When Tess Duteuil and Geoffrey Belin signed on their soon-to-be restaurant in the 20th, they found a stubborn sapling breaking through the sidewalk outside their front door. They named their restaurant Paulownia after the tenacious tree.
It’s so fun to watch things bloom over time. In the case of Paulownia, it’s been great to watch the restaurant and its namesake tree both reaching and growing across several seasons.
Our first visit on a frigid winter night kicked off with some complimentary parmesan twists while we looked at their chalkboard menu. It concluded with an all caps emphasis: HOMEMADE - GOOD INGREDIENTS.
They didn’t need to write that - it was obvious in every bite.
This dish - buttery puff pastry wrapped around a luscious hot pork paté with pickled mustard seeds - was one of the best things I ate in 2023.
I’m not sure how this dish of mussels qualified as “minestrone,” but it was delicious.
Their take on the meatless standby of “perfect egg plus stuff” (in this case, shitake mushrooms, spinach and parmesan cream) made my vegetarian friend very happy.
The vegetarian main was also pretty special - a millefeuille of winter vegetables with cream sauce. It’s not a shock that this couple, who met while working at Arpège, have a way with fresh produce.
My personal favorite dish was the barbue (brill) with beurre blanc and squid (above), but this duck dish was also unforgettable:
Desserts like this chocolate millefeuille were fun, and I don’t mind that they’re using a lot of ingredients (puff pastry) throughout the entire menu. Others may find that lazy, but I think it’s smart.
As much as we loved the food - and we really did - it was the joyful service and superb wine recommendations from Duteuil that made us want to return. And return we did.
I went back a few weeks ago and found the restaurant full (there were only a handful of tables on our previous visit), with sunlight filtering through the giant green leaves of the Paulownia tree.
The menu was very similar: the hot porky pâté, perfect egg, vegetarian millefeuille, duck, and brill were all still there. The accents and accompaniments had changed with the seasons, but they do seem a little skittish about venturing beyond the tried and true.
So I was obliged to repeat dishes, but thankfully they were dishes I already loved. Something new this time around was this agneau pré-salé - lamb raised in the salty marshlands around Mont Saint-Michel. Served with fava beans and charred alliums, it was just perfect for the season.
And speaking of seasonal, the dessert millefeuille was reinvented for late spring with strawberries and hazelnuts.
If you’re willing to get out of the center (and quite honestly, you should be), consider a visit to this scrappy and sincere bistro near Nation. The crowd is local, the produce is impeccable, the service is sweet. It’s the kind of place I hope to return to again and again. Hopefully with a few new dishes to try.
PAULOWNIA
15 Rue des Vignoles, 75020
Open Tuesday-Saturday for dinner only
Closed Sunday & Monday
Reservations at +33 9 78 80 48 59
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9944081d-f21e-4346-a5fa-d6059cd5590a_2560x1440.jpeg)