Paris Restaurants Where the Food Isn’t French

The French, to paraphrase an old joke, are lucky: They get to eat French food every day. So do visitors to France, of course. But French food--both serious French food, of the kind served at restaurants garnished with Michelin stars, and more casual bistro or brasserie fare--can take its toll on the digestive system after a while, and even (trust me, though this might sound like heresy) begin to bore the palate.

When I spend any length of time in France myself, I like to mix things up a bit, gastronomically speaking--to eat sometimes at restaurants where the food is something other than French. This does not imply a temporary lowering of my culinary standards. Even non-French restaurants in France tend to be superb. After all, they’ve got the French to satisfy.

Paris itself, of course, is especially well supplied with what we Americans parochially term ethnic eating places. Be forewarned, though: Restaurant prices of all kinds are very high in Paris today, and non-French places often cost the same as French ones do. In any case, here are seven of the best, gleaned from travels there last fall:

Though London is the Indian restaurant capital of Europe, Paris is beginning to do very well with Indian food as well. One particularly charming and satisfying purveyor of this idiom is Yugaraj. The chef here, chef Hukum Singh, has been called “an Indian Robuchon”--in reference to Joel Robuchon, the most celebrated three-star (French) chef in Paris.

That might be overdoing it a bit, but in addition to a more-or-less-standard Northern Indian repertoire (numerous tandoori and tikka dishes and such), Singh does offer such uncommon and thoroughly enjoyable specialties as malai kharghosh (rabbit marinated with fresh coriander and sauteed with a bouquet of spices), murghi bharta (chicken with garlic and ginger) and ghost shai korma (lamb stew in creme fraiche with grapes and cashews).

Two accouterments that shouldn’t be missed are the onion rings fried in chickpea flour and the pistachio kulcha, an extremely thick and sweet ice cream. For those who don’t want beer or the refreshing yogurt drink called lassi with their meal, there are--this being France--also some good, reasonably priced wines available. The flavorful red Gran Coronoas from Spain (about $15) goes particularly well with the ghost shai korma.

Across the river from Yugaraj, Saudade serves a cuisine virtually unknown in Southern California--that of Portugal. That means simple, hearty but well-made dishes, many of them based on seafood (including salt cod or bacalhau), cooked with an almost Mediterranean sense of color and style--though Portugal, of course, is nowhere near the Mediterranean.

A dinner here might begin, for instance, with salt cod fritters (pasteis de bacalhau) or with rissois de camarao, which are beignets of fresh shrimp, fried in a crisp, tempura-like batter. (The Portuguese, remember, taught the Japanese how to make tempura in the first place--the word coming from the Portuguese tempora , meaning the Ember Day, the Catholic holy days on which fried foods were traditionally served in Portugal.)

Other first-courses include grilled squid and the famous Portuguese soup called caldo verde-- made of green cabbage flavored with olive oil and chorizo sausage. A traditional Portuguese main dish is carne de porco alentejana, a salty but surprisingly delicious combination of pork and clams braised in red wine sauce.

Lovers of salt cod might note that, in addition to the aforementioned pasteis, there are at least half a dozen other preparations of the fish on the menu here--perhaps the most unusual and best of which is bacalhau a bras, which is a heap of crisp, golden-brown matchstick potatoes into which slivers of salt cod and a couple of eggs have been mixed. The house-made almond tart makes a perfect dessert. There are good, inexpensive Portuguese wines available, and, of course, a good choice of ports, vintage and otherwise.

Thai restaurants in Paris offer some of the same dishes we eat at Thai places in Los Angeles-- pad-tai noodles, assorted sates, various red and green curries, mee-krob (which, come to think of it, might almost be called a Southeast Asian version of bacalhau a bras) and so on--but they also serve items rarely if ever seen in L.A.

At Chieng-Mai, which is probably the best Thai establishment in Paris, these include a remarkable appetizer of mussels marinated with lemon grass and grilled on skewers, a slightly spicy but aromatic salad of crab with cucumber, an assortment of superbly fresh fish steamed in banana leaves, and a dish of lamb strips sauteed with Thai basil and black pepper. Portions tend to be somewhat smaller here than they might be in L.A., and the staff is used to serving meals in the French style (i.e., one appetizer and one main course per person) and thus might not quite understand a request for a whole slew of things at once.

