28 Essential Places to Eat, Drink, and Shop in Paris

Don’t ask pastry maven Dorie Greenspan to pick a favorite time of year in Paris. “I’m a Paris partisan — I think there’s beauty and excitement in all of the seasons,” she says. “The French celebrate foods as they come into season and I love that. When I go to a friend’s for dinner in spring, I know there’ll be asparagus on the table. You eat what’s fresh and say goodbye when the season’s over and then move on to the next delicious thing — it’s like culinary Kondo-ing.”

The acclaimed food expert and cookbook author divides her time between New York, Connecticut, and Paris, where she and her husband, Michael, live in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and quickly sink into the rhythm of neighborhood life whenever they touch back down.

What keeps her coming back for more? “I think it’s the intimacy of the city, the turn-a-corner-and-discover-something constant surprise of life here,” she says. So much of that comes from the meaningful relationships she’s cultivated with people equally passionate about the finer things. “Craft is still treasured here,” Dorie notes. “People take so much care with everything — shopkeepers wrap even the smallest purchases with a special touch. I love the talks I have with the caviste [wine seller] when I’m trying to find the right wine for dinner, or the way the cheesemonger gently presses each cheese to find me the best one to serve that evening.”

It’s no easy feat distilling decades of connections into her very favorite Paris picks, but Dorie managed to do just that for Further — dishing up a roundup of beloved bistros, patisseries, and oyster bars, along with her must-try snacks and edible souvenirs, like the wine-soaked chocolate raisins she always brings back in her luggage. You’ll find her full best-of collection below. —N.M.

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We’ve plotted all of Dorie’s favorites on a Google Map for easy access on the go.

Surrounded by gastronomic heavyweights in the 11th arrondissement, Le Bistrot Paul Bert might well be the platonic ideal of the quintessential French bistro: “There’s a tiny window into the kitchen with the word ‘cuisine’ above it, a small bar, and worn wooden tables and chairs,” Dorie says. You’d be remiss not to order the signature steak au poivre made with Sarawak peppercorns (“The sauce should be declared a national treasure”), but the sole meunière is Dorie’s idea of perfection. “So is the copper pan that the sole is served in — so old-school, so beautiful.”

The unpretentious Juveniles near the Louvre has been a small but mighty neighborhood standout ever since it was opened by Tim Johnston, “a legendary Paris wine man,” in 1987; these days it’s in the hands of his daughter Margaux Roudeau and her husband, Romain. “Except for the drawings that Margaux and her sister Caroline made as kids, which hang along the ceiling like a frieze, and the boxes of wine stored hither and thither, there’s no decoration — everything beautiful is on your plate,” Dorie says. “Don’t miss the rice pudding with salted caramel sauce, or honestly anything Romain makes with an egg.”

What is life in Paris but an eternal pursuit of the perfect croissant? “I’m still working on this, hélas,” Dorie says with a laugh, admitting the search will (happily) never end. Her husband, however, has a firm favorite. “Michael adores the croissants from Pierre Hermé, which I agree are superb,” she says. A few years ago the patisserie wizard opened a location in Dorie and Michael’s neighborhood. “Now they’re just 60 steps from our apartment!”

The oyster is her world: Dorie could fill a not-so-little black book with only her favorite Parisian oyster bars. “I have a standing weekly lunch date for oysters with a friend. Because La Rotonde is halfway between us, that’s our go-to place — happily, the oysters are always good.” (The iconic spot in Montparnasse was a regular haunt of Picasso, Diego Rivera, and Peggy Guggenheim.) At the seafood-wine bar L’Avant Comptoir de la Mer in the 6th, the briny bivalves are served in the Basque style with spicy pork chipolata sausages. On the Île Saint-Louis, there’s a perpetual wait for seats at Poget & De Witte — but the prize is worth your patience. Meanwhile, up the block from Bistrot Paul Bert, sister restaurant L’Écailler du Bistrot has an impressive pedigree: It’s owned by Gwen Cadoret, whom Dorie calls “oyster royalty” — her family owns Brittany’s Huîtres Cadoret. “Try their Belons and the Perles Noires.”

On Sundays, you’ll likely find Dorie market-hopping. The Marché Bastille is colorful, overwhelming, and just the spot for amassing great stories alongside produce. ”I once went with a friend who was an opera singer. The minute I turned my back, he and a man selling squash were belting out something from La Bohème,” she recalls. “It all seemed perfectly normal!” Afterward, she and Michael walk around the corner to Ten Belles with their haul for coffee and terrific bread. Sometimes she heads farther afield to the Marché Président Wilson in the 16th. “Although it’s a bus ride away, it’s worth the trip to shop in view of the Eiffel Tower.” Closer to home, the recently rejuvenated Marché Saint-Germain, filled with places to eat and shop, is her go-to spot: “David makes terrific coffee at Café du Clown; Elliot, the owner of Bacchus et Ariane, serves great wine, often with cheese from my favorite fromager, Twiggy, at Fromagerie Sanders; and you can have oysters and tartares at Voit, which looks like a fish museum and sells dry-aged fish — a surprise and a revelation.”

