This article has been written on 22.04.2020
If this has been posted and you are reading it, then it means we are both healthy and well. I hope you are too. I know now, how lucky we have been. Looking back, I see that we have been a little too courageous, but we had our reasons then. One, I already lived here, and had to come back to Paris to my family. Two, we had been waiting for Inanc to visit us for so long. Three, we had organized the perfect eating spree. Put yourself in my shoes, one of the most loved friends of the whole family is coming to visit, and she is one of the best chefs of Turkey. How can you give up the perfect plan?
(As this was happening, the situation was not as serious as it is now.)
We have celebrated our third year in Paris in April. I have been obsessively trying out diffent restaurants, cafes, bakeries, chocolate houses and patisseries since we moved here. I mark my favorites on my mobile map and there are 100. I have been to all of them at least twice, and I can recommend all of them without a doubt. When friends come to visit, I recommend them places to go to that are always in the area they are staying at. Since they also do their own research, usually my responsibility is not that heavy. But now the case is totally different. The whole itenary has been left in my hands. It is very exciting because I have to take Inanc Celengil, who you know as the chef of Aman da Bravo Istanbul, but who for me is one of my best friends, to as many local, various and delicious places as I can in 5 days, digging into my 3 years of Paris experience. The pressure I was putting on myself was huge. I believe you will understand the weight if I tell you that I was creating excel sheets to plan the program.
It was a very lucky coincidence that our first day was my daughter’s birthday. Of course the birthday girl should decide where she wants to go, but I might have manipulated her a little. Thankfully, Yasemin also likes our neighbourhood restaurant a lot. La Table J’M became a part of our lives in 2019. Chef Julien Joalland his partner Isabelle Mesnil bought an old restaurant in an unpopular street of 16th Arrondissement. They changed the decor and the kitchen and reopened. This was one of my dreams when we were moving to Paris. An intimate neighbourhood restaurant that is close to home, has good food and is reasonably priced. We anticipated its opening excitedly. And our dreams have come true; we have already celebrated 2 special occasions here, we have had special deserts prepared for us, champagne has been popped, and we come back from holidays with local produce we find interesting for Julien, who uses it in his menu if he sees fit. Yes, you can guess by now. The menu has whatever is available in the market seasonally. They serve updated modern versions of classic French dishes, daily. Tonight’s dinner deserves Inanc’s comments rather than mine, so I’ll let her speak.
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
Well, what I remember from the first dinner was how I couldn’t take my eyes off the hamburger made especially for Yasemin, and how the cheese and mushroom ravioli that Okan ordered against all our protestations was actually the best dish. Of course a steak tartare was ordered right away, compared with ours at the restaurant and any short comings were evaluated. I can still picture as clearly as today and taste the chocolate ganache and layered chocolate crepe suzette birthday cake made for Yaso. And what was most impressive was the warm attitude the owners had to welcoming their guests, I hope they can get through this period in one piece.
Following the success of the first night, we started our second day early. We dropped Yasemin off to school with İnanç and went to the market. But there were obstacles on the way such as s branch of La Pâtisserie, opened in 2011 by one of Paris’s most mediatic chefs Cyril Lignac, and Benoît Couvrand. Cyril Lignac moved to Paris in 2000, and had a very strong start to his career in Alain Passard’s Arpège, then moved onto another very famous establishment as chef, to Pierre Hermé. He has written 40 cook books, along with all the restaurant, tv and workshop business he accomplished. As much as he is a hard working person, I also believe that he has a very strong team too. Unfortunately they didn’t have the small sesame bread that resembles a ‘kumpir’ when we went, but they had the olive bun. We only made it to the market after we had a coffee and a croissant at the bistro next door. The market in the 16th Arrondissement is known as the most expensive in Paris, but at least the product quality is equally high. I love wandering around markets, the colors, the smells and the chit chat, and to have a chef to stroll along with is priceless. I hadn’t done this for a long while. My first market visit with a chef was with my old partner Didem Şenol Tiryakioğlu. We used to go for our restaurant. She would suddenly get an idea by something she would find in the market and put it on the menu right away. I would be impressed by her knowledge and creativity. Doing this again with Inanc took me back those days and happy memories. Things I did not even see when I was by myself gained a new perspective when Inanc drew my attention to them. I will definitely buy more stuff from herb stands in the future. For example, Inanc showed me something called garlic herb. We added it to a lot of dishes after Inanc left. We might have gone a little crazy at the mushroom stand because morels were in season; I’m sorry for anyone who had to wait their turn behind us. So our menu for dinner at home on Thursday was decided. We had a lot of herbs and mushrooms. What else were we having with those? We can put this question aside for now because our lunch and dinner is already set for tonight. So Inanc, did you enjoy the market?
