Where to eat and drink in Paris
From working trips, mostly around trade fairs. Short, because I would rather list five places I would go back to than fifty I would not.
Last checked · 5 places
Le Relais Plaza
Eat · 8th, Avenue Montaigne, inside the Plaza Athénée · Paris · €€€
Order: Whatever the brasserie classics are that night; dinner, not lunch
The Art Deco brasserie inside the Plaza Athénée on Avenue Montaigne, the 1936 room with the mirrors and the lacquer, still run as a brasserie rather than a hotel dining room. Dinner in January 2026 between trade fair days. Good, and I would go back, which on Avenue Montaigne is not a given.
Verified
Diep
Eat · 8th, Rue Pierre Charron off the Champs-Élysées · Paris · €€€
Order: The Peking duck, and dim sum to start; this is a late table, not a quick one
The Diep family's Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese room on Rue Pierre Charron, open since 1985 and serving until midnight, which is rarer in Paris than it sounds. Dinner here on a working evening in January 2026, a Bolt from Vavin at seven, table at a quarter past. Paris reviewers argue about it, and the prices are Champs-Élysées prices; what it does is put a proper Asian dinner within walking distance of the avenue at an hour when the bistros have stopped serving.
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Bouillon Chartier
Eat · 9th, Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, Grands Boulevards · Paris · €15 to €25 with wine
Order: Oeuf mayonnaise, then the steak frites or the confit; order the carafe, not the list
The 1896 dining hall on the Faubourg Montmartre, a listed monument since 1989, built to feed the working city cheaply and still doing it: starters from a euro, mains around seven, waiters who write the bill on the tablecloth. You queue, you share a table, you are out in forty minutes. Go at half past eleven or after half past nine at night and the line is short. Not the best food in Paris; the best room at the price, and I keep going back.
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Clown Bar
Eat · 11th, Rue Amelot, two doors from the Cirque d'Hiver · Paris · €€€
Order: Whatever the offal is that day, the foie gras en croûte if it is on, and let them pick the wine
A 1902 bar two doors from the winter circus, clowns on the ceiling tiles, now a bistro with Japanese and Korean hands in the kitchen and one of the better natural wine lists in the city. Veal brains, pigeon, a foie gras in pastry lifted with yuzu. Hard to book and the locals book weeks out. On a working trip it is the dinner that makes me feel I actually went to Paris.
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Harry's New York Bar
Drink · 2nd, Rue Daunou off the Opéra · Paris · €€
Order: A Bloody Mary, because this is where it was probably invented, then a hot dog at the bar
Sank Roo Doe Noo, as the old adverts spelled it for Americans, since 1911, the mahogany bar shipped over from Manhattan and reassembled. The Bloody Mary is claimed for 1921, the Sidecar and the French 75 too, and Hemingway and Fitzgerald drank here, which the bar will tell you. Piano downstairs. It is a tourist bar and it is also the real thing, which is rarer than it should be. I stop in when I am near the Opéra.
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