Vegetarian Dining in Paris: Not easy to find...

The visit of a vegetarian friend spurs me to fine good veggie eating in Paris.


It's not an easy feat to find restaurants for vegetarians in Paris. A friend of mine was visiting and I set myself to the task to find a place where we would all be happy. I wanted something interesting, after all. My friend and her two adult children are not even fishatarians but google came through with a long list of places to research. I chose Godjo--an Ethiopian restaurant that many people had recommended to me. I had eaten at a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant in Nashville, so the thought of trying Godjo was pleasing to me too. Although they take reservations but don't honor them, and although we waited for about 45 minutes for a table, the evening was balmy so we didn't mind standing outside and chatting. This is what we had when we finally sat down and ordered. And it was great

The name of the dish is Ye Tsom--the house specialty for vegetarians. You can also get it with pork or chicken. It comes with a sampling of all the very flavorful vegetable dishes on the menu: eggplant, roasted red peppers, spinach, green beans, chick peas, fava beans, lentils, avocado, etc. Each vegetable is cooked soft and mixed with a variety of herbs and spices resulting in different interesting flavors. You eat this all with spongy bread that is not flavorful but has a wonderful soft texture. We all thought that for the price, the restaurant was well worth the wait. The quarters are cramped and there is an even smaller room downstairs. But there is always a line, and that means good eating.

Two weeks in Indonesia

Creating an authentic Balinese meal as orchestrated by a wonderful chef.


I had a lovely time in Indonesia and rather than write about restaurants, I would like to tell you about the new dishes I learned about and enjoyed.

The high point in the cuisine story was the wonderful cooking class I went to where we made 8 Balinese dishes and three or four sauces. It was at the home of Wayan and Puspa and is called Paon Cooking Class. (My travel agent knew about it. You can find them on the web and the class costs 35,000 rupiah or about $37 American dollars.) Not only was it a hands-on experience but the meal we had was a real feast.

Three of us started in the market in Ubud, Bali, where Maday took us around to show us some of the exotic fruits you now see in very gourmet shops in your town like rambutan or mangoustan. Maday is known at the market so there was not problem with her opening up some of these fruits for us so that we could taste them.

Next, we met the rest of the group at the rice fields, where Wayan showed us the rice plants and seeds and showed us how to husk them. It is a very tedious and long job and I wondered with him why rice isn't more expensive. I guess it is the story of cheap labor.

From then, we went to his home and met charming Puspa.

They spoke to us about some interesting Balinese customs, like the fact that everyone who is the first born has the same name (Wayan) and so on until number 4 (Ketuk). For a fifth child, the name is Wayan again. Of course, each person has a family name and a given name so although I met many Wayans and Madays (number 2), they do go by a different name within the family.

Then we set to work and everyone participated. Maday was there to oversee along with Puspa and one other family member. The large kitchen with dining areas was outside. There is a long workspace with counter and several burners. Opposite the opposite the modern area is the outdoor fireplace where Puspa made coconut oil. Puspa talked to us about all the ingredients and explained what we would be making.

Indonesian and Balinese Cuisine is very spicy and they use a lot of vegetables. I love Urab Urab which is a delicious cold vegetable salad with a spicy sauce often served as a side dish. There is the Indonesian curry, usually with chicken but also with tofu. They use tempeh (fermented tofu which comes in a cylinder) and either fry it up so it is crunchy and serve with a spicy sauce, or add it uncooked to gado gado, a famous dish with tofu, tempeh, vegetables in a delicious sauce. Tuna is also to be found on the menu quite often. Ours was steamed in banana leaf.

The class was great because Puspa rotated all of us into different jobs.

After several hours of work, we sat down to a fantastic meal. I have not yet mentioned the clear mushroom soup, chicken sate, and white and red (rarer) rice to accompany all the dishes. Puspa put chopped chile and served it in separate bowls for the people who wanted to up their spice quotient for this feast.

I went to many restaurants in Bali, Jogjakarta and Lombok and had variations on the same theme everyday. But I must say that the meal that was the most fun and most delicious was at Wayan and Puspa's home.

Singapore: Where Everyday there's a Food Festival in this Ultra Modern City

Three places in Singapore not to be missed for sumptuous cuisine and a fun experience.

