Cafe de Lognes Review

Café de Lognes is an Asian restaurant in the center of Lognes. Before known as the Chablis, they changed names some years ago.

It was a restaurant where my family and I used to go a lot to eat as a family. In this article, we’ll see if this restaurant is as good as in my memory and if you should stop to try some of their dishes.

The location

Located very near RER A Station Lognes, this restaurant has been open for many decades. They just recently changed the name and renovated the interior, perhaps less than 10 years ago.

This restaurant is also a tabac, which means they sell games of luck and cigarettes.

The restaurant is separated into three different sections, one of which is where gamblers and people drinking are sitting. Close to the bar and the screens where they show the results of the horse races.

One with tons of windows where there’s basically the stand for peking duck. This area is quite sunny and has a view of the street.

Finally, there’s a room with many fans where there’s no window but a lot of light in the ceiling. The place overall and after the renovation looks clean, and the decoration is minimalist.

This is the kind of place you go to for the food and because it’s good value for money.

This restaurant is fairly big; it has around 50 tables, I believe. We often order to go as well. Just one phone call, and you can pick up your food 10 minutes later.

The entrance at the end and side for the tabac

To be honest, I think it’s a great idea to separate the Tabac part of the business from the restaurant side of it. Since it’s never very pleasant to be surrounded by addict gamblers. They don’t necessarily cause a nuisance, but it’s not something you want to witness when you are eating.

The menu

The menu at Café de Lognes is basically the perfect size. It has enough dishes for you to have variety but not too much, so nothing is of good quality. There are many dishes, from Chinese to Vietnamese and even Laotian.

The menu has illustrations for the dishes and is well spaced out. The menu is quite classic: dim sum, raviolis, nems, and other treats.

The most famous Asian dishes are present on this menu, such as fried noodle rice with beef, rice pasta sautés with shrimp, soup ravioli with shrimp, soup with pork belly, pork tripe soup, hu tieu, etc.

These are actually the dishes we recommend you order at this restaurant.

They also offer some soups and seafood options if this is your thing. The thing I love about here is that it’s like a brasserie; they only offer a limited number of options, which means that if you order them, they will most likely taste good.

You’ll also have the choice of drinks, with three colors being a good option, as well as coffee with ice coffee. I believe they also have a section for wine and alcohol.

It’s actually very common in France to order a bottle of alcohol, like red wine or rosé, and finish it with two or three people. French people like to spend time and drink during lunch, and there’s no reason it should be different for Asians living in France.

The experience

Eating at this restaurant is something I have done for a very long time. Perhaps since I was a young child. I know this restaurant well, and it is a safe choice if you want to eat some good Asian food.

Ice tea in this restaurant is without sugar

We got our order, and we received our drinks first. Their tea wasn’t the typical sweet Lipton ice tea but a real tea with lemon inside. It didn’t taste as strong, but that’s not a bad thing; at least it was more healthy overall.

My dad ordered fresh soy milk, like they do sometimes in Vietnam. We didn’t have the opportunity to check if this soy milk was home-made or coming out of a box.

For x reasons, this day we all order the same dish : pâtes de riz sautées aux crevettes, rice noodle sautée with shrimps or pho sao.

Pho Sao or rice noodle sautée with shrimps

We also ordered some fried spring rolls to share and for our son to eat in case Those were probably the ones made by the next-door restaurant, Hau Ky, but I could be wrong. I feel like my wife and her family make the best fried spring rolls anyway.

I think the Pho Sao before was better. It was sautéed in a wok with a dragon’s fire, and you could see a bit of burn in the rice noodles. At this time, the pho sao was excellent. Now it’s still good, but more similar to what you find somewhere else.

All the other options are of the same quality; it’s very solid. We tried most of them and order regularly from the restaurant. They won’t send you to cloud nine, but still, you’ll feel some pleasure eating the dishes, and that’s what we expect.

The Phnom Pen soup and the shrimp ravioli soup are both very good. Perhaps one of the best you can have in this city

The Banh Canh with Cripsy Pork is something quite special as well. It’s my wife’s favorite dish at this restaurant. My wife is very biased towards Vietnamese food, though.

The drinks in France are quite expensive. A sprite with mint syrup cost something like 3 euros, and a Sparkling water with prunes cost 5 euros. It’s not a drink that would fit most people; it’s slightly acidic and very salty, but not sweet like pocari sweat.

Verdict

8.0 out of 10.

This restaurant is a classic. If you are living in Lognes, this place is like an institution. The food is extremely solid. Perhaps before, it was slightly better.

We still order from this place since, once in a while, we are bored with rotating the food we know how to make at home.

If we had some suggestions for this restaurant, it would be to bring back the old chef who was cooking the rice noodle sautée with shrimp.

Other than that, all the other options are good, and this restaurant is simple and direct. It’s the kind of place you come to every other day to eat good food.