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, while young French Malian chef Mory Sacko cooks stunningly original dishes at Mosuke. 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, November 2023:
The arrival of talented young chef Eugénie Béziat at the Hotel Ritz’s Espadon heralds some major changes in Paris. For one, hotel dining in the French capital is veering away from a long-running model of traditional Gallic luxury food that’s prevailed since the ’80s. Instead, many Paris hotels are offering restaurants that showcase the cooking of other countries, or in Béziat’s case, a very personal cuisine that marries French technique with the vivid flavors and produce of Africa. Béziat is part of an impressive new generation of female chefs finally busting open the boys club that has long held sway in French gastronomy. Another rising talent, Pauline Séné, has just taken over the kitchen at Le 6 Paul Bert near the Bastille. Meanwhile, France will always love its steak frites, but it’s continuing to discover the many flavors of vegetables. Paris has developed a vegetarian and vegan restaurant scene that reflects its role as a culinary global capital, including stars like Faubourg Daimant, a vegan table that claims a place in the Paris 38. To make room for these changes, Le Bistrot Flaubert, Tekés, and Arpège all leave our rankings for now.
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.
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