Just across the street from Chieng-Mai is one of the two Al Dar restaurants in Paris. (The other is far off in the posh 16th arrondissement.) Big, bright and popular, Al Dar serves superb and ample Lebanese food, with other miscellaneous Levantine accents.

Adventurous diners should certainly try the lamb’s tongue in lemon sauce, which is slightly sweet and very delicate. Other delights here include stuffed zucchini and grape leaves, sambousek pastries filled with ground meat or creamy white cheese, fatayer (more or less the Lebanese pizza), intensely flavored makenek sausage and several varieties of hummus, including one particularly delicious one into which thin strips of grilled lamb have been stirred.

Most diners here choose mezze platters--assortments of house specialties, available in selections of 6, 12 or 20. Six will be more than enough for most couples. Don’t miss the rose or (especially) the red Chateau Musar, --one of the legends and curiosities of the wine world, a genuinely fine wine made in Lebanon.

Though Paris is famous for its Chinese restaurants, it has nothing else like Restaurant A. There are two remarkable things about the food at this modest storefront establishment: One is that owner-chef Kien Huynh, a Vietnamese of Chinese origin, is a masterful sculptor who garnishes his food with, well, food-based decorations of truly astounding accuracy and delicacy: frilly tropical fish fashioned out of oversize carrots, Buddhist priests out of Jerusalem artichokes, pagodas out of long white radishes and such.

The other thing, more to the point for those who come to a restaurant to eat and not just to look at food, is that Huynh cooks from what he says are authentic 18th-Century recipes. Many of his dishes are simmered for 24 or even 48 hours, and he eschews the use of MSG and other “shortcuts”--which he says were introduced in the first place because chefs weren’t patient enough to cook food for a good long time.

Whatever the origins of this food, it is excellent--for instance, marmite of lotus root, slow-cooked abalone, duck with assorted Chinese mushrooms and a remarkable rich soup of various vegetables stuffed with ground fish and shrimp and flavored with aged rice wine.

Wally Chouaqui, who is Berber, was once a chamelier or camel driver for the French army in Tunisia. Today, he is a restaurateur in Paris--and his Wally Saharien is one of the small gastronomic treasures of the Ile Saint-Louis.

The darkish, exotic-looking dining room has been described as “colonial et puces”-- “colonial and flea market” in style. It is also comfortable, and somehow feels much more genuine than the spangled salons of the touristy North African restaurants on the Left Bank. The food is much less showy than at those places, too, but is very satisfying. Particularly recommended are the sardines, butterflied and stuffed with herbs, the spicy vegetable soup, the Saharan-style couscous (dry and austere, with few vegetables but with very good grilled sausage and lamb on the side) and a semolina gateaux with orange coulis. “This isn’t really a restaurant,” says the waiter at Arco, across the street from the legendary Harry’s Bar. And indeed it isn’t. What it is, though, is a first-rate tapas bar: a long, narrow, high-ceilinged room with a black-and-white tile floor, an ornate nonfunctional fireplace and attractive wood paneling all around, in which are served up croquettes of salt cod or shrimp, chorizo sausage in white wine sauce, wedges of Spanish-style potato omelet, sardines escabechadas (fried, then marinated in olive oil and vinegar with garlic and herbs), gazpacho, slices of real jamon serrano (the Spanish mountain ham good enough to make you forget prosciutto di Parma) and other such typical tapas bar delights. A good choice of Spanish wines, including sherries, is offered, of course.

GUIDEBOOK

Parisian Dining

Recommended:

Yugaraj: 14 Rue Dauphine, tel. 43-26-44-91. Dinner for two, food only, $75-$120.

Saudade: 34 Rue des Bourdonnais, tel. 42-36-30-71. $60-$95.

Chieng-Mai: 12 Rue Frederic-Sauton, tel. 43-25-45-45. $50-$60.

Al Dar: 8/10 Rue Frederic-Sauton, tel. 43-25-17-15. Also at 93 Ave. Raymond-Poincare, tel. 45-00-96-64. $45-$120.

Restaurant A: 5 Rue de Poissy, tel. 46-33-85-54.

Wally Saharien: 16 Rue le Regrattier, tel.43-25-01-39. $70-$90.

Arco: 12 Rue Daunou, tel. 42-60-07-20. $65-$90, with individual tapas from $10.