AS THE AUTHOR of this piece aptly notes, it’s really been only recently that the tenth arrondissement was considered worthy of locating in your plan de Paris, let alone considered hip. Yet that is what it has definitely become, along with neighborhoods in the eleventh and twelfth.
ALEXANDER LOBRANO lives in Paris and was European correspondent for ten years for the former Gourmet, where this piece originally appeared in a longer version. He is also the author of Hungry for Paris (Random House, 2010, second edition) and was an editor of the Zagat guide to Paris restaurants. Readers may follow Lobrano’s restaurant adventures at his Diner’s Journal postings on his Web site (hungryforparis.squarespace.com).
WHEN MY FRIEND Catherine moved from the Marais to the tenth arrondissement eleven years ago, I needed a map to get to her housewarming party. Even though I’d lived in Paris for decades, the only reason I’d ever been in the tenth was to catch a train. Back then, most Parisians would have told you the same. But as I emerged from the Métro on that crisp Indian-summer night, I found myself bowled over by a charming new city.
High wrought-iron footbridges arched over the gray waters of the stone-lined Canal Saint-Martin, dotted here and there with vivid spots of color from a few fallen leaves. The whole area was peaceful and pretty and suggested a poignancy I’d not before experienced in this city. Catherine’s apartment turned out to be terrific, too. After selling her small place in the Marais, she’d landed a sunny loft with oak floors and casement windows. Best of all, she no longer had a mortgage. This real estate grand slam was the talk of the party, but even though I envied my friend, I couldn’t imagine giving up my place in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Besides, there was no place to shop or eat in the tenth.
A couple of weeks later, I found myself back in the tenth, at a new restaurant called Chez Michel. Chef Thierry Breton’s food was brilliant, but my dining companion and I agreed that the poor guy had made a big mistake with the location. Needless to say, Chez Michel is now packed nightly, and these days Catherine has an admirable choice of restaurants practically at her doorstep. If those first change-of-address cards announcing new homes in unfamiliar arrondissements were an occasional curiosity back then, these days I’m surprised when I notice a move that hasn’t landed someone in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, nineteenth, or twentieth arrondissement. The ninth, a central neighborhood once known as La Nouvelle Athènes because of its neoclassical architecture, is on the upswing, too, for those priced out of prime areas like Saint-Germain.
Affordable real estate partly explains the accelerating migration into these formerly down-at-the-heels neighborhoods, but many also choose them for their old-fashioned ambience, at once relaxed and convivial. “It was such a relief to escape the bourgeois prissiness of the seventh,” another friend told me after finding an apartment overlooking the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, in the nineteenth, a still-gritty area but one brimming with wonderfully quirky shops (and entirely free of the international brands and chain stores back in Saint-Germain).
I’ll always love the Left Bank (it’s still where you’ll find the best hotels), but like almost all of my Parisian friends, I head deep into the double-digit arrondissements so often now that I no longer need a map. If you do the same, you’ll be rewarded not just with good food but also with a fascinating glimpse of the quartiers the French consider the Paris of the twenty-first century.
Think of this area as a developing photograph, an image progressing from blurred first impression to materialization in detail. Until very recently, this neighborhood was one of the more anonymous parts of Paris—rootless and slightly forlorn, thanks to the fact that its main business has always been getting people in and out of town, through either the Gare du Nord or the Gare de l’Est. It doesn’t help that the grid of streets here is slashed crosswise by two pounding arteries (the boulevard de Magenta and the rue La Fayette) whose sole purpose is whisking passengers between the stations and the rest of the city. That snapshot of indeterminacy has changed, though; today, the tenth has been reborn as one of the most dramatic neighborhoods in the city.
Good bones helped: The Canal Saint-Martin, a glorious nineteenth-century waterway, connects to the Seine through a path of leafy planes, poplars, and chestnuts, begging you to wander along its banks, catching some sun by day or lingering over a bottle of wine in the evening. It finally occurred to young hipsters how supremely desirable—not to mention how affordable—it might be to live beside a onetime working canal. This aquatic spine of the quartier began to gentrify a few years ago (it’s no longer such a bargain), but if you stroll down any of its side streets, you’ll still find one of the most unusual urban oases anywhere in the world.
