Before Rice & Beans, there was Rice & Fish. Same owner, whole different game, with a Japanese/American restaurant.

Don’t be afraid, that doesn’t mean enormous California rolls filled with cheese! Quite the contrary, in fact. Rice & Fish is playing the canteen setting with a selection of original Japanese food which remains, well, tasteful. I tried the bento box which consist of a pretty ordinary bowl of rice, a teriyaki beef of the tenderest kind and a very special, although very tiny, slice of cheesecake – which comes as a good surprise if like me you’re not into Japanese desserts. We went pretty early on a Saturday night and the place was half full with a few very glamorous couples, so the mood was something of a classy sitcom. For an easy and satisfying diner this one is a no-brainer.

Rice & Fish
22 rue Greneta
75002 Paris

I don’t know if it’s because of the winter but I’ve been thinking a lot about comfort food lately.

If there need to be a definition of a comfort food meal it might be something like “suddenly you feel like you’re home, back from school, waiting for your mummy to bring your plate”. Now here’s a pretty girly proposition filling that mindset:  Milk, goes as a shorter version for “Mum in her little kitchen” –  the mum is named Deborah and what she has to offer is 5,50 euros dishes at lunch time, and a 20 euros full brunch that really has the taste of a Sunday from your childhood. You’ll enjoy things like a mixed beef, courgettes and mushrooms crumble, a salmon and ciboulette clafoutis, or a strawberry tiramisu, and suddenly the Abesses area will be way more fun.

Milk
62 Rue d’Orsel
Metro Pigalle/Abesses

Le Parc de la Vilette is a rising area for music in Paris. The most renown place might be La Grande Halle de la Villette, an infamous and patrimonial XIX century metal building, which was hosting the Pitchfork music festival not so long ago.

In the very north of Paris, the area around the park counts many locations to attend: Le Cabaret Sauvage, which has been hosting successful house parties and rock concerts. Le Zenith, its high capacity for 6000 people is targeting mainstream acts only. And La Cité de la Musique, a great institution and also a high-performance room with its very large movie screen and the ability to remove the seats to adapt the settings for every act – obviously when Steve Reich pieces are performed or the Contemporary Music Ensemble is playing, that is the least you need.

The new addition is named La Villette Enchantée, a club- bar (friendly prices) and restaurant with a nice Funktion One sound system and luminous windows, a place that offers an eclectic selection of parties on weekends and quickly becoming a kind of schoolyard for all the main promoters in the city. Check this out here!

It is a well-known thing that a secret gives more value. This is also true for restaurants. The best kept addresses are the best indeed. But secrets don’t mean anything if you can’t chose to share them with the people you care about. Golden Pat is one of these addresses where you can’t just go with anyone, because it’s nothing fancy. It’s not a bistro playing on the retro flavor: it’s a real, authentic, old-fashioned and pretty cheap restaurant.

So that excludes colleagues and first dates. You don’t want to feel off in front of the woman who runs the place with a mix of great care for the guests and severity toward her waiters including, apparently, her own son – who had a little too much to drink the last time I was there. So that excludes your most eccentric friends as well.

With your person of choice, you will share a bit of the tight table space, shoulder to shoulder with your neighbor, and eat one of the ten options of the dish of the day, including all the various traditional French specials, for 10,50euros. Don’t hesitate to ask for a nice glass of Côtes du Rhône (2 euros only) that will exhaust the taste of your beefsteak. And leave the place with a thankful smile!

Golden Pat
20 rue de Mazagran
75010 Paris

The neighbourhood around the Grands Boulevards subway station in Paris attracts a lot of tourists, but it is difficult to understand exactly why. Here is an alternative itinerary if you happen to lose yourself there. 

DON’T GO TO: the famous bistro Chartier. Okay, the place looks nice and traditional, but be careful, the food is mostly prepared from frozen meals. As a matter of fact, don’t go to any brassiere around this place neither. Remember you have an Indiana Café at home already.

