Le Temps des Cerises on La Butte-aux-Cailles
So you’ve been in Paris for awhile and you still haven’t met any Parisians to tell your friends about when you get home, well fear not. There’s a restaurant in the 13th arrondissement where you can rub elbows with the locals; and when I say “rub elbows” I’m not exaggerating!
Le Temp des Cerises is a worker’s co-operative restaurant run by a number of people all taking turns doing different jobs. The atmosphere is congenial, where you’re treated more like an old friend rather than a customer. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine invited me to have dinner there and I thought she knew the guy who greeted us. (When you “tutoies” someone, you usually are friends, but this wasn’t the case.)
We were seated,… well actually we squeezed ourselves into our seats next to diners on both sides of us, and as I said before, we were literally rubbing elbows with our neighbors. As for conversation, you can’t help but eavesdrop in such close proximity, so it’s easy to begin chatting with everyone else around you. No, this is not a restaurant where you want to have an intimate romantic dinner!
The food was good, the service friendly, the wine excellent; I would hope so for 28 € a bottle. But what I really discovered was a great quartier. I must admit, the 13th arrondissement is not my usual hangout, but this “little village” made up of a couple of streets, mainly the Rue de La Butte aux Cailles and Rue des Cinq Diamants are a real find. There are a number of shops, restaurants, and bars on this little hill that students and locals frequent. As I hopped on the back of Odri’s scooter it was starting to drizzle, but I was thinking, it’s definitely a place I want to explore further.
Le Temps des Cerises
28-20 Rue de la Butte aux Cailles
tel. 01.45.89.69.48
Mon-Sat: 11h45 - 14h15 & 19h30 - 23h45.
M°: Corvisart or Place-d’Italie
(No reservations and no cellphones. I guess they figure there’s enough talk going on between customers, they don’t need phone conversations to add to the cacophony!)
Photo Credit: La Lune
Paris, FRANCE
February 15th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I was young and I was in Paris…it was about 1980…someone told me about this restaurant end I went there with a friend of mine who, also being of Paris, did not know the place. We had great time…since now I think most things have changed…once there was not co-perative but the photo posted is saying something to me. I have been in Paris other times but I never came back to this restaurant…now that I writing about it….may be……
March 10th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Marina, what’s nice about Paris is that although many things have changed so much, there’s still a lot that has remained the same; I think that describes Le Temps des Cerises as well.