Thank you to everyone for your tremendously helpful advice on this board! We managed to snag our reservations for lunch at Parcelles yesterday so are now just putting the final touches on our itinerary for Easter weekend. We are two travelers, mom and daughter (age 13), staying near Square du Temple.
Here’s what we have confirmed:
Saturday - Late lunch gathered from Caractere de Cochon, Maison Verot, Fromagerie Jouannault, and Bontemps La Patisserie
Dinner cruise on Le Calife
Sunday - Breakfast from Boulangerie Bo&mie
Lunch at Breizh Cafe Canal St. Martin or Creperie Gigi (does Gigi take reservations? Would we hit a long wait Sunday around 1:30?)
Anywhere you recommend for a late dinner after Eiffel Tower Summit at 9? Otherwise we will just eat a meal in the apartment from the foods we purchase on Rue de Bretagne.
Monday - Lunch at Parcelles (confirmed)
Dinner at Huguette or Jeanne Aimee (which would you pick after lunch at Parcelles)?
Tuesday - Lunch at a Marais falafel place, Maison Aleph dessert
Dinner - Chantoiseau after sunset views from Sacre Coeur
Then we have one final dinner in Paris on Saturday before flying home. We will be tired after a late afternoon TGV back from Provence and will be staying in the Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne. Would you pick Garcon or L’Apibo for a relaxing joyous last dinner?
Thanks in advance for any insights!
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We are thinking about Brasserie Martin for a late dinner after the Eiffel Tower, but it’s a lengthy 40 minute trek by Metro and foot. Anywhere else that would be open late on Easter Sunday that we should consider?
For Easter Sunday and Easter Monday (which is a holiday in France), it’s possible that restaurants will close and not decide to do so until shortly before the holiday. But I would expect La Fontaine de Mars, which is near the Eiffel Tower, to be open on Easter Sunday after your visit to the tower because it is a 7/7 restaurant. It’s informal and fun with trad food; often locals from the surrounding upscale neighborhood are there. It’s open until 11pm (which usually means no more kitchen service after 11, not that you have to be out the door by then).
For Easter Monday, between Huguette and Jeanne-Aimée, they are two very different places. Huguette is for raw seafood and likely will be fairly full with tourists and some locals. Jeanne-Aimée is more upscale, sophisticated food, almost all locals, and is often relatively empty at night and reserved in atmosphere – it’s very French (non-tourist) and very Parisian, and it might not be so much fun for a 13 year-old unless she is very sophisticated.
No experience with Apibo, but Garçon! is informal and good. I don’t know what the Saturday night atmosphere is. But there are so many choices!
For all of them, reserve in advance and check back a day or two before your reservation to confirm.
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I imagine scheduling/ reserving a post-Eiffel dinner will be risky. Who knows how much time you have to waste in queuing up for the first elevator to the 2nd level and then another usually very long queue for the smaller elevator to the top ? But there are loads of possibilities for playing it by ear. The surprisingly good Francette (bistro + separate bar with bar food) in a barge moored in the Seine just below the Tour Eiffel, trad resto Les Marches on the rue Manutention next to Palais de Tokyo just on the other side of the river, a 10-min walk to Francette’s very trendy sibling Riviera Fuga (unusual but very successful and very parisian mélange of Italian/ Japanese cuisine/ full meals or tapas-style) on a barge between the Pont Alexandre III and Pont des Invalides), short taxi ride from the taxi stand in front of the Tour Eiffel to Brasserie du Prés in Saint-Germain-de-Prés or a longer taxi ride to Bouillon République on boulevard du Temple in the 3rd. All suggested more for your daughter than for mom.
All the teens in my extended family love, love, love Huguette for its flirty vibe and very flexible menu. When I go, it’s for the oysters and the “petite friture” (tiny fish floured and seasoned, deep fried, and eaten whole… quite an adventure for a 13-year old, I imagine). 
A note on taxis. Certainly, tourists are vulnerable to scams but just make sure that the driver turns on the taxi-metre and that the only fee on the metre when you get in is the “prise de charge”/ 4.40€. There are no fixed fees within Paris proper (only to and from the airports). There are no supplements of any kind when hailing a taxi from the street or taking one from any taxi stand (including rail stations and popular tourist attractions). However, there are approach fees if you use a taxi app to call for a taxi and for reservations.
I’m not an “either/or” person and so I cannot make a choice between the rather hip L’Apibo and the trendy and neighbourhoodly Garcon ! Usually a more interesting mixed gay/ straight clientele at L’Apibo and more conventional “très sixième” mix at Garcon ! Food at Garcon ! tends towards comfort food like its Rolls-Royce version of the iconic croque monsieur (once a reliable café standard but now debased to something cheaper and fast-food-ish in lots of other places) while the ever-changing menu at L’Apibo has more inventive twists. In the end, I could only choose which one more easily fits into my schedule. I like them both a lot.
If I were a tourist, I’d probably choose Aux Crus de Bourgogne for my last supper in Paris.
Thank you so much, onzieme and Daniel. Really appreciate the helpful advice.
I like the suggestion to choose the restaurant location that is most convenient to our schedule for that last night.
One of the tricky pieces we are working out is where we can buy some cheese to bring back to the US before we go to dinner. We have a tight window as our TGV pulls into Gare de Lyon around 7:25, then we need to check into our hotel (Le Lapin Blanc near the Sorbonne), before dinner ideally at 9:00 or 9:30. Most of the fromageries close at 8 on Saturday, but Taka Vermo closes at 8:30.
Our current thought is to take the Metro from Gare de Lyon to St. Paul and pick up the cheese from Fromagerie Laurent Dubois before heading to our hotel. But the 8 PM closing will be tight. (We would scope out the cheeses we want earlier in the week when we are visiting the Marais.)
Alternatively, we could drop off our luggage first, then head to Taka Vermo and go to L’Apibo after. The reservation at L’Apibo would be at 9:30 so we would have some time to wander Rue de Montorgueil and stop at Venchi chocolate and other places open late before our reservation.
La Grand Epicerie is near Garçon and is open til 9. Do they have a good selection of cheeses (though the prices may be exorbitant?)
Any other cheese shops nearby the places we are staying or the restaurants we are considering?
Would a taxi help us get to these locations more quickly? Checking Google maps the time difference between taxi and Metro seems comparable.
For your cheese adventure, I know that both Taka & Vermo and Fromagerie Hisada (near the Palais Royal) have a delivery service so shopping online a day or two before your arrival in Paris, request vacuum packing, and then delivered to your hotel on your day of arrival is another possibility. But make sure they can commit to a delivery to your hotel on day of arrival. Maybe ask (by email) your hotel front desk to give them a ring as well.
There are probably other fromageries that do deliveries via Deliveroo or Epicery delivery services, Just do a google search for “Paris fromageries shopping online livraison domicile”
I haven’t been to La Grande Epicerie in years but remember that their cheese section was good (but not as good as a dedicated fromagerie). Considering the logistics and their later closing, it’s probably your best bet.
