And now we’re bringing a bit of Nordic influence into this weekend’s brunch. Our veggie frittata will reflect the last vestiges of winter with plenty of delicious chard inside, while the Hash of the Week will feature smoked trout. Filling in for the egg on top will be a different kind of egg: trout roe. Reflecting our daily kannelbullar fix for fika each afternoon, our freshly baked cinnamon rolls are back on the menu, going perfectly with our host café’s brilliant coffee. Also added to the menu is the “Savory Grains” selection, which this week will be organic oats in a vegetable stock topped with warm egg yolk, cinnamon and sweet onion.

Skulle du vilja join us?

Brunch x Emperor Norton
@ Coutume Café
47 rue de Babylone
75007 Paris

Mº Vaneau, Sevres-Babylone, Saint-François Xavier

Served from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturdays & Sundays

We’re going to slather chunks of potatoes in a Reblochon cheese sauce, mix in bits of smokey bacon, and weave it all together with strings of caramelized onion. Of course you’ll get the requisite egg on top, making it part of a balanced hangover cure.

Breakfast burrito, vegetarian frittata, and all the other de rigueur brunch items like oeufs brouillés and Aussie-style home fries will be there, too.

Brunch x Emperor Norton
@ Coutume Café
47 rue de Babylone
75007 Paris

Mº Vaneau, Sevres-Babylone, Saint-François Xavier

Served from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturdays & Sundays

Inspired by our last trip to Amsterdam, we’re going to get freaky deaky Dutch on our hash this weekend. Leafy green, smokey… it’s our brunchified take on boerenkool stamppot, a traditional Dutch dish involving potatoes, green cabbage (or kale) and smoked sausage. We’ll be spinning it with top-notch French ingredients and our Californian touch.

Most people have it with gravy. Some with applesauce. Some with vinegar. We’ll probably find a way to make a mutant beast out of it all, and top it with a fried egg. Mmm… Lekker!

Brunch x Emperor Norton
@ Coutume Café
47 rue de Babylone
75007 Paris

Mº Vaneau, Sevres-Babylone, Saint-François Xavier

Served from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturdays & Sundays

Potatoes? Chinese style? Huh?

Spuds are actually widely eaten in northern China these days, so we’re not going too far off the map by serving our hash in a tangy vinegar-chili sauce. For the meat part, we’ll stick to the Chinese New Year playbook and serve a version of “White Cut Chicken,” tender bits of ginger poached farm-raised chicken breast.

Your usual brunch favorites like our gut-busting breakfast burrito, sticky fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and the juicy honey grilled grapefruit will be there as well. You know where to go.

Brunch x Emperor Norton
@ Coutume Café
47 rue de Babylone
75007 Paris

Mº Vaneau, Sevres-Babylone, Saint-François Xavier

Served from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturdays & Sundays

To kick off the new year we introduced the Hash of the Week: a bowl of diced, fried potatoes mixed with a whimsical choice of meat and seasoning, topped with fried egg. The first weekend we did duck carnitas – essentially Mexican style duck confit – and immediately sold out on Saturday, prompting us to improvise with adobo chicken (a traditional Filipino style) hash for Sunday.

We made up for Saturday’s sell-out by making the much requested duck carnitas again last weekend, and enjoying the whole “taking requests” thing, we put up a poll on our Facebook page to see what the coming weekend’s hash should be. It turns out carne asada (Mexican style steak) beat out adobo chicken and Korean bibimbap, so we’ll be turning on the Latin heat in the kitchen at Coutume once again.

Speaking of heat… We got kind of tired of serving pico de gallo salsa with the (in)famous breakfast burrito day in, day out. So we’ve decided to change up the style of salsa once in a while. Last week was a blended salsa based on pasilla chilis. This week it’s… well, we’ll see.

In the meantime, we’ve noticed a lot more of you asking for the hot version of the salsas, which we spike with a decent amount of habanero peppers. Who knew Parisians could handle this stuff? We’ll continue to offer a hot n’ spicy option, and if you get the carne asada hash, feel free to ask for a dose of hot sauce. We’ll be more than happy to let you feel the burn.

Brunch x Emperor Norton
@ Coutume Café
47 rue de Babylone
75007 Paris

Mº Vaneau, Sevres-Babylone, Saint-François Xavier

Served from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturdays & Sundays

If you haven’t received our corporate greeting card for the holiday season, don’t worry.

We don’t do them.

Instead of sending out some nameless, impersonal greeting, we’re going to make sure you have a kick-ass 2012 by feeding you more delicious stuff you simply can’t otherwise get in Paris*. That’s better than a lame e-card any day.

In the last year – our first official one in business thankyouverymuch – we’ve done everything from underground supper clubs to take-out bentos to pop-ups to custom events to somehow winding up in a proper kitchen at a proper café serving the rare beast known as a proper brunch in Paris. This year we’re going to more of all that, but even bigger and better.

Well rested from our holiday time off, we’re back in the kitchen this weekend, with a new menu for our brunch at Coutume. The old standbys are still there – eggs, bacon, toast, smoked salmon, blah blah blah, as well as the Emperor Norton Honey Granola, Frittata, and Breakfast Burrito you can’t seem to get enough of. (Thank you, by the way. We’ve done so many burritos we can now roll them blindfolded.)

