Get FREE email communications from Fodor's Travel, covering must-see travel destinations, expert trip planning advice, and travel inspiration to fuel your passion.
A new wave of culinary confidence has been running through one of the world's great food cities and spilling over both banks of the Seine. Whether cooking up grand-mère's roast chicken and riz au lait or placing a whimsical hat of cotton candy atop wild-strawberry-and-rose ice cream, Paris chefs—established and up-and-coming, native and foreign—have been breaking free from the tyranny of tradition and following their passion.
Emblematic of the "bistronomy" movement is the proliferation of "gastrobistros"—often in far-flung or newly chic neighborhoods—helmed by established chefs fleeing the constraints of the star system or passionate young chefs unfettered by overblown expectations. Among the seasoned stars and exciting newcomers to the scene are Yannick Alléno, who left behind two Michelin stars at Le Meurice to open his locavore bistro Terroir Parisien at the Palais Brogniart and earned three stars at the storied Pavillon Ledoyen within his first year at the helm; David Toutain at the exceptional Restaurant David Toutain; Sylvestre Wahid at Brasserie Thoumieux; and Katsuaki Okiyama's Abri.
But self-expression is not the only driving force behind the current trend. A traditional high-end restaurant can be prohibitively expensive to operate. As a result, more casual bistros and cafés, which reflect the growing allure of less formal dining and often have lower operating costs and higher profit margins, have become attractive opportunities for even top chefs.
For tourists, this development can only be good news, because it makes the cooking of geniuses such as Joël Robuchon, Guy Savoy, Eric Frechon, and Pierre Gagnaire a bit more accessible (even if these star chefs rarely cook in their lower-price restaurants) and opens up a vast range of new possibilities for exciting dining.
Like the chefs themselves, Paris diners are breaking away from tradition with renewed enthusiasm. New restaurants, wine bars, and rapidly multiplying épicieries (gourmet grocers) and sandwich shops recognize that not everyone wants a three-course blowout every time they dine out. And because Parisians are more widely traveled than in the past, many ethnic restaurants—notably the best North African, Vietnamese–Laotian, Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese spots—are making fewer concessions to French tastes, resulting in far better food.
This tiny, charming gem is located just behind the hubbub of Odeon and Boulevard Saint-Germain. The head chef here knows good food and everything on the menu is fresh and delicious, from the truffle tarama or classic escargot starters to the fresh fish of the day (often sea bass or cod) or the duck confit as mains. Desserts are inspired by American classics and made with a fine French touch. The space itself is beautiful, and always makes you feel welcome.
With its Art Nouveau decor, friendly waitstaff, and menu of fresh bistro food, this is the perfect place for a drink or meal after visiting the nearby Montparnasse Cemetery.
Sink into a comfy armchair at this popular tearoom, whose name translates to "the Dormouse in the Teapot" (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). The savory tarts are good, but the real stars are desserts like the decadent chocolate crumble tart or mile-high lemon meringue pie. The restaurant's all-day hours are a bonus, especially for teatime, but its no-reservations policy means lines for weekend brunch can be dauntingly long.
The plush chestnut-and-cream decor of this café is the work of one of Givenchy's nephews. Cocktails are classy, there's a good variety of beer on tap, and the food (brasserie fare such as steaks, fish, and frites) is tasty. In the evening, candlelight makes everyone look even more glamorous.
From a wine-soaked boeuf bourguignon and garlicky snails to tasty slabs of homemade country pâté served with cornichons and a hearty red, this Art Nouveau–era bistro offers all the classics of southwestern France. Check the blackboard menu for the daily specials, delivered in generous portions.
This lively café in the heart of the Left Bank theater district specializes in meats, wines, and cheeses from the Auvergne region of France, famous for its prize beef cattle. If you don’t want meat but love cheese and mashed potatoes, try the aligot, a hearty recipe of potato puree, melted cheese, cream, and garlic.
What used to be a rare bookshop has been carefully reinvented into a coffee shop and gourmet deli serving casual fare like an egg and salmon breakfast, lactose-free dishes and pastries, and mixed veggie salads. The vintage hand-painted storefront and tile floors have been preserved and make the space utterly charming; these are the details that make people fall in love with Paris. There is a children's menu and a large choice of homemade desserts.
This photo op–ready corner café draws a quirky mix of hipsters, artists, and discriminating tourists. The food is good and includes classics like steak tartare and escargots from Burgundy. For a weekday lunch, check the ardoise (slate blackboard) for the daily special. If you're craving a taste of home, the excellent cheeseburger comes with a heap of crispy fries.
Wondering where locals drink their coffee on touristy Île St-Louis? Try this old-time café that also features a menu of classic French dishes—it's open until 2 am daily.
