Ironically, even though Paris is the world’s gastronomic capital, it is easy to eat very bad and expensive food there. The best way to avoid disappointment is of course to have a list of recommended restaurants in advance and stick to it. However, this greatly limits your trip because it forces you to be in certain places during the lunch and evening hours, even though you would often want to be in other places during your trip. Therefore, after more than 20 trips to the City of Lights and endless culinary disappointments, I have managed to formulate a few rules of thumb that will help you choose good restaurants in Paris spontaneously:
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Check out the waiter at the Parisian restaurant
Is the waiter standing outside trying to coax customers in? If so, this is a very bad sign because in a good restaurant or cafe the staff is solely concerned with serving customers and if the waiter has time to do other things there is probably a reason why the restaurant is not popular.
What does the menu at the French restaurant tell you?
Check the menu, which by law must be displayed outside the restaurant. If the menu is translated into English or other languages, look elsewhere. The French are very snobbish when it comes to their language and a restaurant that caters to locals will never translate the menu. So a translated menu means that it is a restaurant that caters to tourists, and they are naturally changing. So it is usually not important to the restaurant owner whether they ever return, which greatly increases the potential for risk.
Good restaurants in Paris – does there have to be a long line outside?
How many people are waiting impatiently for their food? A full restaurant is usually a good sign, but when you look inside, you should check how many diners have already been served and how many haven't. If there are more people waiting than eating, it's a sign that the place is full because it's trendy and not necessarily because of the quality of the food or service.
Who are the diners?
The following tip is especially true in areas that contain quite a few offices and businesses. Do you spot groups of French colleagues during your lunch break? If so, that's a very good sign. As you know, it's very common in France to take a break of about an hour at lunch and go out with colleagues for a business meal at one of the restaurants in the district. Since there are usually quite a few restaurants, the competition for the same office residents is tough and chefs have to work very hard to get the same people to come back to them time and time again. This is why restaurant owners would prefer to let an experienced chef run the lunch shift and a less experienced chef run the evening shift (so in the same restaurant the food at lunch can be excellent while in the evening it can be slightly less good).
How long is the menu?
Is the menu short and has a daily special written on a board in the restaurant? If so, this is a good sign because it suggests that the ingredients were probably bought that day.
How much fish is on the menu?
The following tip is relevant for restaurants that do not specialize in fish or seafood. Check the fish dishes on the menu. Is there a selection of fish or just one fish (usually salmon). If there is only one fish, then, most likely, the chef simply orders it every day mechanically without checking what the markets have to offer (and Paris, despite its distance from the sea, has one of the best fish markets in Europe, so a good chef should know how to take advantage of this).
What do the rating sites say?
Check out what diners have written on sites such as the forkBecause reviews are mostly written by locals, they provide a good snapshot of the quality of the food at a restaurant. Even if you don't know French There is no need to panic, because what ultimately matters is the score the restaurant received. However, pay attention not only to the score but also to the number of diners who rated the restaurant, because a score of 8.5 given by 100 diners is worth much more than a score of 9.5 given by 5 diners.
Check or baguette
One last tip that I already wrote in another post – Check the baguette.As you will see, he will be able to tell you quite a bit about the quality of the restaurant.
I hope these tips will help you on your next trip to Paris. If you still want to plan the culinary part of your trip, you are welcome to come in. To the recommended restaurants page On my website.
Hello Zvi,
Thank you very much for the excellent site.
You wrote that it's best to choose a restaurant that doesn't have a translated menu. That sounds like a good tip, but how do you manage when you don't know a word of French?
And again, thank you very much for the informative articles.
Hi Barak.
There are several options.
1. Ask the waiter to explain each dish.
2. If you reserve a place in advance at such a restaurant, you can usually find the menu on the website and translate it with Google Translate.
3. Choose randomly and hope for the best.
4. Learn French 🙂