Brigade du Tigre, Paris | Brilliant Contemporary Asian Cooking, A-/B+

Chefs Galien Emery and Adrien Ferrand @Geraldine Martens

After a lot of trial and error, my favorite delivered food in Paris reliably comes from Brigade du Tigre, an excellent contemporary Asian restaurant run by chefs Galien Emery and Adrien Ferrand near their original modern bistro Eels in the 10th Arrondissement.

Since I love going to Paris restaurants so much, I’ve never been a big fan of takeout or delivered food. This all changed in 2020 when restaurants in Paris were shuttered twice by the government as part of its attempt to reign in the spread of Covid 19 (they’re still closed as of February 25, with no known reopening date on the horizon).

During the first quarantine, we rarely ordered more than a pizza or two, but once the second shutdown hit us, I was honestly a little worn out from being in the kitchen so much, and we started ordering more delivered food. Too often, it was a hope-springs-eternal sort of a story, as harried, underpaid, often probably not even legally employed delivery people came to our door frequently massless with pizzas scrunched up into the bottom of boxes, congealed Asian dishes that no amount of steam or sautéing could bring back to life, and some truly tragic mishaps, like the time we ordered from a well-rated Paris delicatessen in the hopes of having a good pastrami sandwich; what arrived was just plain awful.

To be sure, we’ve had some good experiences with delivered food as well. I have often ordered from Hokkaido, Ippudo and Deux or Trois Fois Plus Piment–all Asian noodle and dumpling restaurants, and their food is reliably good, reasonably priced and arrives promptly and in good condition. Ippudo even does the really smart thing of packing the noodles separately from the soup, so that you can reheat the soup and then add the noodles without overcooking them. But if these Asian meals are great lunchtime feeds, what I’ve wanted is food for dinner that might begin to approximate the unexpected and delicious flavors and textures of what I’d eat in a great Paris restaurant helmed by a talented young chef.

And this is what I’ve found every time I’ve ordered from Brigade du Tigre–delicious and inventive food with bright and vibrant flavors and diverse textures that’s carefully packed and promptly delivered to arrive at my table in as close to possible perfection as it might be if I was eating it in-house at the restaurant.

A little back story on these chefs explains why their cooking is so good. After graduating from the Ecole Ferrandi in Paris, Ferrand spent seven years working for chef William Ledeuil, the first Parisian chef to passionately master the flavors and ingredients of Southeast Asia, first for five years at Ledeuil’s Ze Kitchen Galerie and then as chef at Ze Kitchen Galerie Bis, Ledeuil’s annex table.

In 2017, Ferrand opened his Restaurant Eels, which remains one of the best contemporary bistros in Paris, and then he and longtime friend Galien Emery had the idea of opening a restaurant that would present their take on the kitchens of the southeastern Asian countries and China. Emery had lived in Kuala Lumpur for five years, and so he knew Asian cooking really well. Together the pair traveled in Asia for three months in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Singapore and China then they came home to create their new restaurant.

I wasn’t in Paris in October 2020 when Brigade du Tigre opened, because as soon as the first lockdown ended, we’ve been spending most of our time at our house in a village near Uzes, but as soon as I went back to Paris, I somewhat warily ordered some of their food online. And it was stunningly good.

The day I first ordered from Brigade du Tigre, I kept a web window for the restaurant’s order page open on my computer all day, occasionally rereading the menu again in anticipation and further reflecting on what I’d order, because I wanted absolutely everything.

As much as I love the time I spend in my little village in the south of France, it’s rudely awakened me to the most urgent reasons I’ve spent most of my life in a string of big cities–London, Boston, New York, London, Paris, Prague, Paris. If the ostensible adult reason to move to a big city was for work, the real ones were sex and food, since cities offer such a wealth of delicious possibilities for the latter. Now that I’m married, though, food is more than ever my urban grail, and if they’re some wonderful restaurants in Uzes, Nimes and elsewhere in Le Gard, they’re things I absolutely crave, like everything Asian.

So finally I completed my order: five-spice bao buns (coiled buns made with rice flour, seasoned with five-spice powder and steamed), grilled wild-mushroom ravioli, pickled vegetables, and roast lacquered pork belly with pumpkin, pok choi and rice, and a baba (sponge cake) soaked with sake and garnished with litchis and ginger. Then I set the table and lied in wait, desperate for the doorbell to ring.

When the food arrived, I was so impressed by the tidiness with which it had been packed and also glad that all of the packaging was paper, since meals from too many other restaurants produce a deluge of plastic, which is currently difficult to recycle due to the fact that there’s more supply than demand all over the world. But most of all, I was ecstatic at the pleasure of vibrant resonant flavors that were beyond my capacity to create in the kitchen.

My first meal was outstanding, and so I ordered again the other day and tried a variety of other dishes, including shrimp tartare, crab cake and coconut cake, all of which were delicious.

Some day soon, I hope I’ll be able to actually have the pleasure of eating in the dining room of Brigade du Tigre, but for the time being, I’m just hugely grateful to have access to such good and reasonably priced food by delivery.

And in the meantime, don’t miss their coconut cake if it’s available whatever you order, which you should.

Brigade du Tigre
38 Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, Paris, 10th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-45-81-51-56. Metro: Grands Boulevards. Regular hours: Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner. Current (February 20210 hours: Open daily noon-2.30pm and 5.30pm-9.30pm for takeout and delivery. Average 40 Euros. www.brigadedutigre.fr