The rue du Château-d’Eau, for example, is the epicenter of African hairdressing, almost entirely lined with brightly colored barber shops and beauty parlors. But every now and then, something else sneaks in. Something like Globus France, a shop that sells charcuterie from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Poland, and Hungary. On the rue Cail, everything is Indian, including the wonderful vegetarian restaurant Krishna-Bhavan, tucked amid shops and clothing stores. The jewel of the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Martin is the foppishly opulent Mairie du 10ème Arrondissement, or town hall, a massive mock–Loire Valley château, finished in 1896, that rather comically lords it over the neighboring clutch of Turkish cafés. Nearby is the pedestrian Passage Brady, a glass-roofed nineteenth-century arcade that’s become a legendary destination for backpackers, stuffed as it is with cheap Indian and Pakistani restaurants. (Try Le Passage de Pondichéry.) Just a few blocks over, on the rue de Marseille, branches of chic clothiers are sprouting up, and you’ll also find Du Pain et des Idées, one of the best new bakeries in Paris.
Generations of privileged Parisian brides have chosen their porcelain, stemware, and silver on the irresistibly named rue de Paradis, where most of the major French crystal manufacturers had their showrooms. (It’s a convenient walk from the Gare de l’Est, which serves the province of Lorraine, where the crystal factories of Baccarat and Saint-Louis are still located.) Today most of the crystal showrooms have moved to more conventionally stylish precincts, but there’s still some great tabletop shopping in the area. At no. 18, you’ll find the stop-you-in-your-tracks-grandiose Magasins de Vente des Faïenceries de Choisy-le-Roi, the former showroom of the ceramic works that supplied the tiles for the Paris Métro. Intended to broadcast the company’s savoir-faire, the interior is elaborately decorated in an odd neoclassical theme complete with urns and busts.
Is it my imagination, or are the paving stones outside the Gare du Nord almost eternally damp, an avant-goût of life under gray northern skies? But there’s also grandeur here, in the façade of female statues, each representing a destination served (Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw), that look down from pedestals with goddesslike hauteur. Of course, Paris towers above them all. The Gare de l’Est, on the other hand, reflects Alsace’s Germanic aspect and quietly bristles with regional pride, as reflected by En Passant par la Lorraine, which sells Alsatian eaux-de-vie and eight-packs of boutique brewers suds.
Around the corner, the rue des Récollets (punctuated by an unexpected breath of fresh air from the gardens of a medieval convent) leads to the Canal Saint-Martin, a hardscrabble precinct of workshops and small factories turned dreamy enclave of the city. Originally commissioned by Napoléon, the canal was built between 1805 and 1825 by engineer Pierre-Simon Girard, who had studied the hydraulics of the Nile during Napoléon’s Egyptian campaign. It became a major freight route into central Paris and commercialized what had been a relatively rural part of town beyond the city walls.
Linger near the canal and you’ll also pick up on the tenth’s particularly twenty-first-century gestalt, one that puts a premium on art and leisure over money and work, with an aesthetic soft spot for the sort of ironic retro gear on display in the windows of shops like Antoine et Lili. Not surprisingly, the streets on and around the canal have experienced a café boom. Spots like Chez Prune and Le Poisson Rouge are packed around the clock, and while there’s no grande dame like Saint-Germain’s fabled Café de Flore, the tenth can hold its own with the bar at the Hôtel du Nord, familiar to many thanks to Marcel Carné’s memorable film of the same name. Stylish restaurants like Ploum and La Cantine de Quentin let you see what the cool crowd likes to eat these days, from Ploum’s spinach in sesame cream to the Parmesan risotto served by Guy Savoy alum Johann Baron at La Cantine.
