Paris

Montparnasse · 243 Boulevard Raspail

Le Duc opened in 1967, when serving raw fish in a serious Paris restaurant still contained enough risk to count as an idea. Jean Minchelli's approach stripped away much of the heavier machinery of French seafood cooking and left product, short cooking times, tartares, raw preparations and fish on the bone exposed enough that quality had nowhere to hide. Then Slavik designed the room to resemble the interior of an extremely elegant yacht that had somehow become permanently stranded on Boulevard Raspail. Varnished wood, brass, portholes, white tablecloths. The interior aged from modern to dated to classic without moving very much at all, while the food's once-unusual minimal intervention became part of the international restaurant mainstream. Paris changed around it. The yacht remains aground.

Gare de Lyon · Main hall, first floor

For the Universal Exhibition of 1900, Paris rebuilt Gare de Lyon and gave its station restaurant the full force of national ambition. The buffet opened in 1901 beneath enormous paintings, gilding, chandeliers, carved wood, leather banquettes and enough Belle Époque confidence to make most contemporary luxury look timid. The paintings showed destinations along the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway network: Provence, Marseille, Nice, the Alps. You were not merely eating before traveling south. The building had already begun the journey for you. It became Le Train Bleu in 1963, was saved from destruction in the following decade and had its major rooms protected as historic monuments in 1972. Trains have continued arriving and leaving underneath throughout this process, which is crucial. This is not a Belle Époque restaurant preserved somewhere sensible. It is still sitting inside a functioning railway station. The food is grand French railway theatre and should be approached accordingly. Come before a train. Come after one. Come specifically because eating beneath several acres of national self-confidence while somebody downstairs announces a delayed TGV is an excellent use of Paris. The magnificence of the room is inseparable from the ordinary movement below it.

Charonne · 80 Rue de Charonne

Clamato exists partly because the space beside Septime became available, an appropriately ordinary beginning for a place this direct. Bertrand Grébaut and Théo Pourriat turned the narrow room into something influenced by North American oyster bars but governed by French product: oysters, shellfish, raw fish, vegetables, natural wine and whatever the boats and seasons have made worth eating. No reservations, no lengthy tasting progression and very little ceremonial lowering of the voice because a scallop has arrived. The queue and reputation grew later. The proposition stayed uncomplicated: ask what came from the sea today and eat it.

Gros-Caillou · 129 Rue Saint-Dominique

La Fontaine de Mars has been on Rue Saint-Dominique since 1908, five hundred metres from the Eiffel Tower. Red-and-white checked tablecloths, burgundy banquettes, mirrors, dark wood and an old zinc counter surround food from southwestern France: cassoulet, duck confit, foie gras, boudin, blanquette and potatoes with enough butter to make several modern wellness philosophies briefly irrelevant. Barack and Michelle Obama ate here in 2009, increasing the restaurant's American fame. The room still functions as a busy bistro and happens to coincide almost perfectly with the international fantasy of what a Paris bistro looks like. The cassoulet is the reason the image has endured.

Grands Boulevards · 7 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre

Chartier opened in 1896 with the democratic ambition of providing a proper meal for a modest price. More than a century later the dining room is protected as a historic monument, while the restaurant continues attempting roughly the same task underneath it. That combination is almost miraculous. Hundreds of people enter a giant Belle Époque hall of mirrors, carved wood and brass. Strangers are seated together. Waiters move at industrial speed. The bill is written directly on the paper tablecloth. Leeks vinaigrette and cheap wine happen beneath architecture grand enough to host a minor royal family. Not every dish needs to alter the course of French gastronomy. Chartier is doing something stranger: it has preserved a nineteenth-century mass-feeding institution by refusing to stop mass feeding people. A museum would ruin it. Next table.

Haut Marais · 52 Rue de Saintonge, 75003 Paris

In 2011, Carina Soto Velasquez, Joshua Fontaine and Adam Tsou opened a microscopic taqueria in the Marais. The space happened to contain another room behind the kitchen, so they put a serious cocktail bar there. The pairing helped push Paris's modern cocktail scene forward: a tiny white taco counter at the front, then a service door, then stone walls, darkness, agave spirits, DJs and drinks worth the trouble of finding them. Candelaria appeared repeatedly in the World's 50 Best Bars during the following years and helped establish the wider Quixotic Projects group. Fifteen years later, the hidden-door format has been copied so extensively that it has become a cliché of its own. Candelaria remains relevant because the two sides still have reasons to exist independently. The tacos are not camouflage. The agave program is not decoration. Eat at the counter, go through the door and allow the evening to change species. What happens on the other side matters more than the entrance.