Philippine cuisine takes on Paris
Let’s be frank and honest. Philippine cuisine has never rated highly on the global gastronomical scale.
But Filipinos are a feisty and irrepressible bunch. Even in France, a country notoriously difficult for doing business, Filipino enterprises are popping up everywhere — especially restaurants, cafes and sari-sari stores.
Reyna is perhaps the most well known Filipino restaurant in Paris. Its “twice-fried chicken”, a creation of chef Erica Paredes, was even recognised by the New York Times, as one of the 25 Essential Dishes to Eat in Paris.
The New York Times writes — “At Paredes’s 33-seat restaurant, with its concrete walls and pink-and-gold accents, the wings come in either three- or five-piece portions and you’re instructed to eat with your hands. Paredes, who studied at Le Cordon Bleu and has been cooking in Paris for seven years — both for chefs like Joël Robuchon and at private homes — has taken the techniques she learned at school and infused them with the Filipino ingredients she knew from her upbringing in Manila. “The more I put myself into the food,” she says, “the more people liked it and the happier I was to cook.”
How could a Filipino restaurant like Reyna get started?
Before becoming a restaurant, Reyna was a weekly gathering at Erica Paredes’ apartment in 2017 with her business partner Cyrille Marc. Every weekend, they welcomed guests for dinner who didn’t know each other, to eat good food and meet over a bottle of wine. Thanks to Instagram and word of mouth, their notoriety has grown. In 2018, following numerous requests, Erica started doing pop-ups in Parisian restaurants.
Another excellent Filipino restaurant is BOBI.
BOBI mainly serves traditional Filipino dishes like Adobo, Bicol Express, Kare Kare, Tinola, Monggo, and Kinilaw. But as BOBI’s owners, Jessica and Aurélie, note Filipino cuisine is considered one of the oldest “fusion” cuisines in the world. It’s a medley of different influences : Spanish, Chinese, Anglo-Saxon. Then come the ingredients specific to the Philippines such as purple yam, calamansi or sugar cane vinegar. This is living proof of the cultural richness of the archipelago.
Philippine cuisine is also full of diversity. There must be as many islands (more than 7,640!) as there are recipes for the same dish! Like adobo, the restaurant’s signature dish. BOBI was founded at the end of 2019 and amazingly survived Covid.
Jessica and Aurélie have also opened a nice Filipino cafe, “KAPÉ”, just around the corner from BOBI.
Filipino restaurants don’t stop there. Here are some others, with plenty more information on the Philippine Embassy website:
Adobo, 96 Rue de la Faisanderie, 75016 Paris
Double Dragon, 52 Rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris
Gem la Pâtisserie Paris, 1 Rue de Marivaux, 75002 Paris
Lala’s Kitchen & Restaurant, 12 Rue Léon Cogniet, 75017 Paris
Le Servan, 32 Rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris
Pot Pot Philippines Street Foods, 167 Rue Legendre, 75017 Paris
Rooster Asian Grill, 8 rue des Frères Lumière 92110 Clichy, France
SAKUSINA, 26 Av. du Général Leclerc, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt