Au Coin des Gourmets
5, rue Dante - 75005 Paris
I visited this restaurant on my third trip to Paris, June 2006. This time my Paris trip was with my yonger sister. We bumped into this tiny restaurant when we searched for a rather big lunch to prepare for our climbing up to Notre Dame tower. Well, I am always a big fan of Vietnamese food ever since I tasted my first Vietnamese meal in a Vietnamese fastfood close to Nice railway station. Furthermore, this restaurant offered a 3-course lunch for only 12.5 EUR. An offer hard to turn down!
It took us some time to decide what to order. There was an English a la carte menu card, but it was hard to see which dishes could be chosen for this lunch menu. We resorted ourselves back to the French menu, and asked the waiter for information. With a lot of difficulties he tried to explain, but not very long, he gave up and went into the restaurant (we sat outside). He came up with a middle-aged lady. It seemed that she was his mom. Because we looked pretty Chinese, she tried to speak to us in Mandarin. Well, it helped a bit more. At least we managed to choose our meal.
My starter were two Vietnamese spring rolls (lumpia). Unlike those known in NL, they weren’t fried, but sort of cold spring rolls. My two spring rolls were quite good. My sister ordered "Pho". It’s a bowl of rice noodles soup with beef. Pho usually comes with coriander garnishing, but they substituted it with spring onions. So, it’s not as good as it is supposed to be.
Our main course is really special. I think the name is something like "Bo Bhung". It’s a tossed rice noodles (what in hokian/tiociu/indonesiann is called yam bihun). I got one with pork while my sister got one with beef. I was very impressed by this dish. The taste blended very well and it was so fresh. There were some nice subtleties in it. I figured some out from the mom. The sandy feel comes from the ground roasted rice. The soft but somewhat crunchy yellow julienne was actually boiled pork skin. There were also mint leaves, lemon grass, bean sprout and lettuce. The portion was not so big, but really satisfying.
The dessert we chose turned out to be couple of cookies and sweetened fruit. We were too full and they were too sweet, so we didn’t finish them. We chatted for a while with the mom about our travel plan. She gave us some tips, which we mostly know, but accepted enthusiastically, because it was given in a language we speak at home: tiociu dialect! Yes, a simple acclamation from the mom about rain overheard by us revealed that. A truly memorable lunch!
