The Best Places in France

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.

Abricot is a neighborhood cocktail bar on Rue Saint-Maur that greets you with a bartender's choice shot before you've decided whether you're staying. It leans Californian, with earthy colors and lots of daylight, which is an unexpected look for Paris. The martini is tiny, the menu is entirely vegan, and the hot dogs come with fried onions. A velvet-and-pillow alcove is where friends tend to lose an evening.

Astier is a proper French bistro on a street of small plates and Scandi minimalism, so the gingham napkins and banquettes feel almost like a dare. The waiters carry food in copper pots and finish it at the table, a bit of theater you'd normally pay twice as much to watch. The kitchen likes a twist, like lamb shoulder stewed with tagine spices, and the cheese basket has shrunk to a plate of five.

This Latin Quarter bistro treats a weekday lunch as a three-hour, three-bottle affair, and nobody shows up with a table-turning stopwatch to stop you. The servers will happily discuss the weather that made your Beaujolais so good, then leave you alone. Tables are small enough that neighbors become co-managers of the chalkboard menu, and the three-course lunch runs €27. Bring friends who enjoy arguing about lentils.

A small Jewish bakery in the 9th that does babka as individual rolls, which is a rare thing to find in a city that otherwise considers the baguette a complete personality. Flavors run past chocolate into halvah, cinnamon, and pistachio, and the rugelach comes in chocolate-cinnamon or maple-pecan. At lunch there are challah sandwiches with pastrami, tuna, or sabich. Bring a few euros and an appetite you're willing to defend.

Bar Joséphine is a cocktail bar tucked inside the Hotel Lutetia, with high ceilings, frescos, and the sort of Left Bank atmosphere Paris spends a lot of money on film sets to fake. Drinks arrive in beautiful glassware with garnishes that have clearly been thought about, and a pianist plays most Thursdays through Saturdays. Dress for it, since jeans and a T-shirt will look like a wrong turn.

Bluebird is a cocktail bar in the 11th that looks like the deck of a '60s cruise ship, with wood paneling, multicolored lights, and an aquarium in the back, minus the shuffleboard. The menu changes monthly and sorts drinks by savory, salty, bitter, and so on, which helps if you've forgotten what you like. There's one table and a lot of stools, so it suits a quick one after work or a nightcap after dinner.

Bouche is a small-plates and natural wine restaurant in the 11th, in a neighborhood where tiled floors and wobbly bistro chairs are practically municipal code. Here the room goes Brutalist instead, all exposed stone, dried flowers, and candlelight, closer to Berlin than Paris. The menu rotates every few weeks and wanders well beyond France, and there's a mezcal and coconut milk slushy for anyone who's tired of orange wine.

This is a no-frills organic bakery with no baguettes and no Art Deco charm, which in Paris counts as a statement. The sourdough pain de campagne has a treacly crust, and the seedy German-style loaf is a dense little brick built for Roquefort. Everything is sold by weight, so you can assemble a bread flight and carry it to the Seine a few steps away, where the pigeons will take an interest. There's a separate window for gluten-free.

A neighborhood bakery in the 11th where the baguette once took Paris's top prize and the croissant dough gets folded into flowers. Sesame turns up in nearly everything, including a charcoal-black sourdough baguette that looks great next to a candle. Weekends bring a rotating cast of stunts, like a madeleine baked inside a croissant, so check Instagram before you queue. Nothing here needs a reservation or a jacket.

Café Lomi is a coffee roaster's café in the 18th, far enough from any monument that nobody wanders in by accident. The beans they roast also supply hundreds of hotels and restaurants around France, so the cups are less a side project than the whole point. Wooden beams and exposed silver pipes give it a New York loft look, while the laptop crowd gives it the hum of a student union with better espresso.

Café Nuances is a coffee shop in the 1st arrondissement that still wears the old grocery's sign, with "beurre" and "oeufs" spelled out on a marble façade that has no butter or eggs to offer. Inside, the Art Deco marble is the main attraction, along with flat whites and pistachio lattes. It makes a tidy pause near the Louvre, and the beans come in a branded sack for taking the souvenir home.

This is a neighborhood pâtisserie on rue Censier that's easy to mistake for a jeweler's, with pastries set out like they've been insured. The cakes lean classic, with a violet-scented Saint-Honoré made for the founder's florist wife as the one real flight of fancy. Expect a short line of locals buying a single éclair and treating it like a major purchase. Pick two things, because you'll want six.

This is an old Les Halles bistro with gingham tablecloths, exposed beams, and a cash register that predates your parents. It once fed the market workers who unloaded produce all night, and the menu still leans on slow stews, tripe, and mutton with beans, served in copper pans. Tables sit shoulder to shoulder, so you'll know your neighbor's order by dessert. The Infatuation counts it among Paris's best bistros.

