Paris has changed a lot since Eater started rounding up its essential restaurants in 2016. Over the last nine years of writing this map, I’ve watched as the city’s entrenched food pyramid — a top tier of haute-cuisine, followed by dressed-up bourgeois restaurants, and finally a base of bistros and brasseries — has flattened out. Today, you can find outstanding contemporary French cooking at reasonable prices all over Paris.
Traditional French haute cuisine has become exorbitantly expensive, too formal, gastronomically staid, and increasingly irrelevant in a city that’s seeing the emergence of wiry young talents like Maxime Bouttier at Géosmine and Youssef Marzouk at Aldehyde. Across the board, modern Parisian menus are trending toward vegetables, with meat playing a supporting role to local produce from sustainable producers. But even as they embrace the new, many Parisians remain rooted in rock-of-ages French comfort food, which is available at a wave of traditional bistros; highlights include the very popular Bistrot des Tournelles in the Marais and thriving stalwarts like Le Petit Vendôme.
In this latest refresh, we’ve revamped our write-ups to include even more relevant info for diners, including a rough range of pricing for each destination — ranging from $ for quick, inexpensive meals with dishes largely under $10 USD (or the equivalent in euros), to $$$$ for places where entrees exceed $30.
We update this list quarterly to make sure it reflects the ever-changing Paris dining scene.
New to the map in July 2025: Prévelle, a minimalist new restaurant near Les Invalides where chef Romain Meder offers an intriguing new take on what the best French cooking could be like in the 21st century; and Elbi (“heart” in Arabic), the second restaurant from Franco Egyptian Tunisian chef Omar Dhiab, another rising talent, in the 10th Arrondissement.
For even more advice for your next trip, order the Eater Guide to Paris, in which we detail our favorite restaurants and shopping spots, offer tips on dining etiquette, plus feature deep dives into the city’s Southeast Asian cuisines, drinking culture, evolving pastry scene, and much more.
Alexander Lobrano is a well-known Paris restaurant expert, has written Eater’s best restaurants map to Paris since 2016, and is the author of Hungry for Paris, Hungry for France and My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris. He writes often for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
