Schwartz's — Restaurant in Paris

Great pastrami sandwich in Le Marais.

Schwartz's is a Jewish deli in Paris, right in the heart of the Marais district. It's right next to the much better known L'As du Falafel, which has become a must visit in the area.

As of the time of this review, I have eaten three times at the As du Falafel and twice at Schwartz's. However, I truly think Schwartz's is the better deal. At first glance, it may look like a much more expensive option, but I'll explain why this is, in my opinion, the better option:

First, you can quickly get a table here. The two times I've been there (lunch time, between 1pm and 2pm), I was seated immediately upon entering the restaurant. In the falafel place, you need to wait typically 20-30 minutes to get a table.

Second, you can order a meat rich pastrami sandwich (see the photos) for 16.50 euros. This might look like a lot, but after eating this sandwich I couldn't eat dinner. So, two people could easily share one sandwich and that would be a nice meal. This is not the case os the falafel sandwich or even the 9 euro shawarma (9 euros for a kebab is quitte ofendido in my opinion and it's not the best I've had in my life).

Third, the quality of the food and the experience is superior. Most people buying the falafel/shawarma sandwiches but then to go. The problem is that there are not so many places in the street to sit. If you are carrying a bag, and want to have a drink, it becomes an exercise of balancing everything. Here you can just sit down and enjoy your meal.

I'm extremely Schwartz's. By the way, you can save money by ordering a "carafe d'eau" (bottle of tap water) instead of soda or by other expensive drinks. That's also an option that the "to go" doesn't give you. Finally, and this is usually important for tourists, the place has nice and clean restrooms.

Totally recommended!...

Back home I own a NY style deli food truck so of the many things that were required to happen on this trip one of my personal top items was to visit the local Jewish quarter and visit a deli. As my luck would have it many of them are on vacation but the big daddy Schwartz's was open. Schwartz's has four locations in the city, we visited the one on 16 Rue Des Eccoffes-75004 Paris. Any NY deli lover would feel quite at home with the decor, think kitchy NY Deli, complete with huge set of the Simpsons statues on the ceiling and an old set of Levy's Jewish Rye posters. Typical Paris seating arrangments preval, think zero space beteen tables, having to move a table out so the person seated in the rear can sit down.

Deborah of course had the Matza Ball Soup and I went for "The Best Pastami Sandwich" 16,50 euro described as Sandwich chaud au pastrami de boeuf & sauce barbecue. (Hot beef Pastrami with barbecue sauce.) I expected that the BBQ sauce reference was just a translation mixup, NOPE it was regular BBQ sauce that you or I might put on a brisket. The meat was piled high, seemed to be almost a pound, it was very very thinly sliced and almost completly fat-less. This made for a very tender but ultimalltly lacking in taste sandwich. The spices were also just a little different, missing entirlly was the normal correnander and repacing it was annise. The meat didn't seem to be smoked as there was no smoke ring but insted rubbed before cooking. The mustard available on the table was yellow hotdog mustard, surprisingly if you dared to try the BBQ sauce it worked OK with the annise based spices. Pastrami, no not really, brined,...

Service was excellent. Our server was kind and helpful, and everyone working there seemed ro be the same.

The table situation was a bit crowded, so hard to feel comfortable, felt more like eating at a fast food place.

The burgers looked good but we didn’t get one. We went for the pastrami as that was supposed to be the centerpiece. Unfortunately, it was dry. It wasn’t bad but just needed a lot of extra sauce with each bite. I was hoping for more of a Katz Deli in New York experience with juicy hot pastrami juice dripping down my chin.

We also got the Cobb salad and while it looked yummy, after taking a bite, the salad seemed wet. Wet like it was washed but not drained well so the dressing didn’t stick. The server offered us more dressing and that’s when we realized the issue: the dressing tasted like it was accidentally diluted with water. Like one part dressing, four parts water. Not watery dressing but watered down dressing. So much so that it seemed clearly a mistake. So we sent back the salad. The waiter kindly replaced it.

Normally I wouldn’t share this story publicly since the restaurant rectified the problem. But we were told that the kitchen said it wasn’t an error, that that’s the recipe for the dressing. So if that’s the case, Schwartz looses a star for trying to sell “dressing hinted water” as...