We’ve rated Zoutra as GOOD with two stars * *

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Zoutra means "small" in Aramaic, and the name fits. Where its older sibling Adraba, just across the street, is a full-throttle party, Zoutra has only 35 seats, candlelight, and the energy of a very good dinner party.

THE FOOD

Chef Elior Benaroche, who built his reputation at Balagan before opening Adraba, is behind both kitchens. At Zoutra the food is lighter and more nimble — Levantine street food given a careful, intimate treatment rather than a festive one.

The Beygalé de Jérusalem (9€) is the right place to start: a sesame-crusted bread served with labneh and za'atar oil, crowned with salmon eggs. It's a small and beautiful thing.

The Sashimi T.G. (18€) — slices of red tuna draped over blood orange segments, scattered with a celery and chive relish — is bright and precise. La Crevette de Lucas (17€) brings four bacon-wrapped shrimp laid on a stripe of labneh, dusted with herbs; it's simple and unapologetically good.

The Hazaya (19€) is the one dish that vegetarians can turn to: charcoal-blackened mushrooms on a garlic cream, topped with a stunning soy-cured egg yolk. It's genuinely excellent, but it's also the only option on a menu that otherwise leans hard on fish and meat. If you're bringing a vegetarian friend — as I did — know that in advance.

The Arayes Lubnani (22€), rounds of lamb stuffed into grilled flatbread and served with garlic yogurt and sumac, were among the most satisfying bites of the evening. The PastaTanni (24€), fresh pasta tossed in a saffron bouillabaisse with shards of bottarga, felt like a high-wire act that landed.

THE DRINKS

The wine list feels like a labor of love, with Armenian, Greek, Israeli, Lebanese, and Moroccan producers that you won't find on many Paris lists. It's also expensive in a way that cuts against the spirit of the place. Bottles start around 40€ and climb quickly; by-the-glass pours run 8–12€ for producers that retail for a fraction of that. Both Adraba and Zoutra invite you to drink freely and stay late with friends, but the price of drinks at both places make that harder than you want it to be.

THE VIBE

The room is warm and a little theatrical — dripping candles, antique mirrors, a leather banquette in the back corner that feels like someone’s living room. The service is high-energy and friendly, verging on flirty, and clearly part of the experience.

THE VERDICT

I like both Adraba and Zoutra. They’re great additions to the Montmartre restaurant scene. Zoutra is the better choice when you want the flavors of that world — the labneh, the sumac, the charcoal — without the noise. The food is consistently strong, the room is genuinely lovely, and an evening here is easy to recommend. Just go with a flexible budget, at least one omnivore, and eyes open about the wine.

ZOUTRA

6 Rue Aristide Bruant, 75018
Open Tuesday-Saturday for dinner from 6-11:30pm
Closed Sunday & Monday
Reservations online or at +33 7 43 52 51 11

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We’ve rated Patine as GOOD with two stars * *

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Patine is a new bistro in the 11th with a chef who can really cook. The dinner menu — three courses for 50€ — is a good deal for food this well-executed, even if the room and service haven’t quite caught up to the kitchen.

Chef Julien Chevallier has been cooking in well-regarded Paris bistros like Semilla for years. He opened Patine in late December with Emma Rajaud, who runs front of house, in the former Café Mirabelle space. The room has been stripped back to bare brick and light wood, and the walls are devoid of art. For the moment, I see neither patina nor personality in the dining room.

THE FOOD

The dishes — thank goodness! — were much more expressive.

We started with the pâté en croûte (18€), a hors-menu special stuffed with pork, foie gras, duck magret, and pistachios. It was beautiful: a tender, buttery crust, deeply flavored aspic, and a bitter salad of cornichons and mixed greens that cut through the richness perfectly. Charcuterie lovers should target this dish.

The pleurotes (oyster mushrooms) with petit pois, confit garlic, egg yolk, and parmesan cream (13€) was a generous, earthy starter. The mushrooms were meaty and substantial, half-hidden under a blanket of parmesan cream that was impossible not to love. If you enjoy the cooking at Juvéniles, you’ll recognize the spirit here — interesting, precise, and deeply satisfying.

Of the mains, the porchetta (32€) was a wild ride — not the tidy slice you might expect, but a mound of herb-rolled pork shavings with lemon ricotta and sautéed spinach, swimming in a dark, concentrated meat jus. Intensely rich, with the ricotta doing essential work to balance it.

