THE PARIS LETTER: What We Ate In Paris, Takeout Edition

Ah, Paris - I love you, but you have got to get a handle on your food delivery. How can a city with such amazing food be so shitty at delivering it to your apartment?

One of the great joys of the week we spent in New York this summer was ordering a different kind of takeout food every night. One night Indian, one night sushi, one night Thai food, all delicious, inexpensive, and to the door of our fourth floor walkup in less than an hour. Often also available for order online. The ability to order a variety of delicious food fast actually may be one of my favorite things about New York.

Sushi Shop Paris delivery - Lots of packaging style

Because, see, we are new parents. When we travel, we don't go out to eat anymore. We order takeout to our apartment or hotel room and scarf it down while the baby sleeps. And so a lot of times, our enjoyment of a place is linked to the quality of the food we can order to our hotel room.

Sadly, Paris ain't so great at this. The whole concept of delivery is still pretty new here. The two times we ordered in, once Indian and once Thai, both in our first year of living here, were both such disasters both in quality of food and delivery time (over an hour for unrecognizable cold food), we never did it again.

But again, we're new parents. And we are tired a lot. One night, when neither of us felt like cooking, Matt threw up his hands in frustration. You know what we never do here? he said - Just order a pizza for delivery. To which I said "But sweetie, that's because the only pizza that delivers in Paris is Dominos (True!).

The Starbucks of sushi!- though I do like the little bottles of soy sauce.

However, we decided not to give up! There must be some good takeout in this city somewhere, right?.

Here are some pics of our first attempt: delivery from SushiShop, what I like to call The Starbucks of Paris Sushi.

By which I mean, its fine. Totally acceptable. And, like Starbucks, there are many branches in Paris and they all seem to churn out the same level of quality. By which I mean, mediocre. But not BAD.

And this has become my standard for delivery sushi now: Reasonably tasty, reasonably fresh, reasonably priced. If you can pull that off here in Paris, I'm yours. And SushiShop allows ordering online as well. Like so many Paris sushi restaurants, you're really only going to get salmon and tuna, and maybe a little cooked shrimp. But seriously, after being starved for good sushi for two years, I'm cool with it.

Plus, of course because it's Parisian, the packaging was all sleek, chic and sexy. Personally, I'd go for more options and less sexy packaging - but that must be the New Yorker in me talking. She's still in there somewhere.