A fine comfort food Chinese restaurant in Paris…read more
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Why would any American go to Paris and intentionally get Chinese food?
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1) The tourist places that create an "authentic" French cafe that looks like the cafes of Jean Paul Sartre's era are often complete rip-offs.
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2) Paris is a globalized city.
That is just a fact.
In New York City, everyone eats Chinese or Ethiopian or Japanese or Mexican.
In New York City, some people even eat French.
Nobody in New York says, "Hey, New York City is in America. We need to be eating hot dogs and hamburgers."
Paris is lived in from people all over the world.
Regardless of where they were born, Parisians want pleasures from all over the world.
Parisian standards in food are high.
So their "food from all over the world" tends to be pretty good.
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3) Just because food is globalized does not mean that food is standardized. Every country, every city and for that matter, every cook, takes international dishes and does something to make it fit their own taste and the tastes of the people in the host nation.
Mexican food in Paris can be a riot.
Some places serve nachos as elegant perfect equilateral triangles with a perfect inner equilateral triangle of refried beans and a perfect circle of a jalapeno slice in the middle.
You could take those triangles and show them in a museum.
Nachos in Texas or Mexico don't look like that.
Parisian cooks have their own takes on the Chinese standards as well.
The good ones make marvelous Chinese food.
The bad ones not so much.
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Le Lys d'Or has wonderful cooks.
I believe the entrepreneurial family behind Le Lys d'Or is Vietnamese.
That already puts them at the fusion of Chinese and French.
Le Lys d'Or is a long standing institution in the XIIe arrondisement.
It is generally crowded - with locals rather than tourists.
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The crowd is right.
The food is fine.
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My wife will vouch for their steamed fish, which has all sorts of hidden flavors suggesting something aromatic and good was in the steaming water.
I will vouch for their imperial rolls (here served on rice with chicken and vegetables) which have a much better fry job than do the imperial rolls I get in Texas.
Texas has a lot of Vietnamese immigrants and first rate Vietnamese restaurants.
So I am used to getting fine imperial rolls.
The rolls at Le Lys D'Or are much better than the ones I get at home.
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If you were to skip the banana beignets for dessert,
You would not be missing much.
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And the nicest part of all,
Is that as you are sitting eating perfectly wonderful Chinese food,
Outside your window,
It is Paris.
What more do you want in life?
