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Frenchie

Frenchie restaurant in Paris | Paris by Mouth

Frenchie is the original outpost from Gregory Marchand, a chef who trained with Jamie Oliver in the UK and Danny Meyer in the USA. They hold one Michelin star and serve a no-choice tasting menu with five courses for 140€. The optional wine pairings are usually excellent.

Frenchie opened in 2009 and has been a very tough reservation since at least 2010. Reservations open three weeks before a given date (Mon-Fri) and all tables are usually booked within a few hours.

The restaurant’s popularity has completely transformed the rue de Nil, a small side street just north of the Sentier subway station. Marchand has spun off his own wine bar (Frenchie Bar à Vins), fast food shop (FTG) and wine shop (Frenchie Caviste) on the rue de Nil, and his presence on the street has attracted truly excellent shops for bread, meat, fish, vegetables, chocolate and coffee. Marchand has also opened locations of Frenchie inside a Paris hotel (Frenchie Pigalle), at a ski station (Frenchie Verbier), and in London (Frenchie Covent Garden).

I’ve been to Frenchie many times and the experience is variable. My most recent visit was good enough to land Frenchie back on our list of 50 favorite restaurants in Paris. The preceding visit was a dud. I’ll leave both reviews here as a caution.

May 2022

Frenchie was wonderful – so good that you felt you were getting away with something – back when it opened in 2009. Then the tiny restaurant landed on every journalists’ “best of” list and was featured in every food travel show you can name. It became difficult, very difficult, to get a table. It became a challenge to even get through on the phone. This is when people stop rooting for a restaurant. This is when people begin to wonder whether it’s worth it, and honestly, is any restaurant really worth begging and pleading for?

I’ve heard so many disappointed rants about Frenchie from people who suffered to get their table and felt unrewarded for the effort. Until my most recent visit in May 2022, I had never had a bad experience. My most recent meal wasn’t bad, but it was totally underwhelming and nowhere near as good as other meals I’d had that month. Restaurants have bad phases and bounce back, and I’ll surely return to Frenchie another time. But I would counsel the many people who message us asking “how do I get into Frenchie?” to place their bets somewhere else right now.

January 2023

After making a stink last year about how Frenchie was slipping, I revisited this old favorite in 2023 and had a much more enjoyable time. A few things impacted my experience. In 2022, we were seated at a cramped table right next to the bathroom and my guest had to move a bit whenever someone wanted to get in there. Such a bad table shouldn’t exist at a one-star restaurant with prices this high. We were also part of the early service (there are two seatings at either 6:30pm or 9:15pm), and in retrospect I was probably annoyed to be eating so early (Parisians tend not to leave the house before 7:30pm). In 2023, we were part of the later service and had an excellent table (there are only a handful of options in this tiny restaurant).

However, the biggest difference in 2023 was the food. I loved everything on this winter tasting menu, from the salsify with coffee espuma and Noir de Bigorre (pork) crumble to the rosy lamb with “couscous” to the deconstructed lemon meringue pie with olive and preserved lemon. Service is kind, professional and Anglophone. The entire dining room is usually Anglophone, in fact. For me, it feels a little surreal to be surrounded entirely by Americans in a Paris restaurant. But for travelers who don’t speak French, it might be a comfort to know they’ll be very well taken care of.

Frenchie is included among our of 50 favorite restaurants in Paris

FRENCHIE

5 Rue du Nil, 75002
Open Monday-Friday for dinner only
Reservations online or at +33 1 40 39 96 19

Their Instagram / Our Instagram

OUR PHOTOS OF FRENCHIE

Our most recent visit (in very low lighting)

Previous visits

IN OTHER WORDS

Le Fooding (2016) “Son menu haute couture déroulé en cinq temps: thon blanc dans un gaspacho de tomates et fruits rouges à la réglisse; langoustines snackées, livrées du Guilvinec le matin même, avec aubergine, purée de miso et citron confit; dos de turbot, fondant, maquillé à l’encre de seiche, escorté d’une émulsion de coquillages, avec poireaux et haricots verts – magique avec le saumur blanc d’Antoine Foucault.”

Les Grands Ducs (2010) says the cuisine is delicious and original, superbly executed, and always fresh with vegetables and herbs and calls Frenchie “more than recommendable.”

Table à Découvert (2010) “… toujours aussi bien balancée entre accords vifs, fraîcheur et gourmandise.”

The New York Times (2010) says “The menu maps Mr. Marchand’s influences, as well as his desire for sweetness and acidity in each dish. A recent lunch yielded a rectangle of delicate house-smoked trout on a horseradish-spiked edamame purée. Pickled red onions aligned on top, while rogue edamame sprinkled the plate. Eaten together, the combination was oddly, deliciously burgerlike in its savoriness.”

Le Figaro (2009) includes Frenchie among the best openings of the year and says without a doubt it features the most stupendous culinary tricks of the season.

