Paris: Best Croque Monsieur?
 

Don't you just love to chow down on five or six of these wonderful little babies? Where is your favorite place to eat them?

Interesting article about them found below:


http://frenchfood.about.com/library/.../aa010403a.htm

Hi,
One place that I remember as having a quite nice Croque Monsieur is Cafe Bonaparte in the square of St Germain des Pres church..down from Cafe de Flore. Nice cafe creme there also...at one time one of the places Paris intellectuals (Sartre, de Beauvoir)used to go.
Mike

Hmmm, I had something at the Cafe Bonaparte that was open-faced, more of a panini. Excellent. I think they had more traditional Croques on the menu, too. All of their sandwiches seem to be good--my husband had something quite different than I did and we both thought they were remarkable tasty for a place that does such volume.

Hi Degas, my vote would be for Flottes, on rue Cambon; the Croque Royale is my favorite, while my wife prefers the Croque Provencal, an all veggie version. Their Aligot is also quite good. JP

The very best croque monsieur comes from my own kitchen!

Thanks for the great inputs.

All this talk has made me hungry. Anybody want o share a favorite recipe? I might just be able to bribe the LW into cooking today!

THE place for a Croque Monsieur in Paris is the Ferme St-Hubert on the rue Vignon, roughly in the middle of a triangle formed by the Madeleine, the Opera, and the Gare St Lazare.

This is both a cheese shop and a restaurant, with virtually all of the restaurant offerings cheese-based. The Croque Monsieur fills a plate and is covered with delicious cheese that has melted exactly to the right point -- all you need is a glass of red wine, a knife and fork, and maybe a cardiologist.

Tables can be hard to get at lunchtime (especially one of the tables on the sidewalk), so be prepared to "patienter."

does a croque monsieur ever come sans jambon?

looking for the french version of an american grilled cheese (but with better cheese), if such a thing exists.

melissa, I always perform a discreet jambonectomy on mine. . .

I think by definition a Croque Monsieur must contain ham (and a Croque Madame must have an egg).

So a Croque Monsieur sans ham would have to be a Croque Something Else. Croque Madamoiselle, perhaps? Croque Fromage? Croque Virge?

lol, elle!

Croque décochonné

LOL

"A BLT, please - depigged."

The best C-M I ever had was at the cafe in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal.

rizzuto, you've named one of my favorite places in Paris. I just posted about Ferme St. Hubert a few days ago for raclette -- which is all I've managed to do there. Guess I'll have to just do a Croque there some time. They could do anything with cheese and I'd kill for it!

I don't really eat that kind of thing as it's too heavy for me, so am not an expert, but I think a lot of cafes serve a croque monsieur nowadays that is open-faced. For Melissa, I can't name names too much, but I have seen various casual cafes that serve a variety of "croques" other than the traditional one with ham and cheese. I have seen vegetarian ones that were only cheese and tomato, for example, although I don't know about just cheese. They don't use a strong orange cheddar type cheese in France typeically (I've never seen that on sandwiches), so simply a grilled cheese with nothing else on it might seem too simple or bland, but you never know -- someone might have one. I know the Soufflot casual cafe (on rue Soufflot near the Pantheon and rue St Jacques) has a variety of croques, some vegetarian. Other than that, I can't name specifics, it's probably something you just have to run across. There are some good sandwich shops (like Lina's or Cosi's) but I don't think they have that style of sandwich but I'm not sure.