The lieu jaune (34€) went in the opposite direction: a perfectly seared fillet with crispy skin atop carrots, turnips, and green asparagus in beurre blanc. It felt virtuous by comparison.

We finished with the chocolate soufflé (11€) and crème caramel (10€). The soufflé was good — rich and deeply chocolatey, topped with cocoa nibs and served with crème anglaise — though the texture leaned closer to a moelleux than the airy rise you might hope for. The crème caramel was barely sweet, which we appreciated, but neither dessert stole the show.

THE WINE

The wine list is entirely natural, with a lean toward the Loire, Jura, and Burgundy — names like Domaine de Saint-Pierre, Les Cailloux du Paradis, and Simon Bize alongside less familiar producers worth discovering. We drank a Saint-Véran from Jessica Litaud (76€) that we chose precisely because we didn't recognize her — this is a list that rewards curiosity. Bottles start at 29€ and there's a decent by-the-glass selection from 7€.

THE VIBE

The room is a work in progress. The large speakers mounted on bare walls were silent during our visit. We ate at what felt like a garden table draped with a cloth. It's a pleasant enough space — bare brick, vintage chairs, a peek into the kitchen — but it doesn't yet have the warmth or character to match the cooking.

THE VERDICT

The food at Patine is generous, personal, and well-executed, and the 50€ dinner menu is a good deal for cooking at this level. What holds it back is everything around the food — the room and service are pleasant but still finding their personality. Come for the kitchen, which is the real draw. The lunch formula at 22€ is reportedly an even better bargain. Book two to three days ahead.

PATINE

16 rue de la Vacquerie, 75011
Open Tuesday–Friday for lunch & dinner
Open Saturday for lunch only
Closed Sunday & Monday
Reservations online or at +33 1 43 79 27 46

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We’ve rated Augustin Marchand d’Vins as GOOD with two stars * *

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There are wine bars in Paris that feel like they were designed to be photographed, and then there’s Augustin. The room on rue des Grands Augustins is small and candlelit, with just a handful of tables and an atmosphere that makes you want to lower your voice and stay for hours. It’s one of the most romantic addresses in Saint-Germain, and that hasn’t changed in the seven years I’ve been coming here.

What has shifted, slightly, is my understanding of how to eat here well.

A clarification first: Augustin isn’t a wine bar in the casual Paris sense. There’s no dropping in on a whim, no quick glass at the counter. You reserve, you commit, you stay. This is a place you settle into for the better part of an evening — with a bottle worth lingering over and food that deserves your full attention.

Chef and artist Elsa Fabrega is the creative force behind Augustin’s kitchen, and she is genuinely talented — not just as a cook but as a sculptor. Her signature creations arrive as works of art: a clay vessel destroyed tableside to reveal a roasted quail, or a whole pork and anchovy preparation encased in pastry shaped to look convincingly like a fish, complete with fins and a tail. These are theatrical and fun, and the room lights up when they appear. I’ve ordered them. I understand the appeal.

But after several visits, I’ve come to believe that Augustin’s greatest strength is something quieter. When the kitchen focuses on exceptional sourcing and a light hand — a carpaccio of scallops with oscietra caviar pooled in good olive oil, ten-year aged sardines on toast, a plate of cheese in peak condition — it’s hard to beat at any price.

On my most recent visit, the scallop carpaccio with a spoonful of caviar at the center was the best thing on the table: simple, cold, clean, and worth every euro of the 48€ it cost. The lamb on a previous visit was equally good (39€).

The pastry creations are a different proposition. They are spectacular to look at and fun to share, but the gap between the visual promise and what’s inside can be significant. On my last visit, the plat du jour — pork and anchovy in a golden pastry fish — arrived impressively and fell quietly flat. At 49€, that’s a miss worth avoiding.

Here’s a (very red) shot of the menu from my most recent visit. I’ve tasted everything on it over many years of visiting, and would always return for the scallops (often offered in winter as a special), the asparagus, the anchovies, the lamb and any of the cheese. What you won’t see on the menu is the “Prise de Terre” dish of quail inside a clay sculpture - that needs to be ordered online at the moment of booking (for 99€). It’s an incredible spectacle — especially for someone who isn’t expecting it — but other dishes are more rewarding to eat.

