Cutting loose
Mischief (3rd arr)
RESTAURANTS • First Person
After scoring a big hit with Reyna, chef Eric Paredes’s first restaurant (and the one that introduced the succulent but little-known cooking of the Philippines to Paris), Paredes has decided to have some freestyle fun in the kitchen at Mischief, her aptly named new place in the Sentier.
Heading here for dinner the other night, I couldn’t help but musing on how the international restaurant scene in Paris has blessedly grown so much better than it was when I moved here in the ‘90s. Back then, I yearned for food that wasn’t French. I have a passionate love of French cooking at all levels of the Gallic food chain, but missed the cosmopolitan keyboards of gastronomic pleasures of London and New York I’d left behind.
Fast forward, and Paris is heaving with excellent non-French tables, as a new generation of French diners has shed almost any trace of the culinary chauvinism once the bedrock of Gaul’s gastronomic identity.
When I reached Mischief, I could see through the two big picture windows in the quietly chic terracotta red-tiled façade — a minimalist dining room with red décor and a sleek stainless steel bar surrounding an open kitchen. That dining room was rammed with members of this new, younger tribe of Parisians, an excellent sign for a restaurant that opened in late September. This was clearly a word-of-mouth success with a lot of momentum.
When I met my Philippine friend Maria from Berlin, she was ecstatic from having studied the menu for the 10 minutes she’d spent waiting for me. A huge fan of the fully flavored Philippine cooking that Paredes does at Reyna, she described the chef’s menu as being sort of like a gastronomic jam session between Miles Davis, Bad Bunny, and Mariah Carey. On her Instagram, Paredes herself dubs her cooking at Mischief as “deliciously disobedient.” Well, I was intrigued, so we ate. And we ate.
We devoured a Hainan burrata, the creamy Italian cheese topped by sweet and savory kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), ginger sauce and chili oil. We wolfed down onion soup lumpia, a ruddy avalanche of allium richness in a beef broth garnished with Philippine spring rolls (lumpia) and lamb pho, pressed lamb with pho sauce and Vietnamese chimichurri.
Paredes has said “knowing the rules helps you know how to break them.” This joyous and judicious iconoclasm is what makes Mischief such a fantastic restaurant. Where else in Paris are you going to find dishes like artisanal SpaghettiOs — a nod to America’s deep culinary imprint on the Philippines — its tomato sauce boosted by anchovies and bone marrow? Or squid ink linguini with a sauté of squid and aioli? Or a Japanese mochi made with cornmeal and dressed up with corn foam, a caramel-butter sauce and popcorn?
Welcome to Paris in the 21st century, and get ready for some funky fun in the kitchen. The French are finally loving a walk on the wild side. –Alexander Lobrano
→ Mischief (3rd arr) • 25 Rue des Gravilliers • Tue-Sat 19h-23h30 • Book.