It’s a serious business for Parisians to dine out.
With over 13,000 restaurants to choose from in the capital, according to the Paris Tourist Office, Parisians are spoilt for choice.
In this article, I will give you my favorite addresses where you can eat typically Parisian food like a local.
Here are the places on a map:
D’Chez Eux
2, Avenue de Lowendal, PARIS 75007
✨ A LEAP IN THE PAST
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At D’Chez Eux, you’ll take a step back in time to the days of the Parisian bistrots: there are red and white Vichy check tablecloths on the tables and waiters in aprons (all without the dust).
With its view on the Invalides dome and its long sunny terrace, the D’Chez Eux restaurant has plenty of tricks up its sleeve to surprise you.
Its generous and gourmet local cuisine has attracted many international personalities, ambassadors, former and current presidents… whose pictures line the walls (Jacques Chirac, known for his love of good food, or more recently Emmanuel Macron, a great aficionado of made in France).
For more than 50 years, D’Chez Eux has made it a point of honour to recreate with delicacy and love the great classics of French gastronomy, prepared from local and regional products: snails from Burgundy, herring fillets from Petrossian, roast farm chicken “la Coucou de Rennes” or cassoulet from the Auberge.
Price: From €29
Website: https://chezeux.com (in French only)
Le Café de la Butte
71, Rue Caulaincourt, Paris 75018
✨TRADITIONAL FRENCH COOKING
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Tired of eating on the run? Do you have a sudden urge to eat traditional food? Good bistro food in Paris is available, but you need to know the right addresses beyond the tourist traps.
The Café de la Butte is one of those little treasures where you can enjoy life. You can eat there, on checked tablecloths, classics such as frog legs.
Café de la Butte is the place to be if you want to enjoy classic bistro cuisine.
It will bring you to the Butte Montmartre to have a good meal.
The décor is in its original style, with a sky painted like a theater set. Le Café de la Butte is a place where you can feel at home.
The big plus that makes you happy: at the Café de la Butte they serve late, during the week it is possible to enjoy all this at 10:30 pm.
Price: From 16 €.
Website: https://cafedelabutte.fr/en
Le Bistrot de la Gare
1 Rue de Lyon, Paris 75012
✨ HAVING A BREAK BETWEEN TWO TRAINS
The Bistrot de la Gare is a new restaurant just opposite the Gare de Lyon. It offers simple, homemade bistro cuisine at affordable prices. No nonsense here.
Inside, the setting has been modernized while keeping a vintage touch (period posters celebrating the SNCF or retro railway pictures).
Are you more interested in the view of the station, ground floor or terrace? It doesn’t matter, because here, you can enjoy gourmet dishes and seasonal, homemade cuisine looking at all these places.
You will find hard-boiled eggs with homemade mayonnaise, duck rillettes, cod brandade, steak and its bistro sauce, accompanied by homemade Chips, green beans or mashed potatoes, and even flammekueche and sauerkraut, a vestige of the Alsatian past of the shop.
The good food in a silk box.
Price: From €25
Website: www.bistrotdelagare.com (In French only)
La Mercerie
98, rue Oberkampf, 75011, Paris
✨ THE BISTRO OF OBERKAMPF STREET
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La Mercerie is a safe bet on the famous rue Oberkampf.
It’s the kind of place where you come to have a drink with friends and eat traditional French food. The atmosphere is sober and vintage, the strength of the place lies in the hubbub of the customers who have come to have a good time: typical of a small neighborhood bistro.
Everyone knows or recognises each other, hugs or greets each other, and the atmosphere is as festive as it is friendly.
The restaurant has a simple menu: 6 starters, 5 main courses, 3 salads, 3 burgers and 4 desserts. All at very affordable prices (eggs mayonnaise, roast camembert, beef bourguignon with vegetables and steamed potatoes, Toulouse sausage and mashed potatoes, beef tartare with home fries etc.).
If your dream is to become a Parisian for a meal, this bigote is the place to be.
Price: From 35 €
Website: http://lamerceriebar.com (In French only)
Le Sully
6 Boulevard Henri IV, Paris 75004
✨ TRADITIONAL CUISINE
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This Parisian brasserie has been located near Bastille since 1917.
In 1920 the flagship dish of the house was the omelet. Today, the Sully is already at its fourth generation (and the dishes are much more varied).
As for the dishes, traditional cuisine is still the order of the day with several suggestions that will delight meat-lovers, such as the 250g Charolais entrecote, the unmissable 200g Andouillette 5A, the 180g veal onglet with candied shallots or the Charolais beef tartar.
