Smoking with Frenchie

He had me at hello. No seriously, I speak French like sling blade, so when Greg Marchand the chef at Frenchie in Paris said “Hello” in English, I was smitten. The meal that followed that night was one of the best examples of ingredient love and technique restraint that’s quite frankly hard to find in Paris. We started with the smoked trout, a mesquite smoked filet served over avocado puree with pickles and dill. Our main course was a pleasantly salty roasted fork tender pork over cranberry beans, with favas and baby carrots both sweet and still slightly crunchy. Dessert was a milky panna cotta just barely set and served with red fruit coulis and a topping of fresh raspberries.

The 3rd way*

*This is part of a series where we highlight a full day of eating and activities in each arrondissement of Paris. Also check out our picks from the 1st and 2nd.

Paris ♥ NYC. Although for as much as the City of Lights-out-at-Midnight loves the City that Never Sleeps, Paris gets around to borrowing only 5% of NYC trends, usually years after they become popular stateside. Hence the current trend of coining Parisian neighborhoods with NYesque names. The neighborhood centered around rue de Martyrs which includes places like Le Cul de Poule, La Pizzetta and Rose Bakery is now referred to as SOPI (south of Pigalle). NOMA is the north Marais, an area usually defined as north of rue des Quatre Fils/rue de la Perle and on either side of rue Charlot and rue Vieille du Temple.

I 2nd that emotion.*

*This is part of a series where we highlight a full day of eating and activities in each arrondissement of Paris. Also check out our picks from the 1st and 3rd.

The 2nd is the Bermuda trapazoid of Paris. For being so close to the center, it’s an amazingly difficult place to locate. Most maps of Paris bleed this crooked rectangle into the 1st and 9th. GPS navigators seem to spin out of control once you cross Petits Champs. Other than the well explored Montorgueil, unless you have a J-O-B here in Paris, chances are you have missed a lot in the 2nd.

Of all the people we have met in Paris, only our friends Christine and Dan actually live in the 2nd. Dan spends his day merging and acquiring companies at his office in the 8th, while Christine left her job in Manhattan with a restaurant PR firm to pursue a career in child education services. Today she took time off from dealing with the whims of screaming children and the concerns of parents to show me the best people watching, passages and good eats of her hood.

You’re the 1st, the last, my everything*

*This is part of a series where we highlight a full day of eating and activities in each arrondissement of Paris. We will start in the 1st (since we live in the first) and work our way around the snail.

The 1st is a funny little place. It’s the fourth smallest geographically, but since the Louvre, Tuileries, Palais Royal, Banque de France and Les Halles hog most of the real estate, there’s very little room for residents. The population of the 1st is 17,700 which makes it the smallest in population size, for comparison the 15th has 232,400.

Some highlights of the 1st are: rue Saint-Anne where a majority of the best Japanese owned businesses and restaurants are. Check out Kunitoraya, which is super tasty, or Higuma for the kimuchi lamen and some gyozas. There is also rue Montmartre which houses three out of the four main kitchen supply shops; Mora, La Bovida and A.Simon. Famed E. Dehillerin is just around the corner on rue Coquilliere.