With excellent shopping, unique art & architecture and a vibrant gallery scene, the Marais attracts a huge number of visitors. There are some outstanding food & wine options within this maze of fashionable streets, and we’ve selected our favorites for you here.
Behind an old iron gate in the 3rd arrondissement lies the surprising sprawl of the Marché des Enfants Rouges, the oldest market in Paris at 400 years old. While an exciting destination for foodies – you have your pick of Japanese bento boxes, Lebanese sandwiches, fresh pressed juice, gluten-free brownies, towers of Moroccan couscous, buckwheat crêpes and more – the choices and lines can be overwhelming, and not every stand is equally excellent. Read below for our tips to navigating the market and the food for which we think it’s worth braving the masses.
Giovanni Passerini, the Roman chef behind the beloved and now-closed Rino, has today opened a fresh pasta shop near the Marché d’Aligre at 65 rue Traversière, 75012.
Pastificio Passerini will make fresh pasta daily to cook at home and sell everything needed to make it into a meal, including various jarred ragus and sauces, fresh herbs to infuse into butter, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, cured meat, and a handful of high-end Italian grocery products.
On opening day, the chef had fresh pappardelle, taglioni, and tagliatelle (fresh and buckwheat), plus three stuffed pastas including Taleggio cheese and seaweed ravioli, ravioli with pumpkin, brown butter, pistachios, and bergamot ricotta, and an agnolotti with mortadella, chicory, pork and veal. Prices for the fresh pasta are astoundingly low for the quality, with plain versions selling for €1.90 per 150 grams and stuffed pastas for €3.90, with roughly 150 grams suggested per person.
The heirloom produce purveyor is branching out into bread.
Camille Fourmont of La Buvette, the beloved gem of a wine bar in the 11th, has collaborated on a new wine bar at the recently opened Hotel Le Pigalle in Pigalle.
Diners can expect simple, seasonal, small plates and excellent wines, per usual. Fourmont says that the bar, also called Le Pigalle, “will be more about assembly than cooking, like a kitchen where most of the preparation is done beforehand. The jam may have been made last summer, and the evening menu this morning.”
For hours and practical info, check out our guide page for Le Pigalle.
The chef-pâtissier Tal Spiegel is putting his extensive shoe collection to work by pounding the pavement in search of beautiful pastries for his Instagram account Desserted_in_Paris.
He seeks out and photographs a different edible masterpiece each day, and his color and pattern combos are a feast for the eyes.
This weekend, Brooklyn Brewery is loving the city right back.
Advent calendars for the child with a discerning palate are now available. For the first time, both La Pâtisserie des Rêves and Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse are producing custom designed advent calendars stuffed with gourmet treats.
Contrary to most news reports, Paris is not on lockdown. The city’s residents, and especially those of us who live, work and play on the city’s east side, are shaken up. But together we’re getting through it. Here is an incomplete attempt to show what that looked like during the week after the attacks on November 13th.
There’s nothing new at A l’Étoile d’Or, and that’s perfect.
Rarely is “it’s just like it always was” a compliment, but a delighted customer at the shop’s re-opening this week meant it as high praise. The iconoclastic and historic candy shop, which features hard-to-find, old-fashioned sweets from throughout France, had been a fixture in Pigalle for over 40 years when, in February 2014, an accidental nearby explosion destroyed the shop and forced its closure. Sweet lovers mourned the loss of unusual candies like the bars of Bernachon chocolates from Lyon (the only spot in Paris to get them) or blackcurrant jellies from Dijon with a liquid center.
French food magazine Fulgurances has just opened L’Adresse in the trendy neighborhood off the 11th and will be serving dinner four nights a week (Wednesday-Saturday) as part of their new culinary residency program. During a six month stint, partnering guests chefs will have the opportunity to try out running their own restaurant.
Thank You, My Deer – It’s a silly name but they’re serious about gluten-free goods, good coffee, and good service. This little café bakes their own doughy bread, has soups, salads & sandwiches for lunch, and more involved fare like homemade gluten-free ravioli or potato gnocchi for dinner. Brunch with homemade waffles and other items available on the weekends.
Chambelland – An excellent gluten-free bakery that specializes in crusty rice/buckwheat breads using flour from their own mill in Provence. A selection of cakes, tarts and even gluten-free chouquettes are available at this trendy café that your wheat-eating friends won’t even realize is gluten-free.
Foul play is suspected with the fowl at La Recyclerie, the sprawling restaurant/urban farm/flea market/bar in the 18th arrondissement. Six of the sixteen chickens were stolen during the night of September 8th from their urban farm alongside the railway tracks, they reported on Facebook.