This is an old-school Parisian bistro in the 2nd, where the menu is handwritten in looping script nobody has been taught since the sixties. The waiters deliver efficiency, practiced scorn, and a little flirtation, all included. There's a big salade lyonnaise, veal liver, and a pile of shoestring frites. The Burgundy list runs pricey, so regulars skip to the cheaper bottles squeezed into the menu margins.

Cinq-Mars is a dimly lit Paris bistro near the Musée d'Orsay, all dark wood and low light, to the point that you may be guessing at your own dinner. The portions run large, with a veal blanquette and a chocolate mousse that arrives in something closer to a fruit bowl than a ramekin. Vegetarians get real options here, from plain French omelets to leek vinaigrette, which is not a given in a bistro.

Big front windows and light wood panelling set CopperBay apart from the usual Paris cocktail bar, which tends to treat darkness as a personality. This cocktail bar in the 10th keeps pastis and classics on the menu alongside original creations that earn some genuine attention. The 50 gave it a Discovery nod, which tracks for a place that reads as both grown-up and quietly confident without making a production of either.

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.

Diamande is a small Algerian pâtisserie in the 11th where the cookies come in colors you'd normally associate with highlighters. The classic shapes stay put, but the flavors wander: pear and ginger in one, blackcurrant and lime in another, and a chile-shaped almond-hazelnut number with a slow peppery burn. The staff will steer you if you freeze at the counter, and a few tiny tables mean you can sit, though not for long.

Dirty Dick is a tiki bar in Pigalle, where the daiquiri arrives shaken and balanced instead of out of a slush machine. The menu runs on rum, punches, and the occasional flame, and the bartenders do a fair amount of shouting, so conversation is more of a suggestion. Bring a group and a Hawaiian shirt you've been meaning to retire, and order the Flamingos on Acid bowl. It sits on The Infatuation's list of the best bars in Paris.

Ethanol is a wine bar and bistro tucked into a former cobbler's shop, the more casual sibling of a tasting-menu restaurant down the road. The playlist runs ninety-nineties and early-2000s rap from the first pour at 5:30, so the natural wine arrives with a soundtrack. Come early for charcuterie and housemade tarama, stay for the French classics, and order the ham and comté croissant, which Parisians treat as a minor scandal.

Fitzgerald is a restaurant by day, serving entrecote and risotto to the Tour Maubourg lunch crowd, and a speakeasy by night, reached through padded doors at the back and down into an Art Deco room of velvet chairs and leather booths. Expect classic cocktails, a weekend DJ, and servers with sparklers, for people who've retired from clubbing in theory only. The Infatuation put it on its list of Paris bars.

It's a pastry shop on Rue Montorgueil that works like a group show, with cakes from a rotating cast of famous bakers, several of them holders of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France title that bakeries like to frame in the window. The case changes often, so you're ordering from whatever the guest chefs left behind, which is a nice excuse to stop in more than once. It's a grab-a-box, eat-it-on-a-bench kind of place.

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.

Kissproof is a Belleville cocktail bar that leans dive more than lounge, with a shelf of absinthe taking the place of the usual pretense. The menu runs from a proper sazerac to sparkling sake and cider, plus a few glasses of wine so France doesn't feel snubbed. A double-patty cheeseburger sits ready to cushion the damage, and the house cocktail with a pickled mushroom is named for exactly that damage.

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.

This is a neighborhood bakery in the 14th that leans Alsatian, which in Paris means soft salted pretzels and a strudel with more cinnamon than the locals strictly approve of. There are also sourdough loaves the size of a toddler, tiny cream puffs, and quiches with nut-brown crusts. A line of regulars forms at the counter, and the women running it keep it moving without losing their good humor.

Le 7 is a small cocktail bar tucked inside a hotel near the Tuileries, with four high stools at a marble bar and a velvet banquette that makes you feel like you've wandered into a wealthy stranger's living room. The dirty martini comes out clear as water, since they use olive distillate instead of brine. A small plate of nuts and chips arrives with every drink, and there's a short list of meats and cheeses.

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 is a coffee shop that doubles as a cycling clubhouse, which explains the lycra-adjacent clientele clipping in before a ride up to Versailles. It sits in the Marais a few steps from the Seine, serving coffee, waffles, and juice, with bike tours on the side. English and French get shuffled together at the tables, and solo travelers rarely stay solo past the first espresso, whether or not they own a bike.

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.

A jazz kissa is a Japanese listening bar where the whole premise is sitting down, shutting up, and actually hearing the record. Mesures transplants that tradition to the Haut Marais, with a minimalist, vintage room that quietly discourages multitasking. Cocktails run three ways: year-round signatures mixing Japanese and French ingredients, rotating seasonal drinks built around Asian flavors, and a solid set of classics for anyone who just wants a Negroni.