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
Of course I enjoyed it a lot, there were so many different varieties of vegetables, herbs, meat, fish and cheese which we didn’t have in our markets. And I have a confession to make. I find gozleme very meaningless, it is a dry phyllo filled with a tasteless filling, usually very, very dry, I never understand why it is so popular. But we had a gozleme in the market made by a Turkish couple. They rolled out their phyllo there, used fresh herbs from the market and it really was the best gozleme I ever had. We also bought puntarella which I would be cooking for the first time, it was very exciting. There was arugula flower with rich yellow petals that exploded on your taste buds when you ate it. We have only recently started seeing the flowers of herbs and vegetables in small producers. It hurts a little that you can find them so easily in a city market in Europe and have no access to in Turkey. It makes one think that maybe we should be visiting farms rather than markets in Turkey.
In France, on Wednesdays the schools are either off or half-day. Our school is one of the half-day ones. So after picking up Yasemin at noon, we head off to have burgers like we usually do. Baāgaā is a very special burger place. They buy their bread from one of Paris’s most important bakers Jean-Luc Poujauran. Their meat is from French animals raised and fed natural grains in the Japanese tradition. Every morning, the meat is minced for that day. Their recipes were created by Thomas Boutin, chef and owner of de Le Vieux Crapaud. (Of course I tried his restaurant too, and it was very good) Because we go very frequently, they don’t even ask what Yasemin is having, anymore. Meat and bread! Sometimes I choose a cheeseburger and sometimes the hot burger. This lunch, the unexpected choice comes from Inanc. Bikini Burger! (I had never had it before) Without reading the ingredients, she ordered it straight away, thinking it would be the same as the legendary bikini sandwich of Tapas24 in Barcelona, and I couldn’t stop her. Unfortunately their only common denominator was mozzarella. There was no truffle, nor jamon Iberico. Baāgaā’s bikini turned out to be vegetable burger with mozzarella and piquillo pepper sauce. And judging by the size of it, it did not seem very appropriate for anyone looking to wear a bikini in the summer either, right Inanc?
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
The Bikini was 3 sizes too large for my slim figure. I was very sad to see that this was not the bikini in Barcelona, however there were still things for me to learn from. It had a very strong grill taste that made it feel like a real burger, I remember the meaty oyster mushroom, good mozzarella, tomato sauce and pesto. And the thinly sliced raw green beans gave a delicious crunch to the burger.
On Wednesday night we had reservations for one of the restaurants on the top of my “to go list” and the only place Inanc herself had requested to go. Chef Stéphane Jégo’s restaurant Chez L'Ami Jean! It is the oldest Basque restaurant in the city and it has been run by Brittany born chef since 2002. He’s a chef who sees his team as family, uses freshest seasonal produce, is constantly in touch with his suppliers, is happy to attract the attention of his guests during the service but can suddenly disappear without notifying anyone at the end of the service. When the pandemic started in France and all the restaurants closed down, he wrote a petition to President Macron and his ministers, asking that this health disaster is accepted as a natural disaster by the government. It turned into a campaign on Change.org. It was signed more than 20.000 times in the first 48 hours. He was requesting by this petition that establishments, especially smaller ones could claim damage from insurance companies if the situation was considered as a natural disaster. The ministry of finance responded by saying that they would not be announcing it as a natural disaster, but they were preparing a support package for the industry and they were in discussion with the insurance companies to get them involved. It is very assuring as a small establishment that the government is responding to your situation right away. Ok, after the additional information, we can go back to our dinner. I’ll leave the word to Inanc to talk about it. Chez L'Ami Jean and Baāgaā and a common characteristic, they both buy their bread from Jean-Luc Poujauran.
