My friends and I were greeted with ominous skies and chilly temps our first evening in Paris, so…read morewhen we happened upon this place, the photos of steaming bowls of ramen and udon won us over! We didn't know it at the time, but there is a plethora of Japanese-style restaurants all over Paris, in case you're feeling so inclined. I say "style" because a lot of these place don't seem very authentic and are owned by other Asian ethnicities. Sure enough, the young woman who greeted us as we entered the restaurant was Chinese, and the picture of the udon that enticed me had bean sprouts and slices of salmon sashimi in it, but I still went for it! I immediately ordered some hot green tea and it came to us SCALDING hot, fyi. I love my hot beverages really really hot but this was a wee bit too hot, even for me. I ordered the tempura udon (with its salmon sashimi slices) and you know what? It wasn't bad at all. It had that good familiar udon soup flavor and the noodles were cooked fine. The tempura was lightly fried, not too greasy, and the sprouts and salmon sashimi slices, while unusual, were fine. My friends' food took a really long time to come out though, so I don't know what that was all about (they'd ordered yakitori combos and the skewers took forever!). I had a satisfying, reasonably-priced meal here and really, sometimes that's all you can ask for in such a touristy area. STEPH JUDGEMENT: An OK option for Japanese-style food near the Notre Dame area.

Zenyama is now called Chez Wang (a part of the sign says Zenyama, the other part says Chez Wang)…read moreand they serve Chinese food already made in trays by weight. They also have soup noodles that they will cook when you order it. Their wifi username still says "Zenyama". For a simple takeaway (take out) place where you go get grub to fill your belly, I did not have high expectations. But what I saw appalled me. We ordered noodle soup and the woman at the counter (seemed to be the owner), screamed when the food elevator came up with the food. Apparently our noodle soup bowls spilled and got everywhere. Instead of getting us new bowls of food, she SCOOPED the spilled noodles and ingredients on the tray back into the bowls. That's a definite NO! She thought I didn't see it and wanted to pretend nothing happened. Funny, if she didn't scream earlier, I wouldn't have paid her any notice.. Second, we also ordered the summer roll they had out on the counter. I had a bad feeling about it after thinking about the spilled noodle incident. Yup, the shrimp in the summer rolls were SOUR. Third, the food trays they had out were NOT refrigerated. Maybe they do things different here in France and so there are not health food code violations for not keeping the food at a certain temperature but that's another no in my book. Fourth, they overcharged us for our food. Idiots thought I can't add? Seriously, getting a couple extra euros was worth it to you? Lastly, the bathroom was appalling. If there is a correlation between the state of the bathroom and the state of the kitchen, I can only hope I won't be hugging the porcelain king tonight. Dear Yelpers, stay FAR away from this place!