Away from the canal, the tenth harbors appealing modern places like Odile Guyader’s laid-back Café Panique and Thierry Breton’s brilliant Chez Michel. There are also wonderful fly-in-amber places, most specifically the delightful La Grille, which may serve the best turbot au beurre blanc in Paris. But to borrow a line of Arletty, the star of Hôtel du Nord, what all these places have most in common is simply “Atmosphère! Atmosphère!”
Tenth Arrondissement Address Book
Antoine et Lili (95 quai de Valmy / +33 01 40 37 41 55).
Café Panique (12 rue des Messageries / +33 01 47 70 06 84).
La Cantine de Quentin (52 rue Bichat / +33 01 42 02 40 32).
Chez Jeannette (47 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis / +33 01 47 70 30 89). Hugely popular café offers a perfect snapshot of the tenth’s laid-back style.
Chez Michel (10 rue de Belzunce / +33 01 44 53 06 20).
Chez Prune (71 quai de Valmy / +33 01 42 41 30 47).
Coin Canal (1 rue de Marseille / +33 01 42 38 00 30). Furniture from the fifties, sixties, and seventies.
Du Pain et des Idées (34 rue Yves-Toudic / +33 01 42 40 44 52).
En Passant par la Lorraine (Gare de l’Est / +33 01 40 35 47 80).
Furet Tanrade (63 rue de Chabrol / +33 01 47 70 48 34). Fabulous small-batch jams and savory éclairs.
Globus France (74 rue du Château-d’Eau / +33 01 42 47 00 58).
La Grille (80 rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière / +33 01 47 70 89 73).
Hôtel du Nord (102 quai de Jemmapes / +33 01 40 40 78 78).
Le Jemmapes (82 quai de Jemmapes / +33 01 40 40 02 35). Stylish café-restaurant with a casual menu.
Krishna-Bhavan (24 rue Cail / +33 01 42 05 78 34).
Le Look (17 rue Martel / +33 01 50 10 20 31). Hipster canteen, busy all day long.
Maria Luisa (2 rue Marie-et-Louise / +33 01 44 84 04 01). Brick walls, seventies funk, and the best pizza in Paris.
Le Martel (3 rue Martel / +33 01 47 70 67 56). A hip crowd and great French and North African food.
Le Passage de Pondichéry (84 passage Brady / +33 01 53 34 63 10).
Philippe Chaume (9 rue de Marseille / +33 01 42 39 12 60). An intriguing photo gallery.
Ploum (20 rue Alibert / +33 01 42 00 11 90).
Le Poisson Rouge (112 quai de Jemmapes / +33 01 40 40 07 11).
Urbane (12 rue Arthur-Groussier / +33 01 42 40 74 75). Relaxed canteen with a popular Sunday brunch.
Le Verre Volé (67 rue de Lancry / +33 01 48 03 17 34). Wonderful wine bar.
Wowo (11 rue de Marseille / +33 01 53 40 84 80).
Aux Zingots (12 rue de la Fidélité / +33 01 47 70 19 34). Friendly service, excellent wine list, and appealing bistro staples.
Anyone who goes to Paris to eat will tell you that the city has been steadily tilting east, specifically toward the eleventh and twelfth arrondissements. This is why I find myself staring at an exhibit of the potato-producing countries of the world inside a display case in the Parmentier Métro station. A wonderful expression of the French penchant for public edification, this stop was named in honor of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the agronomist who convinced his countrymen that potatoes were indeed edible (they were originally cultivated in France only as animal feed, and it was assumed their tubers were toxic to humans). The honor is appropriate, not only because of the shared subterranean bond between the subway and the elegantly named pomme de terre (“apple of the earth”), but also because the denizens of this venerable working-class district subsisted on a steady diet of potatoes for a long time.
Who knows what Parmentier would have made of the sudden popularity of daikon, wasabi, and all the other exotic root vegetables that have become a mainstay on menus in the eleventh and twelfth? My guess is he’d be dumbstruck to find that this slice of the city has become its trendiest gourmet destination, especially for those who want to taste what’s new without spending a small fortune.
