Some recommendations of restaurants, bars, caffees, pubs in Paris, all tested by us. The list is constantly updated, based on our travels.

The 18th district is known as being mainly an Arab district, which means that the Arab culture is visible all around. We started our walk with a short stop at a small street food place to try the Algerian pizza – pizza dough with anchovies, olives and tomato sauce. Next stop was again an Algerian fast food place to try Garantita, an Algerian food, which is a sort of pudding made from chickpeas flour, water, salt and oil, baked and seasoned afterwards with cumin and harissa paste.

Right under the Barbés-Rochechouart metro station, every Wednesday and Saturday there’s a food market. With everything you need, from vegetables, fruits, to cheese, meat and fish, spices and any other stuff people from the neighborhood are in search of. For a few hours in the morning this place is full of people doing their weekly shopping. It’s also a good place to try out the Sfenj, an Algerian doughnut.

After walking a bit around the streets, we stopped for a quick lunch at Sidi Rached, to try, among others, mechouia – an Algerian roasted peppers, chilies and tomatoes. Plus some kebabs made on charcoal and a lentil soup. The cool thing about doing this tour with Guillaume (716lavie.com) is that he is very passionate about simple, quite affordable and authentic restaurants and places to eat out. So he’s constantly in search of these kind of places, always testing, exploring and recommending the good ones.

In the afternoon, we had a few drinks up on the terrace of the Louxor Bar and headed for dinner at an amazing Ethiopian Restaurant, Abyssinia. As Paris has many international restaurants, we decided to pick some that we don’t necessarily find in Romania and to try some of the countries we never had before. Ethiopian was for a long time on our list, but it had to wait until Paris. Guillaume had previously tried this place out for many times and it was an excellent recommendation. For us it was a true delight to try the Ethiopian cuisine and their delicious coffee – it opened our appetite for more.

Our late lunch stop for was Restaurant Mây Hồng, in search of the perfect Pho soup. Guillaume had been doing tours in the 13td district for a long time, but he only found this place only a couple of years ago. Since then, he’s a loyal customer. They use quality ingredients for their menu and they cook the Pho the traditional way, taking more than 8 hours to finish the process. For us, the food was excellent, and exactly what we needed after a full day of walking.

Ground Control – super cool place to hang out on a good weather, with a nice and big outside terrace and with lots of options for food and drinks. Also inside, there are regular events, including flea markets, designers stores, concerts and many others.

La Mechanique Ondulatoire – a cool bar, open until about 2AM with new wave, punk, post-punk music, in the Bastille area.

Maille Mustard shop – for getting some very tasty mustard with all sorts of seasonings, from classical, to honey, walnuts, garlic, basil and others.

Coureurs de Terroirs – for a very good selection of natural, organic wines, some at quite affordable prices for a high quality.

La Ferme Saint Hubert – for cheese heaven.