produits of their neighbour Kiehl's!  We were quite lucky in that there wasn't much of a queue at all, so we were able to go straight into the shop.

To enjoy straight away, we bought an Ispahan and a Tarte Infiniment Vanille.


I almost didn't buy the Ispahan, having tried so many imitations of this raspberry/lychee/rose dessert before, but I'm so glad I did!  Apart from looking beautiful, with its row of stunning (hairless!) raspberries and the carefully placed, perfect rose petal complete with dew drop, it just tasted amazing!  None of the individual flavours dominated, but rather melded harmoniously to create an incredibly gorgeous entremet.  I also loved the contrast between ever-so-slightly crisp macaron shell, the soft macaron interior and the creamy lychee filling.  Perfect.

I can honestly say that one of the hardest culinary things I've ever had to do in my life was stop eating halfway through to give the rest to Clarice.  But all was not lost, because I had half a tarte infiniment vanille to console me!


There are three (count them, three!) types of vanilla in this tart - if you ever thought Vanilla meant "plain", then you were wrong!  Veron from Kitchen Musings made a beautiful version at home (after having been to a 2-day Pierre Herme cooking class in Chicago - JEALOUS!), so I'd recommend having a look at her excellent post to understand all the different elements in the complex little tart.  At the time, I was happy just to eat and enjoy.

I also bought a giant Mogador macaron and an extra Tarte Infiniment Vanille to bring back to Germany, and a block of Mogador chocolate and some sablés diamants aux chocolat to bring back to Oz.

Sorry Cookie, that's not for you!

I ate the giant Mogador macaron 2 days after I got back to Germany.  A whole Mogador macaron to myself. What a treat!!!

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