THE WINE

The wine list is the real reason to come, and the pricing model is one of the most interesting in Paris. Bottles are sold at take-away prices — what you’d pay at a good cave — with a flat 10€ corkage fee added for the privilege of drinking on site. This means genuinely serious wine at genuinely fair prices. We drank a Condrieu that would have cost multiples of what we paid anywhere else. It was extraordinary. Order something that scares you a little. The owner Augustin, who seems always to be there, is a passionate ambassador for the wines he sells. He’s happy to offer descriptions, choices and tastes, and his enthusiasm is the reason this little spot feels special.

THE VIBE

The room is tiny, reservations are recommended even for a weekday, and walk-ins are often turned away. They’re open Sunday evenings, which makes them one of the more useful addresses in a neighborhood that still closes too early.

THE VERDICT

Come with someone who gets excited about wine, ideally on a Sunday evening when the neighborhood is quiet and the room feels like a discovery. Order something special to drink and just enough food to keep the party going. The small plates are where the kitchen shines — the scallop carpaccio, the anchovies from Cantabria, the aged sardines, a cheese or two in peak condition. The theatrical pastry or clay creations are worth seeing once, but on a return visit I'd let the wine do the heavy lifting and keep the food simple. That's when Augustin is at its best. Book in advance and arrive without a tight schedule.

AUGUSTIN MARCHAND D’VINS

26 rue des Grands Augustins, 75006
Open Wednesday-Sunday from 5-10pm
Closed Monday & Tuesday
Reservations online or at +33 (0)9 81 21 76 21

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Our food tours have been praised by The New York Times, Food & Wine magazine, the BBC, the Washington Post, Rick Steves, and the LA Times. We’ve been the #1 food tour on TripAdvisor for more than a decade.

We’ve rated Quedubon as GREAT with three stars * * *
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Every three years, we revisit the restaurants on our 50 Favorites list to decide whether they still belong there. Quedubon, near the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th, was one I was genuinely looking forward to — a place I've been returning to since the neighborhood was my own, and one that keeps finding new ways to justify the trip.

I love it just as much as I did in 2023.

THE WINE

People come to Quedubon for the wine. That was true twenty years ago when the previous owner was serving simple fare. It’s still true, even though the food is now an equal draw. Quedubon has over decades built one of the more serious natural wine lists in Paris — six chalkboard panels covering Loire, Jura, Burgundy, and far beyond, with grower Champagnes and idiosyncratic international picks that signal real curiosity.

Loire is the backbone, with Robinot, Morantin, Bobinet, and La Grapperie across dozens of cuvées. Jura gets serious treatment too — La Tournelle, Fumey Châtelain, vin jaune by the bottle. The Champagne section is grower-only, anchored by Selosse and Vouette & Sorbée.

There are treasures from the Rhone valley, and then there are the genuine curveballs: Serbian reds, Sicilian qvevri, Austrian skin-contact — bottles you won't find anywhere else in Paris.

We splurged on a Saint-Romain Blanc from Sarnin-Berrux 2018 (€91), which was precisely right for what the kitchen was sending out.

THE FOOD

And what the kitchen was sending out was brains. Cervelle de veau pochée (€12) arrived in a pool of bright lemon butter, surrounded by tender small potatoes and giant caper berries. The lemon was the dominant note, the brain itself soft and almost fudgy, the capers providing welcome textural contrast. We soaked up every last drop of the sauce with hunks of baguette.

These brains are emblematic of chef Ollie Clarke’s nose-to-tail approach to cooking. He’s a European champion of triperie cooking and has a rare gift with offal.

Less provocative but every bit as good were these scallops. Saint-Jacques en crudo (€15) were served in their shells, three fanned out on a plate, each scallop “cooked” with citrus and served with blood orange segments and a quenelle of tarama. These were pure and bright and delicious.

The mains, on this particular evening (Clarke isn’t in the kitchen on Friday nights), were not as strong. The sweetbread (€46) was technically assured: a pomme de cœur de ris de veau with a shattering crust and an extraordinary jus, among the best sweetbreads I've eaten anywhere. The salt-baked beets alongside were good on their own terms, but the prune compote felt like an odd match — I found myself wanting potato purée, and at this price every element needs to pull its weight.

The queue de lotte façon bourrida (€33) was a disappointment: the fish was tough, the broth lacked punch, the saffron was undetectable. On a different night, drinking a less delicious wine, a dish this boring could have put me off the restaurant. But I had that brain on the brain, and Quedubon’s first courses more than carried the meal.

