Two goals for this trip: 1) Eat a lot of French food; 2) don’t break the bank doing so.

A cafe/brasserie just up the street from where we are staying, in the 17th arrondissement, has contributed greatly to making this happen.

Le Royal Pereire.

We may have just been lucky this time around, given that we could find good reviews and more here, as well as not so good/bad reviews. But we have been several times and been pleased with the food as well as the prices.

And, for sure, it offers dishes we could not get in the UAE at any sort of reasonable cost.

In our trips there, we have had several of the traditional French dinner standbys.

–Confit de canard, which was fine, except that the skin was not as crispy as the diner would have preferred.

–Moules frites — mussels and fries. A huge bucket o’ mussels  and a big plate of fries.

–Gesiers and artichaut salade — gizzards and artichoke salad. I mean, where do you go to get pan-sauteed gizzards? Le Royal Pereire has them, and they are nice. If you like that sort of thing.

–Beef tartare. Pre-mixed by the kitchen, quite spicy (perhaps a bit of horseradish?), very nice.

–Poulet fermier avec puree. Free-range chicken with mashed potatoes. The chicken (a leg and thigh) was excellent, and so were the spuds — if you don’t mind the half-stick of butter in there.

–The formule poulet roti. A big piece of rotisserie chicken (the breast and wing) and a plate of fries; a piece of apple tart and a coffee — for 14 euros. (That’s about $17.50, but that’s a major deal, in a real Paris eatery.)

Le Royal Periere is not great. It is not going to show up in guide books. And we now know that, of course, Paris does (in fact) have some truly bad restaurants. This is not one of them. This is a restaurant ranked about No. 4,000 among 8,000 Paris restos. That puts it smack in the middle, but doesn’t connote the sense of Frenchness, and the convenience for anyone staying in this part of the 17th, nor does it reflect that this place is a bargain, by Paris standards.

On any given night, the menu will be very French and usually good, the place will not be overrun by tourists, mixed drinks as well as beer and inexpensive wine by the carafe are available, and the location — on the Place de Marechal Juin — offers prime people watching, both from the terrace and the interior of the restaurant. The service is unhurried and generally acceptable.

This is not what a Francophile dreams of, while in some faraway place, but on the ground, with a budget that is not unlimited … it works quite well.