Réservations via dm
Pochana (Oberkampf/Marais)
RESTAURANTS • First Person
“Have you been here yet?” I DM’ed my friend Jon Bonné, sending the Instagram profile for Pochana. The 10-seater debuted in December in the natural wine-heavy stretch of the 11th arrondissement straddling the Marais and Oberkampf, an easy bar hop from Folderol and Delicatessen Place. The restaurant’s Instagram grid showcased a mere trio of photos — no details on the menu or chef, no website or telephone number — just a simple bio: “Thai bites et vins sympas.”
“Ha, no… I tried to go Wed and Thurs but they were fully booked,” texted back Jon, a fellow food and wine writer who owns an apartment in the neighborhood. “Dying to go.”
I DM’ed for a reservation. Nothing. Followed up the next day. Still nothing. As loyal as my friends and I are to our neighborhood haunts like Bistrot Paul Bert and Martin, we’re always craving something new — a guest chef, a pop-up. I asked around and couldn’t find a single person in my friend circle who’d dined at Pochana. But everyone had the same response: “Dying to go.”
When husband-wife proprietors Rémi and May responded about an open table for the first seating that Wednesday night, I jumped. A wooden cocktail table and sole silver stool were the only indicators marking the restaurant’s entrance in an otherwise deserted alleyway near République. A counter faced the expansive windows looking out at the cobbled street. Three tables lined one side of the wall across an open kitchen, where May infuses Chinese touches into her family's Thai recipes, which are paired alongside Suntory Toki whisky highball cocktails or Rémi’s selection of natural wines.
We started with a bottle of gently macerated Sons of Wine pét-nat from Alsace and picked four of the five dishes on the modest menu. Jazz hummed softly in the background in rhythm with May, who was grilling chicken for the gai yang and pork neck for the namtok moo yang salad in the terracotta-tiled kitchen. Along with two designer friends, the couple dreamt up the intimate space themselves, inspired by an izakaya they used to frequent in Japan.
Plates of triangular pork and Chinese chive dumplings drizzled with chili oil and a Thai pork omelette laced with fermented pork sausage crowded our tiny table in the back. I wished there was a lazy Susan, since we kept passing dishes back and forth, sampling bites of each with chopsticks. The symphony of spice hit at the right moments, none overpowering or competing.
The handful of 30-something couples and duos of friends slowly started clearing out as the finale of first seating approached. A stream of stylish Japanese influencers (it was fashion week, after all) slowly filled their place. We finished dinner but weren’t being rushed out — the energy felt more like an after party, everyone gathering once the runway shows wrapped up. The music escalated with the new crowd, and we slowly made our exit, back out to the calm alley you’d never randomly stumble down — unless you knew what was shielded behind Pochana’s buzzy glass vitrine. –Lane Nieset
→ Pochana (Oberkampf/Marais) • 1 Passage du Jeu de Boules • 19h and 21h15 seatings • Book via DM.