An American Vegetarian in Paris

Paris, je t'aime! Even if you don't love me and my herbivore ways! Paris gets a bit of an unfair rap as being not particularly friendly to vegetarians. This is not entirely true as there are a number of standard French vegetarian dishes widely available at most brasseries: crepes! omelettes! baguette and fromage! warm chevre and tomato salad! quiche! What Lovely Carnivorous Boyfriend and I discovered on our visit to Paris last week, however, is that while the city has a number of vegetarian / organic / macrobiotic restaurants and a million strictly carnivorous French bistros, what it does not have is many good omnivore places (restaurants where one of us doesn't feel like we're compromising--him by feeling unsatisfied by a veggie meal or me by having bread and cheese yet again). Nevertheless, we plunged boldly into Parisian cuisine to see what we could find. Reviews for Felafel, Vegetarian Restaurants, and some Omni finds after the jump.

LCBF, who knows no French, can attest to the fact that all of these eateries are perfectly navigable for English speakers. All of our waiters spoke at least some English and most of these places had either some (occasionally humorous) English translations on the menu or separate English menus. Reservations are also easily made over the phone in English if needed. 


A couple useful phrases: Je suis un vegetarian (I am a vegetarian); sans viande (without the meat). Though really you can just point at menu items and ask "vegetarian?" 

Felafel!

Few things make me happier than good felafel. Middle Eastern food is also usually a good bet for an omni couple: hummus for one, shawarma for the other. We stayed in an apartment in the Marais, just a few blocks from Rue de Rosiers (trans: street of rosebushes), which is a busy pedestrian street in the Marais's historically Jewish quarter. It is also the home of half a dozen felafel joints. We went to two places for comparison: L'As du Fallafel, hailed as the "best felafel in Paris," and, as I discovered after the fact, a favorite of Mark Bittman and David Lebovitz, and its less famous competitor Chez Marianne around the corner. The food at both ranged from very good to awesome. They're also relatively inexpensive.

L'As du Fallafel

The felafel here lived up to the hype. It was pretty amazing. Bad felafel is bitter, greasy, dry, or some combination of the three. The felafel at L'As was none of these things. It was lightly fried, so the exterior was crisp, but not heavy or greasy. The interior was moist and the filling more herb-y than spicy. Delicious! I ordered the felafel platter, which came with hummus (also tasty), eggplant, tahini, and other fixings, plus pita bread. It was way too much food for one. I think the way to go is to just order a loaded felafel pita sandwich. The restaurant has a busy take-away window on the street, which is filled with people standing and eating felafel pitas, but we opted to sit inside. The atmosphere is super casual--a cross between a deli and a fast food joint. The staff recruits diners from the street and they fill and turn tables at a swift clip to the beat of techno music. Not the place for a slow, romantic meal, but definitely the place for yummy vegetarian fare. LCBF was less happy with his shawarma, so felafel seems like the way to go here.


L'As du Fallafel
34 rue des Rosiers, Paris, 75004

Phone: 01 48 87 63 60
Metro: Saint-Paul

Chez Marianne

A few days later we went to Chez Marianne, which is just around the corner from L'As du Fallafel. The ambiance at Chez Marianne is much more traditionally French. There's a take-out window here too, but the emphasis is on sitting and lingering at small cafe tables. The menu is primarily composed of food platters. There are a few suggested ones, but a wide range of choices to make your own. I decided to compose a small plate, choosing felafel (natch), hummus, tabbouleh, and eggplant. LCBF had the salmon plate. The felafel here was less awesome than at L'As, but it was still very, very good and made me happy. It was a little crunchier and heavier than L'As', but still moist and tasty. The hummus was very good too--I liked it better than L'As'. The tabbouleh was okay and the eggplant was a little too spicy for me. After dinner I ordered tea, which was a nice Moroccan very sweet mint green tea. A couple downsides: the rye bread served with the meal was stale and I had to order pita bread separately (and for a few extra euros). LCBF was unenthusiastic about his salmon plate--it was a little boring. So again, I'd stick to the felafel.

Chez Marianne
2 rue Hospitalières St. Gervais, Paris, 75004
Phone: 01 42 72 18 86
Metro: Saint-Paul 

Vegetarian Restaurants

Upon discovering that our rental apartment was directly across the street from an organic vegetarian restaurant, LCBF gave me the side eye, but I swear it was a coincidence! I got him into two vegetarian restaurants--Le Potager du Marais and Le Grenier de Notre Dame, both of which were tasty, though he was less than thrilled with them as a meat-eater.

Le Potager du Marais

This was the restaurant across the street from the apartment, so we went here on our first night. The food is contemporary French and largely organic. There were a couple of items on the menu not marked as vegetarian, like the French Onion Soup, though 98% of the menu is vegetarian and organic (with some vegan options, I believe). I ordered the tofu chevre veggie burger, which came with a vegetable pâté of some kind and greens. It wasn't a veggie burger so much as it was a deep-fried pattie topped with warm chevre. It was very good, but also extremely rich. Light vegetarian fare this is not. LCBF had the French Onion Soup, which he liked, and a vegetarian chili, which he said was nothing special. His did look like something one could easily make at home, while mine was definitely more exciting presentation and taste-wise. The bread served with the meal was oddly meh (c'mon, France!). LCBF says that with all the rich options, meat-eaters should find something to like. The restaurant is tiny with only a few tables and seemed busy a lot of the time, so reservations are a good idea (we made ours maybe an hour and a half in advance on the same day). It's a half-block away from the Pompidou and very close to the Rambuteau Metro stop.