Dessert was also pretty great. The tarte cassis curd brûlée (€10) was a wow moment — a deep violet slice of blackcurrant filling in a burnished pastry shell, perfectly matched to its eater’s outfit.

The riz au lait crémeux with blood orange and almond crumble (€10) was quieter but satisfying, the caramel properly salty and bitter.

THE VIBE

We sat down around 8pm and had the room and the owner’s attention almost entirely to ourselves. By 9pm the place was packed and all three servers were breaking a sweat. You’ll be happier at Quedubon if you’re comfortable flagging a waiter down to ask for what you need, or going up to request the bill. It’s lively and local and entirely un-precious.

THE VERDICT

Quedubon remains what it has always been: a place for people who know what they want. That means offal lovers, game devotees, natural wine obsessives, and anyone willing to make the journey to Belleville for cooking that is sometimes transcendent and occasionally uneven. The room is warm and chaotic in the best way — packed tables, red walls lined with bottle shelves, the kind of crowd that holds up glasses to examine the wine rather than the food. It is not a place for the vegetarian, the unadventurous, or anyone expecting a quiet evening. A great option for Monday night.

QUEDUBON

22 Rue du Plateau, 75019
Open Monday-Saturday for dinner
Open Tuesday-Friday for lunch
Closed Sunday
Reservations online or at +33 1 42 38 18 65

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Our food tours have been praised by The New York Times, Food & Wine magazine, the BBC, the Washington Post, Rick Steves, and the LA Times. We’ve been the #1 food tour on TripAdvisor for more than a decade.

We’ve rated Argile as GOOD with two stars * *
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Romain Lamon trained at two palace hotels - Le Bristol and the Ritz - before fleeing to open a neighborhood bistro on the backside of Montmartre. Polissons opened in 2018 and I heard it was great. I never went - let’s blame that global pandemic - and then it closed. But I heard that Lamon was back with another restaurant - this time in the 9th arrondissement - and I was thrilled for another chance to taste his food.

We visited for lunch, which is an absolute steal. The lunch formula runs €22 for two courses and €26 for three. There are some daily specials on offer, too. The dinner is fully à la carte with most mains between 30-40€.

THE FOOD

The meal opened with three oysters in a punchy dashi with toasted sesame oil and a dab of fermented black garlic (€9). This was my friend’s dish and she generously shared one oyster with me. I wanted five more.

White asparagus followed, served room temperature under a sabayon spiked with piment d'Espelette, scattered with trout eggs and walnuts, the black garlic reappearing (€16).

I sopped up some of that sabayon with their very good bread, served with a quenelle of lemon butter.

Roasted squid was another daily special, served with a carrot purée, preserved lemon, and a white wine sauce (€30). This single dish — while delicious —was more expensive than three courses on the set menu, and probably not worth the departure.

More successful (for this midwestern girl) was this dish with two cuts of deeply caramelized ham with pickled mustard seeds, smashed potatoes, and rich Parmesan sauce tying it together. Indulgent without being heavy.

Both of our desserts were part of the set lunch menu. Here’s their chocolate mousse with za'atar ice cream and caramelized hazelnuts. I wouldn’t have guessed za’atar with the ice cream - the flavors were herbaceous and hard to place - but it was tasty.

The riz au lait arrived with sorrel ice cream — a very timid dose of that herb — but the contrast between creamy rice and sticky granola was fun.

THE DRINKS

The wine list is Loire-forward and natural, compact and well-edited, with a handful of favored producers appearing across multiple categories (Château Carbonneau, Domaine Huards, Domaine Séverin). Bottles from 31€, with a macération section for the orange wine inclined. Non-drinkers are reasonably looked after: organic Jus de Rève juices, UMA limonade and ginger beer, a Brooklyn Brewery NA beer, and a Japanese Sencha green tea.

THE VIBE

The dining room on rue de Milan — red floors, blue brick, open kitchen, a wine barrel on the sidewalk — reads casual from the moment you arrive. Service is friendly and unhurried, two people working the floor without fuss. The crowd at Friday lunch was almost entirely French, which makes sense for this corner of the 9th: this is a neighborhood place with a regular clientele, and it feels like it.

THE VERDICT

The €22 lunch formula is a remarkable deal, and this visit left me hungry to return for dinner — Lamon's flavors and execution suggest it would be worth the trip. Argile is a ten-minute stroll downhill from the chaos of Pigalle — so if you're visiting Montmartre and want a memorable meal surrounded by locals instead of other tourists, this is a very good respite. Open Monday, and easy to book. Not a good bet for vegetarians.

