HAS each strip of land its culinary emblem. In the city of Rennes the sausage patties, in Marseille the half and half pizza, in Lille the fries stalls, at 11e arrondissement of Paris… ravioli from Wang. You have to see the effervescence that reigns every weekend behind the large windows of this modest Chinese canteen hidden in a quiet little street between Place de la Nation and the Voltaire metro station to understand how Chez Wang has become, in the few years, a real local attraction.
At the antipodes of the dining cellars and other neo-bistros that are currently flourishing on the right bank, the address, absent from the guides, is a nugget that one slips under the cloak or that one discovers by chance, at the bend of a Instagram stories. You come across a dense and heterogeneous crowd, made up of local regulars, students looking like the day after a party and Chinese, Korean or Japanese expatriates.
A dot to dot game
For those who like Sichuan cuisine, known to be relatively fragrant and spicy, the menu offers a large number of possibilities: a good quality mapo tofu, stuffed eggplants to die for and assortments of meats and vegetables in a yuxiang style – named after this traditional sauce made from soy sauce, vinegar, shallots and chilli paste.
Seen from above, the dish looks like a woven veil and we take a greedy pleasure in losing our gaze in the edible wefts of its jagged edges.
But, honestly, if we agree to hang around here, in the middle of glass lanterns and tangled wooden tables, it is above all to put our hands, our bodies and our minds on a plate of jian jiao, this recipe for fried ravioli that is hard to find elsewhere in Paris. The latter, stuffed with pork, can be garnished here with chives, Chinese cabbage, shrimp, fennel or zucchini. They are ordered in portions of ten or twenty, depending on the appetite or the degree of curiosity. And then what ? All that remains is to hold your breath while waiting to see them land on the table, all in majesty.
Because the plate, as it is presented, is a jewel of culinary goldsmithery. The ravioli, arranged upside down and symmetrically, are discovered one by one like a game of dots to connect. On the surface of their golden skin sits a fine lace of crispy dough, no thicker than a sheet of cigarette paper, the result of cooking in a frying pan. Seen from above, the dish looks like a woven veil and we take a greedy pleasure in losing our gaze in the edible wefts of its jagged edges.
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