L’est populaire, which encompasses the old, proletarian neighborhoods of Oberkampf, Ménilmontant, Bastille, Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Daumesnil, and Bercy, has gone gastro in a major way. It’s here that countless young chefs have chosen to set up shop, due in no small part to the low rents, but also to the demographic turnover that’s seen an influx of well-heeled bobos (bourgeois bohemians) with adventurous palates and a love of good food.
It was, curiously enough, the Opéra Bastille that got the ball rolling. This much derided building (many still compare it to a lavatory thanks to its glass blocks and skin of pale green tiles)—commissioned by President François Mitterrand as a symbol of his Socialist party’s devotion to making the performing arts accessible to working people—opened on July 13, 1989, to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Ironically, by drawing thousands of affluent Parisians to this part of the city for the first time (many of the locals found the programming uninteresting and the ticket prices too high), he set the stage for a real estate revolution.
Hot spots like the pioneering (but now defunct) China Club, a Shanghai-in-the-thirties-themed bar and restaurant, opened to cater to the fashionable culture vultures who discovered the charm of this old-fashioned neighborhood, which had been the center of furniture making in Paris for centuries (and which had already acquired a gloss of bohemian glamour from the free spirits who’d seized upon the low rents along the rue de Lappe and the rue Saint-Sabin a few years earlier). Following the completion of a second set of public works in the mid-nineties, these arrondissements—which had previously lacked any major attractions (even the perennially trendy Père-Lachaise cemetery is just across the street, in the twentieth)—became a destination for a broader public. The change began fourteen years ago with the conversion of a long-abandoned railway viaduct into the Promenade Plantée, a greenbelt walkway that runs all the way to the edge of the city. Underneath it, in a series of brick arches that were the support for the tracks themselves, the Viaduc des Arts became a street-level parade of shops devoted to arts and artisans. (Check out the handmade copper cookware at L’Atelier des Arts Culinaires.) In nearby Bercy, the transformation of the handsome brick warehouses that formerly served the wholesale wine trade (barges from Burgundy unloaded their cargo here) into shops, cafés, and restaurants gave way to a whole new neighborhood. Et voilà, eastern Paris, once snobbishly dismissed by the bourgeoisie, was suddenly hot, even fashionable.
But aside from a few old bistro standbys like Le Quincy and À la Biche au Bois, these neighborhoods didn’t have many restaurants to boast about. That situation has changed dramatically.
Rodolphe Paquin was one of the first chefs to take advantage of this vacuum when he opened Le Repaire de Cartouche, not far from the Place de la Bastille, more than ten years ago. “It was obvious the neighborhood was getting younger and more affluent,” he says. “The rent was half of what I’d have paid in the seventh or the eighth.” Inventive dishes like his carpaccio of calf’s head with oyster vinaigrette and his côte de sanglier (wild boar) with pickled beets have been packing them in ever since.
Paquin was a pioneer, but today this patch of Paris teems with destination restaurants, including Le Chateaubriand, one of the city’s best contemporary bistros and certainly its most popular. The talented young chef Inaki Aizpitarte first attracted attention at La Famille, in Montmartre. And since he moved to the Oberkampf section of the eleventh two years ago, his food has become even more intriguing. He does a single menu nightly, and it reflects both his background—he’s from the Basque country and traveled in Latin America and Israel before moving to Paris—and his sometime fascination with Japan. “Everything I do is intended to tease as much of the natural taste out of my produce as possible,” he says, and dishes like mackerel ceviche with Tabasco and slow-cooked tuna belly with asparagus and chorizo deliciously prove his point. His grilled pork belly with a sauce of réglisse (licorice root) and a small salad of grated celery root offers a brilliant contrast of textures and flavors.
Oberkampf is also a great bet for wine lovers. Le Marsangy, a relaxed and friendly bistro with very good food, has an excellent wine list, as does the consistently good Le Villaret. And there are regular wine tastings at La Cave de l’Insolite, one of the city’s most interesting new wine shops. (Nearby, La Bague de Kenza, on the rue Saint-Maur, sells the best Algerian pastries in Paris.)
