A Fried Food Feast at Paris Cafe

We met up with friends down in the touristy seaport area last week and hung out at a bar that I never knew existed- the Paris Café. Located right across from the New Amsterdam market area I must have passed this a million times and just never noticed. Much to my amazement this place has been around since 1873 and has had quite the guest list. Thomas Edison, Butch Cassidy and Theodore Roosevelt are just a few of the people said to frequent his place over the years.

Apparently when the fish market was still thriving at the Seaport this place was supposed to do some excellent seafood. Unfortunately now that’s gone, the menu read more like your average bar fare. Somehow we ended up splitting all the fried appetizers on the menu.



First up were the popcorn shrimp. They gave us a very generous portion of these little guys but unfortunately the breading was a little bit too heavy for my tastes.



Talk about some heavy breading the chicken fingers were the most fried fingers I’ve ever had in my life! One of my friends even commented that you couldn’t even taste the chicken! It was all crunch- no meat!



Our last appetizer fared the opposite fate of the first two. As you can see our calamari is terribly undercooked. Luckily it didn’t get that chewy, stringy taste but a little more crunch on the outside would have brought this up a notch.

So obviously we weren’t ordering anything gourmet here but I was still a little disappointed in this fried feast. I’m glad to finally know this place exists for its history but next time I’ll probably just stick with the beers.

Paris Cafe