Salut! salutes Asian royalty

Just when I had decided that my famous search for a good Indian restaurant in France was a fool's mission, I chanced upon this unexpected gem.

There is a mention in my updated France in Flashes posting - up to version number 8 now with new additions, though these did not quite justify lifting the file to the top of the blog again.

Le Royal Shah Jahan is out in the Parisian suburbs at Enghien-les-Bains, where the intermittently pleasant Val d'Oise meets the often very unpleasant Seine-St-Denis. The well known Enghien lake is just along the road.

It took an age time to find anywhere to park, but everything about
the restaurant itself was right.

My old standby, chicken tandoori, was by a long shot the tastiest I have come across in France. All that was missing was the sizzling onion, but I have given up expecting that here.

My wife and her friend from childhood have both lived in England, so asked for their vindaloos to be hotter than the Pakistani-owned restaurant would normally serve to squeamish French customers. Both expressed delight with the results.

Peter, the friend's British husband, who has lived in Paris far longer than he hasn't, was slightly less impressed with his chicken tikka masala. Maybe that is a dish best sampled only in the place where it was invented - Britain.

But even he was content when the waiter produced some Indian lager, which may be not be that much better than the usual Kronenbergs and Heinekens, lager essentially being lager, but somehow always seem so.


Curiously enough, we dined there only because our friends' first choice was full. Since we're very much in countdown mode now - leaving Paris between Christmas and New Year - there is no time to try the restaurant Peter and his wife had intended to take us, Le Diplomat in Argenteuil.

I already know nothing better awaits me in the Var. So the Le Royal Shah Jahan can take comfort that its new crown, from Salut!, is safe for now.

And the winner is......

Q: What kind of baker has his own press attaché? A: One who makes the best croissant in Paris.

And who says Pierre Hermé's croissants are tops? The team of six judges assembled by Le Figaro's midweek magazine Scope to munch its way through 64 of them.

All the competing croissants were bought on the same morning across the capital and then judged according to appearance, smell, flavour, price and even the welcome received by those doing the round of bakers and - let me be fairer to M Hermé - pâtisseries.

Actually replicating Le Figaro's operation presented obstacles. At any rate, it did when it came to Salut! second guessing the judges by paying its own visit to the winner's shop.

Scope helpfully gave M Hermé's address as 72 rue de Bonaparte, which threads through the Latin Quarter to St Sulpice and beyond.


Maybe Salut! was having a bad day. It cannot, of course, hope to have a bad hair day.

But look for yourselves. Would it not be entirely possible to see no 72 from the other side of the street and conclude that the magazine must have made a mistake?

For here is a shop that sells croissants and cakes but has a façade that looks rather more like that of an upmarket jeweller. It took a return trip to confirm that those small windows contained not necklaces and bracelets in 18 carat gold but M Hermé's less durable creations.

I hate to quarrel with a winner. But questions really need to be asked about an item associated throughout the world with breakfast but not sold before 10am.

In fact, even 10am proved a variable sort of opening time.

The door was not unlocked until four minutes had gone by after the sounding of the bell atop the nearby 6th arrondissement town hall.

If M Hermé feels this was a trivial delay, he may be interested to learn that by then, half the queue - OK, two people - had also gone by. They didn't even look back.

Once inside the shop, however, you found that service came with a broad smile. My four croissants, costing 1.20 euros each, were packed by the pretty, cheerful assistant as carefully as if she were wrapping delicate porcelain.

But it took another 10 minutes to pay. Pretty, cheerful assistant was not interested in receiving payment; a colleague at the till was in charge of that. Inconveniently for me, she was also in charge of taking Christmas orders.

The town hall bell for a quarter past rang out soon after I left the shop. It seemed a long time to have spent making such a small purchase in an uncrowded shop.

Had Mr Hermé been present, and willing to interrupt his labours for a couple of minutes, I would have asked what was the secret of his success, why he opened so late and whether I was right long ago to think croissants absolutely had to be served hot.

But he was not present. "Pas ce matin," the assistant replied. Oui, mais plus tard? Non.

Thinking it would then be a simple matter of arranging a quick telephone interview, I outlined my mission. "I'll give you a number for his attaché de presse," came the response.

