kerouac - thanks for bumping this back to the top. Your comments and tod's excellent report have been so helpful. I was serious about the donar kebab recommends, and I will add Halong to our list of possibilities as well - thank you. :)

tod - the way you write about your experiences and explorations is wonderful! I cannot wait to read about your next trip :) We start our trip in two weeks...

Adding these to my 'places we could eat' map!

Kerouac - I have been right there!! This is the only part of Belleville I have been to. We walked down rue Louis Bonnet, saw the large corner restaurant Tin Tin then turned up rue de la Presentation and called in at the pharmacy to ask for a restaurant recommendation for lunch. Told to stroll around the block which we did and came back to the corner and settled on Dong Huong which I think is a stones throw away from Halong on the opposite side of the street.

At first I was a bit disappointed in the immediate area thinking "Is this all they call China Town?!" Now I realize it's just part of Belleville and there is MUCH much more to see. I imagined the Chinese restaurants to be in a long line both sides of the street similar to Chinatown in Gerrard street London - all flashy with neon. Funny how we imagine things in our mind's eye!
I think we should go back there at night!

Most of Belleville Chinatown is up the hill -- in the 19th and 20th arrondissement (rue de Belleville that goes up the hill is the arrondissement dividing line.

Queen, I don't have any specific doner kebab places to recommend, but I would definitely tend to say to not bother with the ones in the center of Paris around Saint Michel or Les Halles. They are much better in the real mixed neighborhoods like my Marx Dormoy area or Belleville or the faubourg Saint Antoine...

Tod, speaking of Chinatown by night, I made a little photo essay of Little India in Paris by night on my site: http://tinyurl.com/dz33nt
There is also a daytime version there called 'embedded with the Tamil tigers' :).

I will be putting a Belleville photo essay there soon.

Kerouac - thanks for the tip... I enjoyed your photo essays.

WOW! That's amazing - and the fab photos! Thank you so much for that Kerouac.
As you may know, our Indian population is HUGE and we have entire city blocks for miles with shops very similar (but not nearly so clean and nicely stocked). On a recent quick visit noticed more and more shops taken up by Chinese.

Really looking forward to Belleville!

Bumping this report, because I just told somebody how great it was on another site.

bookmarking

DebitNM: Do you know about the bookmarking function?

See the little yellow/gold star up at the top of the page? Clicking that lets you save a thread to your bookmarks/favorites. And the envelope lets you e-mail the thread to yourself.

Thanks but I prefer to bookmark this way.