Where to eat in the Latin Quarter
The food scene in this historic 'hood is now incredible
This post was originally published in October 2023 and updated in June 2025.
The Latin Quarter is one of my favorite parts of Paris. I’ll tell you about some of my favorite places to visit in these first few paragraphs, but you can scroll down to find the restaurant recommendations.
The Latin Quarter gets its name from the common language that was spoken by students who came study in this neighborhood a thousand years ago. The early scholastic gatherings took place in the open air - students would bring their own stools to attend outdoor lectures here before the Sorbonne was founded in 1253.
With the exception of a few big Haussmannian boulevards, the streets of the Latin Quarter are winding and medieval. The Seine river provides the northern and eastern boundaries for this ancient neighborhood, running from the Jardin des Plantes to Notre-Dame.
The rue Mouffetard is the major market street and runs through the heart of the district. It’s based on a Roman road that was completed more than two thousand years ago.
The Latin Quarter is full of weird and wonderful places that are only lightly visited, like the Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, a church that contains the shrine of Sainte-Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris.
You can stop into the Grand Galerie d’Evolution, where almost every taxidermized animal makes me laugh…
… or visit the Arènes de Lutèce, where locals play soccer and pétanque in the remains of a Roman amphitheater (it’s a great place to eat a sandwich).
There’s also the Pantheon, where France’s greatest influencers - ranging from Marie Curie to Josephine Baker - are buried. Nearby, the Cluny museum displays the country’s medieval heritage, including the famous Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, next to the remains of a Roman bathhouse.
One of the biggest tourist draws in the neighborhood is Shakespeare & Company, the iconic literary institution that opened in 1951. It’s a special place, but plan to wait in line if you want to go. It’s at least 500x more crowded today than it appears in the video below, which was shot the day after France reopened its borders in June 2021.
In terms of food, the Latin Quarter has an unsavory reputation that’s unfairly based on two unappetizing areas. You should steer clear of the rue de la Huchette - a small street that runs parallel to the Seine near the Place Saint-Michel. It’s lined with tourist traps that have men outside shouting “lady, lady, you eat here!” There’s one of these in nearly every European capitol, and you don’t want what they’re selling. The streets around the place de Contrescarpe are the heart of the student zone (there are 13 universities here with almost 50,000 students), and they offer cheap beer, greasy kebabs, and other forms of gastronomic distress.
LATIN QUARTER RESTAURANTS
But aside from these blemishes, the Latin Quarter boasts some really great restaurants. I’ve been revisiting old favorites and trying new spots in order to create this collection. As with our guides to eating in the Marais and Near the Eiffel Tower, I’ve categorized these selections as:
GREAT - these are the restaurants you should prioritize
GOOD - these restaurants make us happy but they’re not our top picks
FINE - these restaurants come in handy in certain situations
NOT RECOMMENDED - we did not enjoy our experience