Price: Menu from 18 €
Website: www.lesully.fr (In French only)
Le Vaudeville
29, rue Vivienne, Paris 75002
✨ THE 100-YEAR-OLD PARISIAN BRASSERIE
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100 years. That’s the age of the Brasserie, Le Vaudeville, a true institution nestled in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, just opposite to the Bourse.
With its classic Parisian brasserie dishes and its seafood, Le Vaudeville has not finished seducing Parisian palates.
Since its start, the dishes have evolved, but the classics are still the order of the day. Today, at Le Vaudeville you will find imposing and delicious seafood platters and numerous generous dishes inspired by traditional French cuisine (crispy calf’s head with mustard sauce, large Burgundy snails, poultry breast, pan-fried calf’s liver with parsley, Vaudeville sauerkraut, fresh grilled cod, whole lobster roasted in salted butter, …).
To complete the picture, the shop also has some fine wine: Sancerre “Les Pierris”, Gevrey-Chambertin, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Pessac-Léognan…
For cocktail lovers, let yourself be tempted by the Barman’s clever mixes.
The plus: From 6 to 8 pm they offer a “Happy Oysters” formula: three Belondine n°3 oysters and a glass of white wine for only 9 €!
Price: From €51
Website: www.vaudevilleparis.com (In French only)
Le p’tit canon
36 Rue Legendre, Paris 75017
✨ THE NEW KID OF THE 17TH
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In this little newcomer in the 17th arrondissement, you can savor classic bistro cuisine, both generous and homemade, on authentic checkered tablecloths. The decor includes period tiles, carved stone, comfortable benches and an imposing counter on which to sit and sip your Suze.
This 100% gourmet spot offers a typical bistro menu. On the menu, you will find typically French dishes, both simple and homemade.
Do you love bistro dishes? like eggs with mayonnaise, terrines and herring fillets in oil? Look no further, you’ll find it all on the P’tit Canon’s menu.
Price: From €21.50
Website: leptitcanonparis.fr
Bouillon 47
47 Rue de Rochechouart, Paris 75009
✨ THE NEW KID OF THE 9TH
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Bouillon 47 offers a modernized version of typical Parisian bouillon dishes.
On the menu, you will find contemporary cuisine in the warm atmosphere typical of Parisian broths.
A friendly atmosphere, a finely reproduced Art Deco style, a large table d’hôtes and an old parquet floor that has seen a lot of use are what fulfills the experience.
On the menu, you will find multiple possibilities and beautiful products: beef consommé with horseradish and vegetable hotpot, octopus in salad and roast, beef cheek accompanied by polenta fries… Typical broth dishes which plunge us straight into the novels of the 18th century (the famous George Duroy would have undoubtedly appreciated this cuisine).
Desserts include kumquat and sage cheesecake, chocolate and praline choux, nougatine and chocolate sorbet.
The perfect place to grab a bite to eat in a busy neighborhood.
Price: From €49.50
Website: www.bouillonparis.fr (In French only)
Les Arlots
136 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, Paris 75010
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A very Parisian bistro, where you can enjoy fresh local cuisine: this is the definition of the restaurant: Les Arlots.
There, you will find all the essentials of a bistro: soft-boiled eggs, fresh and silky macédoine, pâté des Arlots with four meats, home-made sausage and its mousseline charlottes, beef cheek confit, matured beef mitre, sautéed apples and bear’s garlic with red wine juice, and so on.
This establishment is also a landmark for lovers of good wines as they are all meticulously chosen to create a perfect match with the dishes served (Vouvray, Ciel Rouge Michel Autran, Mâcon Villages, Clos Saint Pancrace Domaine Frantz Chagnoleau).
here is the main dish of the house: The homemade sausage and mash.
Price: From 19 €
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lesarlots
Vivant 2
43 rue des Petites Ecuries, Paris 75010
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The ideal place for a French date. The place is carefully decorated. An open marble kitchen, candles, vegetation, lively music: a place that reminds us a little of the “Beauty and the Tramp” tale.
As far as the cuisine is concerned, we are dealing with real French gastronomy, no mashed sausage or omelet. Here, we have spread black tahini draped with chard leaves; mussels from Charente, with pickled pepper and smoked paprika; a delicious beef tartar with beetroot reduction, mustard pickles and watercress emulsion; a whole roast broccoli, a fillet of pollack ikejime with beurre blanc, accompanied by a cashew nut purée…
The most popular dish is the braised veal chuck in molokhia sauce.
