6 Best Restaurants in Challiot and Ternes, Paris

This handsome historic bistro highlights the extraordinary synergy that can happen when French technique meets Asian flavors. Classics like pigeon or beef come alive with pickled daikon radish, tamarind, or saké. You'll still find dishes firmly anchored in the French repertoire, like trout with trout caviar and whipped anchovy butter with lovage, or a caramel and quince dacquoise for dessert. The six-course dinner menu (€76) provides an excellent introduction to chef Louis de Vicari's outsized talent, and with five wine pairings for €60 you'll get a primer in French wines too. This is a restaurant Parisians in the know will cross town for, and that's saying a lot.

Despite overseeing 33 eponymous restaurants, it’s clear that 21-Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse has put heart into his newest culinary endeavor, set in the beautiful Maison Baccarat, home to the esteemed glassmakers’ newest collections. In partnership with talented chefs Christophe Saintagne and Robin Schroeder, there’s a palpable synergy expressed in dishes that artfully balance myriad flavors and textures: sea scallops infused with coriander-spiced kumquat and accompanied by tender lobster and John Dory in a wine-infused cream; or duck with tender cabbage, foie gras, and crispy oysters with spaghetti squash and flecks of cacao. Though the superimposition of a contemporary sculpture sadly obscures the original gilded and frescoed walls, the dining room sports a more contemporary appeal.

Pascal Barbot, who rose to fame at his Rue Beethoven digs (where he earned three Michelin stars), recently reopened in a larger, more luminous dining room. Though he lost a star in 2019, his cuisine remains resolutely haute (and his clientele just as loyal), with dishes that often draw on Asian ingredients, as in black-curry roasted pigeon or suckling lamb in a date and ginger sauce followed by a palate-cleansing white sorbet spiked with chili pepper and lemongrass. The restaurant offers à la carte dining, as well as lunch menus for €85 or €125 and the full tasting menu for €285 at dinner (this is what most people come for). Each menu also comes at a (significantly) higher price with wines to match each course. Barbot's cooking has such an ethereal quality that it's worth the considerable effort of booking a table—you should start trying well in advance. 

Hide Kobayashi, known as "Koba," is one of several Japanese chefs in Paris who trained with some of the biggest names in French cuisine before opening their own restaurants. Not surprisingly, this great-value bistro near the Arc de Triomphe became instantly popular (reservations are a must) with locals as well as visiting Japanese and Americans who follow the food scene. Generosity is the key to the cooking here, which steers clear of haute-cuisine flourishes; both the monkfish fricassee with anchovy-rich tapenade and a classic veal kidney in mustard sauce, for instance, come with a heap of mashed potatoes. For dessert, try the stunning île flottante (floating island), made with oven-baked meringue. Wines by the glass start at €8—unheard-of in this area.

A Paris institution since 1924, this absolute stunner of a seafood brasserie was also one of the first restaurants to champion French-raised caviar, after the Bolshevik revolution cut the Russian supply. Fast-forward to 2023, when star chef Yannick Alléno took the helm of the Art Deco dining room (one of the most spectacular historic interiors in Paris), infusing the menu with a new elegance in dishes like a caviar-flecked salmon-and-seaweed hand roll, langoustine carpaccio with caviar cream, or a perfectly prepared filet of sole, all washed down with sparkly Champagne or a crisp Bourgogne blanc. Desserts are equally luscious. Dining here is a quintessential Parisian experience, whether for a leisurely lunch or an elegant candlelit dinner.

The premiere restaurant at the beautiful Shangri-La Paris Hotel is the city's only Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant. As you sit in a jewel box of a dining room that features giant Chinese porcelains and inlaid jade paneling, you'll dine on lacquered Peking duck, sliced at your table and delivered with a flourish, and all manner of delicacies from one of the world's great cuisines.