I haven’t had the opportunity to eat here yet, but I’ve walked by and it looked very good. Of course, I’m a bit jaded. I have two major vices: bread and cheese. So this restaurant hit a soft spot.

The menu

Their menu is simple and well thought out. The items, not surprisingly, fall into three categories: bread, wine, and cheese. Each item, from the bread sticks to the 50 varieties of cheese, is carefully chosen and paired with wine by Vincent Durand, the resident oenologist.

Vegans are not going to find a lot of choices at this restaurant. But lacto vegetarians should love the extensive cheese selections, tartines, and most importantly the fondues.

Pain, Vin, Fromages is conveniently located near the Centre Pompidou in the Marais. It’s only open for dinner.

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Delicious French Cuisine

Chez Paul serves solid, traditional French cuisine. As such, you’ll find many more meat options than vegetarian. There’s not much on the menu for the vegans. It’s a shame, as the food is really amazing.

I visited Chez Paul on a Friday night. A reservation is highly recommended, as this is a popular restaurant in a popular dining area. I started with the cream of asparagus soup, which was amazing. It was silky and very satisfying. Frankly, I could have stopped at just the soup and died a happy man. Chez Paul features a special vegetable soup every night, so hopefully you’ll be arrive on asparagus night.

Following the soup, my friend Bob and I had the vegetable lasagna and salad. The lasagna was good and cheesy, but didn’t match the asparagus soups flavor quality. Finishing the night, I had the house specialty dessert: pears poached in a spiced wine with ice cream. This was also an amazing dish.

To summarize: Chez Paul is a fantastic, vintage restaurant in a hip section of Paris. The food is amazing, but the vegetarian selections are limited. The vegan options are even fewer. It’s a fabulous place to visit with friends.

Address and Ratings

There’s a Marché des Producteurs de Pays scheduled for May 22 and 23 in the 12th arr. It’s conveniently located between metros Daumesnil and Dugommier.

Keep an eye out for socks and blankets from angora sheep, dandelion wine, sheep’s milk soap, regional cheese and cookies, and buy a hunk of bread from the 3 feet wide circles.

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Report From Vegan Paris

But sadly, it seems that the restaurant couldn’t go on without us and just a couple of months after we left they have transformed into the Foie Gras-friendly “Le Passage Obligé”
There is one bright side: the new restaurant is run by the same “équipe,” who were always fairly well informed about what ‘vegan’ means, and the menu is clearly labelled with several vegetarian and vegan options. Also, they have vegan desserts.
Paris loses a Vegan restaurant: La Victoire Suprême du Cœur becomes Le Passage Obligé

La Victoire was a high-end vegetarian restaurant in the Marais district. I’d been there a few times and enjoyed the variety of dishes.

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This was the first certified organic restaurant in France. The food is also locally produced and dishes are seasonal. You’ll find a wide variety of dishes for vegetarians and vegans. It’s a bit pricey, so save this for one of those special dinners on your vacation.

Travel and Leisure magazine featured BIOart in an eco-travel article:

A new addition to the city’s booming 13th Arrondissement, BioArt **** (dinner for two $100) serves an all-organic menu—risotto topped with shaved truffles; a terrine of diver scallops—in a design-forward space overlooking the Seine.
Eco-Friendly Guide to Paris, London and Stockholm

I have not visited this restaurant yet, so I cannot give a review.

BIOart

1, quie Francoise-Mauriac (13°)

Metro: Bibliotech Francoise Mitterand

01 45 85 66 88/dd>

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Exki has a strong commitment to organic food. Here’s a snippet from their web site:

Nous sélectionnons pour vous les meilleurs ingrédients saisonniers.

Nous refusons l’usage de tout additif.

Certains de nos produits sont labellisés BIO. Par exemple le pain, confectionné et cuit artisanalement sur pierre, sans aucun “améliorant” artificiel. Pour garantir sa fraîcheur, nous terminons sa cuisson, chaque matin, dans nos restaurants.

Sont également BIO : le lait, le yaourt, les jets de légumes, des tartelettes, des biscuits, des confitures,…
Exki philosophie

I have not visited this restaurant yet, so I cannot give a review.

Exki

9, boulevard des Italiens (2°)

118, avenue de France (13°)

82, boulevard du Montparnasse (14°)

01 42 61 06 52

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The omelet was fluffy and filled with the perfect batch of ratatouille. This got me to start wondering: where is the best ratatouille in Paris? It’s not the type of dish a restaurant builds their reputation on. It’s typically the lowly side dish that accompanies the meat and eggs. But good ratatouille is a meal in itself.

I had a great “provencial pizza” at Kosher Pizza that was essentially a thin crust pizza covered with ratatouille.

Where is your favorite place? How about outside Paris?

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Even though I moved away from Paris a few months ago and returned this week, my Parisian grandmother didn’t miss a step. When it came time to order she remembered I was a vegetarian and suggested a wonderful spinach/cheese tart for an appetizer and mixed omelette with fries. Frankly, I was ready to change the fries to spinach as a customer was given their plate with a pile of great looking greens.

Chez Grand-Mère Le Chablis has a small menu written on chalk boards hanging on the walls. You can expect at least one lacto/ovo vegetarian option. I especially enjoy their terrine with chevre and sun dried tomatoes.

They are open for lunch and you can expect to pay 12-16 euros for a two or three course meal. That includes a healthy dose of grandmotherly love.

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So I finally decided to see what the fuss was all about. Jean-Pierre promised a magical experience when drinking wine with cheese. My time in Paris was rapidly coming to an end and I needed a touch of magic.

