Photo by Sylvain Ageorges  

Fatima finds her home in Paris too small, compared to her mansion in Aleppo, Syria. Her patrons, however, adore the little cottage in the 15th arrondissement, because of its tiny patio where summer meals are so delightful. For Fatima is a fine cook.

A mother of seven who settled in France twenty-seven years ago, Fatima has opened a restaurant right outside the back door of her home.

Inas, one of her daughters, is head serving person; Momo, a son, supervises the kitchen staff. This is perfect for Fatima, who is ready to slow down and simply help out with the cooking when it strikes her fancy.

Her husband, who died young, was a chef, at the Iraqi embassy in Paris. “Our parents were born in Acre, a Palestinian town which is now part of Israel, and we grew up in Aleppo,” Inas points out, explaining the background on the 'Syrio-Palestinian cuisine' offered on the menu at Om’Zaki.

Photo by Sylvain Ageorges

Momo would say the recipes closely resemble Lebanese fare, though a spice or two might change. In any case, Momo’s dishes are tasty and colorful, and when you’re lucky enough to dine on the patio – you must be sure to reserve a table, because there are only 25 seats there – under the wisteria and grapes twining up the trellis, the baked kebbé, a delight made of spiced ground lamb with bulgur and pine nuts, served with a minty-cucumber-yogurt sauce, and the mouhalabieh, a dessert flan flavored with orange flower water and pistachios – the experience is practically sublime.

The patio is between the dining room and a red brick studio where one of Momo’s brother’s lives. Fatima’s house is right on the other side, and the restaurant kitchen closes up the other side. Fatima’s right – we wish she had a bigger patio!

Om'Zaki; 76 rue de la Procession; 15. arr.

Open from noon to 3 pm and 7:30-11 pm; closed Saturday at noon and Sunday (summer hours); closed Saturday at noon, Sunday, and Monday night (winter); outdoor dining when the weather permits.

Extract from the new French-English guidebook 'Paris Terrasses – Outdoor Dining in Paris', written by Simon Roger and published by Parigramme.
 

Pierre Cagnaire

Paris receives some compensation after being totally overshadowed by Tokyo in the latest Michelin restaurant-guide.

In the Restaurant Magazine’s recently released list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants no less than eight Parisian restaurants are ranked, which is more than any other city in the world.

Also on national level France is leading with 11 restaurants ranked on the prestigious top 50 list, which is formulated by a jury of 682 highly respected food connoisseurs.

However, Paris doesn’t offer the world’s best restaurant. For a third consecutive year, the father of molecular gastronomy Ferran Adrià’s restaurant El Bulli north of Barcelona was crowned the world’s best restaurant, followed by the inventor of snail porridge Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Berkshire (UK) and Parisian top scorer Pierre Cagnaire.

As the only one out of the top three restaurants, The Fat Duck can brag about being one of the sexiest restaurants in the world according to The Guardian. The newspaper has The Fat Duck as number 48 on its list of the sexiest places to be fed.

Written by David Rich Momondo 

Which dish is Britain’s finest gastronomical invention and intended to make you feel greasy, unhealthy and fabulously guilty? Fish ‘n’ chips of course. Now Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens (another of UK’s many celebrity chefs) has decided to give the dish a “feel-good”-lift.

In February Tom Aikens opened an eco-friendly fish 'n' chips restaurant named Tom’s Place on Cale Street in Chelsea, just around the corner from his other two restaurants.

Photo by Dou_ble_you

The restaurant has been designed using recycled materials wherever possible and it only serves fish from sustainable sources (mostly the fishes are line-caught from small, family-run day boats in Southern England). Expect also the menu to include a few fish you won't find in traditional chippies, such as red gurnard, ling and megrim sole.

A portion of fish ‘n’ chips at Tom’s Place isn’t particular cheap. Price tag for a cod is around €16, but then it hasn’t got a bitter after-taste of guilt and bad conscience.

Author David Rich Momondo

 
Photo by Redking

Innovation has no limits, when looking at ways to avoid taxes. Just look at Parisian restaurant Le Refuge des Fondus in Montmartre, where wine (both red and white) is served in baby bottles, in order to circumvent tax laws on glasses of wine (and distract attention from the quality of the wine!).

The formula ‘fondue washed down with wine served in baby bottles’ is really popular and the restaurant is always filled with a relatively rowdy and fun loving (predominantly expat) crowd. The guests are seated shoulder to shoulder on benches along communal tables sucking on their baby bottles while dipping meat and vegetables into the bubbling oil or cheese in the fondue pots.

Le Refuge des Fondus is anything but a bastion of haute cuisine, which the restaurant's prices clearly indicate. A fixed menu including appetizers, a fondue meal and dessert plus a bottle (baby, of course) costs € 17, and the price also includes free tagging opportunities on the walls.

Le Refuge des Fondus
17, rue des 3 Frères (near bottom of Sacré Coeur)
75018 PARIS
 

Photo by Rick 

In November 2007, Michelin inspectors sprinkled 191 Michelin-stars on 150 restaurants in Tokyo, which is by far the highest amount of stars Michelin has awarded any city. While just about any city in Europe and the US would market itself as a gastronomical powerhouse if it had received just a few of those stars, Tokyo renounces the honour from Michelin. Instead, the Michelin-guide has received heavy criticism from the city’s many food aficionados.

Prominent figures such as food critics, magazines and even the governor of Tokyo have questioned the guide’s choice of restaurants and ratings, and a handful of chefs have proudly announced that they turned down chances to be listed in the guide.

The rationale behind the opposition against the Michelin-guide is, that it is only Japanese people who really understand Japanese food. “How can a bunch of foreigners show up and tell us what is good or bad?”, says Tokyo chef Toshiya Kadowaki according to The New York Times.

The fact that two out of the five Michelin inspectors who did the guide were Japanese, doesn’t seem to have appeased the critical Tokyoites, who claim that the guide gave high ratings to unremarkable restaurants. 

A business man tells how he spent about $200 at the three-star Japanese-style restaurant Kanda and was dismayed to find what he called egregious violations of Japanese cuisine’s minimalist tenets, like an overly large slice of eel sushi that disrupted the dish’s balance."You needed a knife and fork to eat that,” Mr. Nagatomi said according to The New York Times. “I can see why it would appeal to Frenchmen who don’t use chopsticks.”

One restaurateur explains that he refused a listing in the Michelin for fear of turning off customers seeking authentic Japanese cuisine, and another said he turned down a Michelin rating because the idea of ranking restaurants offended Japanese sensibility against bragging and putting others down.

The Tokyo-guide is Michelin’s first guide outside Europe and the United States. The French tyre company says it chose Tokyo because it was the largest and one of the most sophisticated restaurant markets in the world. The Tokyo metropolitan area, with some 30 million residents, has roughly 160,000 restaurants, versus about 25,000 in greater New York City and 13,000 in Paris, according to Michelin.

See the Michelin rankings in Tokyo here [PDF].

Michelin’s new France 2008 Red Guide came out on March 3. To see the full details on the new rankings click here [PDF].

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