One Spoonful At A Time: Back to the motherland

Monday, October 25, 2010

Back to the motherland

I have been looking forward to this meal since well Saturday when a good friend of mine, Rebecca mentioned this Chinese restaurant that served hot pot (both spicy and normal). Now the only times I've had it was in Hong Kong and in Shanghai so was definitely looking forward to keeping warm, especially now that it's winter in Paris; and it was very good. From the outside, it's very misleading since near Les Champs Elysees (a 5 min walk from the restaurant) there are lots of Chinese restaurants, but once you walk in, you see only Chinese people (a. a good sign when entering a Chinese restaurant) and they are basically people from Mainland China (b. another good sign).

We decided to order a hot pot in 2-ways: spicy and not and it was delicious, served with all the goodies! They had an awesome sesame sauce, served with the usual herbs (parsley and spring onions, and a pickled garlic)

And the fixed menu came with a portion of mutton and beef, beef tripe, noodles (and we ordered more noodles), and we also ordered a portion of seafood. Basically the idea of hot pot is that they serve the broths on top of a portable stove top and you cook and serve yourself! Easy peasy!

Mutton, beef

Seafood

The simmering hot pots

Yummy cooked beef with bean noodles

In other words, it was super good and actually will come back for the other food we saw was being served, a very typical Chinese restaurant, not touristy or anything and it looked authentic!! Yay, finally!!

Le Bistro de Pekin

38 Rue Ponthieu, 75008
Tel: 01 42 56 12 34

Metro: Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the meantime, today in class we tackled grilled fish (in salmon and dorade - sea bream form), and also made the accompaniments.

1. Grilled salmon (finished off in the oven) served with sauce bearnaise (egg yolks and clarified butter mixed with a reduction of white wine, shallots, pepper and tarragon)