So Paris is the first stop in our Fall mini getaways. We took off from Newark’s terminal B again (somehow we always end up here) with an unfamiliar airline, Level. We bought these tickets from the Secret Flying app, and they costed €244/pp including taxes.

Secret Flying looks for deeply discounted deals departing from your home city. So if anything looks interesting and fits our schedule, we book it.

Where we stayed: Hotel Gabriel Paris (25 Rue du Grand Prieuré, 75011, Paris, France)
From looking through the various arondissements (districts) in Paris, I was instantly drawn to the 11eme (onzieme / 11th) arondissement because it is known for food. Not much convincing needed there.

We found this place after some research and it was a four star boutique hotel. A few days before our trip we found that there wasn’t a gym so we knew we would have to end up doing a lot of walking to make up for all the calories we would eat on this trip. This must be a case for most hotels in Paris but this place was very small. The front desk was right by the door, and even the elevator was a tight squeeze for two people. The room itself was small as well. Good enough for two nights. The hotel has sliding automatic doors which they keep locked at night so guests need to ring the doorbell to be let in.  There is a complimentary breakfast that we didnt take part in during our stay, so not sure if that was any good!

Our Eating Itinerary
Day 1: Restaurant L’Assiette (181, Rue du Château, 75014, Paris)
Baieta (5 RUE DE PONTOISE 75005 Paris)
Day 2: Boulangerie Utopie (20 rue Jean Pierre Timbaud, Paris, France 75011)
Partisan Cafe Artisanal (36 rue de Turbigo, Paris, France 75003)
Pianovins (46 Rue Trousseau, 75011 Paris)
Au Passage (1 bis, Passage Saint-Sébastien, 75011 Paris)
Day 3: Yann Couvreur Patisserie (137 avenue Parmentier, 75010 Paris)
Urban Bakery (67 rue du faubourg du Temple, Paris)
Le Bichat (11 rue bichat 75010 Paris)
Le Chai d’Adrien (39 boulevard du temple, 75003)

Day 1:
We did hammer down a few vodka sodas and took a sleeping pill each but we actually managed to sleep for most of the flight miraculously, which isn’t usually the case. We were on an Airbus 330-200 and seat’s headrest was the most comfortable design I’ve experienced yet- and with the seat lowered, the headrest prevents one’s head from falling over to the side.

Level is not an airline I had heard of before booking these flights. It’s a minimalistic budget airline that has a good amount of legroom and lots of aisle seating. The bathroom sizes were sufficiently large too. I wouldn’t hesitate to book them again for other flights. Unfortunately the flights are in and out of Newark but hopefully they will soon have flights in and out of JFK.

We arrived at the Orly airport on time at around 13:15. Our reservations for Restaurant L’Assiette was booked online for 14:30 so we wanted to make sure we could make it on time. We managed to get through immigration and get an uber which got us to the restaurant in Montparnasse (14eme arondissement) a few minutes before 14:30. We entered the cozy bistro with our luggages in hand. The host looked at us and was surprised we were there. I can see in the kitchen in front of us that the staff was already cleaning up after lunch service. He did find our reservation, but he was saying they were done for the day. After an exasperated sigh he did eventually seat us and asked us to order quickly from the Plat du jour menu. After all, we did reserve online. I don’t get why they would allow someone to reserve for that time if they intended to clean up for the afternoon at 14:30 already; it’s not like we were late. Dave and I shared a carafe of red wine and we selected the entree + plat + dessert course. 

We both had the Velouté du moment, which was a lump of pâté with a thin cracker on top, and they poured a butternut squash soup around it. It was delicious- never had a soup with pâté in it before- it really added some decadence to ordinary soup. 

The main plate we both had was the poitrine de cochon roti, gnocchi sauce diable. This was roasted pork belly with some gnocchi, and parsnips. This too, was very lovely and the pork belly was so balanced – really not too fatty and not overdone either. 

Dessert was a cute jar of creme caramel au beurre salé: a vanilla custard topped with a large heap of salted buttery caramel. A very delicious way to end a meal. We finished and paid in about 40 minutes, very unusual for a French meal. 

We took another uber back to the hotel (would have walked but we had our luggage) which, with traffic turned into about 30 minutes. 

Even though we slept a good amount on the plane, we succumbed to jetlag when we got to the room and fell asleep for 30 minutes. 

We managed to get up and go for a walk. We might as well walk to Baieta, where we had dinner reservations for 21:00 and take some detours along the way. The hotel was situated very close to La Republique, a square full of skateboarders and protesters on two of the three days we passed by. We passed by the Centre Pompidou and also the Hotel de Ville. We also went to the Pantheon, which was not far from the restaurant. 