Mille Et Un is a small Franco-Korean bakery in the 6th, where French technique takes on sesame, matcha, and ginger. The Paris-Seoul is a Paris-Brest with a black sesame paste hiding inside, and the flans have a crisp puff pastry shell and a middle set just firmly enough to count as solid. A few tables let you sit down with a ginger tea, and the baguette is a straight-ahead French one, which feels almost rebellious here.

Moonshiner is a whisky-leaning cocktail bar tucked behind the walk-in fridge of a pizzeria, so getting in means pushing a door that every instinct says leads to the mozzarella. Inside, there's 1920s jazz, Belle Epoque wallpaper, leather booths, and a cigar room, which feels very Prohibition for a country that never had one. Weekend evenings get standing-room-only, so arrive early or befriend a bartender.

No Entry is a cocktail bar in Pigalle, reached by walking through a refrigerator in the basement of Pink Mamma, which is the sort of entrance that makes you feel briefly like a spy and then like a person holding a drink. The room looks like a chemistry lab with a good lighting budget, demijohns of infusions lining the walls. There are no reservations, so you wander in, order the coffee-scented Boulevardier, and keep your shoes unstuck.

Noir is a coffee shop with enough locations that you're rarely far from one, which is handy after a morning of crossing bridges. The Île Saint-Louis original sits on the little island between the banks, usually with a single barista at work, so expect to wait and call it a scenic pause. Another branch has two floors and a spiral staircase that will end up in somebody's photos. Cheap, quick, and strictly a coffee stop.

Panade is a bakery out in the 15th, far enough south that making the trip counts as a personal statement for the Left-Bank-averse. The viennoiseries wander off from French tradition, including a cinnamon croissant spiced almost enough for American palates and a leftover-croissant pastry with peanuts and sweet coffee fondant that reads as an artisanal Pop-Tart. The line stays short, and one table overlooks the open kitchen.

Petite Ile is a small Franco-Taiwanese bakery in the Marais where French croissants share a counter with fluffy pineapple buns, and nobody seems to be arguing about it. The black sesame pain au chocolat is the one that sells out, and the sourdough boule keeps for days, in case you're the type to plan ahead. Everything is a few euros, and the line forms early. Named among The Infatuation's best bakeries in Paris.

This is a bakery on a Left Bank street, and it sells enormous round sourdough miches stacked in tight rows behind the counter, with a mild tang and a dense crumb that suits a grilled cheese. The branded tote bags and bread knives make it look like a souvenir stop, but people queue for the loaves. The apple chaussons look like turnovers and aren't too sweet. A bread chandelier hangs in the back, which is a lot to ask of flour.

Sample Cafe is a coffee shop with a DJ booth, and the DJ is on duty daily, spinning old-school R&B and hip-hop among records and speakers of assorted sizes. Bring a friend or a solo mood, but leave the laptop and the novel at home. The coffee is a standard espresso or latte, no riffs, because the real order here is a decent cup and a seated two-step. The Infatuation put it on a Paris coffee shop list.

The Beans On Fire is a two-level coffee shop in Montmartre that opens at 8am, which in Paris counts as an act of defiance. The cappuccinos and flat whites are the draw, with pastries as backup. Grab the window seat and watch tourists photograph the corner mini mart from Amélie, or head to the basement, where the wifi is and the sightseeing isn't. It's also a reasonable place to recover from the climb to Sacré-Coeur.

Tiger is a gin bar in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with more than 100 bottles behind it and enough gin and tonic combinations to keep you here until the Sorbonne reopens. The palm frond wallpaper and teal tiles manufacture a tropical summer no matter what Paris is doing outside. The snacks are cheese and charcuterie, and the student crowd trading up from the neighborhood's dive bars makes weekend reservations a smart idea.

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.

The pinball machine next to the zinc bar tells you everything about Le Cornichon's priorities. This corner bistro in the 11th runs terrazzo floors, sea-green banquettes, and newspapers on wooden sticks through the full checklist of the neighborhood hangout that Paris has mostly lost to rent hikes and renovation. The chef came up through haute-cuisine kitchens and is now cooking affordable comfort food for a room that has no interest in being impressed.

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.

A converted cafe in the 11th that has settled comfortably into modern bistro life, with a menu that changes often enough to keep regulars genuinely curious. The kitchen swings between French instinct and wider influences without making a fuss about it, and the natural wine list is taken as seriously as the food. The kind of room where creative young Parisians eat on a Tuesday night like it's not a big deal, because here it isn't.

Voodoo trinkets and Louisiana kitsch line the walls of this New Orleans-themed cocktail bar tucked into Pigalle, a neighborhood that has quietly traded its hostess-club past for a serious drinking scene. The Sazerac and Vieux Carré are the obvious orders, and the room commits to the theme hard enough that it wraps back around to charming. Worth finding on a side street you might otherwise walk straight past.

