Paris’s Delicious Answer To Taco Bell

Last semester, for the final project of a journalism class I was taking, I decided to interview a French chef named Gilles Ajuelos about the current state of French cuisine. I expected him to lament about the downfall of French tradition in the face of Americanization, but much to my surprise Mr. Ajuelos was a relentless optimist who refused to see the changing face of Gallic eating habits in anything but a positive light. Trying to convince me that the rise of fast food in Paris was a good thing, he sputtered, “I think that, more and more, there’s... look, for example, what’s that restaurant called—Cojean. Do you know it?”

Did I know it? Oh, I knew it. And, even though I found Mr. Ajuelos’s cheerful view of modern French eating habits to be a tad unrealistic, I couldn’t help but agree with him on this point: Cojean’s existence is definitely a good thing.

Cojean is in the vanguard of a type of dining establishment that has infiltrated Paris in the past decade: the healthy fast-food lunch joint. The first Cojean opened in 2001—today there are 10 branches, mostly in commercial neighborhoods rife with yuppie businesspeople who have grown disenchanted by the traditional three-course, two-hour lunch.

Other restaurants of Cojean’s type exist—salad bars where diners choose among lettuces, cheeses, and vinaigrettes and watch as their salads are mixed right in front of them, or sandwich places where patrons select their own breads and fillings instead of settling for the invariable recipe of the boulangerie. But no other place combines France’s obsession with quality and America’s obsession with image as successfully as Cojean.

The highlight of Cojean’s menu, as far as I’m concerned, are its salads, prepared daily and packaged to be plucked from refrigerated cases during the midday rush—though, frankly, the word “salad” doesn’t really do justice to Cojean’s creations. “Salad” implies restraint, asceticism, blahness—what Cojean packs into disposable plastic containers is truly inspired.

I spent the first few weeks of my Cojean initiation compulsively buying a mixture of green beans, peas, and coral lentils topped with three thick medallions of ash-coated goat’s cheese and dusted generously with crushed hazelnuts. Eating it felt made me feel at once self-indulgent and virtuous.

I would happily have kept up my salade de chèvre cendré habit, but, in mid-January, I was intrigued by a new bright orange salad. An initial investigation, followed by many subsequent investigations, revealed that this carrot-based salade de nhu was an over-the-top mixture of strong flavors—brackish smoked tofu, earthy black mushrooms, cloying pineapple, grassy cilantro, pungent sweet-and-sour sauce—that, somehow, work perfectly together. These days, I’ve moved onto the salade b12, a tame-sounding mix of green lentils, bulgar wheat, parsley, and alfalfa sprouts that is somehow made habit-forming by its savory dressing.

Though salads are my favorite part of the Cojean experience, the restaurant appeals to many people for different reasons. My coworker Chris frequently asks those going on a lunch trip to bring him back a container of one of Cojean’s soups. “Bring me something hot, creamy, and exotic,” he says, and Cojean never disappoints. It offers four all-vegetarian recipes each day ranging from spinach and chèvre to green lentil to Thai carrot and pumpkin.

Others flock to Cojean for its juices and smoothies, which are still something of a novelty in Paris. Cojean’s blends bear provocative names like “10h du soir en été” (“10 o’clock at night in summer”) and “le dernier baiser” (“the last kiss”), and include ingredients like mango, raspberries, coconut milk, and fresh mint. The restaurant is also one of the few places in Paris that sells wheatgrass—though I have never, in the umpteen times that I have been to Cojean, seen anyone order it.

Given the quality of its menu, Cojean could afford to neglect all other aspects of its presentation—but it doesn’t. Instead, Cojean aggressively pursues a unique image that is both hip and friendly. Its dining areas are sterile and sleek, except for the trays, on which grass sprouts from thin layers of sod. Even more surprising than these patches of greenery are Cojean’s employees. The servers behind the counter and on the floor clearing off tables are almost without exception young, attractive, and convivial, a far cry from the scowling, near-mute waiters that are foun—in accordance with the stereotype—in many local cafés. Cojean plays up the allure of its wait staff—its website, www.cojean.fr, includes a gallery of its fresh-faced, grinning employees, all identified by their first names.

Salad and soup bars with friendly, efficient service are old news in the United States. But no American lunch place that I’ve ever been to has matched Cojean’s menu, or personnel, for toothsomeness. I don’t agree with Mr. Ajuelos, the chef, that traditional French cuisine has nothing to fear from Americanization, but his optimism is well-founded in one regard—Cojean has taken the best aspects of American fast food and improved it.