48 Hours In Paris Ft. Secret Bars, Bakeries & Cheese - Our Alternative Guide.

Yamas! Takila! Yet another very romantic trip for Will and Jesse. We're in Paris! Hey, I'm Jesse, behind the camera is Will, and together we are Top Duel. Over the next 48 hours, we are going to film our alternative guide to Paris. Oh, and by the way, I need to apologise for the quite horrific French accent that I'm going to proceed to do over the next two days. It's cold, bought a big coat. We're going to drop bags at the hotel and then on to breakfast time. Yeah, this place is amazing. It's 172 rooms in the centre of Paris. This place is mammoth. Quick stop off at the Hoxton. We've dropped our bags here, we had a little tour around. This place is beyond impressive, but I am so hungry, Will. Let's get some proper French pastries. Apparently, they do this like pistachio Danish, which sounds just awesome. Pastry time! This is what we've come to see, owned by Christophe Vasseur. They're making bread like they did a hundred years ago. Dough resting for like two days, everything cooked in a wood oven. This has been recommended to us by Maxime, owner of Blanchette. We've featured them before on Top Duel. It's like one of the best French restaurants in London. Come on, Will. I can smell it already. Get your schnoz in here. Mate, I just want it all, but we've got to pace ourselves. The worst thing about this place is the anxiety you have about choosing a dish. Chasson, porfait? She's struggling to understand the thing. I think my French did all right in there because nobody spoke back to me in English. This is an ascargo with chocolat and pistachio. This is like an apple and cream puff, and this is an almond croissant. Can I go yet, Will? Yes, eat. Bon appétit. Yeah? Thanks, Maxime, for the recommendation. Always trust a French man when he's recommending Parisian bakeries. Top Duel top tip. We got there late morning, no queue. Now it's near lunchtime, queuezilla. I can't imagine that's a tip. Well, you heard it here first. Basically, it's a busy bakery, okay? And it's very, very good. L'Arc de Triomphe. Will, that's not the Arc de Triomphe. Will seems to think that every single arch you see in Paris is probably the Arc de Triomphe. We are in Le Marais. This is Jacques Chenin, a very premium confectioner. Treat the chocolate like it's a real high fashion product. Should we buy these for our friends at home? Yeah, okay. Let's see if they last for 48 hours, eh? Oh, thank you very much. I'm loving this. Oh, yeah. I've had a lot of mint-flavored chocolate in my life, but not that. You can taste so much fresh mint. This is their little jelly. Mango flavor. No pectin, no gelatin, all vegan. This place opened September last year, so it's only been open for about four months. Their donut collection changes about every three weeks. Some themes always stay constant, so they always have a chocolate one. They always have a caramel one. We asked Frank what his two favorites were. He said creme brulee and the chocolate banana one. A healthy start to the day. May I have chocolate banana? That's a top-drawer recommended, right? You think it's going to be really dense because it's quite like a little stocky unit of a donut, but it's basically completely filled with banana cream. You heard it here first. I heard it first. Have I got the rest of my cheese? No. You make yourself conscious when you come in close to the camera. This is Marche des Enfants Rouge. The reason why it got its name is because they used to be, in the 16th century, an orphanage. You'd sit on the side. An uplifting note is that the food here is amazing. You can do takeaway or you can sit in little stalls, kind of like a street food market, and some artisanal and organic products as well. This place is a goldmine of food. The crepes that this guy is serving up is like nothing I've ever seen. We've got Mr. Superhero here. It looks just like it's out of thaw. I think we've become really accustomed to street food markets now. There's loads in London. There's loads in pretty much every UK city, but this one is really, really worth coming to. Every single stand here, I'm like, I want that. Actually, I don't want that. That looks like sick. I want to have a glass of wine and some cheese over there. Bonjour! Oh! Did someone say cheese? Lunch on a Thursday. Mate, that is a lofty camembert. This is called the Mont d'Or. It's special that they have a very small menu, and I think they've changed quite a lot. The food here looks so much more high-end than you'd expect in a market. Mate, so far, so good. You're hitting quite a lot of spots. I mean, we don't necessarily advise that you cram in as much as we do, but we're just here to try it all out. We're trying to find the best coffee place around. We heard that the Fringe was the one. We're really worried about overloading on grub and having a bit of a lull. Coffee looks like that, where it will. We have a Czech chocolate hazelnut cookie, which, again, wasn't the plan but looked unavoidable. The guy in there said he thinks that there's a lot of parallels between coffee and photography because of the craft and the kind of amount of precision that goes into it. Mate, I drink a lot of oat milk flat whites. That one, dude, that's high up there. Look at that little juicy goddess right there. Chocolate chip, hazelnut cookie. Warm, very soft, very goo. Kicking out. Top-notch crawl like that. And one of the best oat milk lattes I've