The Best Restaurants in France

A former crêperie just off the tourist drag in Trouville, now home to a stripped-back dining room built around an open kitchen, with a communal table upstairs that tends to generate actual conversation. Jarvis Scott, a Top Chef alumnus, runs the place with a rock-and-roll energy and a menu of bold, unexpected pairings that have little patience for seaside-resort complacency. Natural and organic wines throughout. Book ahead.

A marble bar and blue-and-orange banquettes set the tone at this chic neighborhood bistro a short walk from Napoleon's tomb. The name nods to the Revolutionary calendar's grape-harvest month, and the menu has a similar push-pull energy, taking French classics like egg mayo, beef bourguignon, and crème brûlée and nudging them just far enough to feel new. Lunch is particularly easy on the wallet, which the locals have clearly noticed.

Near Canal St-Martin, this chic little restaurant is the project of a young chef with Ecuadorian roots and a French fine-dining education, and the menu is exactly what that combination sounds like. Beef bourguignon arrives inside a crispy taco with guacamole; cod comes in a coconut-coriander emulsion with fried plantain. The room is contemporary and relaxed, the cooking is focused, and the two continents mostly agree.

A contemporary trattoria in the 7th where the menu changes daily based on what the market and the chef's mood deliver. The cooking travels across Italy but leans toward Sardinia, the chef's home region, so expect something more personal than a standard Italian tour. A terrace opens up in good weather, and the front of house runs on quiet competence, including sharp wine recommendations from an all-Italian list. Regulars never bother asking for the fixed menu because there isn't one.

A converted villa in Drôme Provençale, with a rotunda dining room whose bay windows open onto a terrace that earns its keep in summer. The kitchen leans into the region, pulling Ventoux pork and Ardèche bacon into dishes that feel modern without forgetting where they are. Guestrooms are available if the beef cheek confit with red wine makes leaving seem like an unreasonable ask.

A timber-clad restaurant built where the chef's family vegetable garden once stood, looking out over the hills and meadows of northern Alsace toward the Vosges. The cooking is precise and quietly ambitious, with Japanese and Scandinavian touches folded into a modern French idiom. The open kitchen keeps things from feeling too serious, and four guestrooms upstairs mean you don't have to rush back to anywhere.

Frogs' legs and local pike with beurre blanc on the banks of the Loire, in a townhouse that has been feeding people here for what feels like forever. This is a traditional French restaurant, the kind that makes you feel slightly underdressed however you arrive. The garden terrace is genuinely lovely in warm weather, all shade and flowerbeds. An old-school institution that takes the classics seriously and the service warmly.

Exposed stone, smoked-glass mirrors, and an open kitchen give this Batignolles Italian bistro a slightly rough-around-the-edges feel that suits it well. The Sicilian chef trained abroad, and the cooking shows it: contemporary technique applied to Italian ideas, nothing fussy. Lunch brings a set menu that won't hurt, evenings go à la carte, and the wine list leans Italian throughout. A neighborhood room that actually feels like one.

A stone farmhouse in a quiet Burgundian village, coffered ceilings overhead and a fireplace in the corner, is not where you'd expect a chef who trained with culinary royalty to land. Yet here is Nicolas Morelle, running a single set menu of creative French cooking that casually drops beetroot sangria and carrot-curry desserts between courses. A glazed partition lets you watch the kitchen work, which keeps things honest.

The Genoese chef Zeffirino Belloni was famous for his pesto, and this Italian restaurant in the 8th keeps that spirit alive with house-made pasta and a menu built around big, shared-table eating. The dining room leans into a Roaring Twenties Italy aesthetic, which sounds like a lot but lands somewhere rather comfortable. The crowd tends toward the 8th arrondissement's natural habitat: well-dressed, unhurried, and very unlikely to split the bill.

Mischief is a Marais restaurant where comfort food from the chef's childhood and travels gets shuffled together, in a concrete-and-steel room that could double as a Rick Owens runway. The open kitchen is the seat to request, mostly to watch French onion soup get rolled into a spring roll. It's shareable and playful, and the pasta riff on a canned childhood staple comes in limited quantities, so order it early.

Cypsèle is a tasting-menu restaurant in the Marais, set among restored 17th-century apothecary shelves, with a neon sign that looks borrowed from the tabac down the street. The open kitchen at the back turns out seven courses of seasonal French cooking with a Sweden-to-Japan accent, and the menu changes daily. It's a splurge for people who read menus like novels. The Infatuation named it one of the best new restaurants in Paris.