Alexander Lobrano (2009) says “because the atmosphere’s so cosy and the food’s so good, Frenchie is exactly the type of happy, homey restaurant you’d love to claim as your neighborhood hang-out. It also offers an interesting snap shot of Paris dining in 2009 because it’s main references are two countries that were once derided for their mediocre, even ghastly food–the United States and the United Kingdom–but which have now developed distinctive cuisine du marche styles of their own.

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16 thoughts on “Frenchie”

  1. Does anyone know exactly what time the reservations open up? Yes, I know, three weeks in advance, but there are 24 hours in a day. What TIME? lol, Thanks in advance!

  2. I’m surprised to see some negative comments. Maybe the trick is to go for lunch instead of dinner. My wife and I have had lunch at Frenchie each of our last two visits to Paris, the first week of September in 2017 and 2018. Our experience was nothing short of phenomenal. The food was delicious and the service was everything we could hope for including helping my wife find French wines that’s she loved; not an easy task.

  3. Went to Frenchie with great expectations. The food was inventive and quite good, but the service left a lot to be desired. We ordered a bottle of wine, and watched our server scamper across the street to try to track it down. Appetizers passed. Entrees arrived. Still no wine. Finally, the manager told us that they didn’t have the wine we chose – which is fine – but they could have told us before the appetizers arrived, not mid-way through our entrees. They were pleasant, and the manager tried to make up for this TGIFridays level blunder. But it was by giving us an extra dessert, which was the last thing we needed, after dessert, rather than comping the bottle of wine we ultimately received, toward the end of our meal. A very nice place, with lovely food and nice people, but for that kind of money those kinds of amateur hour screw-ups shouldn’t occur. Maybe it’s the Bourdain Effect. Anyway, I probably wouldn’t return.

  4. I made reservations WELLin advance for a special occasion.The reservation was for 9pm which was a little later than I had wanted.
    When I called to confirm I was asked to come at 9.15. When we arrived we were kept waiting in the street a good 15 minutes for our table.
    After we were seated we waited another 20 minutes to be served. Thus dinner started after 10pm and we were already past being that hungry.
    The food is certainly NOT worth the wait. Mayonnaise in the amuse bouche ( the drop of wasabi does not make up for it), very plain chicken as a main (called hen so that it sounds better), home-made foie gras (probably to satisfy the anglo crowd), not as good as the supermarket version and served with overly sour cherries. I could go on. The staff are reasonably polite but our waitress asked us if she should speak to us in English or French every SINGLE time she came to the table! Can’t she remember a simple detail in such a small dining room? I was very very disappointed in our meal. This place may be hip and trendy with an atmospheric dining room in a hipster part of town, but the food DOES NOT cut it. I felt like an idiot having worked so hard for a reservation. I won’t be fooled again.

  5. have been to the bar a couple of times in previous visits to Paris
    could never get a reservation at the restaurant
    this time I booked 2 weeks in advance and told there were two sittings – 19:15-19:30 and 21:15-21:30
    booked for two at 21:15
    got a telephone call from the restaurant yesterday afternoon to ask if we were still coming and excitedly confirmed even though I was trying to get some sleep and prepare for the evening me and my wife were so looking forward to….
    We arrived at 21:35 because the taxi driver had difficult time finding his way to this small street Rue du Nil.
    As we happily walked in we were bluntly told by the young lady who approached us that we were too late , that there was no available table for us and that this was a very strict policy they had.
    The young lady said she even tried to call my mobile phone (which I never carry with me at night) to check if we were coming .
    Needless to say we were deeply dissapointed .
    there was an available free table right there. We intensively but briefly protested, the chef was standing there with plates in his hands but, there was no way they would let us stay – we were given a straight “NO”.
    When we drove by the restaurant two minutes later we saw a couple crossing the street from the bar and seating dow at the table we saw was free.
    Frenchie certainly pays close attention to the food it serves but this is no way to treat a visiting customer who booked weeks in advance and just a couple of hours earlier confirmed he was coming.

    Surely a restaurant like Frenchie which, is quiet hard to get a resevation to , or any other restaurant for that matter, should allow for some unexpected reasonable delays in arrival.

    Frenchie should be taught a lesson on how to respect people – not just food !

  6. Had just had a meal in the wine bar across the street from the main restaurant. Dropped by and hung out about 45min and got a seat for two next to the kitchen “window” where food was prepped. Have to say the experience was a blast. Great food although we had a bit of a mix up and dessert preceded the main event…did not matter as the prep and careful crafting of the food was impeccable. Loved the sole served whole with a butter and giant caper sauce. Place is packed and yes, there are many tourists but many locals as well. Doubt it would be much different at a lot of high end restaurants in NYC, let’s face it people, this is Paris after all. Wine list was inventive and interesting, drank some Bouchard that is hard to find in the open market as he has become somewhat of a cultish producer. Overall the whole vibe was fun and buzzing on a Friday night, and you won’t fall over when the bill arrives at your table. I think if you want to avoid the hassle of reservations, pop into the wine bar and people watch with a glass of champers. The food will not disappoint.