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
I found out about this place from one of Aman da Bravo’s regulars who had told me that I would love it, it was so me. And I have been following it ever since, keeping alive my dream to eat one day one of the dishes the chef smokes by torching dried herbs over the food. We started off with grilled asparagus, bonito flakes and cream cheese, followed by caramalized octopus with a very aromatic salsa verde. Even though Aycavan does not like duck, we ordered it anyway, and she liked it with all the hazelnuts and so on. Scallops with spinach root and leek was compliments of the chef and made me regret not having such scallops in Turkey. Our smoked meat was leg of veal and came with an amazing broth, we spooned it off. We weren’t still full, grilled skate was served with bacon fried to the consistency of a potato chip. At this point we met the chef and between his very little English and my nonexistent French managed to understand that he had actually come to Istanbul for Parabere Forum and had lunch in my restaurant on a day that I was not there. We kissed each other’s hands to congratulate each other, and it was a very proud moment. There was no room left for dessert, but he sent us his famous rice pudding anyway. They serve it with salted caramel and granola. You spoon off from a large bowl onto your plate and garnish it as you like. We packed the left overs for take away and ate it for 2 more days. What should we have done, thrown away that precious rice pudding?
It was an amazing dinner, a fabulous ambience. You had to pull out the table to be able to squeeze into your seat, that’s how close everyone is to each other. Is it a problem? Never. It is actually a pleasure to share the same space with people who are also there for the food.
We had chosen Champs-Élysées for our morning walk on Thursday. The avenue will undergo huge changes by 2025 and there will no more be an 8 lane traffic. The sidewalks will be expanded, the rooftops will be planted and there will be small electric buses, more bicycle lanes and even a tram line. Last year, world’s most famous department store Galeries Lafayette opened a branch here with a very different concept to its existing store. It is a very modern 4-storied store filled with the latest designs. For me the most attractive floor is the food market on the lowest floor, it is filled with everything you should see and taste, food wise. I believe that not only gourmet lovers, but anyone interested in design and packaging should also go and see it. Many of Paris’s signatures names and delicacies, from its oldest patisserie Stohrer, to its most important chocolatier Pierre Marcolini, to legendary chef Alain Ducasse’s“Le Chocolate” are here.
After about an hour, we exit the store to go to lunch. Our destination is a restaurant in the 5th Arrondissement. It is called “Invitez Vous Chez Nous”, meaning ‘’we invite you over to ours”. Chef Julie and her husbad Aurélien do serve you in a home environment. It is one of my favourite places in Paris for lunch. They serve a daily menu of seasonal food in a warm and cozy atmosphere. The food is accompanied by a small wine list and beer from small producers. The food price parity might be another reason to come back here. They are open on weekdays for lunch between 12:00 and 17:00. They are closed for dinner and over the weekends. As an old restauranteur, I keep thinking that this is the dream job. What do you think Inanc?
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
There are only 2 people working. One is serving and the other one is in the kitchen. Which makes you think right away, ‘what? So is the cook washing the dishes too?’ Well yes. This being the case, you wait as long as it’s necessary, and nobody is complaining. The menu is planned very cleverly. It is a limited menu as would be expected, for example the rice and sauce on my shrimp curry was also served on the vegetarian plate. There are a couple of slow cooked dishes that require no preparation ahead and can be reheated and served. It was super sympathic and everything we ate was very delicious.
After lunch we have our coffee at DOSE, founded by Grégoire and his cousin Jean-Baptiste. It is a brand well known among coffee aficionados in Paris. They import coffee from different regions of the world. The also serve healthy, mostly plant-based lunches, homemade granola, sweet and savory pastries and fresh juices. They also have an online website where they sell coffee equipment along with good beans. This store in 5th is a little smaller than the one at Batignolles, however it has a prime location because it is the only third generation coffee shop in this area and it is located in the best local shopping street, Rue Mouffetard. This was one of the streets I wanted to take Inanc to. I can check another item off my excel sheet. The history of this pedestrian street goes back to antiquity. İt is a street filled with butchers, cheese shops, bakeries, and wine shops. If you are a Meryl Streep fan like me and have enjoyed Julie & Julia, here is another reason for you to like this street. The shopping scene was filmed here.
I must confess that we didn’t buy anything here. But there is a reason. Because we are headed to another shopping street. It is as nice as this one; Rue Poncelet. We go from the 5th to the 17th Arrondissement. This one’s history also goes back to 1400. This was a holy route that goes up to the old Montmartre Monastry, for me today it is a holy route for food shopping. It is open everyday except Monday and Sunday afternoons, and filled with everything from butchers, to bakers, to charcuterie, fish and cheese. For me, it is one of those street that make you really feel that you are in Paris. I know of a Saturday when we spent more than 3 hours here. After the initial discovery tour, we decide to buy a little charcuterie and cheese to accompany the wine tonight. You must not forget that we already bought the herbs and morels yesterday. Who knows, maybe a new recipe will be born from this article.