So we planned on visiting the original wine bar, not just in Paris but around the world. It’s a small restaurant in the 11th arrondissement that introduced the concept of expertly chosen wines that are available by the glass and paired with the best foods and cheeses.

Unfortunately, it was August and we met outside a closed restaurant. However, all was not lost. Jean-Pierre had lived nearby a decade earlier and knew a special little restaurant. We crossed our fingers that it was still around and not on the standard August Vacation.

Le Pure Café

Jean-Pierre lived in an apartment that looked down on this odd corner lot restaurant. He knew it a couple decades ago when the area was buzzing with good ol’ communist and worker activism. This restaurant/bar was a meeting place for the Parisian Proletariat.

It’s now more bobo than prolo. The new owners have expanded the space and size of the bar. There’s still a small tribute to its red history, but the conversations are now about food, family, and work instead of revolution.

The interior is decidedly “shabby chic”. It’s the antithesis of Bofinger or the new restaurants that are meticulously designed. Le Pure Café seems to have grown organically and still exhibits some growing pains. For instance, the circuit breakers were tripped about every twenty minutes while we were there. The raucous din of conversations would abruptly stop as the lights went out and the waiter would lean over a dining table to flip the switch back on.

The food

Le Pure Café has a few vegetarian options on its menu. I chose a baked cheese ravioli dish in a cream sauce. It was very rich, cheesy, and satisfying. However, I was fascinated by my friend Philippe’s dish. He had Burrata. Keep an eye out for this cheese, I think it is going to be the new hotness.

Burrata – Buffalo Mozzarella’s Creamy Sister

Burrata is like buffalo mozzarella with a cream center. He was served a large ball of cheese with a drizzling of pesto and sun-dried tomatoes. He also had a small green salad and some thinly sliced country ham. Obviously you could get it without the ham.

Burrata is very soft and tastes extremely fresh. It gives a new and decadent spin to the standard caprese salad. I would highly recommend this dish for your visit to Le Pure Café.

I’ve been looking for the cheese in California and have only found it in one Bay Area store. The fromager at Oakville Grocery, in Napa Valley, said the shelf life is very short; so most stores will be reluctant to stock it.

The Dessert

One cannot possibly live on pasta alone. No, one needs a balanced diet. In my case, the diet is balanced by a healthy serving of something chocolate. Le Pure Café certainly didn’t leave us unbalanced.

Jean-Pierre had a fabu tarte tatin with vanilla ice cream. Philippe had the carpaccio of pineapple (I prefer the version at La Bélière), and I had the mother of all tiramisu platters. I ordered the Declinaison Chocolats, or a quartet of marscapone delights. I was presented with four variations on the tiramisu concept. There was the standard espresso/chocolate variety, but I also got Pistache, Caramel, and Fruit Rouge. I truly couldn’t choose a favorite, they were all magnificent.

The Wine

Jean-Pierre and Philippe chose a good, but simple wine for me to try. Keep in mind, I’m over 40 years old and have not drank alcohol. So I was experiencing wine and alcohol at the same time… I have to say, it was horrible!

I’m sure the wine was good. I’m sure it would have been magical with cheese. I’m probably going to burn in some alternative wine-hell for dissing vin rouge. But I shuddered and went into body writhing convulsions every time I swallowed the wine. I think Jean-Pierre thought I was being possessed by some kind of voodoo.

I now can live the rest of my life knowing that I really didn’t miss anything in France by choosing Perrier over wine at the dinner table. I still enjoy cooking with booze, but I can cancel any future wine trains through the Napa Valley.

Le Pure Café Summary

Le Pure Café is a hidden restaurant in the 11th. It sits in the split of two side streets that are accessed via a side street. So you’ll need to have your map with you. However, it is certainly worth the trip.

The service was friendly, although a bit slow. The food was wonderful and the wine didn’t kill me. The highlights were certainly the cheese based dishes. I didn’t see much for vegans, but lacto-ovo vegetarians should love it. The restaurant is triangular with large doors on two sides. This makes it fairly wheelchair accessible.

Dinner for the three of us, including dessert and wine was 96 euros.

Update: Watch closely and you’ll find Le Pure Cafe as the backdrop for a recent Windows 7 commercial on television.

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Jazz Music

This are two face to La Bélière. The first is for dinner, where food takes the attention and music provides the backdrop. However, the focus shifts in the late hours as the kitchen shuts down and it becomes a vibrant Jazz bar. The owner’s been known to keep the place open and hopping until the sun rises. So plan on taking your time and possibly staying much later than you expected.

The Menu

Unfortunately there are not a lot of options on the menu for vegetarians. However, don’t let that stop you. Ask for the plate des legumes. This is a selection of vegetables being served with the various dinner plates. Jacques is a master at blending traditional French cuisine with Asian and Mediterranean dishes. You’ll be surprised by the variety. This is usually a good option for vegans as well.

There’s also a tomato/mozzarella mille-feuille salad that is amazing. It comes with ham but simply ask for it “sans jambon”. This is a full meal in itself.

The menu at this restaurant hasn’t changed much over the years; so keep an eye out for the daily specials. This is where Jacques has more room to stretch his culinary muscles. You may also want to make reservations several days in advance and ask for vegetarian options. Jacques speaks English fluently, so you can say hello while you are dining. Actually, everyone that works there seems to speak excellent English.

Dinner should cost between 15-30 euros, depending on your desire for dessert and/or drinks. The meals are large so plan on sharing an appetizer and watch out for the mother of all profiteroles for dessert. She’s a whopper!

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