A pint-sized Venezuelan joint named El Budare has opened its doors this week in my neighborhood and I couldn’t be happier about it. We met the very nice couple – Paula from Venezuela and French-Réunionese Florian – when we stuck our noses in to check the menu last weekend, as they were busy setting up.…

It’s only mid-March and already “Sleeping Beauty” Bordeaux seems to be waking from her winter slumber, shaking off confinement, curfew and coronavirus like a bad dream. Despite 3 million currently infected in France and an excruciatingly slow start to the vaccine rollout, a 20°C sunny day will send hordes of Bordelais out to the Garonne…

Well, it finally happened. After 4 years spent living just 100 meters from TentaziOni, I finally decided I couldn’t survive another day without eating there. I had heard just about every one of my Italian friends praise the restaurant’s menu with a kind of passion they normally reserve for denouncing “pâte à la carbonara à…

I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Unmotivated, lethargic, unhappy. Stuck in an enforced hibernation in my lonesome Bordeaux bubble with a soul-crushing curfew, starving for places and faces, both familiar and new. I sometimes re-read my old articles about the street food of Mongkok, the asados in Argentina, the 18-course tasting menu…

One of my favorite new discoveries in the neighborhood is HEIKO on Rue Fondaudège, perfect for a quick solitary lunch on work-from-home Wednesdays. They specialize in poke bowls  and “sushi burritos” inspired by Hawaiian, Japanese and Mexican flavors. At 11.90€ a bowl and 10.90€ a burrito, this is a pretty great deal. (Considering the quantity…

“Wholesome” is how I feel on Saturday or Sunday mornings at Marché des Capucins with my bae. There’s something so therapeutic, so comforting about picking out one’s ingredients for the rest of the week, pointing at the avocado, the tomato, the radish that will make it into my weekday lunch, choosing the corn-fed, yellow-skinned poulet…

A ride together around the sun, a year spent building a home and then being confined in it. Our noces de coton. To celebrate our first wedding anniversary we decided to try out a restaurant that we had walked by many times on the olde Rue du Palais Gallien, one whose name we had said…

We didn’t stray far from home for our first restaurant meal after déconfinement. That 1km max running radius seemed to set in deep psychologically and for the first time we really opened our eyes to the many fantastic options on Palais Gallien. Yes, nearing Gambetta, it turns into kebab country and the suffocating odor of…

To be honest, I was barely there for this dinner at Madame Pang on New Year’s Eve, at the brink of the new decade. I arrived at the finish line for 2019 like an out-of-shape long-distance runner, dry-heaving but with a smile plastered across my face for show. “We made it!” 2019 was a busy…

Tucked away on a barely-there side street between the Quai de la Douane and Place Saint-Pierre is Porte Quinze, bistro gastronomique of Ivorian Chef Gilbert Okoin. With its modest capacity of just 20, the ambience is intimate, and the interior as discreet as the location. Light wooden surfaces, touches of taupe, grey and white here…