Phil Wood’s guide to Paris
When you’ve stepped off your Eurostar train at Gare du Nord, it might seem reasonable to assume that the large brasserie opposite the station would be a tourist trap but you’d be wrong. Terminus Nord has been wonderfully restored by London-based designer John Wheelan of The Guild of St Luke, who is on a mission to restore and refurbish French brasseries. If you visit Champagne, Brasserie Excelsior Reims has also been given his magic touch. The food and beverage offering at both is the reliable brasserie fare one wishes for after a journey or a glorious day of Champagne tastings.
Alain Passard’s truly legendary restaurant L’Arpège is still well worth the pilgrimage. On a nondescript corner in the 7th, this restaurant is a joy. The lunch menu represents excellent value and gives you the chance to fully appreciate the beautiful farmyard tapestry adorning the walls of the ground floor dining room. It is always interesting to watch the tables around you as no meal at L’Arpège is the same - even the waitstaff can’t tell you what’s on your menu as the kitchen cooks with what it has for that day. You are likely to end up in conversation with your neighbours, as everyone is curious about the dishes other tables are receiving. The menu usually begins with smaller plates of inventive and interesting vegetable creations and you may have some fish or lobster as your main plate. You might even get to try the ducken (look it up!). The sauces are all perfect, and the desserts, like the rest of the menu, seem simple but the skill in their perfection is remarkable. The service is approachable and friendly, and the sommeliers are fantastic at providing suggestions by the bottle or by the glass.
From one Alain to another, Hôtel Plaza Athénée and Alain Ducasse parted ways in 2021 after working together for 21 years. This paved the way for the precociously-talented chef Jean Imbert to take the reins of the signature restaurant of one of Paris’ finest hotels. Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée has a distinctly young and energetic staff, and the dining room now features a communal marble table that runs the length of the room. A meal is not cheap here and nor should it be. The menu card itself is one of the most beautifully designed I’ve seen, and the food is an interesting take on reimagined French classics. ‘The Brioche Marie-Antoinette Caviar’, a light and airy brioche filled with langoustine, served with an allemande sauce and topped with a generous amount of caviar, was seemingly simple, complex, delicious and rich all in one plate. Enjoy taking in the grand dining room whilst sipping on vintage champagne served from a trolley, surrounded by crystal, silver cutlery and service touches including an impressive tableside cheese service and desserts finished in front of you. It may sound gaudy and nouveau-riche but it treads the line perfectly and presents itself as a complete experience which I can only imagine will get better the longer the restaurant is around.
Lapérouse Restaurant may be more of a social scene fixture than a restaurant you’ll find on fine dining lists these days but, funnily enough, it was the first restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars back in 1933. Named for the famous French explorer Jean François de Galaup comte de Lapérouse who used to frequent the venue, the historic building full of private salons and rambling candle-lit staircases makes it easy to picture the heady nights enjoyed by its many famous former patrons - Baudelaire, Proust, Victor Hugo, Serge Gainsbourg (who is reported to have met the late great Jane Birkin here), Orson Welles, Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway. With custom Bernardaud china and a piano man in the dining room most evenings, this is a fantastically fun place to have a late night supper.
Restaurant Cuisine is a tiny little place on the edge of the 9th. It is very much a bistro in the new style - the tables are unadorned and the service is casual. The cuisine at Cuisine is simple and unfussy but always tasty. There are elements of Asian fusion across the menu which in years gone by I would have given a hard pass in Paris but it is clear that young Parisian chefs have had more exposure to these flavours as it was all well integrated and not jarring. The wine list is a concise list of interesting bottles with nothing that is overly expensive, and you might just stumble across a new favourite producer.
By all accounts, Taylor Swift tickets are the only harder booking to get than Septime. Reservations open every day at 10am Paris time for the next three weeks and disappear in front of you as you’re entering those pesky credit card details. After a failed first attempt, we realised copy and pasting one’s card details was the only way to secure a table before the restaurant booked out. It’s worth considering a lunch booking, especially as the lunch menu is great value at 70 euros for five courses. When you walk through the door, it feels like you are in a neo-industrial farmhouse with stripped-back decorative touches and rustic wooden tables. It’s a calm and welcoming space. The food at Septime is sophisticated yet relaxed, vegetable-focused, full of flavour, and served without pretension. The wine list is a mix of cult producers, which makes it easy to find a fantastic bottle. My hot tip here is to finish lunch, order one last glass of wine before you pay the bill, and then ask if you can sit on one of the benches on the street so that you can watch the world pass by.
In a victory of happenstance over planning, my last night in Paris coincided with the closing night of a pop-up by Australian chef, Hanz Gueco, who worked for me at Rockpool 1989. Hanz was cooking at La Cave Du Paul Bert, the tiny cousin to the infamous Bistrot Paul Bert, both of which are worth a visit if you are ever near the aptly named Rue Paul Bert in the 11th. Hanz has always been a super talented chef who manages to blend Asian flavours with French techniques in wonderful ways. His new project, Le Cheval D’or, will be a must-do on my next visit to the City of Light.
When you just can’t fit another meal in, Paris has a remarkable and creative bar scene that is well worth your time. Visit the punk-like Le Syndicat with its all-female bar team and clarified cocktails. I must warn that you will feel old here, but the drinks are worth it.
The Little Red Door, with its farm to glass philosophy, is an absolute must. If your French is a little rusty, the bar staff all speak fantastic English. They work directly with artisanal producers from around France, using their fruits and vegetables to create unique drinks based around singular products. You will be ordering drinks simply called, for example, walnut or cantaloupe, and each one will be special, delicious and original. My pick was tomato - imagine if you infused the perfect martini with the ripest tomato, distilled it together and poured it straight from an ice cold freezer into your glass. Once you have finished at Little Red Door, pop around the corner to Candelaria where you can have a few tacos in the front taqueria or, if you’d like the night to continue a little longer, wait to go through to the speakeasy out the back.
If you don’t yet have a go-to hotel in Paris, the recently-opened La Fantaisie is worth considering. In the heart of the bohemian 9th arrondissement and close to the streets of Pigalle, La Fantaisie has an Alice in Wonderland feel, with a beautiful garden in which to take breakfast, a streetside cafe, a rooftop bar overlooking Sacré-Cœur and Californian chef Dominique Crenn’s first Parisian restaurant, Golden Poppy. If you can snag a room with a terrace, you have the perfect location to enjoy any wine and cheese acquisitions made during your travels.