Our primary target is good cheese, and the store is one of the best on the street: Alléosse. They specialize in aged cheeses and their selection is based on the accountability of their suppliers and the quality and the taste of their products. Comté in French, however the rest is not so easy. Fortunately, the genteman on the other side of the counter doesn’t let me suffer anymore and switches to English. Therefore my precious guest also gets involved in the process and I leave it to her choose from about 100 varietes in front of us. 10 minutes later we are able to exit the store with Selles-sur-Cher goat cheese and a Ossau-iraty we chose in order to have a more ‘smelly’ option. Good cheese should be accompanied by good bread. Right across Alléosse, we enter Liberté, an artisanal bakery. Production and sale is from the same location. They have 3 shops in Paris, and 2 in Tokyo. We bought cheese and bread, we have one more stop to make before heading home. For charcuterie, we go to Delitaly. The Spanish and Italian charcuterie are my favorite. Therefore Delitaly is one of the right addresses in Paris. The cold counter on your right is filled with fresh pasta, olives, cold tapas and salads. If I were alone here, I would be spending a fortune, but fortunately Inanc is with me and she is target oriented, the cold cut counter at the back of the store. I cannot take my eyes off all the tomato sauces, balzamics and olive oils on the other side as we exit, but maybe another time, we should really get out of here now. Tonight we will be enjoying ourselves at home. Inanc is here on vacation and so we don’t want her in the kitchen, but cannot stop her once she sees all the new ingredients we found. At least let me turn on the oven for you!
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
We blended the morels, puntarella, garlic herbs, asparagus, fresh thyme, rosemary, garlic and olive oil, added some delicious French butter on top and put it in the oven. On the side we had water cress and cherry tomato salad with a vinagrette rich in lemon juice. The cheese was more in my mind and I was actually less curious about what was going on in the oven. But as a whole, it was a very nice dinner.
Dear readers, the big day has finally come. For Friday lunch we will be going to Septime, one of the most talked about but hardest to make a reservation at places in Paris which at the same time has the most complicated reservation system. And today Seda and Alp have arrived from Istanbul. Looking back, they might have made history as our most courageous friends during this period. It has even become a running joke among us that they came to Paris for a single lunch at Septime. You will soon understand why. I had been chasing this reservation for months. We had only been able to come here twice in 3 years, one of which was by pure coincidence. Both times the dinner was amazing. The quality of the service, choice of wine etc were all very explanatory as to why the restaurant was always full. After a while I had given up on trying to make a reservation. But this time I decided that I was willing to do whatever it takes for my friends. I was stubborn, I was ambitious, I even e-mailed a blogger whom I didn’t know, naturally to no avail, but then one day they answered my call and in 2 seconds I had a lunch reservation for a party of 5. At Septime, the 37 year old young chef Bertrand Grébaud changes his menu frequently according to the availability of seasonal produce, like at most of the other places we have been to. He advocates for sustainable farming and uses as little animal produce as he can. Before Septime, he has earned his first Michelin star at a restaurant in the 17th Arrondissement, when he was only 26 years old. After opening Septime, he made the 50 best list in 2013 and also earned his star here. (It is still so in 2019.) His latest project is to create a farm at the old air base in Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne) which is run by Fermes d'Avenir Association where part of the farming will be based on permaculture. Apart from Septime, Chef Bertrand has a walk-in sister restaurant called Clamato that serves sea food, a wine cellar also called Septime and a small boutique hotel in beautiful nature called D'un Ile, 2 hours outside of Paris. I ate in all of them and they were all really top quality. I saw once again the importance of having qualified people work for you and the strength of a good team. Seda and Alp came straight from the airport and we met them there. However we don't hug, we keep our distance but we've missed each other so much. Since we have no allergies, we are ready to eat anything they serve us; Alp chooses the wine, cornering our waiter. Well, it’s his right, at the end he came all the way for “just one lunch” Time for a confession; I think our first two dinners were better. But maybe Inanc will comment better on it.
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
I believe that tasting menus put a lot of pressure on chefs. I’m sure that when it comes to creativity, a menu you are pressured to change constantly causes some problems. After a while, rather than showcasing what you do best, you probably start serving some plates that are not memorable, even a little mediocre for the sake of creating something new. I, myself, am not a chef who can push herself in the area of creativity. If I have a new idea, I put it on my menu, but I don’t serve something new just because it is different from what I had before. If there is no inspiration, I choose to serve what I cook best. But it seems the world disagrees, because tasting menus are still the hype, but anyway.