In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the neighborhood that straddles the eleventh and twelfth arrondissements along the street of the same name, Le Bistrot Paul Bert has become so popular it can be tough to score a table. What drives this trio of cozy dining rooms decorated with flea market bric-a-brac is some of the best traditional bistro cooking to be found in Paris today. The chalkboard menu changes often but runs to dishes like coddled eggs with cèpes, coucou de Rennes (a Breton breed of chicken prized for its delicate flesh) in a sauce of morels and vin jaune, and their much loved signature dessert, a sublime Paris-Brest, the praline-buttercream-filled round choux pastry created to commemorate a bicycle race between the two cities from which it takes its name. L’Écailler du Bistrot, run by the same owners as Le Bistrot Paul Bert, is a terrific address for seafood lovers, and on the same street the hip La Cocotte, Argentinean-born Andrea Wainer’s wonderfully eclectic gastroshop, sells everything from cookbooks and table linens to kitchen equipment and the world’s best dulce de leche. Next door is Crus et Découvertes, a first-rate new wine shop.
Other excellent restaurants in the area include Au Vieux Chêne, serving up a delicious market-driven menu; Chez Ramulaud, a relaxed bistro with an inventive menu, a stylish crowd, and a great wine list; and La Gazzetta, where young Swedish chef Petter Nilsson has generated major word of mouth with dishes that are variously of Scandinavian, French, and Italian inspiration. With its loftlike décor, La Gazzetta has something of a New York City vibe, along with a menu that changes all the time. One night, roasted endive with dill, horseradish, lemon, and puréed almonds proved a parade of bitterness, acidity, sweetness, and heat; grilled cod with a side of Brussels sprout purée, fresh tarragon, and capers had a quiet elegance; and ricotta ice cream with ewe’s-milk cheese, hazelnuts, and olives made for an unexpectedly sexy grand finale.
The latest contender in eastern Paris’s new gastro sweepstakes is Le Cotte Rôti, a tiny place not far from the eminently gastronomic Marché d’Aligre. Despite the fact that he describes his restaurant as a bistro, young chef Michel Nicolas puts a lot more creativity into the menu than such a label would imply. His cooking veers between such surprises as an oyster milkshake and nougat de volaille (a sweet riff on chicken terrine) and homier dishes like pork loin roasted in hay and served with gratin dauphinois. Nicolas’s classical training (he worked with Marc Meneau at L’Espérance, in Burgundy) and respect for the best French produce are the perfect springboard for the kind of creativity found throughout the eleventh and twelfth, a part of the city that treasures the past as ardently as it loves discovering the new.
Eleventh/Twelfth Arrondissements Address Book
Astier (44 rue Jean-Pierre-Timbaud, 11ème / +33 01 43 57 16 35). Traditional bistro with a fantastic cheese tray.
L’Atelier des Arts Culinaires (111 avenue Daumesnil, 12ème / +33 01 43 40 20 20).
La Bague de Kenza (106 rue Saint-Maur, 11ème / +33 01 43 14 93 15).
Le Baron Rouge (1 rue Théophile-Roussel, 12ème / +33 01 43 43 14 32). A terrific neighborhood wine bar that’s packed with a young crowd.
À la Biche au Bois (45 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 12ème / +33 01 43 43 34 38).
Le Bistrot Paul Bert (18 rue Paul-Bert, 11ème / +33 01 43 72 24 01).
Le Bistrot du Peintre (116 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 12ème / +33 01 47 00 34 39). Art Nouveau café with decent food and a fun crowd.
Café Place Verte (105 rue Oberkampf, 11ème / +33 01 43 57 34 10). With an hors d’oeuvres bar and delicious plats du jour.
Café Titon (34 rue Titon, 11ème / +33 01 43 71 74 51). Where the shopkeepers and restaurateurs of the fashionable rue Paul-Bert hang out. Good for quick lunches; on Saturday, there’s a Sri Lankan spread.
