Paris at the Table, Choosing Your Neighbourhood as a First Course

In Paris, you eat well almost everywhere. But you do not eat the same way everywhere. There are neighbourhoods of grand tables, where you dress for dinner, and neighbourhoods of markets, where you come home in the morning with a full basket. For a traveller who makes the table the thread of the stay, choosing an address is already choosing a menu.

All our apartments have an equipped kitchen. That detail changes how you live the city: you no longer have only restaurants, you also have markets.

The 2nd, rue Montorgueil and the passages

The 2nd is one of the most gourmand quarters of Paris. Rue Montorgueil, pedestrian, works as a permanent market: fishmongers, cheesemongers, rotisseries, and Stohrer, the pastry shop founded in 1730, where people happily wait for a rum baba.

Around the Bourse and in the Sentier, chefs trained in great kitchens have opened small, precise tables; Frenchie, on rue du Nil, is one of the best known. The covered passages offer another rhythm: a counter, a glass at the wine merchant, a lunch beneath the glass roof. And rue Sainte-Anne, with its Japanese canteens and grocers, adds yet another cuisine to the quarter.

The Marais, variety on a single street

In the Upper Marais, you eat the way you wander. The Marché des Enfants Rouges, the oldest covered market in Paris, gathers counters from around the world in a single courtyard. Further south, rue des Rosiers keeps its falafel and its delicatessens. Breizh Café serves buckwheat galettes made with carefully chosen produce, and Jacques Genin makes his pastries to order.

It is the neighbourhood for those who prefer surprise to ceremony, and who like to come home with good bread and a cheese for the next day.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés, between terrace and grand table

In the 6th, the table is lived the Left Bank way. The terraces of the Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots in the late afternoon, rue de Buci and rue de Seine for the shopping, and on Sunday morning the organic market on boulevard Raspail, which one rarely leaves empty-handed.

For a dinner that matters, the Monnaie de Paris houses Guy Savoy's table, facing the Seine. And for the afternoon, Pierre Hermé on rue Bonaparte, and his Ispahan.

Cooking in Paris

It is one of the least expected pleasures of an apartment stay: bringing back oysters from the market, a roast chicken, aged cheeses, and dining at home, in peace, with a bottle chosen at the wine merchant. Our apartments have large tables, made for six or eight, and kitchens where you want to linger.

Booking the right tables

The most sought-after tables in Paris are booked early, sometimes several weeks ahead. Our concierge can take care of it before you arrive, just as it can find a table tonight, in the neighbourhood, when the mood takes you.

A few markers:

• · Dine the Parisian way. Parisians dine late; book for the middle of the evening.
• · One market per neighbourhood. Montorgueil every day, the Enfants Rouges in the Marais, Raspail on Sunday.
• · Leave one evening free. The finest meals are sometimes the ones you did not plan.

Our apartments, chosen in the heart of Paris, are presented in the collection and in our neighbourhood guides; our selection of Marais tables completes this guide.

The ACT 3 Team