The questions, therefore, will have to wait. Salut! cannot afford airs and graces but also has no wish to start negotiating on small print for an interview with a croissant-maker. Next, he'll be wanting copy control or banning any reference to flakiness and crumbs.

In any case, we can surely rely on Scope sufficiently to trust the thoughts attributed to him after the results were pronounced. The great croissant, M Hermé confided, needed a dry and crunchy texture. The buttery taste had to betray a perfect balance between salt and sugar.

When M Hermé wandered off into "I hear the cry of the croissant....it's alive, the soul of its creator" territory, I felt it was time just to get on with eating the wretched thing.



So, just after 11am and in the knowledge I would soon be meeting friends for lunch, I had my late breakfast.

It was good, very good, and I was content to eat it cold.

But I would have had more difficulty thsn the judges in finding it so much better than all the rest. Or in relegating last year's winner - Julien, located on the rue St Honoré - to seventh place, or last year's third placed contender (a Paul branch on the rue de Seine, not far from M Hermé) as low as 24th. Unless, of course, Paul served the undercover buyer a 2005 croissant.

Last tangos in Paris

Picture: Paul Cooper

With the ticking of the clock growing louder, it seemed a good idea to make a last visit, at least as temporary Parisians, to one of our favourite jazz clubs.

The paradox of Paris jazz is that while people who know about these things say standards of musicianship and presentation have never been higher, musicians and club owners moan that times are hard*.


Consider the glorious history of jazz in this city and you realise that the first part of that proposition is praise indeed.

But the music is caught in a vicious circle. It can be difficult to get into certain clubs on certain nights but this is partly because the number of venues has been steadily shrinking.

Tourists with plenty of spending power still clamour for tables, but natives on average French incomes find the cost prohibitive.

Drinks and, when served, food set you back a small fortune, the band is still playing by the time public transport is shutting down, parking is a nightmare and cabs are elusive as well as dear.

First choice Saturday was l'Arbuci, a famous joint along the rue de Buci. The telephone conversation went something like this:

"Hello, do you have music tonight?"

- but of course, sir.

"What kind of jazz is it this evening?"

- a trio.

"Would they be modern jazz? Traditional?........"

- traditional, sir.

"Very good. Can I book a table please?"

- Sorry, sir, but we're full.

An utterly French exchange.

Le Bilboquet was a perfectly acceptable as second best. Tucked away in a street off the Boulevard St Germain, opposite one of those "secret sauce" steak restaurants where people actually queue outside in the cold, boasts a rich heritage; Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Miles Davis all played there.

It has been a frequent source of pleasure during my Parisian adventure. On Saturday, the club was again heaving, with what looked like a French office party taking over more than half the tables and foreign visitors most of the rest.

When I say prices are steep, I am not exaggerating. You leave with the feeling that you have not so much pushed the boat out as mustered the entire flaming fleet.

The food was excellent but simple. In ordinary circumstances, you might quarrel with 35 euros as the price of a pair of modest starters: girolle mushrooms cooked in garlic and tomato mozzarella. The grilled tuna, a dependable main course, was as succulent as ever, as it rather should be at 30 euros a head.

By the time you've added drinks, even from the bottom end of the range on offer, you can see which way the bill for two is going.

But you've also heard some great music - Le Bilboquet is a mecca for fans of rollicking boogie woogie, though Saturday's fare was the Brazilian chanteuse Catia Werneck, more sophisticated if less fun.

The club has the band to pay as well as the cost of running the restaurant and bar, and the entertainment is built into the menu prices.

Yes, it hurts to pay quite so much for an evening out, even when service is superb and the ambiance perfect, but this is an expensive part of an expensive town. All in all, in other words, you are not ripped off.

Walk a short way along the boulevard, order a small Leffe beer and menthe a l'eau at Le Mabillon, and you'll get little change out of 15 euros.

And the only distraction there yesterday, if you don't count the bawling of fractious twins and equally fractious parents, was that old Parisian standby: a game of Spot the Waiter, with long gaps between each sighting.

* An easy search of the Telegraph website will turn up the original version of this article. For a reason unknown to me, direct links from Salut! to the Telegraph do not always work.