  7. I made a reservation in August for October. no problems. Service, atmosphere, pace, menu, wine. Excellent. Even having Gregory himself stick his head out of the kitchen and ask us how our food was. If you’re writing on this page in English and complaining about the 7pm sitting being all tourists- what does that make you? we’re all after a great culinary experience, but consider where you are going and what you are looking for before you complain or speak above what you’re an expert at. If the food was “good” and the service sucked liked people are bitching about, would the place be doing so well? I for one can say this- i can’t wait for my next trip to Paris so i can go back.

  8. Reservations for us were easy to obtain (2 months in advance and online). Meal was great, staff friendly. Great experience.

  9. We just got back from a week in Paris. We managed to score reservations to Frenchie for a table of 4 at 9:30 on weeknight. Due to the difficulty of getting said reservation, we had very high expectations. I’m with Lynn’s opinion from above- it’s good, but it’s not that great. For people living in Paris, the food may be revolutionary but we could easily name 4-5 restaurants in San Francisco with a similar concept and better execution of the food. The service was definitely cold and the least friendly we’ve experienced in Paris in our last two trips there. We had a lot more fun at Itineraires last year and Fish (La Boissonerie), Coq Rico and Lilane this year.

  10. After waiting forever to try this place, I finally got a chance last week and I can safely say one of the best meals I’ve had in Paris so far. I got the oeuf poché with mushrooms as the starter which was just perfectly cooked and seasoned. The truite with what tasted like mandarin oranges was outstanding as were the desserts. I got just a single glass of wine which was well recommended to go with the meal. The only major dowside for me was the service – just cold and unwelcoming. For being the top restaurant that it is, it should do a lot better on hospitality. That’s the business they’re in.

  11. Hi Whitney, I wrote this on another post related to Frenchie substitutes, but I really feel Frenchie isn’t worth the wait/aggravation. It’s good, but not *that* good. The service was surly (as it was when I made my reservation in person 3 months in advance). The earlier seating was entirely Americans. With wine, it ended up being 70€/person, much more than we’d spend getting a better meal and service elsewhere. I too had felt like I *had* to go there, but afterward I felt a little duped.

  12. I agree whole heartily with Randy. I finally managed to get a reservation for October (4 months in advance) for when my parents come to Paris because my mother is just dying to try it. However, although I haven’t even eaten there yet I already have a bitter taste in my mouth due to A) how impossible it was to get through to them on the phone after calling for 45 minutes straight during the allotted 2 hour reservation window 5 days in a row, and B) how rude they were when I finally got through.

    And to non-french speakers and double beware, the guy who answers the phone now refuses to speak any English (even though later in the conversation he switched to strong English as he was frustrated with my french), so dust off your french dictionaries.

    I do hope the food is worth the agonizing experience getting in!

  13. I realize what becomes hard to become obtain, becomes most desired, but really, what happened.

    I haven’t been to the restaurant in a while, but thought it necessary to write about their customer service, or lack of. There’s no denying Chef Marchand makes some incredible food. Unfortunately, with popularity and fame comes customer service complacency. He has hired unruly front of the house staff, his reservation system or lack of sucks! It takes months to get a reservations, and just keep your fingers crossed they got it right. Just the other night, friends from US made reservations for a table for 4, months in advance in US. Prior to leaving for Paris, they once again confirmed Third time you’d think would be the charm, well you’d be wrong. They arrived in Paris last week, had concierge reconfirm. The restaurant said they only showed reservations for 2 NOT 4. So, they were left with no dinner reservations. Fortunately, they found a decent place, L’Hedoniste.

    I use to have friends from US call me to plead to me to make reservations for them, because at one point they weren’t answering their phones. So, the only way you could make reservations was in person. But currently I refuse to go anywhere near that restaurant, because of the horrible experience I had trying to make reservations for the last set of friends who pleaded to me. The attitude was like, “take what I give you, I can’t be bothered with all your demands.”

    The dining experience has to be about the whole experience, from the time you make the reservations to the time you leave the door. Yes, those types of restaurants exists in Paris, more so than not! So why put up with this type of crap. If Chef Marchand would give half his attention to the customers as he does the food, then that restaurant would be a winner.

  14. TIP TO ALL FOODIES NOT ON VACATION -IF you can get through on the phone (dropping by is more efficient) you can actually get a reservation at Frenchie until August 17th when they close for the summer – they are open Monday to Friday for dinner only. Food is memorable and very reasonable. Had an amazing sea bass (bar) in a fennel consommé last night followed by a pannacotta with raspberries and chocolate to die for…

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