It’s Paris, mon ami, how can the food not be exquisite? For a taste of the City of Lights, all one needs to do is wander the streets and trust that a blind turn will be their best bet. The beaten path will only lead you to overpriced, underwhelming tourist traps that serve up fare as reverently French as the crepes at IHOP. Instead, take a tour of an arrondissement and jump into the first café that beckons to you.
On a recent trip to Paris, my mother and I were walking the streets of the seventh arrondissement, best known for La Tour Eiffel and Les Invalides, when we happened to stumble upon La Rivaldiere on a peaceful, hushed side street.
The restaurant is quite small with yellow walls bordered by grapes, cozy velvet banquettes, and white lace curtains covering only the bottom half of the window, like your grandmother’s might have. Homey warmth calls you from the dark street.
Inside, they’re serving up an exceptional prix fixe, three course meal that is much less expensive and far more memorable than almost any in Paris. The menu changes daily for both lunch and dinner and the prices (in US Dollars) hover around $20-25 dollars per person (depending on the exchange rate of our impotent currency). All of the food is prepared perfectly with an eye for simplicity and execution. White asparagus vinaigrette, followed by sole meunier with steamed sweet fingerling potatoes and completed with raspberry sorbet offered a meal that was light, satisfying and a lesson in why the French are world renowned for their cuisine. On another night we began with a delicate broth with finely diced zucchini, mushrooms and escargot, then seared tuna served with a smoky slow roasted aubergine and finally an apple tart that was paper thin and absolutely transcendent.
This cozy little gem of a restaurant seems to welcome an astonishing amount of regulars but one bite reveals why; the food is consistent, well priced, beautifully prepared and, with it’s constantly changing menu based on the best available ingredients, impossible to tire of. My only true sadness is knowing a meal that superb is 6000 miles away.
La Rivaldiere
1, rue St-Simon
7 Paris, 75007
Phone: +33 (1) 45-48-5396
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