Ismaïl — Restaurant in Paris

We’ll definitely return! When visiting our son at Easter, we spotted this little restaurant and wanted to try it. Didn’t have time then, but we arrived again today for another visit. After a long day of traveling, we decided to try Ismail tonight as it’s a 5 minute walk, and so we don’t miss out again. Upon arrival, you definitely feast with your eyes first, and the enticing aroma of warm Indian and Middle Eastern spices lingering in the air. The food was delicious and well presented. Not only were the flavours delicious, the service was excellent and they go over and above anticipating your needs. When the hostess noticed that I was having a coughing fit due to a cold, she quickly and kindly showed up with a fresh lemon and ginger hot tea with honey. Such a thoughtful and kind gesture, and not one often found in European restaurants. I had just been telling my son about how hard it was to get a hot water refill for my tea in another restaurant earlier that week. It never came! Ismail is now on our short list of local restaurants! You won’t regret trying it. It’s the little things...

Food is good but quite expensive. €5 for a naan is darn expensive. By UK standards the food is okay. We were satisfied to have some desi food. It’s a Gujarati Muslim family who run the restaurant. They were very responsive to us and food was brought very reasonable time. We would have liked to have spoken more with them but they seemed to be busy.

The lamb karahi and the daal were nice. The white rice was properly cooked. The special indo-Lebanese karahi was average. They placed achar (pickles) jar on our table - which felt odd . They should do fresh achaar. Nice thing was they don’t serve alcohol, although I did see someone bring their own bottle.

They kindly let us pray in the basement area. It’s very close to Sacre Couer. Before we went to the restaurant I managed to race over to the Sacre Couer Basillica peak from where you get a lovely panoramic view of Paris. The parking ticket machine didn’t recognise my UK number plate so I just parked there without paying...

I'm personally not into writing bad reviews, but I couldn't ignore this.

Last week I ate at this restaurant with my cousins. I have a severe nut allergy and I have clearly indicated this to the waiter. I had also shown the allergy information in French on my phone. The waiter said it was no problem. We got the food very quickly. After two bites I already felt that I couldn’t continue eating this and I felt myself getting sicker and sicker. We immediately asked for the bill and quickly went to the hotel by taxi. At one point it got so bad that I had to use my Epipen (injection). This could have gone very wrong.

I understand that contact contamination can take place in the kitchen, luckily I'm not that sensitive to that. But my meal was definitely prepared with nuts. I don't had the feeling they took it serious.

The worst part is that they never responded to my email what I send the next day. This is a...