New Paris Restaurant Recs for Solo Diner - April 2025 [Paris]

Regional Dining Discussions France
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My favorite food in Paris remains Perception, a bargain priced tasting menu for the quality of French-by-a-Korean-chef, with Korean touches. The food surely deserves a star if not 2. Not stuffy at all.

It might not be unique - that’s’ hard to find anywhere - but I appreciate the “‘a little different”, and mostly just rave about the food.

I’ve only been at dinner; others have mentioned it’s not quite the same at lunch (and usually we go to the more expensive places at lunch).

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So interesting! I love how restaurants are such a spectrum of personal experience. Perhaps I’ll need to give Perception another chance someday.

I visited Perception with a group in 2023 for dinner and thought the food was very interesting and certainly creatively plated yet inconsistent, ranging from fairly good to one standout dish (which I can’t recall now), though our overall experience felt stiff and pretentious, and I remember we walked away feeling a bit underwhelmed (although it was also very hyped up at the time).

By contrast, I went to Géosmine a few days later (before they got their star) and had an absolutely exceptional experience at the chef’s counter and got to chat a bit with chef Maxime. It’s a very different experience by design—their food was less “creative” in presentation, but the entire meal was an incredibly well-crafted journey in contemporary french cooking, and everything from the atmosphere to the staff were refreshingly welcoming and friendly for a Parisian tasting menu in a way that elevated that meal to the next level.

I also greatly enjoyed the atmosphere and experience at Fulgurances L’Adresse, though it’s impossible to compare the food, as the chef’s rotate every few months (though that is part of the fun when dining there).

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23

As an aside, we’ve been to Fulgurances & their wine bar in Paris several times & have been going semi-regularly to their place in Brooklyn (Laundromat) since they opened. It seems that they have recently instituted some major changes and the Paris Wine Bar is again serving food at dinner, while the main restaurant is now only doing lunch.

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Like you, I am generally a solo diner. In previous trips I have enjoyed Pouliche, Jeanne-Aimee, Le Chateaubriand, and MoSuke (have that one again this April as well). I can also recommend Montee, which I have been a fan of since 2017. Also, Restaurant Amalia is really good. I went last April, and am doing a repeat this April.

This trip, I am trying to branch out a bit more. While I have some repeats (MoSuke and Amalia), I am going for more non-french. As a result, I have a lunch reservation at Kubri, and am planning on hitting up Reyna and Sushi B as well.

I saw Alea, but as I am not planning on spending any time in Montmartre this trip, put that on my list for next time.

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25

Appreciate the great recs! Thanks! We might cross paths. Hah. I’m on the waitlist for Mosuke in early April. :crossed_fingers: Been wanting to try them for a while, but my trips have been too last minute lately and I’ve never been able to get in.

As of now, I’m circling 19 St. Roch. and Kubri for my free night.

If you’re open to taking a chance, I highly recommend Early June. It looks like Minsoo Kim might be in residence in early April.

And Le Servan is worth the hype as well on the asian tinged French side.

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26

I dined solo at Alea a few weeks ago and it was one of my favorite meals on the trip. Very friendly staff and wonderful food.

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27

I think William (FOH) and his wife Léa (the chef) are one of the nicest duos in all of Paris. I can’t imagine William not making anyone (especially a solo diner) feeling very welcome.

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28

Hi all, just returned from my trip and wanted to share a big thanks for the recommendations here, along with my experience. So first off, thank you! You all gave me many wonderful spots to consider.

My group dinners shifted a bit, and we ended up dropping Bon George and adding Le San Sebastien. I also went solo to 19 St. Roch, and lunched at Café Varenne, Les Enfants du Marhcé and Mokonuts.

My thoughts below:

  • Le Saint Sebastien - Dinner

    • Wonderful food, but horrible timing issues with the kitchen, and service went from pleasant to absent over the course of our meal. Our three courses easily lasted three hours, and not by choice, with at least 40min of waiting with an empty table between each course. It’s quite sad, because the restaurant was lovely in all other respects—an exciting menu that was very well executed, friendly staff, good wine, and a mostly french clientele, with a smattering of Americans. I want to recommend it for the food, and I hope we had an off-night with the kitchen, but I would proceed with caution and temper expectations on the timing, as it marred what would have otherwise been a top notch experience for my group.

  • Les Enfants du Marche - Lunch

    • A perennial favorite of mine, exceptional as always. If you like the freeflow and energy of trying creative and sometimes experimental dishes made to be shared in a casual open air market, then you’ll love it. On the other hand if that sounds like your nightmare or if you’re averse to walk-ups and waitlists, then you can find plenty of other great options nearby. Personally, I’m in the love it camp. Yet again, this was right up there with the best meal on my trip. The dishes change frequently, but standouts were red tuna crudo with strawberries and peas (:exploding_head:, dreamy good) and squid ink tempura fried sardines (second time I’ve seen them on the menu, so they may be a staple, and they are consistently astonishing to the point you’ll wonder why sardines aren’t served this way everywhere by default).

  • Parcelles - Dinner

    • Parcelles gets everything right, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, yet it somehow still felt overhyped to me. It’s quite a lovely setting and the food is exceptionally well executed, yet it was missing that extra touch of magic I was expecting based on what I’d heard prior and the difficulty scoring a reservation. The rest of my group would disagree with me on the hype though—they absolutely love Parcelles and are among those who hype it up, and they are both local and visitors. As for me, I will whole-heartedly recommend Parcelles, though I wouldn’t stress the FOMO if you can’t get a reservation. There are many other spots I would recommend as alternatives that are just as wonderful or more unique.

  • Café Varenne - Lunch

    • Long wait, great upscale cafe meal near the Bon Marché. The food was very good, a mix between traditional cafe and brasserie fare. Outdoor café dining on a nice day is one of the pleasures of being in Paris, and Varenne does not disappoint.

  • Le Bon Saint Pourçain - Dinner

    • Quite a lovely spot. Cozy, out of the way, very small and dealing out wonderful food. Similar in simplicity of high quality food to Parcelles and a changing menu—with items that occasionally get sold out and swapped around as a result, yet in a slightly more casual environment with only a handful of tables.

  • Mokonuts - Lunch

    • Tremendous food, lovely people and an intimate setting, but in my opinion it’s overhyped, extremely expensive, and it was 100% American on the day I visited. I almost didn’t go, but it came highly recommended, and while I’m glad I went—I had one of the best asparagus dishes I had all trip, and a very good chicken with peas, radish, spinach and beurre blanc—it wasn’t creatively experimental enough to make me feel it was worth going out of the way for lunch. I would have preferred to do a more basic lunch at a corner cafe any day of the week. Or go back to Les Enfants du Marché for a destination lunch.

  • 19 St. Roch - Dinner

    • Wow. Wowowoow. Run, don’t walk, to this address. Easily the best meal of my trip. And one of the best I’ve had in years. The food is supreme, with a sense of refined creativity. Plus ridiculously good wines, an exceptional, extremely warm and engaging staff, with an open kitchen in a pleasantly designed environment that’s just the right size and quiet enough for conversation. Highlights were hands-down the best asparagus I had in Paris—asperges blanc with smoked roe, lemon peel, spring mix and a smoky ricotta cream sauce; and an exceptionally unique turbot al pil pil—for turbot lovers, this is a swing and a home run: filets of turbot topped with a slighlty smoky sauce and laid over a bed of spinach, baby artichoke, peanut, celeri and the turbot jus, with a side of burnt blood orange. Finished with a custom desert for non-dairy and non-gluten folks like myself.
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