An updated map of over fifty places eaten at during this series can be found after the paywall.
Vittles Reviews: An Englishman in Paris
A Parisian fantasy, Quedubon and the sanctity of a truly great bistrot, by Jonathan Nunn
The rice pudding of dreams.
One of the aims of a certain type of restaurant and travel writing is to sort the ‘real’ from the ‘fantasy’, the authentic from the counterfeit. The subtitle of Counter Intelligence, Jonathan Gold’s 2000 collection of early restaurant reviews, positions it as a native guide of ‘where to eat in the real Los Angeles’, in opposition to the supposed fake one made up of Beverly Hills hotels, snake-oil health drinks and apologetic salads. In Creation Lake, the latest novel by American writer Rachel Kushner, the narrator describes the divide between the ‘real Europe’ and the fantasy of what tourists think it is, using Parisian food as an example (‘shrink-wrapped palettes [sic] of superpasteurized milk or powdered Nesquik’ vs ‘a posh café on the rue de Rivoli with gilded frescoes and little pots of famous hot chocolate’). When a snippet of this paragraph was recently posted online, the reaction veered from surprise that an American ‘gets’ Europe to amusement that this observation, which could really be about anywhere in the world, might be mistaken for insight.
But there is no real Paris, just a set of competing fantasies that prop each other up. On Rue du Plateau, a side street in the 19e arrondissement, you might even find the Paris of the tourist imagination made corporeal. The street leads up to the talon-shaped Parc des Buttes-Chaumont – the most beautiful green space in the city – where you can take a walk around the lake and pretend you’re in a Rohmer film (if you’ve seen The Aviator's Wife, this is the park where François and Lucie aimlessly flirt and take pictures of American tourists). There is a hyped bakery, Boulangerie Milligramme, with constant lines outside. There is a nothing-looking bar on the corner, Le Bar Fleuri, that serves poulet frites on red and white chequered tablecloths for three hours at lunchtime for less than the price of a McDonald’s meal; a perfect mix of chicken-that-tastes-intensely-of-chicken, bronzed frites, a brown, giblet-y reduction and a tiny jar of atomic mustard. It’s the kind of Parisian lunch a visitor might expect to find everywhere but is actually so rare that it’s become a TikTok spot.
Le Bar Fleuri: The best poulet frites in Paris? Peut être.