I was excited to go to Singapore as I had read and heard that it is full of restaurants. Not only can you get cuisine from all over the world there, but there is also the flavorful Peranakan Cuisine, native to Singapore. I had my first meal at True Blue for this type of cooking. The lovely manager let me choose any table I wished as the place was not crowded at lunch. And then, since I knew nothing of this way of cooking, I asked him to choose for me. I started with a salad of Jantong Pisang (banana blossoms with cucumber) which was flavorful and crunchy. I loved those blossoms. Next came a spicy dish: Ayam Buah Keluak, chicken stewed and served with black nuts and rice. The black nuts look exactly how they sound. You are to scrape the outer tough skins and mix this paste with the rice for a flavorful combination. The chicken was extremely tender and the dish just delicious. With my meal, I had Logan tea which has a natural sweetness without sugar.

The Peranakan Cuisine was beautiful presented, delicious to the taste and a lot of fun as I had never had anything like these dishes before. I was so pleased that the concierge at my hotel recommended it to me.

The next evening, I took a taxi to one of the hawker centers that are a necessary stop for any visitor to Singapore. You can get a meal here for $3 (you even buy your napkin) or $25. I heard that pepper or curry crab are the best things to get but I was not in the mood to fight with crab shell covered with sauce that evening, so I trolled all the stands until I found some dishes that looked and sounded appealing. The hawker center is a large place full of food hawkers behind their stands. You can get all sorts of Asian food here besides the crab, and a particularly popular stop is the satay barbecue stand. It is very hot in the city and I wondered how the man behind that flaming barbecue withstood that intense heat all night. My delicious meal consisted of a dish with tender squid and crunchy celery--perfectly spiced to my taste. To go with that was a noodle dish with tofu. It was $4 Singapore dollars which is about $3.50 American.

The taxi driver overheard me talking in the taxi to my guide, who proclaimed my interest in food. The taxi driver then told us that the traffic jam was due to a big food festival being held right near my hotel. Chefs from all over the world came together to demonstrate their signature dishes. I went the next day and was surprised to find Alain Passard there with his specialty of poached egg with maple cream. Unfortunately, he was too busy to talk to me. At the festival was a store where you could find food from all over the world including La Vache Qui Rit! One man's junk food is another man's gourmet item.

My last night was a celebration. I had heard about this restaurant, Indochine, on Trip Advisor and I too give it high marks. There are several locations but I chose the one view at One Empress Palace. I had a table right next to the water and across from the Asian Civilizations Museum. What a meal! This is Thai food at its best. I was off to a great start with Tam Som Talé, a lovely papaya salad with dried shrimp. It was the best of these I have ever had--so flavorful and well balanced. My main courses were The Chefs Special Grilled Tiger Prawns with a spicy citrus sauce. This dish was almost too beautiful to eat.

Instead of plain rice, I ordered Mee (a yellow noodle) Khmer with chicken, tofu and vegetables. This was the best meal: excellent service and a beautiful setting, but it had a lot of competition. I am thinking of the next time I can take a pause in Singapore on the way to another Asian destination.

Les Cocottes, a Christian Constant restaurant

15-20 years ago, Christian Constant, a two-star chef at the Hotel de Crillon, left his post to go off and do other things. He spawned many of Paris' most creative young chefs who also opened their own restaurants. Eric Frechon had a little place in the 19th arrondissement before being awarded three stars at the restaurant of the Hotel Bristol. Yves Camdeborde opened the wonderful La Regalade, where he reigned for several years before going off to open the wildly popular Comptoir du Relais d'Odeon--always booked and always crowded. And Thierry Faucher continues to have success with his two restaurants: L'Os à Moelle and La Cave de L'Os à Moelle.

So much wonderful food and pleasure have all these chefs brought to the Parisian population!

Over the past 10 years, Christian Constant has taken over the 130 block of the rue St Dominique with his two restaurants with one star: Le Violon d'Ingres and Les Fables de la Fontaine. But in addition we find Café Constant and Les Cocottes. Violon d'Ingres is a palace of refined cuisine and Les Fables devotes itself to fine preparations of fish. Cafe Constant and Les Cocottes are more casual restaurants where you will get wonderfully prepared French bistrot food.

Today I had a wonderful lunch at Les Cocottes. This is a very popular neighborhood restaurant which doesn't take reservations and is very crowded at the peak hours of lunch and dinner. One sits on stools at the bar or at tables behind the bar. The walls are decorated with shelves housing Constant's many cookbooks, bottles of wine, cocottes to purchase, jams. The menu is simple yet extensive with salads, verrines, cocottes appetizers and cocottes plats principals . The dessert list is long and full of delicious choices. The food served is beautiful to look at and tasty to eat.

I started with the appetizer of the day: a cocotte of oeufs brouillés with truffes. This was rich and flavorful and served with two long feuilletés with which to dip in the eggs and savor. Next came a perfectly prepared magret de canard smothered in chervil and served with a lovely jus, purée of patates douces and gaufrettes--beautiful house-made potato chips. I chose a light Burgundy wine to go with the eggs and the duck.

