If you think food tastes better in a beautiful room, then you’ll love Le Mini Palais, where refined and playful cooking meets high design in a Paris landmark setting.Eric Fréchon of the Bristol is the consulting chef, present in spirit only, and the menu is as cosmopolitan as the crowd. Book a table on the terrace when weather permits. Open every day, all day.
This tidy crêpe spot near rue Mouffetard is short on the usual Breton bric-a-brac, and long on quality.
It’s all bo bun all the time at this airy annex to the heavily trafficked Le Cambodge.
Sidewalk seats are easy to come by if you want to sip an apéro. Outdoor dining is a trickier proposition. There are plenty of gorgeous spots where the food is grim, and there are delicious restaurants where the outdoor seating is drab. A handful of restaurants manage to do both – serving excellent food in delightful open-air surroundings. Here are our favorites.
Yves Camdeborde’s beloved bistro, once neo and now classic. Book months in advance for weeknight, no-choice dinner, or just queue up at lunch or weekends for the so-called “brasserie menu”, a free-for-all that can feel a bit like a tourist zoo at times. At worst, it’s sloppy and hectic. At best, it’s delicious.
Celebrity chef Cyril Lignac took over this historic bistro in 2008, and while he’s something of a pretty boy, the real looker is the room itself, with its painted ceiling and curvy woodwork. On the menu? A more-or-less classic mix of bistro favorites — steak with bearnaise, pommes dauphines — which, if well-executed, don’t bear much of a personal signature. (Except, perhaps, in the prices.)
With a minimum lunch bill of 35€, and dinner menus at 50€ and 77€, is this really a bistro? Maybe not, but this offshoot of gastronomic sibling Agapé, showcasing chef Katsuaki Okiyama’s precise, balanced and modern cooking, has been widely praised, in spite of prices that are, as Gilles Pudlowski puts it, “pas forcement tendres.”
The “bread” part of Bread & Roses is a lovely range of organic loaves. The rest of it is an English-accented lunch spot and tea salon featuring fresh tarts (savory and sweet), sandwiches, and lively salads, plus flaky scones, serious cheesecake, and a few grocery items, including Marmite. What you won’t find are any bargains.
On the one hand, this really is a café, open all day long starting at 8 am. But it’s the natural wines and simple food that keep this place busy. The terrace doesn’t hurt.
A red and black-lacquered dining room lit with lanterns and staffed by lovely ladies: Lily Wang rides the Asian wave sweeping Paris with style and steep prices.
Chef Frederic Verdon (ex-Ducasse) runs the kitchen at this rooftop address just off the Champs-Elysées. Sleek and chic.
From the team behind Glou comes Jaja, a contemporary bistro featuring top notch organic products, a serious wine list, airy urban decor, and…hot dogs. Open every day.
Join the rest of the neighborhood here on Sunday afternoons for a post-market glass of wine (direct from the barrel), a plate of cheese or charcuterie or, in winter, a dozen oysters. Bottles to go, too.
This Sentier address offers a streamlined menu of contemporary cooking, with global accents, and (comme il faut, these days) natural wines.
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