How does that old saying go? Buy a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach him to make quenelles de brochet and he’ll eat far better? Dorie is impressed by the smart, thoughtful programming at La Cuisine Paris, which, in addition to its excellent food and market tours, offers lessons on everything from baguettes to béchamel. “All the instructors are French, all the classes are in English, and everyone’s macarons look good,” says Dorie. “It’s fun to take the class with a friend, but if you don’t have a friend, you’ll find one there.”

Cooking skills are one thing, but you’ll also need a good set of kitchen tools — and for that, Dorie will steer you to the venerable E. Dehillerin, a fixture of the 1st since 1890. Almost anything Dehillerin sells is top-notch, she says, particularly their small paring knives: “They’re very inexpensive, but do their job perfectly. I buy them as gifts for friends who love to cook and always tape a penny to the gift wrap, so that the friend can hand it back to me — a guarantee that the knife won’t cut our friendship.” Other essential wares? “My all-time favorite rolling pin comes from Dehillerin: a straight French pin without handles, made of a white nylon-like material. It’s beautiful and efficient — an unmatchable combo.”

“Jessica Yang’s ice cream at Folderol is made with lovely ingredients in flavors both simple and spectacular,” Dorie raves. Yang and her husband, Robert Compagnon, opened Folderol, an ice cream shop/wine bar hybrid, in 2020 as a neighbor to their popular restaurant Le Rigmarole in the 11th. The scoops range from the familiar — pistachio, chocolate peanut butter, birthday cake — to more unconventional flavors like maekjeolli (Korean rice wine) and parmesan, and are well worth the jostling with the TikTok set, who queue up here at all hours.

Dorie is so enraptured with the palmiers at Carette that we’re just going to turn this entry over to her — because who better to describe what may be her favorite pastry?

“In any other city but Paris, where toddlers can tie their scarves four different ways, Carette’s palmiers would be reserved for grown-ups with an appreciation for perfection. I can see why kids clamor for them — they’re big and shiny and crunchy, so crunchy that they snap with each bite. And they’re messy: You finish a palmier with crumbs on your lips and your lap and in the folds of your muffler. Me? I love them for these same reasons — the attraction of crunch should never be underestimated — but having made palmiers at home, not once achieving the beauty and balance of Carette, I love them for the craft that goes into them.

“At its most basic, a palmier is a swath of puff pastry: that ingenious mixture of butter, flour, and water, generously covered in sugar, rolled from each long end to the center and then cut. It’s as simple as it sounds. Yet, once baked, it could make you believe in alchemy. The pastry puffs up in the oven, forming what some think looks like a palm leaf (hence the name), others an elephant’s ear, and every romantic, a heart. The sugar melts and bakes to a burnished mahogany color, caramelizing and cloaking the pastry — that’s where the crunch lives. Somehow the inner, butter-rich layers remain seductively tender. Carette’s palmiers are always beautiful, always elegant, and always bigger than whatever plate you choose for them. They are always as crisp as you want them to be: I once carried one back in the rain and, beating all odds, it still had crackle when I finally made it home.”

Alain Ducasse is better known for the trail of Michelin stars following his 34 restaurants around the world, but he also has a sensational bean-to-bar chocolate brand, Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse. “His chocolates are beautiful,” says Dorie, who swears by the sesame bars, made with 75 percent dark chocolate, black sesame seeds, almond praline, and puffed rice. She’s also a fan of the pralines by chocolate artist Patrick Roger, who brings his background in sculpture to his whimsical confections. “Roger is a master at balance. His pralines are just sweet enough, just crunchy enough, just creamy enough, and just chocolaty enough — in other words, they’re perfect.” A newer discovery completes Dorie’s trifecta of chocolatiers: “I recently had chocolate from Julien Dechenaud and was delighted — his caramelized almonds covered in dark chocolate and cocoa are wonderful.” Dechenaud has two shops in Paris, one in the 12th and the other in the 11th, conveniently across the street from Le Bistrot Paul Bert.

Dorie Greenspan is the author of 14 cookbooks, including, most recently, Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple (2021). A five-time James Beard Award winner and recipient of France’s Mérite d’Agricole (Order of Agricultural Merit) for her writings about French food, she splits her time between Paris, Connecticut, and New York City. You can subscribe to her delightful and informative newsletter here.

Nilou Motamed is the cofounder of Further and “an O.G. Greenspan groupie.” She lived in Paris as a child and often wonders why she no longer does.