ARGILE

4 Rue de Milan, 75009
Open Monday-Friday for lunch & dinner
Open Saturday for dinner only
Closed Sunday
Reservations online or at +33 6 46 63 57 50

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Our food tours have been praised by The New York Times, Food & Wine magazine, the BBC, the Washington Post, Rick Steves, and the LA Times. We’ve been the #1 food tour on TripAdvisor for more than a decade.

We’ve rated Épopée as not recommended with no stars
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When Emmanuel Rubin reviewed Épopée for Le Figaro in February, he said the 11th hadn't just found a new bistro — it had gained a truly brilliant cuisine. The kind, he wrote, you'd cross all of Paris for. Michelin followed with a Bib Gourmand the same month. We arrived in March expecting something special.

I was early; my guests were a few minutes late. I stood at the door while the manager Thomas — someone I recognized from his years as a server at Amarante — looked up and said "Oui madame?" No welcome. No warmth. I was shown to my table and sat alone for twenty minutes. I had to ask for water. Then I had to ask for the menu.

THE FOOD

The price was right (24€ for two courses, 29€ for three), but the selection was slim. One of the starters was dried sausage. One of the mains was steamed veg. We were not exactly salivating at the prospects.

But we were rather hungry, so we added a plate of different dried sausage to nibble on from their selection of snacks. That was fortuitous, since our starters didn’t arrive for forty minutes.

This morcilla, which was served as an entrée, was genuinely delicious. But why was this offered as a course?

More successful was this plate of roasted cauliflower with anchovy sauce. The vegetable was deeply caramelized, the sauce assertive and rich, a dish that showed what this kitchen can do. It arrived on a beautiful scalloped ceramic in a portion roughly the size of a golf ball. One floret. After waiting for forty minutes. I would have paid five euros more for a real plate of it.

This marinated sardine on watercress purée with a quarter-teaspoon dot of crème crue. Tasty but meager.

Here’s that steak, a bavette de boeuf with a jus that was genuinely good, served with mushrooms, potatoes, and some barely dressed radicchio. We liked it. We were happy to have some real food, 90 minutes after sitting down.

The skate wing with savoy cabbage in marinière sauce was well-executed, the sauce delicious, though the portion felt restrained. Both plates arrived with a single dot of apple condiment that added little to either.

We ordered the cheese plate because we were still hungry. It arrived cold from the refrigerator, scattered with a stale nut mix.

The caramelized apple with four-spice crumble and parsley root ice cream was competent; the ice cream tasted of vanilla with a vague rooty undertone, interesting on paper and forgettable in practice.

The castella dessert — Japanese sponge cake with blood orange and fromage frais cream — was the meal's best dish, genuinely beautiful and the clearest expression of what Kitano can do when cooking to her strengths.

THE WINE

The wine list is a real strength at Épopée — it’s deep in natural and low-intervention producers with strong Alsace and Jura sections, interesting Serbian imports, and entry bottles from €32. They don’t offer a written by-the-glass list. That’s not uncommon in Paris, but it’s an approach that relies on good service. At Épopée, the server recites three options without description or enticement or really any light in their eyes. And then they fail to actually bring it, requiring you to walk to the bar to retrieve it yourself while your steak grows cold.

THE VIBE

The vibe is what killed this restaurant for me. Épopée seems to be situating itself as a neighborhood place, with easy-going prices to draw a weekday lunch crowd. But it took them 2.5 hours to serve lunch at an uncomfortably glacial pace. There was no welcome, no warmth, barely an acknowledgment. Our dining room was full, with about five tables seated, and they struggled to keep up. The other two dining rooms sat empty.

THE VERDICT

The food at Épopée is fine, overall. But food that’s just fine in the saturated 11th — with so many within easy walking distance — is already failing. Still, the food is not the problem at Épopée. It’s the service, pacing, and unwelcoming spirit that make this place not recommended. Our restaurant index shows a whopping thirty-five restaurants in the same neighborhood that we’ve rated as great or good. These are worth your time. Épopée is not.