Baieta is owned by Julia Sedefdjian, a chef from Nice who earned her Michelin star at a young age of 23. We decided to go for the 7 course tasting menu with the wine pairing.

The Fennel white pepper butter served with the warm sourdough bread at the beginning of the meal was enjoyable- it is a little unusual for a butter. 

The amuse bouche was an onion, olive and anchovy flatbread bite, which was to be washed down with tomato water. I’d not had tomato water before and it was so amazing. It tasted like a clear tomato consomme and it was flavored well. 

The 2nd course: raw bonito, taboulé, hummus, and Falafel. While each component was nice, I didn’t think the bonito sashimi got in the dish itself. 

The 3rd course was crispy egg yolk, haddock, leeks with vinaigrette. This was fun- there was a raw egg yolk inside of a crispy ball which you break open and allow the raw egg to cover the other items. It was all served cold, so not to cook the egg I would suppose. This was an interesting one, and fun!

The first main course (4th) was maybe the best dish I had all night: the Bouillabaieta, an elevated take on a bouillabaisse and a seafood lover’s dream. There was John Dory, calamari, and scorpion fish in the middle of the bowl, and a seafood packed creamy broth is poured around. There was garlic toast and saffron mayo on the side. Didn’t want this to end. 

The 5th course was braised beef chuck with red wine, carrot mash, and smoked bacon. This was alright- although tender, it needed some more taste. 

The last two courses were sweet: 

Butternut cinnamon cake

Shortbread with fennel flavor, lemon whip cream, pastis/lemon sorbet. They weren’t the best in terms of desserts.

This was the first time that the wines paired to each course didn’t really add anything – it almost felt nicer to have chosen a wine. There wasn’t any explanation, and 6 out of the paired wines were white (well, almost everything was seafood). The desserts also fell a bit flat. The tomato water and the bouillabaieta was incredible though. Overall I did enjoy the meal itself and wouldn’t recommend the wine pairing. 

We hiked it back to the hotel, picking up a half bottle of red wine on the way before bed. 

Day 2:
Before the trip, I did a little digging for the best croissants in Paris. One of them, Boulangerie Utopie, happened to be a block away from our hotel so couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try it! There was a line out the door of this small shop, but the wait wasn’t more than 10 minutes. We ordered one regular croissant and one plain au chocolat. Both were perfectly flaky and buttery at the same time. Perhaps the best I’ve had, ever. Can’t top that with a croissant in New York.

We set out to walk to the Eiffel Tower. Along the way we stopped into Cafe artisanal Partisan, where Dave couldn’t resist the jambon beurre baguette, and we desperately needed caffeine. 

We came into the 1st arondissement where we saw Les halles st euschace. There were signs pointing to Le louvre, so we followed them. Because we had lunch at 13:00 we couldn’t really make it to the Eiffel Tower and back. After walking through the impressive grounds of the Louvre, we wanted to walk through the Le Jardin orangerie but, it was closed off for some event. We headed to the closeby Le jardin de Luxembourg, which is a beautiful public park.

Wanting to try and reach a 50k step count goal on my Fitbit, we walked to Pianovins, which is back in the 11eme arondissement. Pianovins is also a Michelin star restaurant, and is a charming little restaurant. We opted to do the menu decouverte which contained three dishes with cheese and dessert! 

The amuse bouche was a Chorizo and sweet potato soup, which did wet my appetite. 

The first dish was a cream of lentil, with chunks of foie gras and chanterelle mushrooms. I’m telling you, duck liver and soup is a trend that am not going to complain about. It was delicious. 

The second dish was three seared sea scallops, in a mousse with grilled hazelnuts. Well cooked and executed dish. 

The main was a beautifully seared cod, with potato and a small slice of bacon. Haven’t had seafood cooked so well for a while before coming to Paris. 

The cheese plate was next- we had three slices of cheese each. We were recommended to go from the hardest to softest (stinkiest) cheese. The stinky soft cheese was the best. 

The white chocolate dessert, while simple, was amazing.

We headed back to the hotel to freshen up and prepare to go walk back to see the Eiffel Tower. 

This whole time, I had been breaking in a new pair of All Birds Tree Breezer ballet flats which I literally bought the night before our flight. It was a big gamble considering I knew we would be doing a lot of walking. Everything was like walking on a cloud, but I was getting painful blisters on the bit right above the heel that the back top portion of the shoe dug into. It had been painful throughout the trip and I used up a box of bandaids taping up my foot. But I sucked it up. We had a lot of time before our dinner reservation for 22:00.  

