Helen Rosner
Where to find creative chefs redefining French cuisine, classic brasseries and bistros enjoying a renaissance, stunning Michelin-starred meals, and more of Paris’s best food
Paris has reclaimed its status as one of the world’s favorite cities to eat. The French capital is bustling with a brilliant constellation of restaurants these days, including a bevy of openings that show off how deliciously cosmopolitan it’s become: Menkicchi is maybe the best ramen shop in town, young French Malian chef Mory Sacko cooks stunningly original dishes at Mosuke, and Korean-born chef Sukwon Yong shows off the growing influence of Asia on contemporary French cooking at the reboot of Le Bistrot Flaubert. Plus there’s an inventive and diverse array of casual dining options, like the affordable Café du Coin, excellent Montmartre bistro Le Maquis, and Parcelles, an outstanding bistrot a vins in the Marais. There’s also been a renaissance of Paris’s long-established gastronomic landscape, with traditional bistros, brasseries, and stylish restaurants serving classic French cooking made famous by chef Auguste Escoffier.
Updated, April 2023:
Demonstrations against a new law to raise France’s retirement age (from 62 to 64) have been getting a lot of international news coverage, but they haven’t slowed down Paris’s thriving tourist trade, as travelers make up for time lost to the Covid pandemic. What they’re happily discovering is that the French capital is in the midst of an impressive restaurant boom that’s being driven by a generation of talented new chefs. Chef Thibault Sombardier is a star among them and a cool operator at Les Parisiens, a low-lit Art Moderne bistro in a chic new hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This table replaces the still very good but touristy Frenchie on this list, in part because Les Parisiens offers an evolving menu that reflects several recent trends: a terrine or two — Paris is mad for terrines and rillettes again — other offal dishes, and treviso and radicchio, which are enjoying a new purple reign in France. As summer arrives, book reservations as far in advance as possible, which is a lot easier now that more and more Paris restaurants take online bookings.
We update this list quarterly to make sure it reflects the ever-changing Paris dining scene. The guide is organized by arrondissement, spiraling out from the First.
Alexander Lobrano is a Paris restaurant expert and author of Hungry for Paris, Hungry for France, and his gastronomic coming-of-age story My Place at the Table. He blogs about restaurants and writes often for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Saveur, and other publications.
