City Guide: Best of Paris

I’ll be honest: I’ve never been tempted to leave New York City.  I mean it’s a pretty exciting place to live and to eat.  As I’ve said many times before, you can literally eat anywhere in the world right here in New York.  And of all the places I’ve traveled to over the course of my life,  I’ve never been tempted to stray from Manhattan, that is until I lived in Paris for two glorious months.

Wandering the gorgeous and curiously clean streets, and perfectly manicured gardens and parks of Paris makes you wonder why the hell we don’t all get on a plane and move to the city of love.  And not just for love or for beauty, but mostly and most importantly (to me anyway), for food!  Paris is a foodie’s paradise.

It’s a paradise for freshly baked, wondrously flaky croissants, for warm, crispy-edged crepes filled with deliciously unpasteurized cheese and farm eggs with fluorescent orange yolks (the way they should be!), for dense, rich foie gras slathered on toasted baguettes, and for nutty, yellow butter smeared on anything and everything.  Lest I forget the souffles, the moist, fluffy quiches, the deeply flavored cassoulet, the sublimely stinky and soft cheeses, pain du chocolat, and the peerless chocolates.

I wish it weren’t so heavenly (because practically speaking, I won’t be moving permanently anytime soon), but it is.  (C’est la vie.)  Paris is like living in a museum, except the food’s so alive.   What I learned while playing house in the Marais is that some of the best things I put in my mouth, the best bites I took, were not just from haute, fancy spots, but also from neighborhood bakeries (boulangeries, as they call them), cheese shops (fromageries) and chocolatiers. Of course, Alain Passard’s legendary Arpege was unforgettable (and yes, worth the ticket and fight for a table), and so was Spring and Yamtcha, but I’m more surprised at how exciting the outdoor food markets, the no-frills creperies, and grungy falafel joints are.

If you’re heading to Paris for three days, a week, or forever (I’m jealous), here’s my guide to the Best Restaurants Paris in the most delicious city in the world.  And we’ll be adding new places every week…

Bakeries