Oscar Wilde died upstairs in Room 16, and the cocktail bar below commemorates him in a drink, which feels about right. This is a hotel bar in Saint-Germain, tucked into the kind of street where antiques dealers and rare book merchants share the pavement, and signed photos of De Niro, Depp, and Jagger line the walls. The crowd has always skewed toward the notable; the room just makes it easy to feel that way yourself.

Named for a New Orleans brothel madam whose Storyville establishment was the talk of the early 1900s, this cocktail bar on Rue Frochot leans into the reference without apology. The Belle Époque interior runs to dark wood, deep greens, and bare bulbs looping around the bar canopy like a fairground ride. A neon sign outside gives away the speakeasy posture before you even push the door.

Bottles stacked in wooden crates by spirit type line the back bar, which is a useful organizational system and also a pleasant thing to look at. Maria Loca is a cocktail bar near the Bastille that leans into a hacienda aesthetic, plants everywhere, paintings from young artists on the walls, the whole Latin American detour intact. It runs quiet on purpose, the kind of room built for two or three friends and an unhurried drink, not a scene.

The mosaic floors and mirrored ceilings are original to the former butcher's shop, which is a good start for an Argentine steakhouse in the Marais. Mauro Colagreco and his partner in beef bring cuts from four continents through a high-heat broiler, and chimichurri arrives like it means it. The room runs on Latin warmth and Parisian cool in roughly equal measure, and the Malbec list keeps pace. It holds a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

Brasserie Bellanger is a new-wave Paris brasserie where the wallpaper, deco chandeliers, and red velvet chairs all seem to be competing for your attention. The half roast chicken comes with a mountain of frites built for dragging through the jus, and even the leek vinaigrette shows up charred and piled with bitter greens. It's a proper sit-down dinner, and plenty of those velvet chairs are held for walk-ins.

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.

A neighborhood café in Belleville where the lunchtime regulars know the move: roast chicken with frites and a puddle of herby jus, for under seven euros, which feels like a clerical error nobody plans to correct. The owner polices the clean plate with the zeal of a school principal, so skip the starters and don't leave anything behind. The lemon pie lives in a cupboard wedged between the bar and the bathroom.

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.

Cosi is a casual Saint-Germain sandwich spot built around thin focaccia baked to order in a wood-fired oven, which comes out hot enough that you'll burn your fingers and say nothing. The menu runs long enough to cover two weeks without a repeat, and it has actual tables and a bathroom, a rarity for sandwiches in Paris. Expect regulars and tourists sharing the room, both pretending they're not here for the same reason.

Gemüse is a Berlin-style kebab shop in Montmartre, and the name is German for "vegetables," which turns out to be the whole plan. The spit-roasted chicken plays backup to a pile of roasted and raw carrots, peppers, zucchini, and slaw, all stuffed into sesame bread that holds together under the sauces. The line wraps around the corner, but it moves quickly, so you'll be eating on the sidewalk before your patience runs out.

This is a falafel stand on rue des Rosiers with a bright green storefront and a line that wraps the sidewalk. You pay while you wait, so by the window the transaction is mostly choreography. The pita comes stuffed with herby falafel, cabbage, cucumber, and fried eggplant, and it's a two-handed affair. Eat it in the nearby park, or join the shorter indoor line, which costs a little extra and buys you a bathroom.

A Marais bistro with exposed beams, gingham curtains, and a gruff owner posted at the bar like the room's unofficial bouncer, so it looks like a movie set and somehow isn't one. The upstairs dining room hums over a live woodfire, where a meat-heavy menu gets grilled, and the steak arrives sauceless with a wooden pepper grinder on every table. It lands on The Infatuation's list of Paris's best steak-frites.

A glass-fronted butcher counter that doubles as a restaurant, tucked inside Paris' oldest covered market, where you pick a dry-aged cut from the case or just name a budget and let the bearded butcher improvise. The steak arrives sliced on a board for sharing, with a bright, herby sauce and char-grilled vegetables standing in for the fries. It's a casual, market-stall sort of meal, and The Infatuation lists it among the best steak-frites in Paris.

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.

A neighborhood boulangerie in the 5th that you may recognize from a certain Netflix show, which explains the selfie line and the branded shopping bags. The croissant is shatteringly flaky with a browned-butter edge and a light, airy middle, and it's been written up by The Infatuation among the city's top croissants. The apple tart, slow-cooked compote under thin caramelized slices, is the other thing people order. Pay at the counter, eat on the sidewalk.

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.

Faste is a croque monsieur specialist near Gare de l'Est, which means the sandwiches here are built from thick slices of bread and so much cheese sauce that cutlery and possibly a bib come into play. There's a mushroom and tarragon version for the vegetarians, and a tasting platter if you can't commit to one. The room is small and airy, with a few tables outside, and it's an easy lunch stop before or after a train.

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.