Paris tips: eating out
THREE STRONG RECOMMENDATIONS
These are the three places I'd most strongly recommend during your visit, as I think they offer a nice variety of quality Parisian eating experiences.
1. Dinner at Le Train Bleu
When the underlying idea was to recommend places off the tourist track, it might seem odd to start with Le Train Bleu, at the Gare de Lyon. But this is surely one of the most extraordinary restaurant spaces in the world. You can only experience it in Paris, of course, and I usually take any first-time visitor there for dinner. It's Lyon-influenced brasserie food at more-than-brasserie prices, but they have simple set-price menus at 55 and 74 euros, and anyway, as usual, the final bill depends above all on what you drink.
It's worth it (and in any case it won't break the bank) for the overall experience. The decor is as 'Paris 1900' as can be. Nearly all the more academic French painters of the day were involved, including Gervex (above), so as well as its being a solid brasserie, its painterly views of cities along the old PLM line from Paris to Lyon, Marseille and across the sea to Algiers offer a colourful panorama of French art at the turn of the last century. All this with traditional French service - waiters in black and starched white running back and forth with trays and bottles - and the bustle of the station below.
Best of all is dinner on an August evening, when for once, if you're lucky, the place can be relatively quiet and the setting sun streams through the giant windows and picks out the gilding from the west. But if you don't have the good fortune to be here when Paris is quiet, go anyway - and best book now, as the place fills up ages in advance.
This is a link to the restaurant's website.
Here's an article in English about it.
Address: the restaurant occupies the first (i.e. US second) floor of the Gare de Lyon, overlooking the square in front and the tracks behind. You go into the station and enter the restaurant by a double staircase that faces the trains.
2. Lunch at Benoît
When the underlying idea was largely to avoid Michelin stars, it might seem odd to go on to recommend Benoît, which actually has one. Benoît is now part of Alain Ducasse's restaurant business. He's the starriest chef of all, which isn't always a good thing (they can overreach and end up simply milking their name, as the ex-three-star Marco-Pierre White has done with his foul restaurant chain in the UK), but Benoît is a gem. It's an authentic old bistro near the Tour Saint Jacques, serving top-level bistro food in a simple but pleasant setting and with the discreet, professionally-trained service the French do well.
It also offers the most amazing lunchtime deal I can think of. The set lunch menu (on weekdays) is priced at 42 euros for three courses (you can have two, if you prefer, for 32 euros). The choice is limited, but everything is immaculately prepared, and they change the menu regularly to suit the seasons. A real bargain.
This link takes you to the lunch menu.
Of course, you can also eat à la carte and at dinner time. Book now to be sure of a place.
Address: 20 rue Saint-Martin, 75004 Paris, i.e. near the rue de Rivoli at Châtelet.
3. Dinner at L'Entracte
This is something almost completely different, as now we're getting to places I go to all the time, even on my own. L'Entracte is a genuine local restaurant in my own neighbourhood, i.e. in the Père Lachaise area. It's well east of the usual tourist haunts, but still, at Gambetta, only four Métro stops from République. A young couple, Nadège and Maxime, took over a little café just off place Gambetta in the 20th arrondissement and, through sheer hard work and high standards, have turned it into the best restaurant in my vicinity. As they have children to look after at home, only one or the other will be on duty there, serving. From outside, it still looks like an ordinary, unprepossessing café, but inside, though small, it's cosy enough, and the truth is this local has become a kind of 'standard' by which I judge other restaurants in terms of quality and price. After trying a new place, a common verdict is: 'The food wasn't as good as at L'Entracte, but was more expensive'. So I go back, and all my friends love it. Isaac Lythgoe, a young English artist I took there, claimed it was the best dinner he'd ever eaten!
The food is good, modern French bistro with some touches of fusion. A full meal for two: starter, main course and pudding, with an apéritif followed by a bottle of wine, usually totals about 130 euros, depending on what main you choose and, again, the wine you drink.
This is a link to the website. You can book easily online. During the week, booking isn't usually necessary, but I do it to be sure of having a table, as they are next door to a theatre and sometimes get busy. Give them my regards.
Address: 21 Rue Malte Brun, 75020 Paris, at Métro Gambetta, on the same little side street as the Théâtre National de la Colline - i.e. behind McDonalds!
*****
When I started writing this, I actually had a fourth 'must-do' in mind. I'd already finished writing before I realised the restaurant is closed for renovation in April and May - though they explicitly promise neither the decor nor the cooking will change. I'll leave it here, but to save time, you can always skip it and go on to my other recommendations below.
Dinner at the Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes
In one way, at least, the Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes is at the other end of the French food spectrum, as it's one of the last bastions of good, old-fashioned regional cooking left in Paris. Over the years, these places I knew in the 80s have dropped, one by one, off the Paris culinary map. So now, I go to the Pyrénées Cévennes often.
