Where One of Paris’s Top Young Chefs Eats
A really good Paris edition, and you can fit it all into one trip.
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This week we’re in Paris with French chef Alexia Duchêne, the chef and owner of Le Chêne in New York City.
Alexia trained at Michelin-star restaurants like Le Taillevent and Frenchie in Paris, before her career took off on Top Chef, France’s leading culinary competition show — where she became the youngest chef to reach the final stages of the competition. She has since then worked with France’s culinary titans like three-starred titans Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alléno, as well as two-starred Jean-François Piège.
Below, the Parisian chef shares her favorite places in the city, from restaurants and bistros to boulangeries, chocolatiers, and wine bars. In short, it’s everything you need for the perfect Paris trip to eat extremely well, and you can fit it all into one trip.
My Favorite Paris Restaurants
La Scène by Stéphanie Le Quellec (two stars) is the first. I love her modern approach to French cuisine, but at the same time, she still dives into classic dishes and reinterprets them.
So, for example, in France we traditionally cook peas with pork fat and spring onions, and she has created her own version, using very small peas that are extremely sweet, barely cooked, and prepared in a pea juice. It’s a refined way of taking something traditional and making it feel new.
Another example, I recently had millefeuille made with tripe and caviar that you eat with chop sticks, which sounds unexpected, but it was incredible.
The service is very warm. It’s a bit more relaxed than traditional fine dining, and she herself is very inviting. I’ve dined there for both lunch and dinner, but I think dinner is better. The restaurant is in a basement, so at night it feels much more cozy and intimate. I love this restaurant so much that my husband and I got married here.
Augustin Marchand d’Vins is more of a wine bar, but the food is excellent. It’s a very small, dark space, really more of a dinner place, with only one person in the dining room and one person in the kitchen. That setup makes the whole experience feel very personal, something that’s quite rare at a restaurant.
The wine list is the bottles you see on the wall, so choosing a wine feels almost like being at someone’s home. The menu is small, but during white truffle and black truffle season (from December to March), it’s incredible. The chef creates these dishes where he hides something under the truffle and then adds a huge amount of truffle on top. He also does an amazing burrata sourced from Italy, with warm bread and a lot of truffles. It’s one of those places I always enjoy.
For lunch, I love Clamato, the seafood restaurant from the Septime team, one of Paris’s most iconic restaurants. For me, this is modern French seafood at its best. The food is very fresh, light, and seasonal, with lots of crudos and raw dishes.
What I especially like is that they’re not trying to be too traditional. They mix influences. For example, they might add a Szechuan-style spicy oil to fish, reflecting how people eat today, mixing cultures and flavors more freely.
I usually order the sea urchin, the scallop dish (when in season), and the incredible maple syrup tart — it’s one of the best bites you can have in Paris.
I pair everything with a glass of Jura wine or something similar. Their wine list is mostly focused on natural wines, but it’s constantly changing.
Unlike Septime, where it is nearly impossible to get a reservation, they don’t take reservations, so there is always a chance to get in. You can arrive early and queue, or put your name down, go across the street to their wine bar, have a drink, and wait for your table.
Another one of my favorites is Cheval d’Or. What makes it special is the fusion between Chinese cuisine and French food. They play with both cultures in a very interesting way. Sometimes they take something very traditional and imperial from Chinese cuisine and interpret it in a more French way, and sometimes they do the opposite, like using French presentation for Peking duck. It’s different, and I think Paris needs more of that diversity.
The atmosphere is very relaxed, yet it still feels like a proper dining experience, with a great wine list as well. It’s best for dinner, and I recommend going for the tasting menu.
My Favorite Parisian Bistros
For a very traditional bistro, I love Le Baratin. It feels like stepping back in time. There’s no branding, no PR, no attempt to create a concept. They just focus on traditional French food. The service is very minimal. They’re not trying to entertain you, and in a time where so many restaurants are trying to create an experience, I find that very refreshing.
For the perfect meal here, I’d start with a terrine to share, then go for the sweetbreads (which are some of the best in Paris), and finish with desserts to share at the table. For wine, I’d order a Beaujolas (a light, fruity French red wine). I recommend going for a long lunch where you can sit, take your time, and drink wine.
Another place I really love is Juveniles. It feels both traditional and modern at the same time. The restaurant is small and very intimate, with a minimal design (wooden wine crates against the walls). There is one chef cooking in the kitchen and one waiter, and that’s it.