ÉPOPÉE

52 Rue Léon Frot, 75011
Open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch & dinner
Closed Sunday & Monday
Reservations online or at +33 9 85 18 01 57

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We’ve rated Les Enfants du Marché as GOOD with two stars * *
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There are some people who, whenever they’re traveling, make a beeline to the local market. I am one of those people. I like to lay eyes on the seasonal produce. I like the buzz of daily shopping. And if I can eat a bite there, all the better.

The Marché des Enfants Rouges is catnip for people like me. It’s Paris’ oldest covered market, established in 1628, and nicknamed “the red children” after the scarlet uniforms worn by kids at a nearby orphanage. It functioned for centuries as a real market, a place where locals shopped for ingredients to cook at home. Today it’s more of a food court, with more than 20 stalls selling casual and international fare.

Those stalls used to be affordable (and some still are). Back in 2009 I brought Matt Gross here when he was working as the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times. Enfants Rouges was a great place to maximize his tight budget on a sunny day. But that was a market of a different color.

An influx of tourists changes markets over time. We’re drawn to something that feels authentic and local, but our presence changes it. Well-intentioned travelers spend money on things we can immediately devour, not ingredients to cook at home. And over time—at the Mercato di Testaccio in Rome, the Mercat de la Boqueria in Barcelona, and here in Paris at les Enfants Rouges—the onion sellers disappear. The simple food stalls are replaced by ever more premium offerings until we arrive at this - a three-bite caviar tart for 28€.

Welcome to Les Enfants du Marché. We’ve been loving this bougie counter inside the market for years, as you can see from this 2018 review. But it’s a very particular taste.

I use it occasionally, spontaneously, and with some guilt—like someone else might use cocaine. It feels like a giant waste of money and the crowd can be annoying, but sometimes I’m in the mood.

THE FOOD

That caviar tart was brilliant, by the way, when I returned for a hit last week. The pillow for the salty spoonful was a buttery tart crust piped with citrus cream and topped with the thinnest layer of potato.

I paired this with a plate of fat green asparagus, perfectly fried karaage-style, with a mound of rich haddock cream for dipping and dragging (24€).

So I dropped more than 50€ on lunch for myself - two very small plates consumed on a stool inside of a bustling market. I’d just come off a long-haul flight and wanted to eat something beautiful in the open air. This was perfect for that moment.

What else is it good for? Vegetarians. Les Enfants du Marché has long been a reliable spot for those who don’t eat meat. You’ll pay a lot for your small plates, but they’ll be lovely.

Meat eaters, especially adventurous meat eaters, are rewarded here as well. Past visits have exposed us to a plate of trotter + turbot, and a heaping platter of fish heads. The menu on my recent visit included pigeon, sweetbread and pithiviers.

THE WINE

Famously natural, the wine selection at Les Enfants du Marché is less of a selection and more of an acceptance. They ask you what color and then pour. I’ve never seen a list or been offered a choice. Other people might be more demanding with more success, but they’re always so busy that I just go with the flow. If you like what you tasted, they now have a bottle shop across the street.

THE VIBE

Les Enfants du Marché is open from noon through early evening. Come for lunch, an afternoon snack, or apéro. They close at 6pm in the chilly months and stay open ‘til 8pm when it’s warm, but the mostly-closed market is a weird evening vibe. Service can be rushed or hungover or spacey, but it’s clear that they mean well. The experience is casual even if the prices are not.

They don’t accept reservations, so go at noon or shortly thereafter if you aren’t in the mood to wait. And if they’re slammed you could always try your luck at one of the 20 other nearby stalls.

THE VERDICT

Les Enfants du Marché is a fun scene for people who aren’t particularly concerned about budget. Vegetarians are well-served, and adventurous carnivores will find things they won’t see elsewhere. I’m glad it exists as an occasional indulgence — the kind you justify with jet lag or a birthday or a particularly beautiful day.

LES ENFANTS DU MARCHÉ

39 rue de Bretagne, 75003
Open Tuesday-Saturday from 12-8pm
Reduced hours in the cold months are displayed on their Instagram
Open Sunday from 12-5pm
Closed Monday
No reservations

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COMING TO PARIS ?

We’d love to welcome you for a food tour! For more than a decade, we’ve been offering delicious walking tours of Paris’s best artisan food shops. Three hours, led in English by true experts, 8 guests max.

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Our food tours have been praised by The New York Times, Food & Wine magazine, the BBC, the Washington Post, Rick Steves, and the LA Times. We’ve been the #1 food tour on TripAdvisor for more than a decade.

We’ve rated Occasion as GOOD with two stars * *

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Paris has no shortage of tasting menus that demand three hours and three hundred euros. Occasion, which opened in the Goncourt neighborhood of the 10th in February 2026, is a different proposition: four courses for 49€, in a room assembled from flea market finds and mid-century design objects by two friends, Candice Brée and Margaux Baju, who between them have cooked at Plaza Athénée, Akrame, Gaya, and Pages. It feels like a breath of fresh air — the kind of place you go not because it's a special occasion, but because you don't need one.

THE FOOD

The four-course tasting menu (49€) opened with gougères stuffed with a warm cacio e pepe filling, served in a silver snail dish — a small, witty gesture that set the tone for the evening.

The first course was a stunner: raw scallop with julienned carrot, mandarin pepper marmalade, and fir oil. The mandarin dominated in the best way — its brightness lifting the whole plate — but the real surprise was the raw carrot alongside raw scallop, a pairing that would never have crossed my mind. The plating was painterly, but it absolutely delivered in terms of flavor. The fir oil kept the dish from veering too sweet, a quiet but essential intervention.

The single agnolotto — ricotta, seaweed, brown butter — was delicious, but arrived so minimally sauced and alongside white asparagus so aggressively al dente that the plate felt meager. Nothing is overstuffed at Occasion — neither the pasta nor the customers.

The aged merlu arrived as a generous fillet — silky, beautifully cooked — with bitter radicchio and carefully turned turnips softened by a sumptuous savagnin sauce. The pile of walnuts made more sense once you considered the wine: savagnin's oxidative, nutty character pulling everything into alignment.

We ordered the cheese course (+10€) from Maison Ratafia partly as insurance against leaving hungry, and it was a good one: Brillat-Savarin with a shaving of dried rhubarb, and a Tomme de Fédou, served with smoked pear compote and pickled mustard seeds in a radicchio spear.

My companion made a face when the final course was announced — a look I've come to recognize whenever vegetable-based desserts appear. Their track record is mixed, to put it charitably. Some diners are willing to play around with a potato mousse or a sunchoke cream. Others are fundamentally opposed. But on this occasion, the célerimisù — celeriac cream, lemon curd, feuilletine crumble, celeri-café ice cream — won us over completely.

The meal closed with a madeleine baked and served in a scallop shell, topped with a dot of scallop coral caramel that tasted, pleasingly, of nothing but excellent caramel. A small thing, perfectly done.

THE DRINKS

The wine list is exclusively French and natural throughout — VDF-heavy, with strong Loire and Bourgogne representation and real character in the fringe regions: Bugey, Auvergne, Corsica, Jura, Alsace. Bottles start around €32, most interesting choices land between €40–80, with a few landmark bottles at the top (Rostaing Condrieu, Stéphane Ogier Côte-Rôtie). A Soléras section — oxidative, Jura-adjacent — is a wine-geek nod. By the glass, €7–15. Non-drinkers are well served too: kombuchas from Archipel, good tonic, juices from Alain Milliat and Ferme de Lyonnière.

THE VIBE

The restaurant’s name is a pun: occasion in French means secondhand, and the room is assembled like a collector's find — Breuer cantilever chairs, a suspended Ben Hoek shelving system displaying vintage glassware, Jocelyne Trocmé sconces, and Strateg cutlery with bamboo handles. Nothing here looks like it came from a restaurant supplier. But the most memorable design detail isn’t in the dining room.

It’s the bathroom floor that provides the best design moment. Mosaics by artist Louise Delespinasse, inspired by Roman asarotos oikos (unswept floor) designs, depict a spilled wine glass, a plate of seafood, a lone fork.

The service from a pair of young guys was playful and professional — warm without being studied, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

THE VERDICT

Occasion is exactly what Paris needs more of: a room worth lingering in, cooking that takes itself seriously without holding your wallet hostage, and a wine list that rewards curiosity at every price point. At 49€ for four courses, it sits within reach on an ordinary Tuesday — no special occasion required. Book it for a friend you want to impress without making a production of it.

OCCASION

13 Rue Jacques Louvel-Tessier, 75010
Open Tuesday-Saturday for dinner
Closed Sunday & Monday
Reservations online or at +33 7 81 83 42 30

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We’ve rated Eme as FINE with one star *
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When Capitaine closed, the southern Marais lost something important. That restaurant never fully delivered on its promise, but it occupied a real gap: an affordable modern bistro in the shadow of the Place des Vosges, a neighborhood that has always deserved gastronomically better than it gets. A local told me that he’d been hoping the Capitaine space would become something he could actually afford to visit on a Tuesday. Instead it became Eme — a gastronomic tasting menu where lunch starts at €75.