ever had. Respect to Fringe. We're in East Paris. Just like in London, the East is the kind of younger, more fashion-y kind of district. We didn't realise, but we've timed our visit around Men's Fashion Week in Paris. So there's a lot of fashionistas around. Are we fashionistas, Will? Started chucking it down in the rain. So we thought, well, as we're staying in the best hotel in Paris, let's come back here, have a couple of drinks, and make our plan for the evening. Second glass of wine today. We don't want Jesse to get a bit slurry, do we, Will? Uh-uh. This is the Rive Bar in Hoxton. Open to anyone, so you don't have to be staying here. You can just come in here and have a drink or some food or work. It's past 5pm now, so we've moved on to the hard stuff. Here we have a truffle margarita. I like that a lot. This is the smallest room. It's called the Shoebox in Hoxton. It's ample and it's sexy, isn't it, Will? As everything in Hoxton, attention to detail is immense. And they have a little survival guide here. Surrounding map. We've got a list of places. We're not going to be able to make it to all of them tonight. We can do as many as we possibly can. Let's go get pizza, Will. Come on. We've heard about this big mama group that has lots of restaurants all over Paris. One of which is Pizzeria Populaire. So Pizzeria Populaire, as now I've been told it's been said. And we call it Pizzeria Populaire. It's basically a piece of Naples in Paris. It's very, very popular because it earns tables quickly. But it's really reasonably priced. Ah, thank you. It's served in a wine glass. It's a blonde beer. So here I'm going to give you some of the ingredients. We have beef carpaccio, Parmesan crisps here, a balsamic glaze. And then here we have our Regina Beretta. Again, we've got mushrooms, Beretta on it. Ham. 15 euros of 15 euros. It's quite cheap in Paris. Paris is cheap. I've just been told they're opening one in London. They can't tell me anything else apart from it's going to be open in Zone 1. Everything was good? Everything was great. Thank you very much. We've done our pizza. That's some good value. Good value pizza. And now we're going to go on to Mabel. We're in Mabel. It is a rum empire. Will, this camera's going to be getting a lot more shaky from now on, isn't it? We asked Joseph, master exorgist here, to pick some for us. He's given me this little bad boy. I'm not going to try and pronounce it. There are two different types of rum in here. One's from Jamaica. There's passion fruit, sesame, and rhubarb. It's kind of like a sweet and sour one. And Will has got one that is essentially rocket fuel. It's going to put him into a different dimension. There are four different types of rum in here. And then the mixer is champagne. Cheers. That's nice. Awesome rum cocktails. Very, very strong. Will, I don't think I've ever had a drink as… Yeah, Will's a bit… Next place we're going to is Baranad. Now, it looks like an Indian restaurant from the outside, but we're told that you go through inside and out through the back, and there's a little speakeasy cocktail bar. Sounds good. Is there a bar through there? I don't know, but we have something special somewhere you can find. Okay. Okay, so that door's the box. This one is… Oh, look at this. Hello, how are you? Hello. Oh, it's all happening back here, isn't it? This setting is like you're in a train going through Mumbai. It's funny because the restaurant outside is super chilled, and then here is an absolute bustle. This is the cocktail menu, a little passport. All of the cocktails are kind of Indian. There's like some sort of infusion or flavouring in there. And the food menu is like a train ticket. We ordered two hay honeys, some tandoori chicken, and we've got a butter chicken serving there. Nice little Indian tapas as well. If we're more hungry, we've got more in on the dishes. Thanks, man. Take it easy. Next up, Lavamatic. Another speakeasy. We're quite liking this theme. Lavamatic is like a laundrette, and apparently we've got to go through a washing machine to get into this little bar. He said it's the moor. That is sweet in a bar. The entrance downstairs is fantastic. Full-on laundrette scenario. It even has like a little dispensable detergent. Best couple of buttons, walk to the washing machine, and then you're in here. We're back at the Hoxton Hotel. We've done a lot today. We've done like, I don't know, 10, 11 places, something like that. Going to hit the hay now, have a little nightcap in Hoxton, and then ready for full speed ahead tomorrow because we've got another whole day to make use of, dude. Good night. I hope my snoring doesn't keep you up. Oh, mate. Just having a little day two planning sesh. I'm using the little Hoxton map to plot out a few of our places today. I want to take Will down to Shakespeare and Company, which is this cool little bookshop down by Notre Dame in the Latin Quarter. Will loves a book. Hey, Will. Especially when we're picturing it. Little bus on here and we're off. Decent little pano risotto. We're going to go to Holly Belly. We're going to have brunch. Just to remind you that you are in Paris, forget it's just left and rounded places. Holly Belly 5. This place is quite a straight up brunch place. You know the drill. Filter coffee. I prefer authentic. You feel like we should go more French. Yeah. As we're here, we might as well enjoy our pancakes. Okay, so here we have the savory stack. Not so savory because