The 38 Essential Restaurants in Paris

"Hidden on a small side street on the edge of Les Halles in the heart of Paris, this intimate restaurant sports contemporary decor of cutout wooden paneling and an open kitchen. It’s become one of the most sought-after reservations in the city for the superb contemporary French cooking of young chef Thomas Meyer, the former sous chef to Anne-Sophie Pic at her three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Valence. Meyer presents his cooking in a tasting-menu format that showcases his perfectly tuned creativity, love of fresh seasonal produce, and culinary loyalty to his native Jura in the east of France. The menus evolve regularly, but standouts of a recent meal included a grilled cepe mushroom with meadowsweet-flavored sabayon and a sauce of deeply reduced mushroom jus and white miso; sea bream with kale in Granny Smith apple juice with a gelee of lovage; roast pigeon in a sauce of its own gizzards with green cardamom and citrus; and an intriguing dessert of rice pudding wrapped in rice roll with mirabelle plums stewed with vin jaune. Located in the First Arrondissement." - Alexander Lobrano