Eating and drinking
France > Paris > Eating and drinking
As in the rest of France, Parisian cooking has art status, the top chefs are stars, and dining out is a national pastime, whether it's at the bistrot on the corner or at a famed house of haute cuisine. In recent years, prices at the top end of the market have come down – with some superb-value midday set menus on offer – while the quality at the bottom end, particularly in the tourist hotspots, has sunk. Our advice to gourmets is to snack it out for a few days, then go for a blowout (but don't forget that wine with a €35 set menu can easily send the bill to €60 or more).Paris is also renowned for its foreign cuisine. There are numerous excellent Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese establishments, and you'll find restaurants of Caribbean, Middle Eastern, North African, Central African, Latin American, and Western and Eastern European origin, along with Kurdish, Afghan, Japanese and even Tibetan. Like other Latin Europeans, the French seldom separate the major pleasures of eating and drinking – drinking is never an end in itself, as it so often is for Anglo-Saxons. In consequence, there are thousands of establishments in Paris where you can both eat and drink. In order to simplify matters, we have divided them into two broad categories: Restaurants and Cafés and bars. Listings for the latter are places recommended for snacks and drinks – whether coffee, tea, beer, wine or cocktails – whereas the Restaurants Listings are places you'd want to go for a full meal. For that reason you can find brasseries andbistrots in either section, depending on what we like about them. The Listings are arranged in alphabetical order. Where you need to book for a restaurant we've given the phone number. By way of an introduction, we have included a description of the various kinds of establishment that you'll come across, as well as some indication of the conventions that surround eating and drinking in France.
Pages in section ‘Eating and drinking’: Snacks and picnics, Vegetarians, Cafés and bars, Alcoholic and soft drinks, Restaurants.
| 