RATHER GO TO: La Scala, a nice Italian restaurant, probably one of the few decent restaurants in this neighbourhood. Don’t be afraid of the hostile manners of the boss, he will get warmer as your lunch progresses, and anyway the specialties are worth it.

DON’T GO TO: Any theatre around. They are mostly about old fashioned boulevard comedies, nothing Broadway-like, plus there probably won’t be English subtitles.

RATHER GO TO: Le Beverley, the last pornographic movie theatre in Paris. The quality of the film doesn’t really matter, just to go there is a pretty special experience.

DON’T GO TO: All of the Irish-style pubs serving cheap pints. You didn’t really come here to enjoy the Parisian version of the European student exchange programs, did you?

RATHER GO TO: Rue du Faubourg St Denis. It is a short walk from these cheap pubs and you’ll find a more local and mixed crowd and maybe stumble upon Michel Gondry at Chez Jeanette.

When craving for an affordable and comforting lunch the options might not be so obvious in Paris: from the usual sushi place to the bistros charging nearly 15€ for French classic meals of standard quality. Let’s rather go for couscous. Here are the three places, each of them being the best in its own category…

The Champion: L’Homme Bleu.

Located in the 11^e arrondissement, its reputation is pretty much undisputed. The place is a bit small, but the portions are not! Last time I went, the French star DJ Laurent Garnier was there enjoying a meal with his family. All right, you have to pay the 15 € that get you to the superior category of meals, but you the money is worth.

The Good Friend: Chez Younice

Here you have a nice venue and you might want to take your time to have lunch and bring you own bottle of wine. Chez Younice is one of these rare places in Paris where you don’t pay extras to drink better wine – because it’s your own! – which will make perfect sense with the couscous or lamb tajine (my favourite), which is already of rare quality for 10-12euros. The perfect place for an informal dinner with friends.

The Canteen: Le Thorel

You go to this place like you get your feed under the table waiting for your mommy to bring the dish. The food is tasty, not frozen like in many of the restaurants of the area, definitely none of the nouvelle cuisine sophistication in here but the ingredients are served with generosity, and you can’t beat a 8,50€ menu (appetizer + meal of the day to choose from a large offer).

Nearly 90 years ago The Swiss Valley in Warsaw was perceived as the noble plain air location for concerts and cocktail parties. Surrounded by luxurious boutiques and embassies at the time was the place to be for the high-class Warsaw crowd. This neighbourhood had its triumphant return in the nineties and from then it has become, again, the best location for cutting-edge fashion and services.

There’s a place which is absolutly unique, Galilu, where all those memories of the beautiful past of the “Paris of the East” are still alive. An every girl’s delight, the minimalistic urban spa provides pampering and spiritual relief. A surprisingly small, but carefully selected choice of treatments is offered. Galilu has a peaceful and almost dream-like ambiance.

It’s a hole-in-the-wall restaurant found in the back alleys of Hongdae,  a district full of vinyl-spinning basement bars, shoe-packed boutiques, cook-at-your-table barbecue and hand-drip coffee. And yes, This is Chicken is definitely worth looking for.

A couple of years ago, you might have seen Ji W. Kim riding around Hongdae on a scooter delivering fried chicken. But he chose to start this place, a restaurant he can call his own, and with a grammatically unwieldy name to boot.

This is Chicken features a short menu, with Woody Chicken and Rude Chicken among its house specialties. There’s also beer on tap, to keep the customers spirited amid scratchy recordings of old reggae and ska music playing in the background. Named after the 2006 British skinhead movie This is England, this restaurant may seem like a Frankenstein of ideas stitched together– a Korean chicken restaurant, reggae, ska and British skinheads.  You might start to question your own sanity. What is going on here? What brings these random things together?

Simply put, Ji loves chicken. He’s fascinated by the culture portrayed in This is England, and he can’t get enough of reggae and ska. Rather than make a restaurant to suit other people’s tastes, he conceptualized one for the person he knows best: himself.