Legendary performers and artists, including the likes of Isadora Duncan and Hart Crane, used to hang out here, and now it's a popular place for a coffee, glass of wine, or well-made cocktail. Stay for lunch or dinner and enjoy the brasserie menu, where the signature salade niçoise is outstanding and the classic French onion soup hits the spot. It may not be as hip as the equally historic cafés in St-Germain-des-Prés, but Le Select is a low-key way of soaking in the Left Bank historic café scene without the hubbub.
A quiet residential street shelters one of Paris's great neighborhood bistros, which retains its moleskin banquettes, blackboard menus, and small wooden tables where you'll touch elbows with your neighbors. Expect fresh market ingredients in a gastronomic menu that's liberal with deluxe details. A typical meal might include vegetable soup with foie gras and cream, truffle tagliatelles, panfried scallops in crab sauce or axoa de veau (a Basque veal sauté), and a vanilla soufflé with cherry jam. All this plus a great choice of wines by the glass keep happy regulars filling the dining room. Prix-fixe menus start at €32 at lunch.
Japanese-French fusion cuisine is wildly popular in Paris as deliciously demonstrated here at chef Daï Shinozuka’s pared-down bistro in a corner of the Marché des Enfants Rouges. Seasonal dishes like creamy pumpkin soup with mussels, parsley oil, Camargue salicorne, and preserved lemon or roasted Normandie scallops with smoky haddock cream, spinach, and roasted turnips drizzled with watercress oil dazzle the palate. For dessert, litchi mousse and granité with grapefruit gelée crowns a gratifying dining experience.
If you're young—or young at heart—come here to hang with the Sorbonne crowd at this bustling brasserie on a shaded pedestrian lane. It's steps from campus and also near Le Jardin du Luxembourg.
All of Paris seems to collide at this lively corner café in the heart of the Marais, where you'll find pretty much whatever is your pleasure any time of the day or night. Slide into a red banquette, or take a seat on the wide wraparound terrace to watch the world go by while indulging in generous servings of all the French classics, a glass of wine, or coffee and dessert.
The operatically beautiful LiLi, in the Peninsula Paris hotel, puts sophisticated Cantonese cuisine in its rightful place—the gastronomic center of the world. The menu features all the classics, raised to the status of haute cuisine: small plates of dim sum (seafood, vegetable, or pork dumplings) alongside more substantial fare like fried rice studded with market-fresh vegetables, succulent Sichuan shrimp, and barbecued suckling pig. The chef's signature crème de mangue laced with pomelo pearls is an ethereal ending to an exceptional meal. At €75, the prix-fixe lunch menu is a wonderful introduction to this timeless cuisine.
With a reasonably priced set menu, this restaurant from the owners of Willi's Wine Bar is an ideal spot for a relaxed meal after visiting the Louvre. Natural light streams through the interior, and a broad, curved staircase leads to a spacious upstairs salon: the perfect place to enjoy the seasonally motivated menu.
There's not a brasserie in Paris with a view to match the one at this eatery set on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower (the Jules Verne, helmed by chef Frédéric Anton, is on the second floor). Multiple Michelin-star chef Thierry Marx presides over this chic dining room, done up in creamy leather and blond wood, where everything is "stylish, sustainable, and cozy" (and, we might add, very expensive) with special attention to local products whenever possible. Like any good Parisian brasserie, this dining room is open from 10 am until 11:30 pm and serves every meal, from breakfast to late-night drinks at the bar. Views are equally stupendous day or night, but there's nothing so romantic as seeing the City of Lights at night—especially from within the tower, glittering madly for five minutes at the beginning of each hour after sunset. Online booking lets you choose your view; a window seat will cost you extra.
Pastry chef Myriam Sabeta’s carved out a whole new niche in French sweets with her creations influenced by her childhood in Aleppo, Syria. Her signature “nids” are based on kadaïf, the buttery angel hair pastries of the Levant, which Sabet fills with cream and dried or candied fruit in original flavors such as Damascus rose, chocolate-sumac, or lemon-cardamom. Her ambrosial baklavas may be layered with Piedmont hazelnuts and lemon or Iranian pistachio and orange blossom.
Once you're done with the Louvre, this little sandwich stand adjacent to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel is probably the closest spot to snag something to restore you. Classic French sandwiches like ham-and-butter or tuna salad are served on fluffy baguettes reminiscent of ciabatta. They're joined by quiches, a handful of salads, and desserts.
Though Parisian purists may not approve, the rest of the world has joyfully embraced this hybrid restaurant/pastry shop that rose to global TikTok fame with the “crookie,” an unabashedly decadent mix of French croissant and American-style chocolate-chip cookie. You’ll feel better about indulging if you first partake of the many healthy items on the brunch, lunch, and dinner menus offering French classic dishes like country paté, a creamy veggie soup of the day, escargot in garlic butter, roasted duck leg, and a juicy American-style hamburger on a homemade French brioche bun.
