Hurray for traveling, but also: hurray for airports with sweet, stable and FREE (!) Internet connections. I have a brief interlude here in Kansas City on my way back from a reading, so I thought I’d tell you about a trip I took last month. After attending a desi wedding in Georgia (the American one!) I took the Delta nonstop to Paris (the French one!) for another wedding. And in France, I did a little desi-spotting, in the part of Paris known as La Chapelle.
So, in this blissful hiatus from the security line (as Kumar says, “random search, huh?â€), I bring to you tales of gastronomie and naan fromage!
I can’t pretend that I had an exhaustive look at La Chapelle—time did not permit—but you know me, I managed to eat. And take pictures. Neither can I pretend to be Preston Merchant, but I did try to get some of the signs that captured the French-Indien-Srilankhan (!) vibes.La Chapelle is the name of the train station nearest to this area. It’s somewhat connected to Gare du Nord, the hub for northbound travel out of Paris. The busy neighborhood is crammed full of stores: sari shops, restaurants, bookstores, translation services… Most businesses I saw were Tamil-speaking, with Tamil signs, and walking down the street, I heard snatches of Tamil with a distinctly Sri Lankan lilt. There’s a sizable Sri Lankan Tamil population in France. (Wikipedia says 100,000, most in Paris, and refers to the area as a “Little Jaffna.)
I heard more Sri Lankan Tamil when we ate in neighborhood restaurants. (We also ate at one Indian restaurant that was not in the La Chapelle area.) What did I eat? Well, the clear winner for novelty was my taste of naan fromage. My bite revealed it to be the gooey equivalent of Indien-French grilled cheese. (I suffer from that common subcontinental curse of mild lactose intolerance, so I limited myself to a bite, which was, frankly, sad.)
When I asked what kind of cheese it was, the person who had ordered it wrinkled her nose, grinned, and said, “Industriale?” But, she added, she still loves it. (She orders two naan fromage and chicken tikka every time.) Perhaps elsewhere the naan fromage is made with Roquefort or Camembert, but it would seem that in many places, it’s made with the French version of Velveeta. (Has anyone eaten it in the United States? I hear rumors of naan fromage on the West Coast but have never seen it in the U.S. myself. Neither do I remember seeing it in Singapore or Malaysia. Does anyone have a recipe?
Here is a video of someone making it, on YouTube.
I also sampled plenty of dosai. At one restaurant, I saw a distinction between Ceylon thosai—which looked like the plate-sized ones made by my mother—and regular or Indian thosai, or dosa, the mammoth ones I am used to seeing in restaurants in New York. I don’t remember ever seeing this in the U.S. either—at least, not at a place that also serves the Indian style. (Also sad. Ceylon thosai are good.) We also ate thaalis, paper dosai, biryani, lassis (rose and mango), vadai, banana blossom curry…
At this last I must note (again, with envy) the superior availability of the fruits and vegetables exotiques in other countries. Alphonso mangoes, mangosteens… Yum.
Below, a few pictures from the area. Preston… sorry, dude, I’m learning.
On the street.
SRILANKHAN!
ET SRI LANKAISES!
Some posters were still up from the anniversary of Black July. (See previous post about that here.)
More Black July posters. Can folks read the less obvious ones? I can’t—I think we were hurrying somewhere when I took them and they’re pretty small for my poor vision.
Fromage!
A translation service.
Specials of the day. At the bottom, in Tamil, they say they also have shrimp curry. Yum.
Great post! Sometimes the naan fromage is called “Cheese Naan” in English but with the Indo-French accent 🙂 . I’ve had it stuffed with a salty white cheese, too, something like a mild feta. Several restaurants around Paris claim to have invented it or claim it as a “spécialité maison.” That’s so impressive that you saw a place serving Kotthu Roti! We don’t even have that in Malaysia.
I like the top picture a lot…regal old french buildings harkening back to an earlier era in a very different France, now serving a new, entirely different (immmigrant) population and culture…I feel like the picture conveys much more than just its face value..
