Last Sunday, I had brunch at The Blue Elephant, a Royal Thai restaurant in the heart of Bastille in Paris.

Bastille is a central east neighborhood of Paris. Today it’s a trendy district known for its nightlife, bars and nightclubs. Until the 18th century there was a medieval fortress prison, which Revolutionaries held down on July 14th, 1789.¬†It’s a significant symbol of French Revolution. Along with the Tennis Court Oath, the storming of Bastille is considered the starting point of French Revolution that overthrown French Monarchy and put the Republic in place. July 14th is the French national holiday, the pendant of US July 4th. Except for the Blue Elephant and small fashion creator’s boutiques, I am no fan of Bastille. I can’t figure out how people find the place charming. For me the district feels sad.

But, pushing the Blue Elephant’s door is like being Alice pushing a simple (glass)door and entering wonderland. The place is like a Thai garden. Everything is as sophisticated as only Asian cultures know how to make it.

It’s been the second time I had brunch here, and I was pleasantly surprised. Lots of restaurants have lowered their quality and raised their prices over the years. The trendier the restaurant becomes, the more expensive it gets, the poorer is the quality. It’s not the Blue Elephant’s case at all. It is as yummy as it was 3 years ago at my first brunch there. Actually, the Blue Elephant brunch is more like a buffet lunch with appetizers, thai soups, entr√©es and desserts. The choice is massive and it’s quite difficult to try everything out. Last time I was barely able to reach the coffee time. This time, I chose carefully what was really likely to stimulate my taste buds.

At the appetizer table, I shot purposely the vegetables only. The fried spring rolls and steam raviolis corner was too crowdy. With good reason. They tasted like freshly made: fresh vegetables and meat inside while most of the time I barely identify a whole dough with some stuffs inside. The shrimp salad on this pic was deliciously bittersweet and spicy. I mixed it with all the vegetables around: some soy bean, carrots, cooked mango (!), mushrooms and beets.

At the raw spring roll table. The sauce in the blue bowl was peanut based. Surprising!

Together with the crunchy carrots and soy bean sprouts, mushrooms and other not identified vegetables, there were shrimps wrapped inside the rolls.

The Thai soup was made on order of meat (choice of chicken, beef, pork, duck), asian vegetables, and those spices I added by myself. The red one was red chili, and the dark red one dried chili. The dark liquid was soya sauce I guess. In the middle was dried garlic. Peanut chips at the rear. Green vegetables at the front were large chives. As usual with Asian soups, I burned my tongue tip.

A large choice of entrées of meat, poultry, seafood or vegetables were available. At the rear of the pic are varied cantonese rice. I made my mind up on the cashew nuts chicken and oyster sauce beef of the front of the pic, and a coconut curry chicken (kinda washed green bird droppings colored so not pictured but beyond luscious).

I love love jasmine steam rice, white, free of supplement or cooking fancy. It was sitting on a steam pot and was smelling so good. Do you see the steam above the basket? Now guess the smell of it. Unbelievable.

The dessert was the part I liked the least. Caribbean cuisine has very poor desserts. I mean we have so many fruits all year long that there’s no need to create stylish desserts. I guess Asian cuisine is the same. The fruits were so tasteful. I found out a fruit we call in the Caribbean water apple I didn’t eat for aeons. It’s a pear shaped red fruit. The flesh inside is white and watery. It grows up on tall tall trees I used to climb up to harvest the rubis at the branch’s tips and eat them right away perched on my branch (It tasted better with efforts to get it. That’s no joke). The other cooked puddings¬†and alike were nothing great compared to the rest of the brunch.

Clearly, this chocolate mousse was a mistake. The small yellow thing beside was orange flower based and just funny to taste: sweet, between stringy on my tongue and elastic under my tooth.

Hey, Wait! You might also like

• The Blue Elephant brunch, London
• Pierre Herme, chef patissier
• Happa Teï’s Japanese cuisine

Author: Gaelle