Le Potager du Marais

22-24 rue Rambuteau, Paris, 75003

Phone: 01 42 74 24 66

Metro: Rambuteau is the closest, followed by Hotel de Ville

Le Grenier de Notre Dame

This restaurant is a perennial favorite of mine; I really have a soft spot for it. I discovered it by accident six years ago when I was wandering aimlessly about the left bank and now I stop by every time. The owner is very pleasant and will chat with you (in English) if the restaurant isn't too busy. The space is cozy with two floors and a few outside tables. The interior is full of plants and is generally comfortable. The menu is old-school 70s vegetarian (the place was founded in 1978--the first vegetarian restaurant in Paris) with lots of platters of tofu, brown rice, seitan, and raw veggies. It's also largely organic with house-made desserts and juices and plenty of vegan/macrobiotic choices. I ordered one of the tasty tofu/seitan/rice platters, which came with some interesting slaw. I was very happy to have a huge plate of high-protein vegetarian comfort food in front of me. The flavorings for the tofu/seitan were French-Asian fusion style, though meals here are decidedly unpretentious. The bread served with the meal was a good whole grain. I also had my favorite Paris dessert here--a fantastic organic crepe au chocolat, and very good organic mint tea. LCBF had the veggie lasagna and a baked apple dessert. He said both were good, but that I was torturing him by making him eat zucchini instead of escargot. Okay, he didn't really say that, but I could see it in his eyes. Reservations are suggested on weekends, so we made one a couple hours in advance for Saturday, though it wasn't strictly necessary. It is, as the name suggests, very close to Notre Dame, so it's a nice place to stop for lunch after visiting the cathedral.

Le Grenier de Notre Dame

18 rue de la Bucherie, Paris, 75005

Phone: 01 43 29 98 29

Metro: St. Michel

Omni Picks

We had some omnivore luck at a couple of places: Macéo (Dinner) and Les Deux Magots (Brunch).

Macéo 

Macéo is an upscale fine-dining restaurant in the 1st, which we chose because it offers a three-course vegetarian prix fixe menu. The restaurant calls this their Menu Au Vert (Green Menu), offered "for our guests who wish to enjoy a fine meal while making alternative choices." I felt very subversive with my alternative herbivore lifestyle. We were given a nice amuse bouche to start--a chilled root soup of some kind. I then had a confit of vegetables (red peppers and such) and quinoa with chevre moelleux (goat cheese stuffed in a very thin, stiff pastry wrapper). The cheese was nice, but the vegetables weren't anything exciting. For the second course I had grilled polenta with asparagus, artichokes, and mushrooms. The polenta was good (certainly better than my experiment), but the artichoke flavor dominated the dish. The dish lacked cohesion, I thought--it was just a number of different elements put together a little haphazardly. For dessert I chose the pear financier with Guanaja chocolate (it was a bit of a mousse), which again wasn't bad, but wasn't great. LCBF had similar feelings about his meal (lentils ravigote with shank shavings, wild duck, and an apple tiramisu dessert). It was all fine or good (though his duck was unevenly cooked), but nothing awesome or mouth watering.

It is, however, always exciting to find a multi-course vegetarian fixed menu, and the food, though not excellent, was good, the service pleasant, and the ambiance nice. Overall, I was happy we went. Reservations are a good idea. You can make them online, but then you have to call to confirm, so it's easier just to call.

Macéo

15 rue des Petits Champs, Paris, 75001
Phone: 01 42 97 53 85
Metro: Pyramides

Les Deux Magots

Les Deux Magots is a famous left bank cafe on Saint Germain where Sartre and de Beauvoir used to while away their days talking philosophy over coffee. Now it can be, unsurprisingly, a bit touristy. The food is great though, and I like the atmosphere. We went for a late Sunday brunch and sat at a table outside, but the inside is very nice and features statues of two magots (Chinese wise men). Our waiter was nice and funny and was happy to point out the vegetarian options on the menu (there are English translations and I generally read French pretty well, but there were a couple things I wanted to be sure about). I had an excellent mozzarella, tomato, and basil quiche with a green salad (which in France means a few leaves of lettuce topped with slices of tomato and pickle) and LCBF had foie gras with toast points, which he liked very much. There was an amazing-looking dessert tray, but sadly I was full (I had a Nutella crepe later from a stand in Jardin du Luxembourg to make up for it). This might have been one of my favorite meals in Paris.

Les Deux Magots
6 place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, 75006
Phone: 01 45 48 55 25
Metro: Saint-Germain-des-Prés


Honorable Mention: Market Shopping
Our apartment had a little kitchenette, so we cooked at home a couple of times using produce from the market across the street (the one in the photo at the top of the post), bread from the boulangerie-patisserie a few doors down, and pasta and cheese from an organic store around the corner. J'adore market shopping! The produce was fresh and abundant on our street and I had a yummy croissant for breakfast every morning thanks to LCBF's early morning runs to the boulangerie.

Wish List: L'Arpege
L'Arpege, Alain Passard's restaurant in Paris, serves no red meat (though it does serve fish) and is welcoming of vegetarians. At 350+ euros per person for dinner (lunch is a more "moderate" 140+ euros per person), it wasn't in our budget. But if you go, let me know how it is!