The Cafe Figue in the 15th has that wonderful blend of honest, inventive, inexpensive and flexible food. People keep wanting to go to places where there are no tourists and no English is spoken - et voila!
The firsts all looked like losers and I saw a lot of optical "hemming and hawing." But in the end, the huge cold soft-boiled egg with sweet-potato; tandoori gamba with wasabi in a watercress soup; and samosas of chicken with shaved carrots and other veggies and raita - would you believe? - were just fine.
For mains my other silly companions had the filet of duck (which to be serious, was terrific) with big carrots, parsnips, onions and eggplant and i had beef with lemon-grass and sticky rice and bulgogi sauce - really lovely.
To finish, we had a moelleux of pear with ice cream, that tasted like yogurt in a good sort of way and coco panacotta with roasted pineapple and apple cubes, just right.
With two bottles of the wine of the month, no bottled water and four coffees, our bill was 75.60 E a couple.