No one can resist dessert and although there was a lovely moelleux au chocolat that day, I opted for the fabulous tarte au chocolat de Christian Constant served with a bit of crème chantilly and caramel. The tarte was not fabulous: it was sensational!

No wonder this place is as popular as it is. So as to avoid the line at dinner, I would recommend skipping lunch and getting there at the beginning of the service. But don't put it off. Hurry to Les Cocottes and you will not be disappointed.

Walaku: Authentic Bento Restaurant; Kissaten (tea salon)

An authentic Japanese tea salon in a quiet Parisian street






I learned about Walaku from a friend and then saw a little article about it in the free magazine that we can get in the metro. It is the lunch restaurant of the 1 star Japanese Teppanyaki palace, Aida, which I must try soon. Walaku was the perfect place to go with my friend, Noriko.

We spent a lovely 90 minutes in the heart of Japan. This is an authentic fancy lunch place with wonderful service and excellent food. To start was a savoury chestnut ball sitting in a delicate vegetable broth. After that came a lovely two-tiered bento box with lobster, sea bass, sashimi of flounder clothed with silky sea urchin roe, beautifully prepared vegetables and egg. The second tier was comprised of delicious roast beef and a wonderful fresh salad.

Walaku is a tea salon for most of the day, and the teppanyaki grill is used so that the chef can create the different desserts in front of you. The specialty is dorayaki which is usually a "hamburger" of delicate cake layers filled with red bean paste. However, theirs has the delicious edition of apple pieces and marscapone cream. It reminded me of a wonderful home-made dorayaki that I had in Kurokawa Onsen in Fukuoka, Japan. In a few tastes, I was transported back there and said to myself that I must return soon. After the dorayaki came a lovely fruit gelee surrounding a bit of white bean paste. A perfect ending to an excellent lunch.

Walaku is open from Wednesday through Sunday. For the bento lunch, it is necessary to reserve but for the salon de the, no reservations are necessary.

Sot L'y Laisse

A Japanese chef who worked with Paul Bocuse in Tokyo moves to Paris and opens his own little jewel of a restaurant he calls Sot L'y Laisse.





Sot L'y Laisse is a tender cut of chicken that the stupid throw out. This is what the phrase literally means and what the chef named his restaurant. The little bit of tender chicken is hidden in the wing. I remember the wife of a 3-star French chef explaining this to me as I asked her what it meant when I saw it on their menu.

Three months ago, Eiji Doihara (who worked at Paul Bocuse in Tokyo) opened his own restaurant on a quiet street in the 11th arrondissement. There was a buzz about it right away.

I went there for dinner with my friend, Eric, and we were able to sample a number of excellent dishes on the menu. Of course, I ordered the sot l'y laisse which were prepared in a cream sauce with wild mushrooms. Eric when for the ventreche (stomach) of albacore tuna, cooked rare and served with pesto.

I saw that there was Cote de veau de lait on the menu and I asked Eric if he would order that with me. Alas, he is not a big meat eater. I was very happy when the server told me that they could prepare the dish for one. It was fabulous: a thick chop of milk-fed veal served with gratin dauphinois, a potato dish slowly baked with cream until the potatoes are tender and the top is golden brown. This was a lovely dish. Eric had a lovely cabillaud dish with vegetables flavored with orange. Also on the menu was duck breast, a turbot dish and a tempting crépinette de pied de porc au foie gras et lentilles.

With our meal we were able to order glasses of wine and I chose two Burgundies: a white Macon for the first course and a red from the South of France for the veal. We felt sated after we ate the two courses, but decided to share a dessert as so many of them were appealing to us. We opted for a light compote de poires (actually a gelée of pears) with a coffee mousse. It sounds odd but it was very delicious.

The restaurant serves a reasonable three course lunch priced at 26 euros, and the menu changes with the season.

Best Pizza in Paris

A wonderful pizzeria in St Germain des Pres



Pizza Chic in the classy neighborhood of St. Germain des Près, is a classy pizzeria--not a pizza joint. It is open 7 days a week and the pizzas are terrific. The decor is lovely with jet black tables and pristine white tile walls. The pizzaoli and oven are on view and I chose a table right in front of the oven so I could watch the action.

The menu is a basic pizza menu but the pizzas are far from that. I had the sumptuous pizza prosciutto: mozzarella, cherry tomatoes that are cooked and then covered with arugala and draped with a myriad of thin slices of prosciutto. Worth its weight in gold. Prices are steep for pizza (mine was 22 euros). There are classic Italian desserts and excellent wines and coffees. I can't wait to go back.