Kicking off 2012, we’ve added the Hash of the Week. If you don’t know what hash is – in the culinary sense – it’s typically diced potatoes with shredded bits of delicious meat and, when properly served, an egg on top. This week we’re doing duck carnitas – confit de canard with citrus and spices – with your choice of fried egg or unctuous soft-boiled egg.

To tickle your sweet tooth, we’ve carried our genuine Aussie-approved Sticky Date Pudding with butterscotch sauce from the holiday menu. And because it’s the New Year and we’re in France, we’re serving our special individual-size Azuki (red bean) and chestnut Galette des Rois.

Note: Some of the galettes contain a special fève. Find one and you’ll win a bag of Coutume coffee to take home with you!

Come on by to Coutume – 47 rue de Babylone, 7th arrondissement – between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

*Correction: Since we went public, we’ve noticed a number of the things we serve later appearing on Parisian menus. It’s truly flattering. Thank you, sincerely.

St. Feuillien. Lupulus. St. Stefanus. Delerium Tremens. Carolus. Chimay. Cuvée des Trolls. Emperor Norton?

This Thursday, December 1, we have the honor of creating the food for this canonical lineup of “Les Mythiques Bières Belges” for the second Mousse Touch soirée, this time to be held aboard the Concord Atlantique boat, on the Seine by the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

As with the first Mousse Touch event, we’ve been tasked with creating new, original food to be enjoyed with a variety of beers. Thinking long and hard about the Belgian theme, we couldn’t help but be flooded with stereotypical images of the foods we ourselves had between beers in the streets of Brugges and Brussels: Fries and waffles.

So we set upon creating a hybrid of the two, which we’ll unveil at the party. Of course, we aim to go a little bit farther, so inspired by our taste memory of the Flemish back country, we’re working on some savory toppings involving endives, konijn, and even Vlaamse stoofkarbonaden.

See you on the boat!
Discounted advance tickets here: http://www.mousse-touch.net/acheter-des-places
(€20 at the door.)

One year ago, we put our first ever to-go item out on the interwebs: The Thanksgiving Bento. Now that we have a professional kitchen and an awesome café to serve it in, we’re dispensing with the bento box and offering up the Assiette Thanksgiving Revisité – our reinterpretation of a typical American Thanksgiving dinner with a Japanese touch.

Whether you’re homesick, curious, or already know this dish from last year, come to our brunch at Coutume this weekend, and we’ll hook you up with a plate of:

• yuzu-brined turkey breast
• stuffing with kaki (persimmon)
• potatoes mashed with our homemade Japanese mayo
• Brussels sprouts leaves with white sesame and bacon
• candied sweet potatoes
• the infamous cranberry-shiso sauce

***Limited availability***

We’ll also be stocking the dessert case with some autumnal delights, like our pumpkin spice bread and – special for this weekend – pecan pie. All house made. Zero industrial ingredients.

Of course, the usual brunch menu will be on offer, so you can get your fill of eggs made to order, real Irish bacon, Aussie-style potatoes, breakfast burritos, and all sorts of awesomeness à la carte.

Finally, to give thanks to all of our awesome fans who have been patient with the crowd and the wait for a table, we’re extending brunch service until 4:00 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, so you have a little extra time to get your grub on.

Coutume Café
47 rue de Babylone
75007 Paris

Saturday & Sunday, 26-27 November
Brunch served from 11:00am to 4:00pm
Desserts & pastries served until 7:00pm

Tuesday, 19 October
7:0 0pm – 12:00 midnight

Although the Emperor is no fan of the right wing nor its mouthpiece newspaper, we also know when to be flattered. So we’re honored not only to have been mentioned in this week’s must-do events by Le Figaro, but we’re also humbled by having been chosen to provide the food for this inaugural beer event by Mousse Touch in partnership the Mondial de la Bière (World Beer Expo).

For the first time ever, Canada’s finest craft brewers – representing Québec and Ontario – are united in Paris to share their wares with beer aficionados. Dieu du Ciel, Le Naufrageur, Le Grimoire, À l’Abri de la Tempête, Charlevoix, and Beau’s have all made the trip across the Atlantic to pour some beers, while our friends Demory will be representing the home team.

We’ve prepared a special Canadian-inspired menu to complement all the brews on tap:

Please join us at:

Le Passage vers Les Étoiles
17 Cité Joly
75011 Paris
Mº Père Lachaise

More information: mousse-touch.net

Update: The contest is now over and our homeboy didn’t win. We thank you nonetheless!

Thanks to all your votes last week, our little mustachioed friend has survived the first week of the Les Toqués du Net contest from Super Marmite and Monoprix.

This week, Omid had to create a dish following the “flavors from elsewhere” theme, which proved more difficult than planned – mostly because of the lack of expected products at Monoprix. In the Asian aisle, they were out of Japanese rice! So he took some not-so-exotic ingredients – after plenty of deep thoughts – and created a dish that’s at once simple, rather gastronomic and definitely pretty.

Listen up: To see the dish, you have to go to the photo page on Super Marmite, and if you like it, click on the little heart icon beneath it. (You’ll have to sign up with the site, but it’s totally worthwhile – and spam free.) By doing so, you can vote for me in the hopes that I’ll be in the finals next week, with a live challenge in front of Pierre Sang from Top Chef. Would that be cool or what? Vote!

Naturally, you can also order this dish on Super Marmite. It’s scheduled for Tuesday, September 20 at 8:00 pm, and it’s only €5!