Ironically, even though Paris is the culinary capital of the world, it’s surprisingly easy to end up eating very bad, very expensive food there. The best way to avoid that is, of course, to arm yourself with a list of recommended restaurants ahead of time and stick to it. But that approach limits your trip quite a bit, since it means you have to be in specific places at lunch and dinner, even though there are plenty of times during a trip when you’d rather be somewhere else. So, after more than 20 trips to the City of Light and countless culinary disappointments, I’ve put together a few rules of thumb that will help you pick good restaurants in Paris on the spot:
Check out the waiter at the Parisian restaurant
Is the waiter standing outside trying to lure customers in? If so, that’s a very bad sign. At a good restaurant or café, the staff is busy taking care of customers, and if a waiter has time to do other things, there’s probably a reason the place isn’t popular.
What does the menu at the French restaurant tell you?
Check the menu, which by law has to be posted outside the restaurant. If the menu is translated into English or other languages, look elsewhere. The French are quite snobbish when it comes to their language, and a restaurant whose target audience is local will never translate its menu. So a translated menu means the restaurant is aiming for tourists, who by nature don’t come back. That means the owner usually doesn’t care much whether you ever return, which raises the risk considerably.
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, check how many diners have already been served and how many haven’t. If more people are waiting than eating, that’s a sign the place is full because it’s trendy, not necessarily because of the food or service.
Who are the diners?
This next tip applies mainly to areas with lots of offices and businesses. During lunch hours, do you see groups of French colleagues? If so, that’s a very good sign. As you probably know, it’s common in France to take about an hour for lunch and go out with coworkers to one of the restaurants in the neighborhood. Since there are usually quite a few restaurants to choose from, the competition for those office workers is fierce, and chefs have to work hard to get people to keep coming back. That’s why restaurant owners tend to put their most experienced chef on the lunch shift and a less experienced one on the dinner shift (which is why the same restaurant can serve excellent food at lunch and slightly less impressive food in the evening).
How long is the menu?
Is the menu short, with a changing daily special written on a chalkboard? If so, that’s a good sign, since it suggests the ingredients were bought that same day.
How many fish dishes are on the menu?
This next tip applies to restaurants that don’t specialize in fish or seafood. Check the fish dishes on the menu. Is there a selection of fish, or just one (usually salmon)? If there’s only one fish option, the chef is probably ordering it automatically every day without bothering to check what’s actually fresh at the markets (and despite being far from the sea, Paris has one of the best fish markets in Europe, so a good chef should know how to take advantage of that).
What do the review sites say?
Check what diners have written on sites like The Fork. Since the reviews are mostly written by locals, they give you a pretty accurate picture of the quality of the food. Even if you don’t know French, don’t worry, because what matters in the end is the restaurant’s score. But pay attention not just to the score but also to how many diners rated it, since a score of 8.5 from 100 diners is worth a lot more than a 9.5 from 5 diners.
Check the baguette
One last tip I already wrote about in another post: check the baguette. As you’ll see, it can tell you quite a lot about the quality of a restaurant.
I hope these tips help you on your next trip to Paris. And if you’d like to plan the culinary side of your trip in more detail, feel free to check out my recommended restaurants page on my site.
