Christmas week used to be a challenge for us and more so on the actual holy days because so many places are closed; but a faithful and safe harbor for us for sometime has been Lao Lane Xang 2 (LLX1 is not bad but not as nice I think.)
From the Olympiades Metro one passes a faux-collage-ish wall mural with faux ripped posters that one used to see for Dubonnet and such and enters the Ave d'Ivry, suddenly bursting with the energy of shops, grocery stores and restos on a sleepy New Year's Day.
We were dining with the hot top chef and Award-winning writer, the latter having just arrived back from a secret assignment in the Far East, so we let her dominate the ordering - with good reason. I was in charge of the wine - 8.80 E per 50 cls of Chinon, mind you, and she ordered the sausage with sliced carrots and cukes to accompany it - we polished that off rapidly.
We ordered and ate "family style" of course, most unFrench, having (from top to bottom) a shrimp and cuttlefish salad, spicy salad with pork bits and pho-like wraps of lettuce, mint and cilantro, fried tripes with a zippy sauce, quail parts and eggs and a huge chicken leg with cukes and regular rice (we had ordered 2 sticky rice which never appeared but we were charged for - 1 demerit).
Desserts were a coco banana with tapioca "soup" and a green-herb-tinted coco jellified "cake."
The bill with no bottled water, 160 cl of wine, three coffees and mysteriously-undelivered sticky rice was 55.20 E a couple.
Go? I meant what I said: This is "The perfect Christmas, New Year's, Easter, Ascension, Assumption and National Day place."
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