This couscous restaurant on rue René Boulanger has been open for almost sixty years. Established in 1946, and taken over fifteen years ago by the Achour family, Le Zerda Café’s orientally decorated main room is always packed with diners hungry for their tagines and coucous.
The classics includes the excellent merguez and meatballs (€18.50), which is gargantuan with a mountain of super-fine couscous or alternatively the sweet-savoury fassi (€18.50) with dried fruit, chickpeas, confit onions, and fragrant, delicately flavoured meatballs. Another must-try (but perhaps not all in one go – the couscous is a proper belt-buster) is the chicken or pigeon pastilla (€8.90), with crispy filo pastry, dusted in icing sugar and baked to perfection. The wine can be left by the wayside (we tried a very forgettable Algerian, Fleur d’Aboukir) but the dishes are so intense that water or beer would make better drinking partners.
Second address: 125 rue de Tocqueville, Paris 17th
TRANSLATION: MEGAN CARNEGIE