The food is incredible. The menu is what I like to call market cuisine. The chef is guided by what he finds in the market and builds the menu around that. That kind of cooking is hard to find in New York, so I really appreciate it when I’m in Paris.
During my last visit, I had an amazing squid dish, sweetbreads, and a beef tartare with a lot of cilantro that was completely different but very fresh. The wines and cheese are also excellent.
The best way to eat there is to order a lot of starters and share everything. I recommend going for dinner.
The Best Bread, Sandwich & Pastries in Paris
For bread, my favorite in Paris is Ten Belles — they make the best sourdough in the city.
I love the texture. It has very high hydration, so the crumb is slightly sticky and almost sticks to your teeth in a good way. The crust is very dark, almost burnt, and that’s what brings so much flavor.
Many of Paris’s Michelin-starred restaurants use their bread for service, which says a lot. I always get their classic loaf at their small shop near Le Bon Marché department store.
For something simple, I love Chez Aline — it’s perfect for a quick lunch while walking around. They make sandwiches, but they do it extremely well with the highest quality ingredients. It’s very old school where everything is priced by weight and sliced to order — this makes a big difference in the sandwich’s texture and flavor. You choose your cheese, your ham, roasted chicken, salads, etc., and they build it exactly how you want. And for dessert, you must order the rice pudding.
In France, eating in the street is part of the culture, and a good jambon beurre (a classic sandwich of baguette, butter, and ham) is a staple. For me, this is the most authentic Parisian experience you can have.
For pastries, one of my all time favorites is Carette. I grew up nearby, and my dad would always go there on weekends to buy pastries. I even worked there when I was younger.
I order the same things every time. One is the raisin bun dipped in icing and finished with toasted almonds. It’s very simple, but for me it’s the best pastry in the city. The other is the cherry clafoutis, a classic French dessert made with milk, eggs, and almonds. When I was working there, I would actually try to cut it badly on purpose so I could keep a piece for myself every day. It’s that good.
Although it’s very popular with tourists, locals adore it just as much as the quality is very high. In the 16th arrondissement especially, it still feels very local.
The Best Sweets in Paris: From Chocolates and Caramels to Ice Cream
I love Jacques Genin, he’s the best chocolatier in Paris. Not only are his creations unbelievably delicious, but they’re also very creative in terms of flavor combinations and technique.
One of my favorites is a chocolate with a caper filling. It sounds crazy, but it works really well, that balance of sweet and savory.
He also makes pâtes de fruits (traditional French fruit jellies), using vegetables like cucumber or red pepper, combining sweetness and acidity in a very interesting way. And you must try his incredible caramels, they’re made with real fruit juices like passion fruit, mango, or raspberry.
If you’re looking to buy a gift, this is the perfect place. I usually go to the store near Le Bon Marché department store.
Another place I find very interesting is Alléno & Rivoire. What makes them unique is that they remove refined sugar and instead work with the natural fructose of the fruit. They do this by confiting fruits, slowly cooking them in their own juices, like pineapple without adding sugar, and this creates an incredibly intense flavor.
They make a dessert called ‘three pods of vanilla bean’ that looks like a vanilla bean but is actually chocolate. It’s extremely expensive, but when you try it, it’s so good that you don’t want to eat anything else. This is another one of the best bites you can have in Paris.
For ice cream, I love Berthillon. It’s the most famous ice cream maker in France. They don’t do anything gimmicky, and really focus on the quality of the ingredients. So for example, the raspberry sorbet feels like you’re eating the fruit itself. It’s not too sweet, very flavor driven and incredibly fresh.
A nice touch is that their ice cream comes in molded shapes that look like beautifully presented cakes. The pear, raspberry, mango and the nougat are a few of my favorites flavors.
The One Wine Bar Not To Miss
One of my favorite wine bars is La Cave, the wine bar from the Septime team. The wines are natural, with great by-the-glass options, and the food is simple but very good. They serve bread from Ten Belles, great charcuterie, and cecina (thinly sliced cured beef) that’s really, really good.
Beyond the fantastic wine selection, it’s really the atmosphere that stands out. It’s very international, you meet people from all over the world, and people actually talk to each other, which is rare in Paris. I’ve met so many people there, even going alone.
I like to go early, around 2 or 3, when it’s quiet, and then it gradually becomes more lively. By 5 or 6, it’s packed, especially on Sundays and Mondays, with people from the industry, as many restaurants are closed.
Lastly, below you can find my favorite NYC restaurants.
Thank you for reading,
Gabrielle