2.3 stars.
Yes, I'll admit it - my "American" is flaring up again. I know you're not really supposed to ask for changes to the lunch prix-fixe menu. But really, when on the regular menu you have two versions of the same dish, one with meat and one without, and you've got the meat version on the lunch menu and your customer wants the veggie one, you can't accommodate? Really? Apparently not. So, my vegetarian-ness caused me to have to pay an extra 4€ for lunch. And, if we wrap our thinking caps around this one, we'll all probably come to the same conclusion - preparing a veggie meal is usually less expensive than preparing a meat one. But whatever. I'll move on.
So, this little area, situated next to the Pantheon, boasts quite a few Tibetan restaurants and shops. It's not an area of town you'd expect a little enclave like this, and I was intrigued. As my Friday French class at the Association Philotechnique is nearby, I had a few opportunities to scope out which resto would be my first, and this place won because it specifically said "vegetarian" on the menu. The ambiance is cute - Tibetan dolls and other "artifacts", which can be bought at the nearby shops, peppered the walls and shelves. The food, though, I wasn't feeling it. I've had Tibetan food - good Tibetan food - before in San Francisco. Perhaps this place was offering food from a different region of Tibet than the other place. But, I'm fairly sure that they don't grow iceberg lettuce in the cold mountains of Tibet. I'm still getting acclimated to how everything in Paris gets French-ified. Yes, the French love their lunch salads. But if you're eating at a Tibetan restaurant, don't you want to eat something, oh I don't know, Tibetan? All of this is to say that I found this place to be fairly inauthentic. Granted, I'm not Tibetan, have not been to Tibet, and really have no right to judge what is or is not Tibetan. Perhaps this is again the case of my American-ness getting in the way of my enjoying food in France. Regardless, I don't think I'll be going back here. But, it hasn't put me off so much that I won't try one of the other Tibetan places in the area. read more