it also features a lot of maple syrup. They have pancakes, eggs, bacon. I'm not going to lie, it's tasty. Not too sweet. Let's call a spade a spade, right? That place is decent. It's secure outside. It's always busy. Might be the most un-French place you can go in Paris. We got served by one guy from Cambridge, another guy from Stratford. We are going to provide the antidote for that. I'm going to find the most French place we could possibly find just to give you a balance. Roger La Grenille. The most French restaurant you could possibly find, right? We were told by the guys that they didn't get many tourists in here. This place first opened in like the 1930s, right? Apparently he was a real legend around town. Lots of creatives in here. Loads of parties. And it's renowned as one of the best places for frog's legs in all of France. It's called the Arrogant Frog. Cheers. What's up first, Jess? Snails, Will. It smells brilliant. It smells garlicky. It smells very nice. It's this garlic sea. Hmm. It kind of tastes like cockles or something. Like seafood, like little shellfish. We now have a Croque Monsieur. So in here they have ham, both with cheese from Switzerland, bread which is absolutely cooked in loads and loads of butter. Give it a whirl. Oh, make a frog go. That light and sweet. You can taste the butter. It's so crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. Okay, so this is the frog legs. It's like nuggets, he said. They retain just this bone only, so it acts like a big cocktail stick. With a bearnaise sauce, wine sauce, and garlic aioli. The aioli. Mmm. Kind of like a fishier texture than chicken. That aioli bangs in my mouth. These are frog legs served another way. There's little Freddy the Frog. Bit different to a Freddo, isn't it? We wanted something super French. I've never had frog legs before. I've never had snails before. Roger La Grenille is the best place for this type of thing. We can't be very close to anybody from now on in because our mouths are garlic city. So in this guide we weren't going to focus on many of the sort of obvious touristy spots, but Notre-Dame is one of my faves. And Will hasn't been inside, so try and keep that camera subtle because they won't like it. Ridiculous. Imagine if I said to you, oh yeah, I want to build this building. It's going to take me 700 years. Yeah, can you like just give me some debt on it? This is the Centre Pompidou. It's the first example of an inside-out building. And since 1977, it's seen 180 million visitors. This is Shakespeare & Company. In 1922, an American called Sylvia Beech opened one up nearby. Closed down when the Germans occupied Paris. This one opened in 1951 and was originally called Le Mestral. They changed their name to Shakespeare & Company in tribute to Sylvia's original one and on Shakespeare's 400th birthday. And it helps out writers in giving them support and free lodging in return for help out in the shop. Oh, I think this one's about us, Will. Reminds me of like a shop from Diagon Alley, Harry Potter. The Louvre is home to the extremely famous Mona Lisa. The biggest art museum in the world at 782,000 square feet. And within a single year, 10.2 million visitors view this place. It's quite impressive, eh? My farm's bigger than the Louvre. Yeah, you've got a big farm. It was essentially exhibiting art since like 1699 or something. I'm not going to get any more technical on that because I don't really know. Enough of this culture. Let's go and stuff our faces. Yeah, Will's quite up for cheese. Mate, what a beautiful day. So we're here in Col. This place is actually an Asian restaurant. We've just come up here to check out the glass ceiling, look at the view. I've ordered an espresso martini. Will's ordered a margarita. It's very posh Parisian. These cocktails are 17 euros each. It is a lot, but it's only two euros more than it was over at Mabel last night. We're getting to the final stages now. This street is called Rue de Nils and it is home to four places by the brand Frenchie. Very popular. We'll start with the first original one, the original Frenchie Bistro. Open on evenings for a very nice little sit-down din. And then Frenchie Wine Bar. Open this evening, so we're not going to be able to make it, but it's been here for five years and it's decent. And if you like the wines in there, you can get them here in the Frenchie Wine Store. Yummers. And then the more casual, laid-back, daytime version, we have Frenchie To Go. And that's the one we're going in. I've heard the Reuben is amazing! We've got pulled pork sandwich, a Reuben salt beef sandwich. Oh yeah. And you get a side, you get a beer or a soft drink, 17 euros. It's the same price that we paid for those cocktails over at GONG just now. Right, that's it. We hope you've enjoyed our four hours in Paris. I think the highlight for me was the croque monsieur from earlier today. Oh, the cheese at the market. The climbing through a washing machine at the bar last night. Let us know what you think. If we missed anywhere, let us know in the comments. If you go and see anywhere that we've featured in this video, also let us know. We love the interaction we have with you guys. Most of this video has been based on recommendations that we've got through you from Instagram, so thanks a lot for that. Love you all. Love you, Will. We've had a good time, haven't we? Yes, mate. And the next one is going to be 48 hours in Bangkok. Slightly different to Paris.