According to La Recyclerie, the birds are a valuable part of the restaurant team who help maintain the gardens, participate in their anti-waste and recycling efforts, and serve an important function in their farm’s educational efforts.
There will be twice the spice this Fall in Paris when Szechuan restaurant Deux Fois Plus de Piment opens a second branch called Trois Fois.
It should come as no surprise that the Parisian craft beer pioneers behind La Fine Mousse bar would be the first to open a restaurant dedicated to beer and food pairings. Slightly more surprising is just how refined, inventive, and delicious the food here is. Knowledgeable beer sommeliers work closely with the talented chef to present an intelligent set of seasonal small plates, paired with beers from one of the 10 taps or the extensive bottle collection.
It’s Fête de la Musique tonight! While the all-night free music festival might technically be about the tunes, there are some great bars, restaurants and shops that are putting on concerts and serving specials to celebrate.
The Marché Aligre is a true neighborhood market — so vibrant and bustling that it’s worth even a crosstown trek. Open six days a week, the produce is affordable, the selection diverse, and the vendors highly engaging.
Well, almost.
The universally beloved Franco-Chinois restaurant from Adeline Grattard has been closed for months as the team prepared to move to a new location.
The new spot at 121 rue Saint Honoré isn’t open quite yet, but François Simon announced that tickets will be available today for 20 of his readers to attend a pre-launch party.
There’s no set date for the actual launch, but their website promises the same fusion fare, just in a larger space.
In the meantime, you can get your fix at Boutique Yam’Tcha, their tea shop with a steamed bun window, which sprung up in the old space at 4 rue Sauval.
To save the 13 million travelers who visit Notre Dame each year from the 13 million terrible restaurants that surround it, we present you with our favorite places to eat near the great cathedral.
Grand Pigalle, a 37-room hotel from the team behind Experimental Cocktail Club and its many outposts, will be opening at 29 rue Victor Massé in the 9th arrondissement on April 2nd.
Rooms will start at 200€ and guests will have the option to be chauffeured around town to any of the group’s other establishments – Beef Club, Fish Club, Prescription Cocktail Club and Curio Parlour – in a vintage DS Citroen 1973. For those who prefer to stay and stumble closer to home, the rue Victor Massé features plenty of other cocktail destinations – L’Entrée des Artistes, Lulu White, Glass, and Dirty Dick, to name a few.
Félicitations to Djibril Bodian of Le Grenier à Pain Abbesses for winning First Prize in the 2015 Grand Prix de la Baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris, a.k.a. The Best Baguette in Paris Competition. If Bodian’s name sounds familiar, it’s because the Senegalese born, second generation baker also won the top prize five years ago. His bakery will be providing bread for President Hollande and the Elysées Palace for an entire year, just as he did for Sarkozy back in 2010.
Quixotic Projects, the team behind Candelaria, Glass, and Le Mary Celeste, will be opening a Korean fried chicken joint named Hero at 289 rue Saint-Denis, 75002 on Friday, April 10th.
Have you ever wanted to eat a few hundred baguettes in a few hours? Are you free on Thursday, March 26th?
Enter to win one of six spots on the jury for the Grand Prix de la Baguette 2015.
The Salon de L’Agriculture 2015 is the site of a very special celebration: the 90th birthday of Roquefort cheese as we know it.
Haute cuisine is not exclusively about what’s on the plate. Elaborately choreographed service, the spectacular number of dishes, the depth of a wine cellar and sumptuous surroundings – these are arguably the elements that separate restaurants with two and three Michelin stars from their starless competitors.
If we look exclusively at the food, however, ignoring the chandelier that twinkles overhead and the plush pedestal propping up our handbags, there is still much to celebrate in haute cuisine.
France, the last winner and host of the Bocuse d’Or, failed to take home a single award in the international culinary competition. Norway beat out 24 countries/competitors for the gold, and the United States, in second place, had their best showing ever.
Additional Reading:
The first ever Paris Cocktail Week will be taking place next week, featuring events, courses, and special drink prices at more than thirty bars around the city.
Due to the ongoing hostage situation at a kosher supermarket near Porte de Vincennes, Le Figaro reports that police ordered the closure of shops and restaurants along the rue des Rosiers in the historically Jewish neighborhood of the Marais today.
Most of the shops normally close for the sabbath on Friday evenings and all-day Saturday, but were forced to take extra precautions and shutter early this afternoon.