Will This is Chicken be a hit? Will customers connect with the owner’s eclectic and obscure vision? If you navigate through the back alleysof Hongdae and stumble upon this establishment, you’ll find Ji happily frying up chicken in the kitchen, listening to his favorite songs. Then you will realize that Ji has already achieved success in his own right– as he does what he loves best and plays by his own rules.

But you better order your chicken early, because This is Chicken is 86’d on all their stock almost every night.

There are many restaurants in Bogota, one opening every day, but out of all the innovative foods in this this city, I’m not afraid to say that Conosur (open since 2008) remains as one of the few that scores in all of the “must try” fields: it’s delicious, it’s affordable and it’s practical.

This small place is inspired in the Brazilian “Temakerías” but they use thin sheets of plantains as a temaki shell. And for dessert, they make cones out of Rice Crispies, which is an additional way of breaking the mold.

Your visit to this place has to end with a “Milo” brownie-Rice Crispies Cone. It’s as sweet as it can get, but completely worth it! They also have real temakis, but the fusion with standard Latin ingredients is what makes these extraordinary. You will find Ropa Vieja Cones, Chicharrón Cones and Ceviche Cones; imperative to try the 3.

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Conosur: El arte de comer con las manos

Hay muchos restaurantes en Bogotá, uno abre a diario, pero entre todas las opciones innovadoras que se trata de ofrecer en esta ciudad, no tengo miedo de decir que Conosur (2008) permanece como uno de los pocos que logran entrar en una opción proritaria a la hora de pensar en que sea: Delicioso, asequible y práctico.

Este pequeño lugar se inspira en las temakerías brasileras, pero la hoja de Nori es reemplazada por una hoja fina de plátano. Y de postre, hacen conos con Rice Crispies, lo cuál también rompe con el molde.

Su visita a este lugar tiene que terminar con un Cono de Brownie de Milo. Es bastante dulce, pero vale totalmente la pena! También tienen los típicos Temakis, pero es la fusión con ingredientes latinos lo que los hace extraordinarios. No dejen de probar los conos de Ropa Vieja, Chicharrón y Ceviche.

Ever since UNESCO named Mexico City’s downtown Humanities World Heritage in 1987, it has undergone a level of social, commercial and real estate boost, one that can only be compared with that of the second Count of Revillagigedo, in the late 18th century.

This recent boost has gone through different phases. The most recent one begins with the opening of a Grupo Hábita hotel, famous for its Polanco Hábita and more recently the American Hotel in Manhattan, amongst others, in the former house to the Counts of Miravalle, across from the magnificent Spanish Casino. The hotel, named Downtown, will open its doors in a few weeks. However, it has already received the Design Award from Wallpaper* magazine.

Besides the hotel rooms, Downtown will have three restaurants and a hostel, and will display Manuel Rodríguez Lozano’s mural El holocausto (1945) on its stairs, which was restored after decades of being neglected. It sucks that the second Count of Revillagigedo isn’t around to witness this beauty!

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Downtown: el nuevo centro en el Centro

Desde que en 1987 la Unesco le confirió el título de Patrimonio de la Humanidad al Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México, éste ha experimentado un impulso social, comercial e inmobiliario que sólo puede compararse con el que se vivió durante el gobierno del segundo conde de Revillagigedo, a finales del XVIII. Este impulso reciente ha tenido sus etapas. La más nueva se inaugura con la apertura de un hotel de Grupo Hábita –famoso por el Hábita en Polanco y recientemente por el Hôtel Americano, en Manhattan, entre otros– en la antigua casa de los condes de Miravalle, enfrente del suntuoso Casino Español. El hotel, que se llama Downtown, abrirá sus puertas dentro de pocas semanas. Sin embargo ya recibió un Design Award de la revista Wallpaper*.

Además de las habitaciones de hotel, el Downtown tendrá tres restaurantes y un hostal, y exhibirá en su escalera el maravilloso mural de Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, El holocausto (1945), finalmente restaurado luego de décadas en el olvido. ¡Qué coraje que el segundo conde de Revillagigedo no pueda presenciar esta maravilla!