For my last day in Paris before I headed to southern France for spring break, I thought I’d grab lunch in the Marais, one of my favorite neighborhoods. Chez Marianne, a Middle Eastern place I’d been meaning to try for the whole quarter, was full by the time I got there, so I decided that I might as well end my quarter in Paris the way I started it: at L’as du Fallafel. Unfortunately, being that it was spring break and tourists had been flooding into Paris, the line there was as long as I’d ever seen it, full of people anxious to try the famous L’as du Fallafel, endorsed by Lenny Kravitz.

“Tourists taking over my city, OH MON DIEU!” I sighed, pretending like I hadn’t just come to Paris in January. I briefly considered waiting in the long line, but then decided I just wasn’t in the mood to be in a “touristy” environment any longer than I had to and started looking for something else to eat.

I remembered that Pozzetto was just down the road, so I decided to get some amazing gelato while I thought about what to have for lunch. Dessert first - backwards lunch day!

I ordered the medium cup (€4.50) with Pozzetto’s fantastic pistachio, pear sorbet, and something that the nice Italian man working there described as “made from cookies”. The pistachio was super as always, incredibly creamy and with a lovely pistachio flavor, the bright and fresh pear sorbet helped balance the creaminess of the other flavors, and the “made from cookies” flavor tasted like…cookies! I was pretty sure that I’d misunderstood him when he said “made from cookies”, but eating it was like having digestives in gelato form, CRAAAZYY. 

I was wandering around while eating my delicious gelato, and when I realized that I was getting close to Arts et Metiers, I remembered that I hadn’t actually gone back to the banh mi place that had been closed when I went at the beginning of the quarter, so I decided to see if I would have better luck this time. 

If I hadn’t been looking for it, I probably would have completely missed the banh mi place, which has no signage and is completely nondescript from the outside. It’s a good thing that I actually was looking for it, because inside this tiny one-room store was the best sandwich that I’ve ever eaten. EVER. 

When I squeezed through the doors, I found myself crammed next to a small Arab family that was just chilling with the banh mi lady, and everyone was laughing, and riding, and cornholing, and I instantly had a good feeling about the place. It doesn’t make much sense, but food tastes so much better if the person who’s making it is happy, and the banh mi lady just looked so happy to be doing her thing. 

I ordered the pork banh mi, which at €5.00 is about two euros more than most other banh mi you’ll find in Paris, but I soon learned what my extra two euros was getting me. The banh mi lady began by placing a baguette into a special baguette toaster, something I’d never seen before, and then she moved to a tiny nook in the back where she started cooking some pork, filling the room with delicious pork smell. YUM. When the pork was done, she took the toasted baguette, spread on a layer of mayonnaise and a layer of hot chili paste, and then filled the baguette with the pork and a bit of the pork marinade, pickled cucumber spears and shredded carrots. I took the hefty sandwich outside and sat down on a little monument to eat my fantastic-looking banh mi.

PARTY IN MY MOUTH. 

The toasted baguette was the best bread for a sandwich I’d ever had, and made me wonder why this was the first time that I’d had a toasted baguette sandwich in Paris - come on Parisians, get on the toast train! The hot, perfectly crispy-but-not-too-crispy baguette soaked up the pork marinade, and even just the toasted baguette with pork marinade would have been amazing, but add big chunks of tender, freshly-cooked pork, the tangy and crunchy contrast of the cucumber and carrots and the freshness of the cilantro, and you have a crazy delicious sandwich.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

THE SPICY CHILI PASTE. 

I wasn’t sure what she had put in it, but the spicy chili paste gave every bite a massive amount of heat and flavor, smacking me in the mouth and telling me to like it. WOW. For ten weeks I’d been missing big and bold flavors, as French food is definitely full of flavor but not as intense as other cuisines, and even spicy ethnic foods are toned down for French palates. Not this banh mi. Definitely one of the most flavorful sandwiches I’ve ever had in my life, and given the circumstances in which I had it, the single best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.

After finishing that magnificent beast of a sandwich, I decided to continue with my backwards lunch day by ending lunch with a 80 centime bao from one of my other favorite neighborhoods, the Belleville Chinatown.

