Paris – Maison de Chengdu

After visiting Montpellier, Carcassonne, and Toulouse, we ended up where we started, in what is probably our favorite city. And this time, to make things a bit more interesting, we would be staying in Paris for two weeks, where we could really get a feel of actually, just like a popular travel and television personality says, being a "temporary local". The results would be interesting.

I got us an apartment in the 3rd Arrondissement, on what I thought would be a pretty busy street. But it turns out that this portion of Rue Réaumur was pretty quiet.

It was what I consider a typical Parisian apartment, on the 2nd (that would be 3rd floor by American standards) floor, no lift, cozy, comfortable, with a washer, kitchen, just steps from the Arts-et-Métiers metro stop, and there were no less than 3 Boulangeries within a block of the flat! Man, talk about living the life.

I always create Google Maps for when we travel and this one looked especially "busy"……

Well, part of staying so long in one place would mean having choices in terms of cuisine. While doing a bit of research in the area, I found several Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants within a block and two Boba shops on the same block. This is the Marais mind you! I also noticed a couple of Wenzhou style restaurants and was wondering why that was. In digging into that a bit, I found that the first Chinese to migrate to Paris were from Wenzhou in 1876. And many settled in the Arts Et Métiers area, basically right where we were staying. Of course, over time gentrification has changed things and the now the 13th Arrondissment is considered Paris's "Chinatown" or more appropriately "Quartier Asiatique".

We had already been traveling for two weeks and were ready for some Chinese food. After looking thru things, I selected Maison de Chengdu. The state of Sichuan food in San Diego is pretty sad these days so I thought we'd see how this place matched up.

The place is a tiny hole in the wall and the dining area takes up two floors. Those guys you see waiting outside are food delivery folks. This place does a huge volume of takeout and delivery.

The customer base is interesting about 50-50 Asian to non-Asian and the staff speaks both Mandarin and French.

Looking over the menu, we decided on what we wanted and the Missus placed our order. Which started (of course) with a TsingTao.

First dish to arrive was our favorite; the Intestine Dry Pot.

Man, this was the best Sichuan I'd had in a while! The pork intestine was crisp and full of porky-offalness! It had decent, but not overwhelming spice, and we got a good "buzz" from the Sichuan peppercorns. The Missus really enjoyed the potatoes which had a nice starchy-sweetness magnified by the ma-la flavor. We enjoyed this dish so much that we returned two more times (heck it was almost across the street) during our stay.

The Eggplant was nicely cooked as it basically melted in your mouth.

But was overly sweet.

The Shui Zhu Niu Rou (Water Boiled Beef) was tender.

But was lacking balance in terms of savory tones (garlic – Doubian Jian – Soy), "Ma" (numbingness from the Sichuan peppercorns), and oil (too much). It was not bad and better than what we'd had in Paris before.

Still that intestine dish would keep us coming back two more times!

Maison De Chengdu (古味成都)
16 Rue Volta
75003 Paris, France