4 days ago
11 of the best restaurants in Paris
When Unesco added French cuisine to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2010, it was specifically the 'gastronomic meal' they were honouring. And for many visitors to Paris, a typical Gallic round of creamy sauces, smelly cheeses and fine wine is as high on their to-do list as scoping out the Sacré Coeur or the Louvre. But there's more to this proud nation's gastronomy than clichés of bistros, brasseries and haute cuisine.
In recent times, Paris restaurants have shed rigid hierarchies to embrace a more dynamic and diverse worldview. I've been exploring the scene here for years, and the rise of neo-bistros has highlighted seasonally driven menus and vegetable-led cooking, while a new generation of chefs bring multicultural influences to bear on traditional tastes. But wherever and whatever you choose to eat, a meal out in Paris remains a daily ritual steeped in pleasure, provenance and a deep reverence for good food. Bon appétit!
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£££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for a blow-the-budget gourmet extravaganza
Any of Paris's ten three-Michelin-starred restaurants will deliver a fine-dining experience that might very well be the meal of a lifetime (possibly with a once-in-a-lifetime price tag to match). But Plénitude one-ups the others with its magical location on the first floor of the ultra-luxe Cheval Blanc hotel and its dreamy views along the Seine and across the Pont Neuf. Dishes take inspiration from chef Arnaud Donckele's native Normandy, and his adopted homes of the Mediterranean (where he has the three-Michelin-starred La Vague d'Or in St Tropez) and Paris, with an emphasis on expertly balanced saucing. Expect the likes of chicken with caviar and courgette artfully arranged in a velvety champagne velouté. It's open for dinner only from Tuesday to Saturday, and you should leave time afterwards for a drink in the hotel's seventh-floor bar Le Tout-Paris with its view of the illuminated Eiffel Tower. A plush room for the night comes recommended for those looking to keep the celebrations going.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for a fabulous French meal straight off the train
Quality places to eat around the Gare du Nord are as rare as an empty seat in the Eurostar waiting area, but to start (or end) your trip with an abundance of ooh la la, this tiny dining room — a five-minute walk from the station — is absolutely comme il faut. The day's menu is chalked up on a blackboard paraded around the closely set tables — though with only a few options per course, this is not the place for fussy eaters. Offal lovers and anyone who likes punchy flavours, however, will rejoice in the likes of a doorstep of duck pie laced with silky chicken liver. Les Arlots is a bistro à vins; chef Thomas Brachet takes care of the cooking, while his co-owner Tristan Renoux looks after the wine (and wine bar Billili next door), which involves a chat about preferences rather than a list.
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£££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for fine dining without the formality
Eat in any French restaurant where fine dining is delivered without the fuss of starched tablecloths, supercilious service and sky-high prices, and you're eating in a restaurant influenced by Septime. Chef Bertrand Grébaut turbocharged the bistronomy movement when he launched this place in 2011 and Septime remains as relevant today as when it opened, with a frequently tweaked tasting menu served in an industrial-feeling interior of blackened steel and untreated wood. Influences are as likely to be Asian or North African as European, and the pairing of natural wines is the best way to get the most from the menu's assertively fresh flavours. Bookings open three weeks ahead; if you can't get a table, pay the corkage fee for a bottle at the wine shop Septime La Cave across the road and share some small plates, or try the no-reservations Clamato, a seafood sibling next door.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for a French bistro fantasy with old-school charm
Picture the perfect French restaurant and it will probably look like Chez Georges: net curtains in the windows, mosaiced tiles on the floor, nicotine-yellow walls hung with huge mirrors for people-watching, leather banquettes buffed to a high shine from thousands of bottoms and backs, and paper-clothed tables packed so closely they must be removed when anyone wishes to go to the loo. One might assume it was a pastiche were it not for the fact that Chez Georges has looked like this since 1964, and the intervening years have allowed the kitchen to perfect a never-changing menu of classic bourgeois comfort. If in doubt, order something creamy: celeriac rémoulade followed by veal sweetbreads with morel sauce, then chestnut purée topped with double cream, perhaps. There are some big-ticket Burgundies and Bordeaux on the wine list proper, but the best-value bins are scrawled in the margins of the handwritten menu.
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££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for fine French ingredients and authentic Moroccan cooking
This family-friendly Moroccan restaurant, all mosaic-topped tables and brass moucharabieh lanterns, stands out from the north African competition for two compelling reasons: the quality of its ingredients and the natural wines that partner the cooking. Le Tagine's commitment to all things orange and unfiltered is matched only by the high calibre of its beautifully presented cuisine, shown to most delicious effect in the 20 or so couscous and tagine dishes. Try a chicken with olive and preserved lemon tagine, or the couscous méchoui in which star billing goes to leg of milk-fed lamb from the Pyrenees. Breads and pastries made in house show the same dedication to labour-intensive sourcing and authenticity.