La Cave de l’Insolite (30 rue de la Folie-Méricourt, 11ème / +33 01 53 36 08 33).
Le Chateaubriand (129 avenue Parmentier, 11ème / +33 01 43 57 45 95).
Chez Ramulaud (269 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, 11ème / +33 01 43 72 23 29).
La Cocotte (5 rue Paul-Bert, 11ème / +33 01 43 73 04 02).
Le Cotte Rôti (1 rue de Cotte, 12ème / +33 01 43 45 06 37).
Crus et Découvertes (7 rue Paul-Bert, 11ème / +33 01 43 71 56 79).
Le Duc de Richelieu (5 rue Parrot, 12ème / +33 01 43 43 05 64). Steps from the Gare de Lyon; a best bet for a hearty meal before or after traveling.
L’Écailler du Bistrot (22 rue Paul-Bert, 11ème / +33 01 43 72 76 77).
L’Équateur (151 rue Saint-Maur, 11ème / +33 01 43 57 99 22). Delicious Cameroonian and Senegalese cooking.
Eurotra (119 boulevard Richard-Lenoir, 11ème / +33 01 43 38 48 48). A sort of discount version of Dehillerin, the famous cookware store in Les Halles.
La Gazzetta (29 rue de Cotte, 12ème / +33 01 43 47 47 05).
Marché d’Aligre and Marché Beauvau (the covered market in the middle of the open-air Marché d’Aligre), two of the greatest and least-known markets of Paris, both with a distinctly neighborhood feel. (Place d’Aligre, 12ème.)
Le Marsangy (73 avenue Parmentier, 11ème / +33 01 47 00 94 25).
Le Pause Café (41 rue de Charonne, 11ème / +33 01 48 06 80 33). Trendy, with nice, simple food.
La Pharmacie (22 rue Jean-Pierre-Timbaud, 11ème / +33 01 48 06 28 33). A former drugstore; now a grocery store, organic tea salon, restaurant, and bookshop.
Le Quincy (28 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 12ème / +33 01 46 28 46 76).
Le Réfectoire (80 boulevard Richard-Lenoir, 11ème / +33 01 48 06 74 85). Hip little bistro specializing in nostalgic retro dishes.
Le Repaire de Cartouche (8 boulevard des Filles-du-Calvaire, 11ème / +33 01 47 00 25 86).
Au Vieux Chêne (7 rue du Dahomey, 11ème / +33 01 43 71 67 69).
Le Villaret (13 rue Ternaux, 11ème / +33 01 43 57 89 76).
“Paris gives me a frisson every time I arrive. Nowhere else affects me so physically and spiritually. Perhaps it is partly because I was not born a Parisienne but grew it into the fabric of my garments when spending my college years there and then visiting frequently every year all my life. I’m definitely a Left Bank lover, and my secret gardens are parts of the Luco (Luxembourg Gardens), especially around the Fontaine de Médicis and the upper southwest corner near rue Vavin. Square Paul-Painlevé, a tiny garden near the Sorbonne and the Cluny museum, and Place Dauphine, both of which I discovered while a student and used to sit in for hours reviewing for exams, still beckon me and the latest book I am reading. Flâner in Paris is another treat as there is so much beauty: buildings, shops, the bords de la Seine, inner courtyards, markets (particularly boulevard Raspail)—the aesthetic they transmit is signature Paris. Walks, walks, walks are Paris—say, on the way to a visit to the Rodin museum. These are a few of my favorite things. And then there’s the iconic sitting at the terrace of a café. I love it, whether on a main boulevard or on a small street. Eating out is me and whether eating a sandwich at a café, dining at a bistro, or celebrating New Year’s Eve at the Tour d’Argent, it is like nowhere else and, oh, so good. Paris for me is also going to the movies and the theater with friends and following with a discussion and deconstruction around a seafood platter.”
—Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Don’t Get Fat