What makes a good bistro? After conducting a totally unscientific study for some 40 years, we're tempted to answer: It's an establishment that gives you the feeling of being at home, only better. According to the Ile-de-France Chamber of Commerce and Industry, there were 5,247 bistros in Paris in 2021. So we wouldn't presume to claim that our selection is of the very best in the capital.

But it brings together places scattered across the city, which have become like a second home for their regulars. Prices are low (a record €1 for an espresso at Vins des Pyrénées), the welcome is warm, the decor not intimidating and the food not complicated but well prepared. And there's often that little something extra – a sharp playlist, a drink offered, or simply a genuine smile – that makes you want to come back. Then come back again, and again. Until someone comes to look for you there when you're not at home.

Au Petit Bar, booths and Formica

You almost want to pinch yourself to believe it. It's a stone's throw from the Tuileries Gardens and just behind the palatial Le Meurice, but as you enter this canary-yellow bistro, you're catapulted back to the working-class Paris of the 1960s! Tiled floor with blue clovers, rotary telephone (yes, yes) on the Formica counter, moleskin booth seats... Here's a bistro still in its prime, taken over by Marie and Jean Dalle in 1966. While Jean Dalle has left the counter for good, the octogenarian Marie is still hard at work in the kitchen, assisted by her sons Hubert and Michel in the dining room.

Admittedly, the food isn't the most sophisticated, based on salt pork with lentils or roast veal macaroni (and no vegetarian alternative). But it's honest, ultra-affordable for the neighborhood (€12.50 a dish) and served with a smile, backed up by one or two jokes like on the radio station Rire et Chansons. All prices, incidentally, also seem to have been frozen in time: coffee at €1.30; glass of wine from €3.20. You come to enjoy a vintage experience, and you return to rediscover the warm family atmosphere of this unique bistro in Paris.

La Petite Bourse, a meeting place for friends

There are plenty of bars in the area, including the Bistrot du Croissant across the street, where Jean Jaurès was assassinated in 1914, and the gigantic Brique Machine, which specializes in craft beers, with brewing vats and seating for no less than 300. But La Petite Bourse is our favorite, because you feel like family there! And that's a problem for the owners, Laëtitia Vidal and Alan Gaudin, who often find it hard to close up at the end of the evening. For the past six years, the couple have struggled to keep prices affordable. Coffee is €1.80 and most glasses of wine (around €5) are "direct from the producer" with a few organic bottles, even if the owners haven't made a religion of it.

You have 78.47% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.