Jah Jah started life as a vegan hot dog tricycle and has since settled into a proper Afro-Caribbean canteen, complete with Bob Marley portraits, Jamaican flags, and a reggae soundtrack that never gets a day off. The all-vegan menu runs to tempeh skewers, barbecue cauliflower wings, and bowls built on yams and acheke. Order the bissap or ginger juice, because the skewers bring more heat than the tricycle ever did.

Jones is a French restaurant in the 11th that reinvented itself under new owners, and the menu now tracks Paris as it actually eats, with a vocab list at the back to decode the Paname slang and the cross-continental plates. Think taleggio-stuffed arepas, grilled fish, and shaoxing emulsions, plus natural wine and kombucha for the abstainers. It's built for a crowd and gets loud and lively by dinner.

La Joie is a Sri Lankan restaurant in a former butcher's shop in the 11th, which spares Parisians a train to London for a proper egg hopper. The menu mixes island greatest hits with the chef's childhood favorites, and the hopper arrives with a dollop of sambol begging to be rolled up like a cigar. The furniture suggests a French school canteen, so it suits a quick lunch or a solo dinner better than a long evening.

Le Grand Café is a big, high-ceilinged brasserie tucked into the renovated Grand Palais, with 300 seats, a lot of marble, and a terrace facing the Petit Palais. Lunch skews fashion and well-fitted suits, dinner skews people thrilled to have an excuse to dress up. Expect brasserie classics at brasserie-plus prices, shellfish towers delivered with ceremony by servers in white vests, and a banana split that costs real money.

This South Pigalle restaurant has been doing vegan and gluten-free since before it was fashionable, and it's built around wellness, with a menu that goes easy on salt, sugar, and oil. The cooking still feels indulgent anyway, thanks to things like chickpea crêpes and a spelt risotto thick with mushrooms. Sunday brunch is a fixed menu of two savory plates, two sweet ones, and drinks, so nobody has to make a decision.

Lacquered pigeon with apricot glaze alongside rice cooked with vermicelli tells you what kind of restaurant this is: a place where a classically trained French chef cooks the food he actually grew up eating. Omar Dhiab's second table in the 10th is a casual dining room, slightly spare on atmosphere but generous where it counts. The menu moves from tempura grape leaves to oeuf en cocotte with merguez ragu without breaking a sweat.

A snug neighborhood restaurant in the 9th where bare wooden tables and white walls give it the calm of a Scandinavian country inn. The short menu shifts with the seasons, and the pâté en croûte alone is reason enough to book. Save room for the caramel-glazed choux filled with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, which is the kind of dessert that makes you reconsider your flight home.

L'Ami Louis is a tiny, dark-paneled bistro in the 3rd where the roast chicken for two is shown to you whole before it disappears to be carved. It returns in two acts, breast first, then the dark meat, a ten-minute intermission that the shoestring fries fill nicely. Bring a card with room on it, since even the green salad is priced like a minor investment. It's a Paris classic, and it knows it.

Le Coq et Fils is a French bistro on Rue Lepic built around chicken with a resume, from Gascon roosters to Bresse hens bred for presidential tables. Couples in the industrial-chic dining room split whole birds that arrive on a pedestal, as if the bird were the one being honored. The quarter chicken skips the three-digit price and still gets poached, roasted, and set in jus, with sourdough for the confit garlic.

Saint Père is a cheap, counter-service Ivorian spot on the stretch of Boulevard de Strasbourg where every other storefront sells fish or chicken, and the awning outside says l'Espérance, which helps nobody. The poulet braisé comes off the coals heavy with garlic and chile, over rice cooked in its own drippings. The ginger juice is sweet enough to count as dessert, and the line out the door has opinions about all of it.

This is a steakhouse in the old-school sense, where the dining room still has its golden hat racks and Art Déco light fixtures, and portraits of shaggy cows watch you order. There are a dozen cuts of dry-aged French beef, and the big ones arrive whole at the table for inspection before being sliced. Puffed potatoes come alongside, plus a pepper sauce that skips the cream. Dress code is whatever you'd wear to meet a very large rib.

This is a proper neighborhood boulangerie on a Montmartre corner, the kind where you point, pay a few euros, and leave with a paper bag. The croissant is the quiet type: lighter than the butter-slick showpieces built for photos, faintly honeyed, and it sheds flakes down your front the second you bite in. It also leaves you fit enough to climb the butte afterward, which is the whole plan.

