Blog | HPRG The Nanashi restaurant in the Bonpoint flagship store, Paris – Hotels Paris Rive Gauche Blog

The Nanashi restaurant
in the Bonpoint flagship store, Paris

We visited the huge Bonpoint flagship (two minutes from the Jardin de l’Odéon) about two years ago for the blog, and found it eye-popping (for a number of reasons).

This month, we went back to try out the latest branch of one of our favourite restaurants, Nanashi, which already has two venues on the Right Bank and now their first on the Left Bank… in the basement of Bonpoint. And as usual it’s a great relaxed place with great food!

Here’s our review…From the outside, you can’t guess how cavernous this shop is, and whoever thought of putting a great restaurant into a very expensive kids’ clothes store had a wonderful idea. The space now used by Nanashi at Bonpoint was their tearoom when we last visited. Apparently, that didn’t work very well…Down some steps inside, you’ll enter two large rooms with vaulted ceilings, a display case of desserts and vegetables piled up against the wall. There’s also a large terrace for when the weather’s nice. The whole vibe is relaxed and welcoming…We know Nanashi from their two other restaurants, and are big fans of their copious, tasty bentos, a style that is difficult to find in other restaurants, probably because the dishes are tricky to make, with many different fresh ingredients.

Their freshly-made fruit juices are also legendary. We started off with the day’s special, a mix of pineapple, white grape, orange and Granny Smith apple. It’s also possible to ask for one of the fruits to be left out if you don’t like, say, pineapple (like me).If you’ve never been before, you might not  know exactly what to order, as the dishes may seem a little exotic with odd names, but there are decent explanations of most in the menu, and the waiting staff are very good at explaining if you need help.

We decided to start with a brioche-style mini-pizza (served with young salad leaves and shavings of fresh ricotta), Edamamé (green soya beans blanched in the pod), Onigri (rice prepared in seaweed) and a vegetarian spring roll (complete with organic sprouts, tofu, cooked pulses, a wild sesame leaf and spicy green tomato jam).

All the dishes are prepared at the restaurant. Only the desserts are made at Nanashi rue Charlot, where the dessert chef is based.Unlike the other two Nanashi restaurants, there is no vegetarian bento here (only meat or fish), which surprised us, so one main course idea had to be changed, but before that (as the starters were so delicious) we let ourselves be tempted by one of the day’s special salads of red kuri squash, chicory, butternut and hazelnut.For the main dishes, we chose a meat bento (lamb tagine), a salmon bento and a salmon chirashi (cubes of raw, organic salmon marinated in soy sauce and served with wasabi).

There was also a vegetarian dish (which we forgot to photograph!) called veggie soba, with soba noodles, tofu, carrot, shitake mushrooms and sprouts. Everyone in the group was surprised by the different texture and flavours of each dish. You can really taste each of the ingredients, but also enjoy their combination of tastes. Delicious, as always.And even after all that, we could not resist dessert. Dessert at Nanashi is always good!

We went for roasted seasonal fruit with crème fraîche and muscovado sugar, plum agar-agar, the day’s special tart (red fruit) and a matcha cheesecake, which was amazing despite being a strange shade of green. Even their pannacotta with black sesame seeds (making it grey) looked good. We’ll have to try that next time…

A little coffee to finish, and our lovely meal was at an end. Our stomachs were stretched, but we were happy.

So, the food is healthy, fresh, tasty, copious, and sensibly priced. What more could you ask for? Oh, and all Nanashi restaurants are super kid-friendly, so feel free to come as a family!

Nanashi is at Bonpoint, 6 rue de Tournon, 75006 Paris (here)

Tel. +33 (0)1 43 26 14 06

Open from Tuesday – Saturday from 10am – 7pm. Special openings onSundays 9th, 16th and 23rd December 2012, as well as Sunday 6th January 2013

To check out all our photos of Nanashi at Bonpoint, click the play button on the slideshow below, then click the four little arrows bottom right to go into fullscreen mode.