Price: From 41 €
Website: vivantparis.com
Le Servan
32 rue Saint-Maur, Paris 75011
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Whatever your tastes are, this bistronomic restaurant will impress you. If there is a sure fact in Paris, it is without a doubt Le Servan’s flavor, whose name is no longer used.
This bar is a landmark known to all Parisians, but it is also a refuge for many tourists seeking French gastronomy. In this shop, the know-how of good French cuisine has been preserved and that is its strength.
The dishes offered at Le Servan are old-fashioned dishes which have been revised to the taste of the day. There are many combinations of flavours (each one more surprising than the next).
The menu starts with Zakouskis (“hors-d’oeuvres” in Russian). Here you can choose between whelks with mayonnaise, grilled peppers, fried shrimps and fried wontons.
For starters, you can choose from the bistro’s basic dishes: white tuna-tomato-oseilla, crab-pepper-peanut, crab-mayo-cream coral, soft-boiled egg-leek-poutargue.
And for the main course, there is cod with lime butter, pistachio and courgettes, suckling lamb with aubergine, farm pig with spicy apricots.
Price: From €38
Website: https://leservan.com (In French only)
Le Chateaubriand
129 avenue Parmentier, Paris 75011
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This is a bourgeois bistro setting, but the cuisine is a true author’s work, lively, daring and full of flashes of brilliance.
The setting is a little bourgeois but the cuisine is no less lively, daring and outrageous. A refined vintage decoration with a beautiful marble counter and a superb replica of the football world cup: this is the mood of the Chateaubriand.
Just like the atmosphere, the chef regularly dares to create surprising combinations of flavours. Amongst others, we find a sliced scallop covered with a veil of papada (Iberian pig’s throat), a tomato stuffed with squid, beans and coconut, the tocino de cielo (a runny candied egg on a dacquoise base)…
If you are looking for new culinary experiences this is the place to try it.
Price: From €80
Website: http://www.lechateaubriand.net/index_uk.html
L’Avant-Comptoir du Marché
14 rue Lobineau, Paris 75006
✨PORK MEAT
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Here, we celebrate good food, good soil and especially pigs. Lovers of pâté, black/white pudding, pig’s ears… in short, of everything that constitutes the piglet, I have found your temple.
Paintings of pigs on the walls, a red pig hanging from the ceiling, a ham on the bone on the counter and a gigantic lump of Bordier butter are all available. A place that is 100% franchouillard.
You will find a gourmet, hearty cuisine, served (very) generously.
Everything is good in the pig (thats what we say in France). There’s no need to list all the dishes, but you’ll find just about everything that makes up a pig. And since a bon vivant also needs to moisten his gullet (from time to time), the restaurant offers a very extensive wine list.
For the more adventurous, they serve shots of Béarn blood (sic), a kind of liquid blood sausage.
Price: From 12 € (the pan of the day)
Website: https://camdeborde.com/en/restaurants/avant-comptoir-du-marche
Le Baratin
3 rue Jouye-Rouve, Paris 75020
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Located on the hill of Belleville since 1987, the Baratin is the bistro that has welcomed the greatest chefs (Pierre Hermé, Iñaki Aizpitarte, Bertrand Grébaut…).
Le Baratin offers sincere, honest and above all comforting cuisine (sweetbreads, shoulder of lamb, sardines, sautéed mussels, offal, etc.).
Le Baratin will make you appreciate offal (for real).
The ideal address for a real French feast with your family.
Price: From €20
Phone number: 01 43 49 39 70
Racines
8, passage des Panoramas, 75002
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The Racines bistro was set up in 2007 in the premises of a former printing works. Here you will mainly eat raw food, simmered dishes made from carefully selected products.
The chef regularly mixes his grandmother’s recipes with those of the bistronomic new wave, creating a sensory experience and an explosion of flavours.
Here the menu follows the seasons, it changes and above all it is on the slate (as in the old days): pasta with beef stew, veal chop “Milanese style”, and desserts from mum (for example, as we told you the slate changes daily).
A dream of a bistro with wood panelling and light and shade.
Price: From €41
Website: https://racinesparis.com/EN
I aim to share my tips and recommendations for the beautiful country of France. My goal is to help you plan your next adventure, whether it’s a weekend getaway or a once-in-a-lifetime trip. From finding the best hotels and restaurants, to discovering unique activities and sights, I’ve got you covered!