££ | Best for a seafood-centric late lunch
The Marché Couvert des Enfants Rouges is the oldest covered market in Paris, having occupied this spot in the Marais since the early 17th century. Les Enfants du Marché arrived some 400 years later and still feels like it brings something new to Paris with its no-bookings chef's counter right on the market floor (wrap up warm in cooler months). Expect to queue for one of the dozen or so stools, then prepare to be dazzled by fish-focused small plates that excel in bold pairings: crudo of line-caught grouper with candied citron zest and horseradish is a typically vivid assembly. The wait to be seated is less painful as the afternoon goes on; should you find yourself still here at the early-evening closing time, pick up a bottle to take away from the restaurant's La Cave wine shop round the corner.
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£££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for a unique fusion of cuisines from a star chef
Montparnasse was once famous for its café culture of caffeine-and-croissant-fuelled artists and intellectuals; now it's the cooking of the chef Mory Sacko that gets foodies coming to the residential 14th arrondissement — assuming they've had the foresight (and perseverance) to reserve a table the moment bookings are released about three months in advance. MoSuke was the first west African restaurant in France to win a Michelin star, but Japan is just as much of an influence on the French-born Sacko as his Malian and Senegalese heritage, alluded to in a restaurant name inspired by the only African samurai. If that all sounds too much to take in, it makes perfect sense on the palate in thrillingly distinctive dishes such as the signature Tanzanian and Madagascan chocolate tart with wasabi ice cream that concludes a menu available in four, six or nine courses.
££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for a contemporary take on bistro classics
Sarah Michielsen, the soignée owner of Parcelles, respects tradition without being slavishly in thrall to the past. When she bought the former Le Taxi Jaune — a famous 1930s bistro near the Pompidou Centre — she left the look of the place largely unchanged: white tablecloths, copper-topped bar, tiled floors and windows which open to the Marais street when it's warm enough. But with Parcelles, she introduced a menu of classic comfort cooking updated for modern tastes and served by staff who seem to have been to charm school. Butter-drenched scallops come draped with guanciale, there are great veggie dishes such as potato gnocchi with sage butter and fried sage, and almost everything is made in house — so much so that there's now an épicerie opposite selling pickles and pâtés. The sort of casually sophisticated place you could just as easily turn up to in jeans and trainers as a suit and tie.
£££ | BOOK AHEAD | Best for plant-focused, sustainable tasting menus
Manon Fleury is something special: a chef who has put her money where her mouth is and opened a restaurant that embodies her belief in natural sustainability, human dignity and animal welfare. Of course, it helps that her zero-waste cooking, prepared and served by a mostly female staff, is so enthralling, with fruit and veg at the forefront of a menu of micro-seasonal ingredients sourced from small-scale French producers, and meat and fish only used sparingly to point up the subtle flavours and aromas of the plant-based cuisine. Think pairings such as a Swiss chard mille-feuille with yellow pollock, or a dessert of lemon with Jerusalem artichoke. The skylit-illuminated room, with its polished concrete floors and oak dining chairs, is as invitingly textured as the cooking.
£ | Best for deep-filled pitta sandwiches that won't break the bank
You can eat in at the family-friendly L'As du Fallafel, but given that a falafel sandwich is the Middle East's answer to street food and the street here is so atmospheric — the traffic-free and cobbled Rue des Rosiers in the historic Jewish quarter of the Pletzl, where kosher bakeries now sit next to chic boutiques — do as the locals do and eat while window-shopping. A combination of quality cooking and celebrity endorsements (Natalie Portman says this is her favourite meal in Paris) means you should expect to queue, but what is handed through the hatch is worth the wait: a pillow of pitta stuffed with crisp falafel, crunchy salad, squishy aubergine and spicy harissa sauce for 10 euros (£8.50). Note that it's closed Friday evenings until Sunday mornings, in which case you could try King Falafel Palace a few doors down.
£ | Best for kid-friendly crêpes and parent-friendly alternatives
If you haven't had a proper crêpe since your French exchange (the ones made on a hotplate in the park don't count), then this ever-expanding stable of Gallic pancake houses across the city is a reminder of just how delicious they can be. Breizh is the Breton word for Brittany, where the founder and Breton native Bertrand Larcher grows his organic buckwheat (naturally gluten-free) for savoury galettes such as the ham, egg and Comté cheese 'complète'. Kids will love the chocolate and cream-filled sweet crêpes, though the version slicked with nothing more than salted Bordier butter and brown sugar is a rather more adult-orientated pleasure, as is a glass of crisp Breton cider if a Breizh Cola isn't going to hit the spot. The original, tiny Breizh Café in the Marais remains the most atmospheric, but with a dozen chicly simple branches in the centre of Paris, you're never too far from a sugar spike when sightseeing fatigue sets in.
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