Serious Eats
Best Lunch in Paris?: Shakshouka at La Grande Mosquee de Paris
It was the cheapest thing on the menu and also something I meant to eat in Israel last summer but forgot, so the shakshouka was my obvious lunch choice at the Paris Mosque café. With one egg perfectly poached in a liquidy sauce of spiced tomatoes, peppers and onions, the dish was everything I could have hoped for in a light lunch. It also came with a basket of white bread with nigella seeds - my favorite seeds ever - for dipping and mopping. On top of all this, the waiter, who kept calling me "princess," didn't charge me for the hazelnut cookie I had for dessert because I was "so charming." The one downside to the meal was the flock of birds that kept trying to eat my cookie (my table was in a courtyard). Fortunately the cookie quickly disappeared, and the birds followed suit.
Restaurant de la Mosquée de Paris
39 rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 75005, 5th Arrondissement, Paris, France (map)
01 45 35 97 33
Open daily, 12 to 3 p.m. and 7 to 10:30 p.m.