That’s not a criticism in itself. If it’s great, it’s worth the price. And things did appear to be promising. Nazareno Mayol Curti is a Uruguayan chef with a CV that commands attention: stints at Mirazur and David Toutain, plus a celebrated residency at Fulgurances in 2023 that made critics take notice early. His Argentine partner Mara Ballester runs the room. They opened Eme in late 2025, and the press has been warm.

THE FOOD

The 5-course lunch menu (€75) opens with the meal’s best bite: a shiso leaf folded around chicken skin and black garlic, lemon sharp against the richness, served alongside a mushroom bouillon with dill oil that is genuinely profound — deep and clean at once. This is the moment where the cooking feels most personal and most alive, and it sets expectations the rest of the meal doesn’t consistently meet.

An oyster in whey emulsion with grilled leeks and oyster leaf is technically accomplished but lands flat. The oyster leaf — a herb that mimics the taste of oyster — feels redundant when actual oyster is present, and the dish, like most that follow, arrives soft and cool in a ceramic bowl.

White asparagus with wild garlic and coriander is delicious in the way that dish reliably is when the asparagus is good, the fat smoky, and the acidity well-placed. It’s a small bowl. It’s fine.

Then pigeon — presented in two parts, breast and leg, with parmesan cream, pistachio pesto, fried sage, and a leg that arrives on a walnut board with a rope-wrapped bone and a knife. The cooking is genuinely excellent. But the dramatic claw presentation has been on so many Paris plates in recent years that it no longer reads as drama. It reads as a chef doing what young chefs do. To illustrate, here are similar compositions from the restaurants A.T., Hémicycle and Maison.

The ingredient vocabulary throughout the meal — marigold, miso, black garlic — is similarly fluent, and similarly familiar. Other critics frame Mayol Curti’s Uruguayan roots as central to his cooking. What you taste here is more like a confident command of current Parisian tasting-menu grammar.

The one moment where his South American identity announces itself clearly is the bread course: a char-marked pan criollo cooked on the barbecue with duck fat, listed on the menu in Spanish rather than French. It is the greediest, most satisfying thing on the table.

Dessert of honey, pollen, and miso — two textures, one smooth, one closer to sorbet, with toasted grain and fromage blanc — has genuinely good flavors. By this point you may be tired of soft food in bowls.

THE DRINKS

The wine program is serious—and seriously expensive—built around natural growers, with real depth in Jura and Loire and prestige Burgundy for those inclined. For non-drinkers, the sans-alcool section includes juices from Patrick Font, kombucha, and a house-made iced tea that is quietly excellent. This is a considered program, not a token gesture.

THE VIBE

The space is handsome in a quiet way — walnut tables, sage-grey walls, two paintings in bright orange and green that mirror the flowers waiting at the entrance. It feels more like an evening room, and at lunch on a weekday the atmosphere is correspondingly muted: a few solo diners, two in the kitchen, one in the room, jazz playing at a volume that doesn’t quite fill the silence. The service is correct without being warm. The menu describes food driven by emotion. I didn’t feel much emotion in this room.

THE VERDICT

Eme is skillfully made food from a talented chef, but the lunch menu at €75 feels like a pricey entry point for the cooking. Dinner is €115. Paris has never had more tasting menus than it has right now, and if you’re not exceptional, the format starts to feel like a constraint rather than an invitation. Cypsèle, a few blocks away, is exceptional. Eme is fine — which, in this neighborhood, in this moment, may not be enough.

EME

4 Impasse Guéménée, 75004
Open Thursday-Saturday for lunch & dinner
Open Tuesday & Wednesday for dinner only
Closed Sunday & Monday
Reservations online or at +33 1 44 61 11 76

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COMING TO PARIS ?

We’d love to welcome you for a food tour! For more than a decade, we’ve been offering delicious walking tours of Paris’s best artisan food shops. Three hours, led in English by true experts, 8 guests max.

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Our food tours have been praised by The New York Times, Food & Wine magazine, the BBC, the Washington Post, Rick Steves, and the LA Times. We’ve been the #1 food tour on TripAdvisor for more than a decade.

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