We each got here to France in our 20s, considered one of us (Johno) for work at Activision and the opposite (Mashama) for a cooking college, and we each fell in love with Paris in our personal methods. After we bought the Gray in Savannah off the bottom, we talked about opening a restaurant in Paris. We got here to France to revise our e book, Black, White, and The Gray, and after a few months consuming out right here, we had been determined and began in search of house.
Now, we simply opened L’Arrêt within the seventh arrondissement. We’re nonetheless in that starting stage of making an attempt to get a staff collectively. We additionally opened in a really previous constructing — there’s been a restaurant right here for 100 years — and we needed to do quite a lot of renovations, because the final time it was renovated was within the early ’70s. We tried to maintain quite a lot of the spirit of the previous place, preserving and restoring the furnishings, the lighting, and the bar face. We’re additionally bringing American tradition and hospitality to Paris, and getting of us who grew up right here to purchase into that. There’s a relationship between Parisian meals, French meals, rural French cooking, and American Southern cooking. It’s not a small endeavor, although it’s a small restaurant.
As Parisians have been attending to know us, we’ve been attending to know our native eating group even higher and returning to previous favorites. Under are a few of the eating places we love — some that we eat at on a regular basis and a few that encourage our work at L’Arrêt.
We love the proprietor, Pierre Cheucle, at this little place on the Rue de Stanislas within the sixth arrondissement. He’s a personality and makes you are feeling so at residence. It’s a conventional, French, old-school-style bistro and showcases meals from Lyon. One of the best issues on the menu are the kidneys and the mustard sauce. The old-school French bistros love quite a lot of offal, so there’s some historical past there. When kidneys are executed unsuitable, they’re very metallic and form of make the filings in your enamel damage. However after they’re executed proper, they’re scrumptious, and Cheucle’s are scrumptious.
7 Rue Stanislas. Open from midday to 2 p.m. and seven:30 to 10 p.m., Monday by way of Friday; closed Saturday and Sunday
That is turning into like our bar from Cheers. We all know all of the waiters, they usually’re completely happy to have us as a result of we’re in the identical enterprise. They know we actually respect how arduous all people works. It’s the camaraderie. We’ll go there after service, late at evening, and order inexperienced salads, roast rooster, and steak frites. After which we’ll simply sit there till 2 a.m., till we’re the final individuals in as they break down round us. After a few glasses of wine, you’re kissing all people on the cheek goodbye. We love having regulars-status right here.
Professional tip: It’s at all times the identical guys serving. Once you get a job there, you by no means go away. It’s probably the most coveted jobs in Paris.
151 Boulevard Saint-Germain; midday to midnight each day
On Sunday mornings, we go to the market and simply purchase stuff for the fridge for the week. It’s nice attending to know the distributors, and after a couple of weeks you begin to see the identical individuals. All people loves the canine they usually get handouts as we stroll by way of the market.
Boulevard Raspail; Open Friday and Tuesday 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; closed Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Thursday
This place is simply across the nook from L’Arrêt. We attempt to eat within the neighborhood as a result of we’re a part of the neighborhood now, particularly locations the place we have now relationships with the possession. Ravi does conventional Indian, together with lamb saag, which is bomb. The proprietor is at all times there, so it’s a type of locations the place you at all times really feel at residence.
Professional tip: The chef makes huge, fats, meaty drumsticks which can be simply to die for.
50 Rue de Verneuil; Open from midday to 2 p.m. and seven to 11 p.m. Monday – Saturday; 7 to 11 p.m. Sundays
Le Bon Marché is a five-story shopping center with high-end shops and boutiques. It’s related by an airbridge throughout the Rue du Bac to the La Grande Épicerie de Paris, which is a meals corridor and tremendous high-quality grocery store. It has a counter the place you will get oysters and charcuterie, a bit devoted to foie gras, a fish part, and a cheese part. It’s the final word procuring expertise, and it has all the things you want on your life in Paris multi functional place. Two or three nights per week, dinner is cans of spicy sardines from La Grande Épicerie (purchase them by the dozen), half a baguette from L’Arrêt on the way in which residence after working late, a couple of hunks of cheese, and a few olives.
