Review: Boissonerie - Paris, France

What: Boissonerie (aka Fish)

Where: 69 Rue de Seine, 75006 Paris, France - In the St-Germain district (6ieme arrondissement)

Why: Cozy place with fantastic french country cooking right off the touristy section with a great wine list.  

Verdict: Highly recommended. Comfortable, easy going, you can get service in english, food was some of the best we had especially at the price. Get a reservation and be ready to spend the night there. 

Firstly I have to say how much I love the St-Germain des pres area. If you're visiting Paris for the first time, get a hotel here. It's so lively and fun with lots of great cafes everywhere. This find was by absolute luck on our part last summer. We were walking down rue de Buci which is busy with terrasses filled to the brim. Too busy, we keep walking. We get to a corner and look down, see a cute little sign of a fish. We walk towards it to see what it's about and see that there's a busy restaurant on this quiet side street. We pop our heads in and ask if they have a table, they did but with about 45 mins wait. We decide we might as well instead of walking around for 45mins instead. So we take a seat at the bar (window sill actually) and order a bottle of wine from the huge list they have. The bartender takes our order, walks out the front door and goes next door. This is where they keep their wine. 

Let's talk burgers!

If there's one place anybody should let their creative juices flow, it's while making burgers. Some people are traditionalists and that's good. Why mess with a good recipe right? Because it's fun that's why!

There are a few important things to any great burger so let's go through that and then we'll look at variations.

Cacio e Pepe: what's the big deal?

I have to say, I'm absolutely hooked onto this dish as if the main ingredient was crack. It's a simple, every day type of dish that is fairly light but also very pleasing. I would consider this something very cheap to make but with that being said, get GOOD ingredients. It makes all the difference in the world. The simplicity of the dish means you can taste every technique and ingredient, you can't hide under a heavy sauce.

Is this the 1,000,000,000th food blog?

What's the point of another food blog out on the world, I know. And to be honest I don't have any hooks or tricks. I'm just a guy that loves food and trying to replicate half the stuff I eat at home. I'd say I love many different types of flavour profiles (yes, flavour not flavor. I'm Canadian) but what I really care about is enjoying the meal itself.

In Montreal, there's certain foods we do well, and there's some that we fail miserably at. This is the same for any city really but if you're looking to travel here some of this info can be good to know. Let's see, I'd recommend french of course. There's the fancy 4+ courses with wine pairings which is always good, but the better stuff is bistro\brasserie style. French country cooking is just pure happiness. We also have excellent Indian food, Thai (although not cheap but moderately priced), Portugese and Italian (but not as much as most people think).