Rue Gastronomie
August 5, 2007 - The Boston Globe
PARIS - The heart of the 11th Arrondissement is big and beautiful, but until recently, the only reason Parisians came here was to visit a friend or to go home to bed. Here in the City of Light’s version of the middle of nowhere, however, everything is changing in the space of just a few blocks, revealing a new gastronomic sleeper area and a neighborhood reborn. This being France, the renaissance naturally began with food. The one-block stretch of Rue Paul Bert hosts two perfect bistros and a tiny, customer-focused wine seller. Stretch your legs for another half block up Rue Chanzy and you’ll come across the cafe that glues it all together. {bull} With those successes, more restaurants, cafes, and other shops—such as a new, food-focused bookstore—have popped up like champignons. “Twenty years ago, this was a bustling neighborhood. Then it died,” says Gwenaëlle Auboyneau, who with her husband, Bertrand, runs Bistrot Paul Bert and the neighboring l’Ecailler du Bistrot. “The street became known for its restaurants and then the boutiques started showing up, and people found their neighborhood again.”
“It brought the street back to life,” echoes Paul Bert chef Thierry Laurent.
In the kitchen, Laurent demonstrates why the bistro is the reference point for the area. Cracking jokes and sautéing six dishes at once in the middle of the lunch rush, he tosses a half-brick-sized hunk of red tuna into a pan causing the fish to seize like a fist as it hits the screaming hot oil. With flames that lick upward around the rim of every pan, how Laurent has any hair left on his forearms is a mystery.
In his six years at the Paul Bert, Laurent slowly has brought the food up to its current, revered status. He branches out a bit on dishes like the tuna, which he serves with a caponata, but pushes mainly to perfect bistro classics like an entrecôte and fries. (An aside for lovers of well-done meat: Though the three-course prix-fixe menu changes frequently, one constant is a notice on the menu board that reads, “Red meat is served blue, bloody or poorly cooked.”)
Another classic is the Paris-Brest dessert, which is a bit like a doughnut made in heaven, halved, then stuffed with a hazelnut mousse that tastes like love and comfort.
If the Bistrot Paul Bert is the neighborhood’s rock, Café Titon is the lube that keeps it moving.
A pork and mushroom dish and a plate of fries head out of the kitchen at Le Bistrot Paul Bert.(Joe Ray for the Boston Globe)
“People come here because they can count on us,” says Joël Blein, who co-owns the cafe.
Throughout the day, the restaurant hosts the people who make up the neighborhood, everyone from construction workers to yuppies, office workers and funky graphic artists, grandmothers and what Blein calls “free electrons”—French slang for freelance artists, actors, and their ilk.
“We had looked at 110 places over the course of a year and a half before we bought,” Blein says. “We made a database to help us make our choice.”
I look at him like he’s a bit strange and he laughs.
“We used to be computer geeks, but when we found this space, we pounced,” Blein says. “Now, we’ve become a reference point for the neighborhood.”
Café Titon doesn’t serve the food that people travel to France to eat, but rather the meat and potatoes of the working Parisian’s lunch—daily specials, steaks, salads—all served quickly and for under $10. On Sundays, the cafe breaks the mold and offers a tasty Sri Lankan brunch. It has nothing to do with the menu for the rest of the week, but it’s something the regulars love.
In sharp contrast to Bistrot Paul Bert and Café Titon is Le Temps au Temps, run by whiz-kid chef Sylvain Sendra.
“The Paul Bert is an institution,” Sendra says, moving his hand in a flat line signifying quality and consistency. “Oh! look at this!” he yelps, distracted by a tub of rosy meat. “Pork entrecôte!” he exclaims, showing off the beautiful cuts.
On a given night, customers with a hard-to-get reservation at Le Temps au Temps might start with a sardine tartare with a Burgundy wine jelly, follow it with a beet and squid risotto, and end the night with sautéed Burlat cherries with homemade vanilla ice cream—all from a kitchen half the size of my childhood bedroom. When things get moving during lunch prep, Sendra runs a hand mixer with his left hand and reaches across the kitchen with his right to stir a sauce on the stove.
He opened three years ago, but Sendra says he’s only just hitting his stride. To celebrate, he renovated, sinking about $80,000 into a budget for an assistant (and equipment) in the kitchen, and a dining-room air conditioner
“So the food got better but the prices went up?” my inner cynic asks aloud.
“We didn’t touch them,” Sendra responds, giving yet another reason his prix-fixe menu, at about $41, is one of the best bargains in Paris.
A few doors down at Crus et Découvertes, Mikael Lemasle is the neighborhood wine seller.
“The shop is a link between the artisan winemaker and my customers. It’s a way for us to support the little producer and for people to put a face on the wine they’re drinking,” Lemasle says, summing up what he half-jokingly calls his “petite résistance” against large producers.
On this day, he’s brought winemaker Frédéric Rivaton of Domaine Rivaton in the southern Languedoc Roussillon region in for a tasting.
“Mikael is very personal in his approach to wine,” says Rivaton, whose rough-hewn hands look as though he might never get the vineyards out of them. “He does a good job of educating his clients.”
Sure enough, Lemasle might spend 20 minutes with a customer to sell an inexpensive bottle of wine. This low-pressure attention is probably why some of them spend their lunch breaks wandering through his store.
There’s a similar feeling a couple doors down at La Cocotte, an artsy, food-only bookstore with butcher’s paper lining parts of the walls and furniture. The store sports an eclectic mix of books, ranging from high-end conceptual photo collections to beautiful photo-recipe books by star chefs to “Dîners à Bollywood” and an English-language card game called “The Housewives’ Tarot” that comes in a mock recipe box.
“It’s a neighborhood based on conception,” says owner Andrea Wainer, who opened the shop in May. The way she explains it, it’s easy to imagine that the art students who used to live here because it was cheap became the architects and graphic designers who live and work here now. Apparently, they like to eat well, too.
“I was looking in another part of town when I was ready to open the store, but I saw this and said, ‘Toc!’ ” Wainer says, giving a knocking sound to the decision made. “People come, a place opens, and more people come,” she adds, referring to the food-based synergy that rebuilt the neighborhood.
It’s hard to tell if the area is hitting its stride or will keep getting better. A new park directly behind Bistrot Paul Bert recently opened its gates, a new kindergarten was built next to it, and more and more good places to eat and drink continue to pop up.
“It wouldn’t have worked without the neighboring businesses,” says Wainer. “People come find my store by accident when they come to eat . . . and this street attracts people.”
“People used to come [here] because the Paul Bert was here,” says Sendra, referring to the origins of the rebirth. “Now they come because they know they eat well.”
Joe Ray, a food and travel writer, can be reached at www.joe-ray.com.
If you go…
Where to stay
Hotel Beaumarchais
3 rue Oberkampf, Paris
011-33-1-53-36-86-86
hotelbeaumarchais.com
A small, trendy hotel in a great neighborhood at the very bottom of rue Oberkampf. Doubles $123-$180, depending on season. Try to negotiate a better price.
Where to eat
Bistrot Paul Bert
18 rue Paul Bert
011-33-1-43-72-24-01
Lunch and dinner prix fixe about $43. Noon-2 and 7:30-11. Closed Sunday and Monday. Call ahead to reserve.
Café Titon
34 rue Titon
011-33-8-73-17-94-10
The neighborhood meeting point, where locals often stop for a good, cheap lunch (around $12), then check in for an after-work drink. Daily 8 a.m.-midnight.
Le Temps au Temps
13 rue Paul Bert
011-33-1-43-79-63-40
tempsautemps.com
Prix fixe lunch (about $20) and dinner (about $40). Noon-2 and 8-10:30. Closed Sunday and Monday. Call ahead to reserve.
Where to shop
La Cocotte
5 rue Paul Bert
011-33-1-43-73-04-02
lacocotte.net (in French)
A beautiful food-focused bookstore ranging from artistic offerings to nuts and bolts recipe books. Tuesday, Wednesday 10:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m., Thursday-Saturday till 9.
Crus et Découvertes
7 rue Paul Bert
011-33-1-43-71-56-79
Frequent tastings with producers on Friday afternoons; call ahead to confirm. Monday-Wednesday, Saturday 4-8:30 p.m., Thursday, Friday 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and 4-8:30.
See the .pdf version of this story as it ran in the Boston Globe: page 1,page 2, page 3