Panir naan, camembert puri, feta paratha, naan fromage d’affinois, Velveeta chapati, Amul naan, naan pecorino…my mouth is watering, my heart is thumping…
I understand all this all too well…
Great pictures! I would love to check this neighborhood out if I ever get a chance to go back to Paris. Last time I visited, the only Desi encounter I had was being swarmed by Hindi-speaking Souvenir salesmen at the Eiffel Tower.
Naan fromage is all well and fine. Try ordering a mattar paneer in France. One Pakistani restarauteur helpfully explained that the fromage had been mixed in. So the French know mattar paneer as this goopy mess with lots of frozen peas.
About the La Chapelle restaurants– If you are vegetarian, perhaps the best vegetarian in Paris can be had at Krishna Bhavan. It is good by the very low standards I use to judge subcontinental food in France. I’m just back from NYC. The dosas at Saravanaas on Lexington Ave are infinitely better.
If you are looking for Indian food, once again, your’re best off at La Chapelle. Much better than Passage Brady a few stops away on Line 4.
There is a French speaking desi population in France from Mauritius. Vikash Dhorasoo is a soccer player who played in the World Cup for France.
brownelf, hello 🙂 where there is a critical mass of Sri Lankans, there seems to be kotthu rotti. That wasn’t the only place I saw it… I’m surprised you can’t get it in Malaysia, but now that I think about it, I guess I didn’t see it anywhere there.
my_dog_jagat: pretty sure that one of the restaurants where I ate, and maybe the one that differentiated the Ceylon and Indian thosai, was Krishna Bhavan. Is it vegetarian? The restaurant I ate at first was vegetarian. The second was called Anjappa or something similar. (Didn’t take notes as copiously as usual.) I agree that Saravanaas does Indian dosa exceptionally well, but unless they start making pittu and Ceylon thosai, I’m going to have a certain affection for K.B. I did have reasonable saag paneer in a French restaurant, but I didn’t try any peaz ‘n’ cheez.
joolz: Lots of the Sri Lankan Tamils I met or heard speak in France were speaking Tamil and French, so yes, I think a good chunk of the desi population is French-speaking. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I didn’t realize there was a Mauritian connection, though! That’s kind of awesome about the soccer player… why is there such a large population of Mauritian extraction?
Mauritius used to be a french colony first before it became english.
Is there a trend in Tamil speakers immigrating to Europe? When I was in Barcelona there was Tamil everywhere…a friend of mine took me to the Asian neighborhood b/c she knew I was a big fan of all things desi-I still have my collection of newspapers I picked up there…one page would be Catalan, the other Tamil.
Nice post, VV. Made me really hungry.
Just wondering: with SM in your writing credits, why even mention rags like The Atlantic Monthly?
thanks so much VV. i’m going to be there in less than a month and this has revived my food tourism research!
Oh, to be fair, we do have versions of kotthu roti under different names. It may not be exactly the same thing, but “roti banjir” (literally: flooded roti) is somewhat similar — roti canai chopped up and drenched in curry. But the curry is different from the “authentic” kotthu roti I’ve had and sometimes they put all sorts of other stuff on top too (fish, hardboiled eggs…).
9 · Melissa said
yes, it’s the hip new destination for those wishing to avoid the hospitality of colombo
I am not sure if all the Tamils you meet in Barcelona are part of the SL diaspora. There’s a significant community from Pondicherry India in France and the Catalan region of Spain
There are also the Reunionese. They only look Tamil. They have been completely integrated, converted to catholicism etc. So now you have catholics practise Thai Pusan 🙂 There is nothing benign about French colonisation or imperialism. Yet everyday, I hear the French complain about how they have to fend-off the onslaught of English(using any means possible). Ah, French hypocrisy at its best.
Hypocrisy or not, at least they’re doing it! I give them full points for that. Although it is a shame how they annihilated all indigenous non-Standard French languages from their nation.
have you had “cheese de pain?”
whoops, that should be “cheese du pain.” yeah, have that yet?
I haven’t. Do explain!
17 · Kam said
once, when i had a sandwich with a 2 month old slice of kraft. the doc in the er told me that kraft doesn’t make blue cheese.
I’m currently in Russia (Moscow), the desi scene is virtually non-existent. There are 1/2 dozen Indian restaurants and smattering vegetarians ones. Russians are aware of Desis (Idiaaan), but has the feel of growing up in California in the 70’s. My girlfriend and I stared at where ever we venture, but people are nice.