Blé Sucré is a neighborhood bakery in the 12th, a short walk from the Marché Beauvau, and it has recently added a few seats so you no longer have to eat your pastry on the sidewalk like a raccoon. The croissants are buttery and a touch sweet, with a shell that crackles like a kettle chip. The pain au chocolat leans closer to dessert, which is fine before nine, and The Infatuation put the croissants on its Paris list.

Chez Ibo is a cozy kebab counter near the Canal Saint-Martin that still does lamb and veal on the spit, in a city where most of its peers quietly switched to turkey. The meat gets hand-sliced and crisped on the griddle, then tucked into a sandwich with sumac onions that are doing more work than their size suggests. The Turkish bread is fine, but the move is the baguette from the bakery across the street.

A bakery-pâtisserie on boulevard Pasteur where the croissant crunches on the outside and tastes closer to brioche inside, which is a strong opinion for a pastry to have. They open at 10am and sell out anyway, so sleeping in is a plan with consequences. The pastry case is arranged like a jeweler's window, and the seasonal chausson, almond cream with rhubarb or lemon curd, is easy to miss while staring at it.

La Maison d'Isabelle is an open-plan bakery on the corner of Place Maubert, where the croissant is the whole argument and it's the color of old mahogany. It shatters on contact and leaves a snowfall of flakes on your jacket, so dress accordingly. The line moves fast, and on market mornings it fills with people who know to ask when the next warm batch is coming out. A palmier helps the waiting.

La Renommée is a mahogany-paneled French dining room on Rue Saint-Honoré where the reservation book fills about a month ahead, mostly with Americans soaking up old-world Paris. Expect exorbitant prices and a dry-aged strip steak with a funk you'll either love or discuss. Peas arrive swimming in bacon and butter, which undoes any virtue, and the tarte tatin comes with a gravy boat of raw cream, so nobody's dieting here anyway.

Land & Monkeys is a vegan bakery-cafe with the gilded lettering and storefront of a proper Parisian boulangerie, minus the butter. The croissant comes out burnished and crackly, with a pretzel-like savor, which is a neat trick for something that never met a dairy cow. The quiche is eggless and the sandwiches are hamless, and most locations have tables, so you can sit down and eat it all without hurry.

This is a bakery in the Butte-aux-Cailles, where the croissant arrives with a crunch loud enough to turn heads on the sidewalk. The flaky shell sheds crumbs like it's being paid per flake, while the pale, airy inside stays light enough that you won't need a lie-down afterward. Japanese touches show up across the pastry case, and it's a stand-up, grab-a-bag, eat-it-walking kind of stop.

Le Cèdre is a Lebanese counter on rue Mouffetard, a street where crêpes and kebabs usually take turns disappointing students and tourists. The falafel comes out faintly green from all the herbs packed inside, and the chicken shawarma gets a thick swipe of garlic sauce. It's cheap and fast, so most people eat on the edge of the Place de la Contrescarpe fountain, though there's a small dining room behind the counter. The Infatuation put it on its Best Sandwiches In Paris list.

This is a tiny Marais bakery where the croissant feels like a jet-puffed marshmallow and tastes of malty sweetness with the butter doing the talking. A trophy from the regional croissant contest sits on the counter, taking up room the shop doesn't have, since turning around inside is a team sport. The smart move is to take your pastry to the bench-lined square across the street and eat it without anyone's elbow near your eye.

Bonnard is a bistro in the Marais that treats vegetarians like guests rather than an allergy, which in Paris counts as a plot twist. The room is bright, the service is easygoing, and the French cooking borrows from elsewhere without making a speech about it. The starters carry the menu, so lean toward anything creamy or stuffed, and skip the dishes that look suspiciously dry on paper.

Bouillon Pigalle is a 300-seat, two-story French canteen where servers in black vests and white aprons deliver egg mayo for €2.50 and wine by the liter. It's loud enough that conversation is mostly a rumor, which is part of the charm. The lines are famous, but the kitchen runs continuously from noon to midnight, so showing up mid-afternoon gets you a red leather banquette and a bourguignon without the wait.

Breizh Café is a crêperie in the Marais built around buckwheat galettes from Brittany, the savory kind with ham and comté, plus sweet crêpes for the end. The roll-ups arrive folded into a cylinder and sliced like sushi, which is a bold move for a pancake. It's cheap, easy, and light, but this location is tiny, so book a table. The other branches around Paris have more room and terraces.

