Parisian Cuisine

About Parisian Cuisine

By the ULTIMATE Paris Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

What to order in Paris, from the boulangerie counter to the bouillon and the bistro, and where to taste it: our guide to the dishes that define the city.

Parisian cuisine

Parisian cuisine balances deeply rooted, comforting traditions with generous, unpretentious dining institutions. From the flaky perfection of a bakery counter at eight in the morning to centuries-old cafés and the vast, clattering bouillons, the city’s food culture is built around a shared appreciation of French regional ingredients, handled with care and eaten in company.

Learn a handful of words and dishes, and every menu, counter and blackboard in the city opens up.

Ask for “une tradition”, not just “une baguette”: it is the loaf French law protects.

The tradition baguette

Walk into any boulangerie and ask for “une tradition”. The baguette de tradition française is the loaf French law protects: a decree of 13 September 1993 reserves the name for bread made only with wheat flour, water and salt, risen with baker’s yeast or sourdough, with no additives and never frozen. The result has a crackling, deep-golden crust, a creamy, irregular crumb and a faint sweetness of slow fermentation. Buy it warm, and do as Parisians do: tear off the end, the quignon, on the walk home.

The jambon-beurre

The jambon-beurre is the city’s lunch in two words: a length of baguette, split and spread generously with salted butter, filled with thin slices of cooked ham. Nothing more. Its pleasure lies entirely in the quality of the three ingredients, so choose a bakery that bakes its traditions on site, and eat it on a bench in a square.

Viennoiserie

The croissant and the pain au chocolat belong to the viennoiserie family: dough folded again and again with butter until it bakes into dozens of fine, shattering layers. A good one is crisp outside, honeycombed within, and leaves a shower of flakes on your plate. They are breakfast, taken at the counter with a café crème, rarely a pudding.

The bouillon revival

The bouillons are Paris’s great popular dining rooms: large, bustling, quick and inexpensive. Bouillon Chartier on the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre has offered, in its own words, “a good meal at a modest price” since 1896, with waiters in black waistcoats and long white aprons. A new generation has revived the idea: Bouillon Pigalle opened in 2017, inspired by the restaurants of 19th-century Paris, and its sister Bouillon République on the boulevard du Temple. Expect the classics of French home cooking, served fast, at prices that make a three-course lunch an everyday affair.

Bistro classics

A few dishes define the Paris bistro. French onion soup, gratinée, is a deep, slow-cooked broth of caramelised onions under a lid of toasted bread and melted cheese, served bubbling in its bowl. Beef bourguignon is beef braised for hours in red Burgundy wine with bacon, mushrooms and small onions. Steak frites, a seared steak with thin, crisp chips, is the bistro staple. And escargots, Burgundy snails baked in garlic and parsley butter, come with tongs, a small fork and plenty of bread for the butter.

Where to taste it

Le Procope, on the rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie near the Odéon, has been a café-restaurant since 1686 and calls itself the oldest café in Paris; it names Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot among its regulars, and coq au vin among its historic dishes. Bouillon République, on the boulevard du Temple, serves the bouillon repertoire every day from 11.30am to midnight, and takes bookings online. La Jacobine, a small restaurant of French tradition on the rue Saint-André-des-Arts, is a few steps from the Odéon. Au Bourguignon du Marais, on the rue François-Miron, is devoted to Burgundy: its signature beef bourguignon, Burgundy snails, eggs en meurette and a wine list drawn entirely from the region.

Our advice: start the day with a croissant at the counter, buy a tradition for a jambon-beurre at lunch, and end it in a bouillon. Book ahead at the bouillons that take reservations, or arrive early.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Parisian Cuisine before you go.