I wrote extensively about the 80 centime bao earlier, so I won’t recap too much, but these giant pan-fried bao are actually one of the things that I’ll miss most about Paris, weirdly enough. I know that I can probably get really good bao in the SF Chinatown or in Cupertino, but that’s just not very convenient, and definitely nowhere near as convenient as hopping on the subway and getting to Belleville in just a few stops. 

After my fantastic, city-spanning backwards lunch, I took care of some last-minute business related to my departure from Paris, and in the late afternoon, headed to Bastille to try some of the glazed madeleines at Blé Sucré that I’d heard good things about.

They were fine madeleines.

———

After spring break in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, I came back to Paris for one last day before I flew out, and after some plans with friends fell through, I ended up having the same backwards lunch as the other day, partly by design, and partly by accident.

My hostel was in the Marais, so Pozzetto was just a short walk away, and how could I say no to a last opportunity to have Pozzetto’s gelato?

Pistachio, hazelnut, and “milk” flavor. I will miss Pozzetto.

The banh mi had been on my mind for all of spring break, and I knew that I had to have it one last time. 

This time I arrived around 3:00 PM, and no one else but the banh mi lady and her teenage daughter was in the tiny store when I came. I ordered the pork banh mi again, and as she started putting it together, the banh mi lady started talking to me in Vietnamese.

I was all, “Désolé, je comprends pas,” (I don’t understand), and then the banh mi lady was like, “ohhh, so where are you from?” I told her about my background and how I was a student studying abroad, and after she handed me my sandwich and I was about to head out, she invited me to sit inside the store and eat there. I was enjoying the conversation, so I took my coat off and sat down, and she even offered to make me tea (while totally making fun of her daughter for not liking the lemon tea)! We just chilled there drinking tea long after I’d finished my banh mi, and I learned how she’d opened the store just six months before, how she toasted her banh mi, which others in Paris don’t do, because she liked the crunch (hilariously making a “harrunch!” crunching sound each time she said it), and about why she didn’t have very much signage for the store (she prefers having a smaller clientele, word-of-mouth style). She was especially excited to tell me about her spicy chili paste, saying how her addition of sesame seeds added flavor while balancing out the heat and brought it to another level of deliciousness (completely true).

After about half an hour had passed, despite how much I was enjoying the conversation (also the longest conversation I had in French during my time in Paris), I knew I had to get moving to profiter fully from my last full day in Paris. I asked if I could take a picture of the inside of the store, to which the daughter was like, “AHHHH!!!” and ran into the back room. Awwww.

This is pretty much the entire store!

The banh mi = best sandwich ever, and banh mi lady = one of the coolest Parisians I met; if you have a chance to go, definitely swing by. In fact, one of my regrets leaving Paris was that I didn’t come by this place sooner…oh well.

I got on the metro to head towards Montparnasse, but somehow I got on the train heading in the wrong direction, and when I realized my mistake, I found myself at the Belleville station. I hadn’t been planning on getting bao, but this was clearly a sign! I had to get a bao! 

So that’s how I had the same lunch two days in a row (so to speak). But what a good lunch.

That night, for dinner, I did end up getting a falafel from L’as du Fallafel, finishing Paris the way I began it. As I ate my last meal in Paris, reflecting on the past ten weeks and everything that’d happened, I had a sudden moment of clarity and all my thoughts focused on this one realization:

LENNY KRAVITZ IS FULL OF IT.

Seriously, go to Mi-Va-Mi right across the road instead. Silly tourists.

ADDRESSES

Pozzetto
39 rue du Roi de Sicile, 3rd
Metro: St. Paul or Hôtel de Ville (1)
01 42 77 08 64

Banh Mi
7 rue Volta, 3rd
Metro: Arts et Metiers (3, 11)
01 42 71 28 20

Wen Zhou Mei Shi Lin
16 rue de Belleville, 20th
Metro: Belleville (2, 11)
01 47 97 70 01

Salon De Thé Wen Zhou (also has good 80 centime bao, filling slightly different from Wen Zhou Mei Shi Lin)
24 rue de Belleville, 20th
Metro: Belleville (2, 11)
01 46 36 56 33

Blé Sucré
7 rue Antoine Vollon, 12th
Metro: Ledru-Rollin (8)
01 43 40 77 73

L’As du Fallafel
34 rue des Rosiers, 4th
Metro: Saint-Paul (1)
01 48 87 63 60