As far as I can tell — there are absolutely no Dosas or Idlis in Moscow.
I live in Geneva, Switzerland now and recently went to an Indian restaurant here, unfortunately not the same diversity as Paris but not too shabby. Anyways restaurants back home (US) do have cheese naan but it’s usually filled with crumbled masala paneer, I was actually expecting something like that when I ordered the Naan Fromage, but no I got that gooey stuff too, but sorry it was a bit to wierd for my liking, and bland to boot. Maybe Paris’s fromage industriel is better then geneva’s 🙁
Amitabh @16:
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blockquote>
Hypocrisy or not, at least they’re doing it! I give them full points for that.
Dear Amitabh,
The idea is not just to remove Anglais(said with a sneer) from France. It is to impose French on everyone, everywhere. So which do you prefer, the English or the French? Or or … perhaps you’ll take Chinese?
My mother was a French teacher. I recently asked her why she learnt French? Well, she said, they made it so easy. They opened schools everywhere. (We lived in Nigeria back then). Then she closed her eyes and there was a pained expression on her face. I think she was recolleting all the humiliation she had to go through to get just the right French pronunciation. Something about putting a spoon in her mouth…
If there is a war, Anglais vs francais, I think I’ll be right at the front waving the Union Jack.
I”ve been to many of those Indian restaurants near Gare du Nord, and most were pretty forgettable. But in ordering the naan fromage, VV missed the bigger abomination–“plain naan”. At every Indian place, ordering plain naan meant getting naan with another kind filling. Any guesses at to what it was?
Mayonnaise.
Okay, it’s been six years, but the memory of that still makes me queasy…
Sugi, in the cultural melange of Paris, were you able to find a durian?
Absolutely, I agree with you 100%…I don’t even like French. All I meant was that I’m glad they’re protecting it within France. As far as imposing French on others, I would be totally against that.
oooh i love watching recipe videos even when I don’t understand a word ! :)))) thank god for food. that looks YUMM! thanks for sharing.
21 · sui__generis said
That’s very interesting. What are you there for? Work? Holiday?
If it’s for work, could I ask what line of work you’re in? I only ask because Russia is one of those countries I still have pictured in my mind as the backdrop to Yakov Smirnov jokes. I’m sure that it’s not the case.
Moscow is an impressive city. Think New York City, Washington DC and Paris rolled into one at twice the price. The metro is fantastic. You can sit across the Kremlin (a stone’s throw) and eat at McDonalds. If you like biker chicks and redheads wearing high-heels, Moscow is your place. We’ve been here for 2 weeks with a few a more days to go for work in the technology industry and have been impressed with city’s cleanliness, efficiency and restaurant selection (we’re vegetarian). It is, however, quite expensive — our hotel next to the Kremlin is $500/night. We’ve been to 3 Indian restaurants in the city, all of them quite good (and expensive). All the restaurants prepare food well in our experience. People are polite and store vendors are not at all pushy — service though is not a strong point. The selection of ultra, ultra high-end goods is off the charts. Reminds me of the John Lennon song Strange Days with my own verse (Everybody’s smoking, no one’s getting high / Lot of things for sale, nothing worth buying).
If you plan to visit Moscow learn to read Cyrillic, buy a Russian dictionary (few English speakers) and brings lots of cash. Russia has embraced Capitalism and Consumerism full force — riding the Metro you could easily be in NYC minus the ethnic diversity. There are a lot of folks from China in Moscow especially at Moscow State U and Technological university. Sushi restaurants are ubiquitous. People smoke like fiends.
Moscow is not at all what was expected, much better and more expensive.
On a completely random tangent…the diaspora photos by Preston Merchant are really really really really good.
btw, i think that the juillet noir photos could potentially fit into his collection. 🙂
Thanks, Lalita.
Koththu Rotti ( more of a Sri Lankan Muslim cuisine ) in Singapore/Malaysia is called as Murthabak. You can’t beat the Chicken Murthabak from the Arab Street ( near the big mosque ) restaurants in Singapore. If you don’t like the red hot pepper ( chili ) don’t even bother 🙂