I suppose that, to be honest, you might say the decor is hideous. It's a wholly unreconstructed faux-rustic place, with beams, parchment lampshades, copper pans and checked linen. It can't have changed in years, but that, of course, is part of its charm, as the chef-owner knows: I'm sure he has no intention of modernising it.
The menu is an innovation-free zone, but in few other places in Paris will you find such well-executed French country classics as their world-champion pâté en croûte or frisée aux lardons with a poached egg on top, their snails, their huge cassoulet, presented in an oval copper dish, or their marvellous salted-butter-caramel soufflé. Also, they know how to grill a steak: brown and crisp outside, rare inside.
You'll need to book online, as the rarity, these days, of food of this kind means it has a following - even, surprisingly, among a fairly young professional crowd. Also, preparing to write this blog post, I discovered (I had no idea before) that the Pyrénées Cévennes is one of Michelin's 'Bibs Gourmands', which, on their website, they explain is 'our award for good quality, good value cooking.' I'd often wondered how young Japanese couples ended up cautiously eating cassoulet in such an unglamourous place, but now I know. I'll talk more about Bibs Gourmands later in this post.
This link takes you to the website.
Address: the Pyrénées Cévennes is at 106 Rue de la Folie Méricourt, 75011 Paris, within easy walking distance of République.
*****
OTHER RESTAURANT RECOMMENDATIONS
All of these but one are still places I know well, where you can go with little risk of disappointment.
Jolia
Jolia is another of my neighbourhood restaurants, within fairly easy striking distance of République. In this case, you could either walk or take the Métro three stations up to Père Lachaise (where I live).
As you can guess from the photo above, Jolia will give you a chance to experience the younger, trendier kind of local restaurant in an ordinary Paris neighbourhood. What surprises me there is how good the food is for the price. It's delicious French/Middle Eastern fusion, bursting with flavour, very well done. The trend in this kind of place is to offer small and larger plates 'to share'. If I go there with a friend, I usually take three small and two large; but ask them to hold back the two large ones for later, otherwise you get everything all at once, like in a Greek tavern. As usual in these young places, the staff are cute, charming and enthusiastic, but sometimes a bit clueless. The bill is always smaller than I expect, which is nice - again, it depends on what you drink. I think the last time I was there, with the five 'plates' we just took a long cocktail each and a bottle of water, and it came out at something like 85 euros for two.
This is a link to the website. I book, to be safe, though they say they also keep some unreserved tables at every sitting.
Address: 123 rue du Chemin Vert, Paris, 75011, near Métro Père Lachaise.
La Grande Brasserie
More staid and traditional but by no means stuffy is La Grande Brasserie, just off the Bastille. This is a place I sometimes go to for dinner after the opera, or for lunch with friends. It's what its name says: a spacious brasserie, modern but with some frescoes left over from previous incarnations, and brasserie food unusually well executed. I prefer it to the more famous Bofinger opposite. They pride themselves on the quality of their eggs mayonnaise. The last lunch I had there, with an American visitor, was excellent.
This is their website.
Address: 6 rue de la Bastille, 75004 Paris.
Café Charlot
This is a good lunch option if, one morning or afternoon, you decide to 'do' the Marais - the area that grew up around the Place des Vosges in the 17th century, went to sleep in the 19th until kissed by a frog in the 1980s, and is now altogether back in business and booming. Café Charlot is on the corner of rue de Bretagne and rue Charlot, on the République side of the Marais and thus in the heart of one of Paris's 'BoBo' (bourgeois bohème, or hipster) enclaves, so it's well positioned for a stroll across République square and along the lively rue Dupetit-Thouars (where you'll find the city's trendiest art bookshop, OFR), past the square du Temple gardens and into the rue de Bretagne (which is where I do my food shopping at the weekend, more of which in a separate post about places to visit).
Installed in an old bakery, the Charlot is a good salad/burger/club-sandwich sort of place, with a lively, Parisian bistro atmosphere and (usually) friendly young staff. It's very popular during fashion week, when black limousines draw up to disgorge overdressed créatures looking for a casual bite. On a nice day, with luck you might still find a little table outside. As far as I know, they don't take reservations.
This is the Charlot's website.
Address: 38 Rue de Bretagne, 75003 Paris.
Soya
We all have friends who don't eat meat, so sometimes I need a good veggie place, notoriously hard to find in France. Soya is one: organic, gluten-free and actually vegan, so much so that a friend who worked there told me they'd even debated whether mushrooms qualified to be cooked and served there. Again, it's within easy walking distance of République, in a back street just across the canal. The food is varied and tasty and the place is popular, so you do need to book. The one drawback is that you may find yourself seated on a bench with no back, something I'm not too keen on.
This is their website.
Address: 20 Rue de la Pierre Levée, 75011 Paris.
