Eating With Kids: II

Published: 10 April 2009 by John Talbott 582

For a week this month, Colette and I hosted two of our ten year old grandchildren in Paris. Both have visited before, both are trying to be more adventuresome palatewise and both are incredibly well-behaved.

Unfortunately, they labor under the cloud of their elder sister and cousin respectively – a terribly adventuresome eater whom I took to mainstream Paris restaurants when she was just three and who was game to try everything from oysters to tarts.

I read somewhere that kids will eat almost anything if it is presented to them three times or so and while many posters on the food websites insist they don’t alter their eating habits for their kids’ sakes, others look to compromise a bit.

I draw the line at the American places (ie McDo’s), Americanized chains (Buffalo Grill, Hippopotamus, Quick) and ethnic places serving pizza, pasta, Indian, etc., cuisine since they get plenty of that back home.

Thus during this week, we eased in by trying crepes and soufflés at the Breizh Café + Le Soufflé, did go back to Leon de Bruxelles which they’d enjoyed 2 years ago and on the weekend broke our ethnic ban by going to Lao Lane Xang 2 + Noura.

At Versailles, after a trudge out to the Petit Trianon, Colette didn’t want to return to town where we usually eat, so we tried out La Flotille, which was really not a great idea in retrospect and we also followed an eating pal’s suggestion to eat at a glitzy old brasserie and Bofinger also wasn’t that good.

But all in all I had some fine food eating at such places: I recall with fondness my crepe Montagnard, my three soufflés, the fish and chips, everything Laotian and the Lebanese desserts.

The following are my top picks for kids:

Breizh Café

109, rue Vieille du Temple, 2nd (Metro: Filles du Calvaire)

T: 01 42 72 13 77

Closed Tuesdays

A la carte 15-30€

Le Soufflé

36, rue du Mont Thabor, 1st (Metro: Concorde)

T: 01.42.60.27.19

Closed Sundays

Menus: 23, 29.5 + 33, a la carte 30-60 €

Lao Lane Xang 2