38 Rue de Sèvres; 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Saturday; 10 a.m. to eight p.m. on Sundays
La Tour Montlhéry – Chez Denise
This place is over within the 1st arrondissement by the Rue Saint-Denis, which is the red-light district. The parable goes that the eponymous Denise was a madam, and when she determined to go away the life, she opened this restaurant within the neighborhood. It was open 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and dealing women may eat at no cost.
Going there 40 years in the past, you could possibly go at 3 a.m. after an evening out on the bars to eat haricot de mouton, which is that this mutton and white bean cassoulet, and swill the home Brouilly, which they poured from huge casks on the entrance into huge liter bottles. Eat till 5 a.m. on a Saturday evening, go residence, and get up on a Sunday to learn the New York Occasions on the roof and nurse a hangover. The mutton is the previous haggard lamb. It’s actually gamey and unctuous, they usually prepare dinner it perpetually on the bone. As Jerry Seinfeld says, “Salad’s bought nothing on my mutton.”
Professional tip: Decide the mutton up along with your fingers, and dip the bread within the beans and the sauce.
Editor’s observe: The restaurant’s hours have since modified.
5 Rue des Prouvaires; midday to midnight each day
This brasserie is on an previous avenue simply off of Boulevard Saint-Germain. It’s cool and hip, and you’ll slip in there for sausage and lentils, or one thing like that.
6 Cour du Commerce Saint-André. Open from midday to midnight each day
This Pierre Gagnaire restaurant is an area pop-in for a bowl of pasta. There are 11 Michelin stars between his eating places. Piero is that this place on the Rue de Bac, and it’s his tackle an Italian restaurant. The menu may be very seasonal, together with the pastas, that are at all times nice. Proper now, he’s bought this tremendous skinny spaghetti with a spicy tomato sauce. The French don’t actually like spice as a normal rule — and this shit is genuinely scorching — however he’s getting away with it. He simply places collectively a very good bowl of pasta.
His staff is nice; it’s all Italian guys. We’ll poke our heads in on a Saturday afternoon and ask to seize a couple of seats on the bar at 8 p.m. The bar’s solely three or 4 seats, however they’re at all times welcoming to us. It’s an attention-grabbing dichotomy to have entry to a chef with a number of Michelin-starred eating places in a neighborhood place. They’re at all times packed and at all times type. That’s hospitality in a very great way — and then you definately get actually wonderful meals on prime of it.
It’s the form of restaurant we wish L’Arrêt to be: a spot individuals need to go, however there are at all times spots for the regulars. That’s a cultural factor you construct.
Professional tip: The tuna and seafood crudos are at all times attention-grabbing. Gagnaire’s bought this langoustine and beet crudo in beet jus that’s simply phenomenal. It sounds bizarre, and when it hits the desk, it seems bizarre, nevertheless it’s rattling scrumptious.
44 Rue du Bac; midday to 2:30 p.m. and seven:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday by way of Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday
This text is drawn from an interview. It has been edited and condensed for readability.
Mashama Bailey is the chief chef and co-founder of the critically acclaimed the Gray in Savannah, Georgia, and L’Arrêt by the Gray, a neighborhood bistro in Paris’ seventh Arrondissement. She received the 2022 James Beard Excellent Chef and 2019 James Beard Greatest Chef: Southeast awards.
John O. Morisano is a multifaceted creator, speaker, and restaurateur working on the intersections of hospitality, arts and tradition, city growth, and social transformation. Together with chef Mashama Bailey, he’s co-founder and co-owner of Gray Areas, the hospitality and life-style model behind the Gray Savannah and L’Arrêt in Paris.
