Brunch at the Blue Elephant, Paris

Soup with Vermicelli and Sliced Beef

Many moons ago I invited the Hub to the Blue Elephant on his birthday which was generous of me since in those days I was still living with a student mentality and had difficulty buying the need to spend a few hundred Francs on a Thai dinner. Nowadays of course in accordance with my glorified maid status I no longer bother with prices or at least if I do I would pretend that I didn't.

A few years later I had Sunday Brunch in said Thai restaurant with my Singaporean girlfriend MF and I remembered being happy with it though still whinging about the lack of Thai desserts as we know them in Asia (namely the steamed tapioca and tako that I just adore). At that time we paid 29 Euros per head. A few Sundays ago when I brought the Hub there to brunch using his funds, the price had gone up to 39 Euros. And still no Thai desserts as we know them in Asia.

But as I had expected, he was happy. The restaurant is situated in Bastille in a seedy but interesting street filled with lots of restaurants, bars and cafés. It's actually in some kind of cheap between-2-walls transformed into an exotic paradise with wood, bamboo, flora and fauna, a bridge and a pond. We arrived early and got a table on the mezzanine overlooking the buffet area and it was just perfect.

View from our table

The buffet consists mainly of a fresh salad station, a soup station (you choose your own noodles and ingredients and the cook prepares it for you), a starter section (e.g. satay, fried hors d'oeuvres, tim sum...), a main course section (e.g. different types of curries, stir-fry dishes, rice, pad thai...) and a dessert and fruit section. The quality is quite good and the selection while not as important as buffets come in Asia is OK, I guess, especially after years of living away from Asia. Unlike many Thai restaurants in Paris where the owners are usually Chinese of some sort, the Blue Elephant has a real Thai cuisine with a nice and gentle Thai service. I sometimes do wonder why Chinese waiters are usually so rude and impatient, though it doesn't mean that we are not good people as a race. Anyway I digress.

Soup Station

Salad Station

Dessert and Fruit Station

So the Hub was really happy with his brunch and I gained a few points in his book for that.

Blue Elephant Paris

43-45 rue de la Roquette

75011 Paris

Tel : 01 47 00 42 00

http://www.blueelephant.com/paris/index.html