Today, we found our new favourite Saturday lunch place - a Chinese restaurant run by Japanese owners that is about 6 minutes by foot outside the Louvre Museum. Take the Avenue de l'Opéra to Rue Sainte-Anne after you leave the Louvre. At 7 Rue Sainte-Anne, you'll find Lai Lai Ken, a cafeteria-style restaurant that serves huge steaming bowls of delicious ramen noodles and massive pots of hot tea.
The bowls of ramen are between 8 and 9 euros (11 euros for a menu - soup plus a main course or a main course plus a dessert). Despite the quiet and unobtrusive appearance of the place, the food is amazing (and served very quickly). We had the ramen noodles and ravioli with pork.
The place was full of locals (both Chinese, chatting in Chinese, and Parisians, chatting in French) so it obviously had street cred as both authentic and delicious. It was also amazingly filling. After we ate, we sat for about an hour happily digesting our food. Then we realised a line for tables had formed and our self-involved food coma was rudely excluding others from a culinary treat. We paid up and left.
We also decided that this place deserves a return visit on our next Louvre outing. Maybe after we've sampled everything on the menu, we'll consider trying other restaurants. read more