Mokonuts

Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem, she trained as a pastry chef, he as a savoury cook, opened a 25-seat café-bakery on a quiet stretch of rue Saint-Bernard and turned it into one of the most-asked-about lunch reservations in Paris. The cooking is Franco-Lebanese with Japanese and American grace notes: aromatic chicken, line-caught fish under Middle Eastern spice, miso-walnut cookies that travel by the kilo. Lunch is the play; dinner runs a few nights a week and books out fastest. Walk in for coffee and pastry. The atmosphere is calm, considered, mint-green-fronted, slightly austere, the food does the talking.