Michelin-starred chef Hélène Darroze made a name for herself decades ago, and her long-established restaurant in Paris has been revamped and renamed Marsan, a nod to her birthplace in the country's southwest. It's prix-fixe only, at lunch and dinner, whether you opt for the elegant upstairs dining room or the semiprivate table for six with a view of the open kitchen. At the table next to the kitchen (la table du chef), there is a multi-course tasting menu for €325. The elegant dining room serves a four-course lunch menu on weekdays (€95) and a six- or nine-course tasting menu for lunch or dinner (€195 or €250, respectively) that features beautifully presented dishes such as foie gras, lobster, sea bass, farm-raised squab, and Darroze's signature baba, an Armagnac-infused cake with vanilla syrup and candied pears. For truffle fanatics, one can request additional white and black truffle dishes (available only during truffle season).
In Belle Époque Paris, Maxim's de Paris was known for being the spot where well-heeled gentlemen brought their favorite mistresses, and it long attracted a veritable who's who of Parisians and foreign Francophiles. After falling into relative obsolescence during Pierre Cardin's three decades of ownership, hospitality group the Paris Society gave it a much-needed facelift in 2023; now the Art Nouveau institution retains its velvet banquettes, stained glass statement walls, and gorgeous light fixtures and boasts a menu of revitalized French classics. Service is curt, bordering on aloof, but with a coupe of Champagne in your hand, it's easy to ignore.
Inside the Grand Palais, Mini Palais is a stylish dining room, but the menu is the real draw. The burger de magret et foie gras, a flavorful mélange of tender duckling breast and duck foie gras drizzled with truffled jus on a buttery brioche bun, underscores what's best about this place: a thoroughly modern cuisine with an old-fashioned extravagance. For a summer meal or a cocktail, the majestically pillared terrace overlooking Pont d'Alexandre III must be the most beautiful in Paris.
Part of a stylish new chain proliferating around Paris, this sleek café inhabits the entrance of a formerly run-down historic passage couvert on the picturesque, and newly chic, Rue Richer—home of the Folies Bergère. Coffee lovers can enjoy their cuppa (or matcha, chai, and so forth) from velvet banquettes or high up on a balcony overlooking the soaring, light-filled space with a views down Rue Saulnier.
This restaurant is small but mighty when it comes to fresh and delicious Japanese comfort food in the form of inari age: sushi rice wrapped in fried tofu (that used here is imported from Kyoto) and topped with vegetables, fish, or meat. The menu also features delicious udon, donburi, gyoza, and mochi for dessert. The dining room is spare but warm, with Noguchi lighting and lots of wood. The chef holds a sake sommelier certificate, and you'd be wise to take his pairing advice. There's also a tantalizing selection of sake cocktails and natural wines.
Chef Martin Maumet has taken over chef William Ledeuil's former Kitchen Galerie Bis and opened Oktobre with its equally refined signature dishes. The catch of the day or quail served with seasonable vegetables does not disappoint. A three-course lunch menu is €39 is offered only on weekdays (but not on public holidays). On weekday evenings, one can choose to order à la carte or the six-course tasting menu for €83 per person. On Fridays and Saturday, the tasting menu is five courses. For groups of six or more, it's the tasting menu only in the evening.
Chef Jason Gouzy won a Michelin star less than a year after the 2020 opening of this sought-after restaurant, where each dish resembles a gemlike work of art. The sleekly romantic dining room perfectly mirrors what's on the menu: dishes of exceptional imagination and refinement with an emphasis on seasonal market-fresh vegetables, seafood, and meticulously sourced meats. Watch Gouzy perform his small miracles—imaginative smoked vegetables and exquisite, unexpected pairings—from behind the kitchen window, or wait to be surprised. It's never a disappointment.
A perfect fit in the Arts et Métiers neighborhood, this bustling spot is popular for its loft-like, industrial-style atmosphere and stellar coffee served with delicious homemade sweets. Custom coffees are roasted on the premises from beans sourced all over the world.
The serious, unpretentious, and mightily creative cuisine here quickly catapulted Quinsou to culinary fame. An emphasis on first-rate growers and suppliers puts vegetables in the limelight, though fish, shellfish, and game also make welcome appearances in the small number of market-fresh dishes that grace the daily menu. Prix-fixe menus are the only options, with a four-course lunch menu (€95) or a five-course dinner menu (€125). Both menus are offered with wine parings for €160 and €200, respectively. It's difficult to convey the originality of these dishes, but Parisians are smitten, and you will be, too.
Originally a cave à manger (a wine bar/bistro) serving natural wines and top-quality French fare, Racines made the foodie world rejoice in 2018 when adulated Sardinian-born chef Simone Tondo took the helm and introduced a small but stellar menu of Italian comfort dishes mixed with French stalwarts. The old tile floors, wooden tables, and location in the atmospheric Passage des Panoramas, Paris's oldest covered arcade, only add to the charm. Since earning a Michelin star, it's utterly packed at mealtimes (and quite noisy for those with tender eardrums), so be sure to reserve in advance.
Sign up for Travel Tips & News
Thank you for your interest!