The Turks
I realise that, when visiting Paris, you may not be seeking out Turkish food. But I include these because they're places I go to all the time and have done for years, for two main reasons. The first is that I lived and worked in Turkey in the 70s, and got to know Turkish food then. The second is that I like simple food, freshly cooked, in a place where I don't need to book and can just walk in and eat.
The two Turkish restaurants I go to are both in the same street, rue du Faubourg Saint Denis. This is the old main road from the royal basilica in Saint Denis, north of Paris, into the city, which explains the particularly handsome Porte Saint Denis at the end of the street, built as a city gate by king Louis XIV. But way before that, already it was the Roman road into Lutetia.
Much more recently, it became Paris's first Turkish neighbourhood, and today it's what you might call 'gritty', i.e. not totally respectable, but is gradually gentrifying and is thronged in the evening with youngsters drinking cheap beer on café terraces. It's also home to one of the 'Bouillons' that have taken over many of the historic brasseries - in this case, Chez Julien - and that Instagrammers rave about (pay no attention). It's a very picturesque and - Turkish or not - utterly Parisian street.
The restaurants are the Derya and the Pizza Grill Istanbul.
If you've ever visited Istanbul, you'll surely know Istiklal Caddesi, the main street in Beyoglu, the old European quarter, that runs from near the Galata Bridge to Taksim Square. And you may have noticed there are still old street signs there marked Grande rue de Pera, in French. So perhaps it isn't so surprising, after all, that the Derya manages to recreate, in Paris, the feel of Beyoglu's meyhane taverns, with their simple but dignified 1890s interiors, without the cheesy folkloric elements - carpets, cushions, brassware - Turkish restaurants tend to adopt abroad. Here, as you see above, it's white walls, prints of old Istanbul, and brass chandeliers. The food is just the same as in Istanbul. Should you go there, give my regards to Eyyüp, who directs the service (you can easily find a photo of him on the website, where they misleadingly call him 'Chef Eyyüp'). He calls me 'Naci' (pronounced 'nadjee'), his affectionate Turkish version of my name.
Here's the site.
Address: 16 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, 75010 Paris, next door to the bouillon which has taken over the former Belle Epoque brasserie, Chez Julien.
The Pizza Grill Istanbul is a simple place, but the grilled meats are even better than at the Derya and we're old friends of the waiters (they used to work at the Derya), so my partner and I alternate between the two. Also, unlike the Derya, the Istanbul has a wood-fired bread oven, so for starters you could each have a lahmacun - a very thin, savoury, ground meat 'pizza' that you fold around the salad it comes with - or a pide, a boat-shaped pizza big enough to share for starters. My favourite pide is with egg and sucuk sausage.
At both of these, if with a friend, instead of drinking wine I usually share a half-bottle of rakı, Turkey's ouzo, with water and ice. This pushes the price up a bit, but even with the rakı, starters and mains for two will come out at about 80 euros in all. But Turkish red wine, such as Yakut, is perfectly drinkable.
As far as I know, the Istanbul doesn't have a website. But I see French food-writer Gilles Pudlowski likes the place, and his blog has photos of the food.
*****
Finally, one I haven't been to yet, but intend to try soon...
Le Grand Vefour
This is one of Paris's oldest surviving restaurants and its Directoire decor is still intact. From the outset, it was a prestige address, and even in recent years it's had three stars in the Michelin. But in 2021 it changed tack, deciding deliberately to offer food at more affordable prices, though still in the 1790s decor.
The restaurant is in the Palais Royal, an urban enclosure laid out in the 1780s, with beautiful rose gardens, carefully clipped trees and a big fountain, that visitors often miss: a rare haven of peace in Paris, with several restaurants and cafés and some boutiques interesting enough to make the whole ensemble’s arcades worth exploring.
Interestingly, the restaurant offers, for lunch or dinner, what it calls its 'semainier', i.e. a different set-price menu every day, priced at 68 euros for three courses, or 57 euros for two. This is surely worth a try, and I intend to do so quite soon. I should imagine you'd really need to book.
The website is here.
Address: 17 Rue de Beaujolais, 75001 Paris.
*****
LES BIBS GOURMANDS
Whatever people may say, the Michelin is still, in my view, a reliable guide at least to restaurants in France, Spain and Italy. Michelin's star system is well-known. Its 'Bibs Gourmands' less so, but this way of rewarding chefs who offer particularly good food at particularly reasonable prices is very handy when you're travelling.
Wherever you are, you just Google for 'michelin bib gourmand', adding the name of the city, and you'll find a page displaying the restaurants.
This link will take you to the result for Paris, and at the top right of the page you'll find a symbol you can click on (c.f. the top right of the photo on the left) to view all the Paris Bibs Gourmands on a clickable map.
Sometimes you can book directly from the Michelin website, sometimes not.
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