Didon is a small Saint-Germain restaurant where nearly everything passes over coal, including the cheese, which gets griddled and handed an apple and some calvados as a chaperone. The open kitchen sends out polished plates with a world-tour streak, many built for sharing, so a date will see you at your messiest. The weekday prix fixe lunch is easy on the wallet, and every wine comes by the glass.

Double is a twelve-seat Italian-Japanese tasting counter in Montmartre where one chef cooks an eight-course prix fixe while half the room watches from the open kitchen. The small plates are built for splitting, but the pastas are not, so bring someone you trust with a fork. It's a date-night kind of spot, the sort of dinner where you book ahead and everyone else's elbow is part of the experience.

This is a grand old French dining room on the Seine, a maze of staircases and little private salons where Hugo and Zola once ate, and where their portraits now watch you hunt for your table. The windows frame the river and the Louvre, a pianist plays, and the prices have drifted well past what a working novelist could manage. Order the steak au poivre, then the namesake layered cake, and let the truffle and caviar pass.

Le 21 is a candlelit, white-tablecloth French dinner on Rue Mazarine, where each table gets its own spotlight, as if the butter needed lighting. Meals open with a parade of amuse-bouches and move through lobster thermidor and rolls soaked in more butter, a nod to the chef's American roots. Antique utensils turn up for the tableware nerds, and desserts run light and fruity, which your liver will appreciate.

This Moroccan restaurant in the Marais keeps its lamps lit so dimly that the jewel-toned Berber chairs are mostly rumor, even at lunch. The guembri on the soundtrack makes a drab Tuesday feel like a birthday, and tagines are the house specialty, nine of them, with flatbread baked to order for the broth. Groups can share mezze and couscous bowls, while the three-course lunch is a calmer, cheaper way to sit in the dark.

Le Mansart is a neighborhood French café with a copper bar, leather stools, and a sidewalk terrace where the locals sit so the tourists can wander off to Amélie's old haunt. Lunch runs on a two-course prix fixe that costs less than most sandwiches in the 9th. By evening it turns into a wine bar where getting a drink involves some light elbowing, and the natural wines are priced like it's a dare.

Le Procope is a sit-down French restaurant under crystal chandeliers, with marble tables, big mirrors, and the faint sense that Benjamin Franklin might still be waiting on his check. Philosophers and revolutionaries once argued here, and now tourists photograph the woodwork between bites. The servers are cheerful, the mains outshine the starters, and the profiteroles come with homemade ice cream.

A warm, wood-lined Vietnamese restaurant in Saint-Germain where the chairs and booths are real furniture, not stools, a detail the reservation-chasing crowd seems to appreciate. The menu leans regional, with dishes like a Cambodian bánh sung that you won't find at the usual Paris addresses. The spring rolls shatter loudly, and the phở tends to sell out by second service in winter, so book early. The Infatuation lists it among Saint-Germain's best.

An open kitchen tucked into the back of Paris's oldest covered market, Les Enfants du Marché is the kind of place where the chef next to you on a stool might have a Michelin star of their own. The team sources from the same small producers as half the serious restaurants in the city, and the Japanese chef turns that market haul into food that has no business being this precise at a market counter.

Loyo is a casual Ivorian restaurant in Montmartre that looks more like a nightclub than a dining room, which the regulars have clearly decided to ignore. They treat it like their living room and chat with the easygoing staff while portions arrive at a size that suggests nobody here has heard of restraint. Expect coal-roasted chicken under a hill of onion-tomato salad, spicy cod accras, and house-infused rum to start.

Miznon is a fast-casual Israeli counter on rue des Ecouffes where the whole roasted cauliflower is the signature, and vegetarians are treated as guests rather than a problem to be solved. Everything gets stuffed into a warm, fluffy pita, and you dunk what you like in tahini from a self-serve sauce bar. The dining room is bare bones, with a farmer's sink in the back, so expect to eat with your hands. It closes for Shabbat.

Shinjuku Pigalle is a Japanese izakaya-style spot where Kurosawa posters cover the walls and a neon sign over the bar promises sex, money, and power, which is a lot to ask of a place that also sells takoyaki. The menu runs to homestyle plates and street food meant for sharing, so ordering for the table is the move. The bathroom is decorated more freely than the rest, so consider yourself warned.