The Chinese Quarter in Paris

Finally the day has come where we set out in search of fulfilling our dormant dim sum hunger. A hunger/ habit formed from years of living in Northbridge (Perth's China town) and breakfasting with Lloyd's family who got me hooked on the dumpling fare of dim sum. Today we went to Paris' Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement. An area most Parisian's turn their noses up at and you kind of get why. It definitely isn't the prettiest place and compared to the rest of the picturesque city, it is a bit a dirty mark. There are a lot of ugly high rise apartment blocks and the place feels like the opposite of Paris. So why did we catch a long metro ride out here? Dim sum! In Perth, Australia we know the good and bad dim sum restaurants in our Chinatown like the back of our hands. It is something that we crave (MSG?) every weekend. So we wanted to try out the French version. Check out the photos from the day...

The Paris saxophone buskers here play George Michael's Careless Whisper. True story! 

Paris does good street art regardless of the canvas.

In search of the ONE!

Walking to our chosen dim sum restaurant...

Woop we found it! Chine Massena! 

Looking at the menu. So hungry, but can't read Cantonese, or French.

The lucky dip begins!
Overall, when comparing it to our favourite place in Perth, the food was pretty good.
There were two things going against us though. The first was the obvious language barrier. We found it hard to communicate with the waiters, more so than usual. We kind of felt like it was a bit of a lottery waiting to see what was going to arrive on our table (we had to order food from a menu as they weren't doing the traditional trolley service).
We thought we ordered some things that didn't arrive and weren't sure if it was just lost in translation. The second thing was one of us was vegetarian, so where we thought we were asking for vegetable dishes we were in fact getting vegetables with meat. This of course ties into problem one. Overall the experience was great. The staff were friendly. The food was top quality and the price at the end was about spot on.
Though I'm going to say it...I think dim sum is one thing Perth gets so right.
We love our local Dragon Seafood Palace and miss it. The squid tentacles. Mmmm.

We didn't get too many photos of the food as we got too caught up in the experience and the hunger. Must eat dumplings!

There were a lot of other dim sum restaurants across the road from here behind the McDonalds. That area is well hidden. Our next dim sum visit will probably be in this area to mix things up.
We will be heading back to Chinatown. Dim sum lives on in our hearts.

Time to head back to Montmartre via the Metro. Yet again satisfied and full!

A map to Chine Massena in Chinatown :