What is an expensive restaurant? The answer is relative. Outside of Paris, it's not difficult to get a decent meal for around €15. In the capital, however, it's more complicated, especially in upmarket areas, and even more so with inflation. Those who, only a few months ago, were offering menus at €20 have had to increase their prices to €25 or sometimes €30.
We crisscrossed the capital to find the best addresses for lunch at a reasonable price, keeping only the seasonal offerings, unearthing hidden gems (Le Véro-Dodat), Normandy-infused bistronomy (Le Rigodon), affordable Korean delights (Mojju), vegan Lebanese feasts (Qasti Green), canteen-priced pasta royale (Sugo) and cutting-edge pizzas (La Riposte). Here are 15 restaurants that are all great surprises, with committed chefs who are brilliantly defying a complex economic context.
It's a little gem of a restaurant that you don't discover by chance. Between the Louvre and the Bourse du Commerce, you first have to make your way into the (little-frequented) Passage Véro-Dodat. This arcade, decorated with wood-paneled display windows and paved with black and white rhombuses, looks like a temporal rift that takes you back to the year of its inauguration, 1826. Between art galleries, boutique studios (including Christian Louboutin's) and a luthier, stands the narrow, two-story restaurant building. Lunch is served upstairs in a futuristic setting: a tiny, midnight-blue room studded with luminous arches and mirrors, hosting a handful of marble tables. The good taste of Bertrand Cazenave, a former dancer with the Opéra before reinventing himself as a restaurateur, is evident.
The lunch menu is reasonably priced for the area (€24 for a starter-main course or main course-dessert, €29 for all three). You'll find quality game meats (prepared by the specialized company Nemrod), such as their fine wild boar sausage with wild garlic, as well as more vegetable finds, like leeks topped with red onion, mimosa egg and dill. The accompanying homemade focaccia is as soft as a top-of-the-range mattress. But it's the pastry creations that really catch the eye: Véro-Dodat, designed above all as a tea room, offers sweet gems such as fruit-filled shortbread tarts and rum babas confectioned at the last minute.
Le Véro-Dodat, 19, Galerie Véro-Dodat, 1st arrondissement. Tel: 06-30-85-34-45.
The price of pasta has been rising steadily for the past decade. Located near Rue Saint-Anne, better known for its countless Asian establishments, Sugo has succeeded since its opening in 2023 in offering good, fresh pasta at affordable prices, between 12 and 15 euros at lunchtime. The dining room has the air of a chic cafeteria, with its large wooden tables, candles and infectious good humor. The ultra-short menu focuses on the essentials: three starters, five pasta dishes and two desserts.
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