Chef Stefano De Carli’s Guide to Eating in Paris

At his natural wine bar Trouble, Chef Stefano De Carli is all about pushing the envelope. His menu regularly features creative mashups like tempura-battered endive with citrus curd or ginger-glazed carrots with walnut pesto. And unlike at most natural wine bars, here, there are more copious offerings perfect for sopping up all that vino, with more-is-more sandwiches like spicy beef tongue kébab or a vitello tonnato cheesesteak. But when he’s not coming up with his next audacious offering, this Roman native is forever on the lookout for excellent comfort food, metal music, and more. And after nine years in Paris, he’s got more than a handful of go-tos.

Like many chefs, De Carli is not much of a breakfast person, though he admits he’s got a soft spot for the pain au chocolat at Chez Meunier.

“The feuilletage is really awesome,” he says. “And they also make a pain au chocolat with hazelnut praline. And for me it’s even tastier than the classic one.” 

 

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On Sundays, he’s not a stranger to brunch. “Usually we go for eggs and bacon and that kind of stuff,” he says. And while sometimes he and his girlfriend cook at home, they also make a habit of visiting Jim’s Corner. 

“It’s a pretty simple place, but they have good deals for the price,” he says, noting that his go-to is toast, eggs, and bacon paired with avocado, grape tomatoes, and halloumi. “It’s near the apartment, and when you wake up on a Sunday after the Saturday night, it’s the best place to go, I think.” 

 

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For lunch, he seeks out traditional Parisian staples. “I really enjoy places like Bofinger brasserie near Bastille,” he says, noting that while he’s still never tried their house specialty – Alsatian choucroute – he loves to dig into their omnipresent vol au vent with sweetbreads or seasonal chicken breast with morels. 

“It’s a little bit expensive for what you eat,” he cautions, “but as a place where you have the room and the service, it really makes you feel comfortable, and it’s generous portions. And I love generous portions.” 

 

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He also loves meat, something that’s clear from the more-is-more sambos on his menu – a boon for frequent fliers at natty wine bars who end up having to gorge themselves on bread to soak up all the booze. But while he’s no stranger to working with meat, particularly the offal that Roman cuisine is known for, he admits he rarely cooks it at home. Instead, he heads to spots like Café Riche, a traditional French restaurant in the 9th with an exceptional côte de cochon. 

“When I cook at home,” he explains, “it’s really simple stuff, you know, like vegetables, or as I’m Italian, it’s simple to do pasta, so we eat a lot of pasta at home.” 

He also eats quite a bit of pasta when he goes out – and he has loads of fantastic Italian spots in his back pocket. Chief among them is Passerini, the restaurant named for and run by the chef who drew De Carli to Paris. He recalls working in the kitchens of Settembrini, in Rome, and encountering Giovanni Passerini while collaborating on an event. 

“There was a trend, in Italy, where sous-vide cooking was the new avant-garde of meat cooking,” he recalls of that encounter, 15 years ago now. With Passerini, he says, “we saw that cooking meat in a traditional way, on the bone, a whole piece of meat was the thing to do. And that’s why I tried my best to go to Passerini, to do that kind of cooking.” 

After working for years at Paris’ Grand Pigalle Hotel, which was being run with Passerini consulting, he eventually went to work in Passerini restaurants “for real” for over three years. 

“It was kind of a dream to see what he actually did in his actual kitchens,” he says.  

These days, however, he admits he rarely dines at the chef’s restaurants. 

“I didn’t change my mind because of the restaurant,” he says. “I just don’t really like to go eat where I work or I used to work. But Passerini is probably the best one… the best restaurant in Paris to have Italian food.” 

He does, nevertheless, have other spots to scratch the itch.

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“When I’m looking for a tasting menu or a more fancy dinner, a place that I really love to go to is Dilia,” he says, characterizing chef-owner Luca Francesconi as a “gourmet grandmother.” 

“I love the way he’s able to mix a menu that can really be described as fine dining but make things in a way that’s just so tasty,” he says. “And you can really feel the Italian tradition.” 

For a more approachable alternative, the chef has a few pizza spots – and a caveat. 

“There’s some pizzerias in Paris that are good,” he says, “but most of them make Neapolitan pizza. And it’s not my favorite.”

 

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Instead, he prefers Roman pizza al taglio, something he hasn’t found mastered in Paris.  

“The actual pizza al taglio, you enter in the shop, you choose the size of the slice you want, and then it’s sold by weight,” he says. “In Italy, it’s cheaper and better. So the pizza al taglio in the Roman way is what I really miss.” 

That said, if he wants to scratch that itch, he’s found a fairly good replacement at Ave Pizza Romana. “It’s thin and crusty,” he says of the pizza, which he says is one of his favorites in Paris… though it’s narrowly edged out by Fratelli Castellano.  

“I don’t go there very often, because it’s near the Tour Eiffel, so it’s pretty far to go there,” he says, “but I think it’s the best pizza in Paris.” 

 

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When it comes to dessert, De Carli admits he doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth. But like any good Italian, he makes an exception for ice cream, specifically the gelato from Artigelato on rue Lafayette. 

“I think it’s the thing most similar to Italian ice cream in Paris,” he says, noting that you can always judge a good gelateria by the color of its pistachio. 

“When the pistachio is not green, it’s good,” he says. “Green pistachio in an ice cream maker is a red flag.” 

Come evening, he says he’s “not a Saturday Night Fever guy.” 

“I don’t like to go to dance, I don’t like to go to clubs.” 

 

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Instead, he’s got two ideal Saturday night plans. If he wants to go out, he’ll gravitate towards one of Paris’ many craft beer specialists, like are Liquiderie or BEER Paris. But perhaps even more than a bar, his ideal Saturday night is spent shutting the restaurant with the dregs of unfinished bottles that won’t last til Tuesday. 

“The kitchen is a pretty nervous ambiance, so you can have good teammates and a good relationship with your teammates, but there’s never a lot of time to talk about who we are as people,” he says. “And I think that Saturday night, after the service, drinking with the team, it’s a really good moment to see the actual people you are working with, which is probably one of my favorite Saturday nights.”