Young Parisians and expats shaking up the food scene

When I first visited Paris 15 years ago, the last thing I expected to see served in a restaurant was a pickled onion. Now, sitting in The Sunken Chip in the city’s hipster Canal Saint-Martin district, I watch as waiters spoon out onions from a huge jar of this British pub staple.

The young patrons crowding the three small tables at Paris’s first dedicated fish-and-chip shop have no lurking teen associations about the onions – nor about the mushy peas that also accompany their battered hake and thick-cut chips. “The onions are really popular,” says co-founder James Whelan.

Young people in Paris have acquired a taste not just for British fast food but for modish fare from all over the world. A glass of wine on the café terrace is no longer enough, nor are the brasseries stuffed with cheese, charcuterie and, worst of all, their parents.

During the past five years Parisians in their late twenties or early thirties have been drawn to bars and restaurants that tap into the trends emerging in London, Berlin and New York – albeit with a French touch. Speakeasy bars, food trucks, posh burgers, elaborate cocktails, kimchi, gluten-free food and monoproduct stores are just some of the concepts taking off.

“Young Parisians are travelling more, working abroad more, learning English more,” Michael Greenwold, The Sunken Chip’s 29-year-old co-founder, tells me over lunch. “They see what is happening in Williamsburg and Berlin and want the same thing.”

The drivers are the long-term shift in economic power away from Europe, the international dominance of the English language – and the 25 per cent youth unemployment rate in France.

A survey last year in Le Point found that half of 18- to 34-year-olds were looking to leave France for work, often heading to Berlin, London or New York. An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 French people now live in London.

Increasingly, an international outlook is part of the job for those employed in France at the big companies. “For years, speaking bad English was a political statement, a way of showing support for France,” says Felix Marquardt, co-author of the controversial Barrez-vous! campaign and book which encouraged younger people to “break free” of France. “Kids today don’t care about that – they just want to succeed.”

Santiago Michel, 27, graduated five years ago. Soon after, he left France to work in Mauritania and Oman for Newrest, the French business catering group. Now, he is back in Paris and has just opened his own burger restaurant, La Factory, with a group of friends. “For too many years, Paris has been filled with bad brasseries where you are handed huge menus – all of which look the same – by snobby waiters,” he says over drinks at Le Mary Céleste, which does a kind of eclectic tapas with a Chinese touch. “But it’s changing.”

They see what is happening in Williamsburg and Berlin and want the same thing

Eva Jaurena, 26, spent four years in England running a cinema. She returned to Paris to build an organisation called Ernest that encourages restaurants to give to charity. “Among my friends we really want lighter food, fusion food, healthy takeaways . . . More and more of these places are springing up across Paris,” she says.

Two of the most pronounced trends in Paris are the food trucks and the high-end burger. Neatly exemplifying both is Le Camion Qui Fume, Paris’s first food truck.

It launched in 2011, since when hundreds of other gourmet burger joints have sprung up, such as Paris New York, Blend and Big Fernand.

One lunchtime in mid-August, when Paris is largely empty, I join a full 40 people queuing outside the Le Camion Qui Fume truck. “It’s the best burger in Paris,” Helena Munvera tells me while we wait. Twenty minutes later I order the blue cheese burger with coleslaw for €10.50. It’s delicious.

Another clearly foreign-influenced trend is the “secret” cocktail bar, such as Candelaria, where you have to shuffle through a hot Mexican kitchen to get to the elaborate €13 drinks.

Cocktails hardly existed in Paris before the Experimental Cocktail Club opened eight years ago. Candelaria took the trend forward, adding the “secret” element, mimicking places like Please Don’t Tell in New York, which is hidden behind a phone booth. Today the speakeasy is everywhere: Moonshiner, for example, opened last year on a site wedged behind a pizza restaurant.

These fads come on top of the increasing popularity of fusion restaurants such as Le Mary Céleste, a trend highlighted in last year’s edition of the influential food guide Le Fooding.

“These guys are not all just singing ‘La Marseillaise’,” writes Le Fooding founder and journalist Alexandre Cammas, pointing to the recent success of foreign chefs such as Simone Tondo, Taibi Abderrahmane and Kristin Frederick. “But all serve the image of France more than certain members of more Gallic stock.”

Paris might not yet be as open or quick to adopt global trends as New York or London. But the city is changing – and for les branchés, a chilled rosé and assiette de fromages is no longer enough.

Michael Stothard is an FT correspondent based in Paris.

The Sunken Chip, 39 rue des Vinaigriers, 10th, +33 1 5326 7446; thesunkenchip.com

Photographs: Stéphane Remael