We walked all the way to the 7eme arondissement, which was mostly a peaceful walk until you get to the Tower. Then, it was teeming with tourists and also vendors selling replicas of the Eiffel Tower that lit up, along with beer and champagne. We took a few pictures and went through the park Champ de Mars, but had no desire to wait in the queue to go to the top or walk under the tower (which was a free privilege in the past, before recent terror attacks). We then walked north to the arc de triomphe in the 8eme arondissement. Again, we weren’t going to go up top, especially when it was night outside already. We then walked along the champs lysee a little bit and then walked a whopping 1hr plus back to the 11eme arondissement for dinner. We walked through the 2nd arondisement, passing by the Palais garnier and the Opera. 

So it’s not a surprise that the restaurants and boulangeries I found were mostly close to our hotel- the 11th arondissement is a bit of a foodie restaurant area. Perfect for us! We made it to Au Passage for a late dinner. This restaurant is a bit more of a tapas place, and the menu changes daily, which I love. The one glaring difference between Au Passage and the other restaurants from the trip so far (l’assiette, pianovins) is that all of the patrons in the restaurant were not French speaking. Not quite the escape I hoped for. The food itself was not bad at all, but it wasn’t going out with a bang on our final night- the full execution wasn’t there for some dishes. Oh well, can’t always expect perfection. 

We had:

Cucumber oysters (3): this was quite delicious and refreshing. 

Grenaille potatoes with katsuobushi kale: this was an excellent plate- the katsuobushi with kale is not a combo I had before- and it had a lot of umami. 

Cockles: I didn’t quite know that these were literally tiny clams. They were good but plain and not very satisfying. 

The scallop ceviche was interesting- lots of different flavors going on there.

The sweetbreads with artichoke hearts were good, but because we’ve gone to Marcus Wareing’s restaurant in London before and tried the masterful sweetbreads there, it’s a little hard to have better. The artichoke hearts were really nice.

We ended up with another cheese plate today- brillat savarin, tomme, fourme d’ambert. The soft brillat savarin was my favorite. 

We didn’t quite make it to 50k steps (only 49k and painful blisters). Next time…

We tried to find a place to go out but that didn’t quite work out- everywhere seemed a little touristy. We ended up going back to the little late night deli shop from last night, got three cans of beer and some saucisson sec. 

Day 3:

I knew this was a short trip, but it went by too quickly. 

This morning after dragging ourselves out of bed and packing our bags, we checked out and went on mission number two of finding the most delicious croissant. 

I saw something on Instagram about Yann Couvreur having amazing pastries and turns out there was a store in the 10eme arondissement, ten minutes walk from where we were. Couldn’t miss up the opportunity. 

As we got close to the shop, we saw a queue of people in front of a boulangerie. There was no name on the awning but we assumed that it was the place because at the corner, I saw the name Yann Couvreur. After paying for a croissant and a pain au chocolat, I realized I needed a napkin. I entered into the Yann Couvreur bakery through the door of what I thought was their coffee shop and we then realized we brought croissants at some random boulangerie. So now we had to buy one regular croissant from Yann Couvreur. 

Turns out that other bakery was called Urban Bakery. Their croissant was a little bit on the very soft / mushy side- too much butter maybe. In contrast, the Yann Couvreur croissant was very crispy. Both didn’t beat the Utopie croissants from yesterday. We did also get an eclair at Yann Couvreur which itself was a work of art. Delicious, also. 

Needing some coffee to wake up, we ended up at Le Bichat, an organic juice place/café that was low key, and we had ourselves a cheap coffee at €3 total (compared to a whopping €4 each spent yesterday at the Partisan for tiny cups)

We then walked to the Sacre Cœur – it was insanely packed today and flooded with people. We made it to the top and had some pan fried foie gras for €10 from one of the many food and drink stands.  

Now we had to find a place for lunch and finish in time to get a cab to the airport. We walked back to our hotel, hoping to find some nice eats along the way. We had a hard time finding something we really wanted to eat (brunch menus are big on Sundays). 

After much walking around back and forth, we ended up at Le Chai d’Adrien where we sat outside and overlooked La Republique. The food here was not quite spectacular but we couldn’t run out of time.

We had some escargots, confit duck (where the sauce was very sweet), and the beef tartare. After sharing a bottle of red we hopped into an uber and off for our flight home. 

Till the next, Paris!