This is why I think we were not able to taste the plates that earned Septime its name. Our first course was a porcini soup with porcini and chestnut. It was followed by raw scallops, raw almonds, berries served with a berry sauce. I remember wishing it was more sour. We continued with grilled asparagus, served with asparagus sauce and water cress. For me, it wasn’t impressive. But I must also remind you that we had set our expectations very high. Then there was a stew of black truffle, bone marrow, pancetta and jerusalem artichoke. The main course was steamed seabass served with rhubarb sauce and caramalized endives. Dessert was a sorbet but I don’t remember the flavour. The experience as a whole was of course pleasant, but it wasn’t the best of this trip
However the main adventure was what happened after lunch. We recieved news from Turkey that they were closing the borders to France. İnanç, Seda and Alp were of course confused and panicked. Their families, kids, their whole life is in Turkey. They want to fly out that night but there are no available flights. The announcement by Turkey is very vague, there are no details. Is this restriction valid for citizens or not? Will there be rescue flights? Will they be quarantined on return? And many more questions come to mind. Normally, you would expect the embassy to have all the answers in such a case, but it seems they are equally clueless. We head out to the airport but cannot find any solutions or answers, we all head back home or to our hotels, empty handed. It seems we have no one to talk to. Later on the deadline to lockdown changes, only to be changed once again later on. The certainty and the consistency behind these decisions leave us nonplussed. Seda and Alp return on Saturday, and Inanc on Sunday.
Saturday morning we make plans in a mood totally different from our previous days. We decide a walk will clear our heads. Towards lunchtime we feel like a snack and to to Gregory Marchand’s FTG about which I’ve written in Gastereamag. Anyone who comes to visit us eats once at FTG became true for Inanc too. As usual the kitchen staff is working away seriously in the kitchen.
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
We have found THE Lobster Roll, it cannot be called just eating and we basically drowned ourselves in it. It is the best and the most expensive fast food I’ve ever had. If you make the mistake of converting euros into liras, you feel the dread. The fries are amazing. It justifies twice over why fries are call French fries. It is served with ginger aioli and it is so delicious.
And the last dinner!
As we leave the house for our Saturday dinner, France also starts announcing its own security measures, closing all restaurants and cafes starting tonight midnight. Restaurants and cafes who have not closed even during both world wars or the terrorist attacks of 2015 are closed. Without realizing it, we are also on our last dinner out along with Inanc. Our last dinner is at Restaurant Eels. This is my wife Ayca’s discovery. We ate here a couple of times thanks to her and have always enjoyed it. It is a very modern, modest, comfortable but chic place. It has a Scandinavian feel to it. Its owner chef Adrien Ferrand has been awared best young talent in 2015 Gault & Milau Awards. The whole team is young, like himself. They have opened Eels with sommelier Félix Le Louarn in 2017. They had been working together at another famous Paris establishment, Ze Kitchen Galerie. The menu consists of 4 starters, 4 main courses and 4 desserts. You can either order a la carte, or a fixed menu. In 2019, they were chosen as a new and notable discovery in the 50 Best list. I believe this young chef and his team will be every successful in the future as well. The ambience, service, wine and the food are all worthy of our last night. I think this will be one of the first places I want to come back to when life returns to normal. Normally I had narrowed our options for tonight down to two and I let Inanc decide.
İNANÇ ÇELENGİL
I’m not sorry that we chose Eels in the end, it made us very happy. We orders lamb loin that was served with a fantastic red curry and beurre blancla. Its fat was crispy, and the black beans under the meat were a very nice accompaniment. Raw mackerel, aioli and a thin garlic breadcrust. Raw oysters, black and red caviar, and an aromatic herb butter. We ordered duck once again and were not disappointed. We finished off with a cream cheese dessert covered with chocolate. The wine pairing was very good too but with all the excitement around the food and the travel nerves, I forgot to take pictures. It was a very adequate finish in the end.
Our last meal was fried eggs with mushroom and a traditional baguette by Ayca. Then we said our goodbyes. I’m very lucky to have been able to make it back home directly, and not getting infected along the way was the cherry on top. I even had all three seats to myself on the plane. But my fortune in life is that I have best friends who live in Paris and know about food, which is also my biggest misfortune because they are also so far away. Point of view is relative.
I have nothing to add to Inanc’s last words, but I want to remind her something: Don’t forget who made the sandwich you had on the plane!!!