The Least Expensive MICHELIN-Starred Restaurants in Paris

In this intimate establishment near the Quais de Seine, Tunisian-born Chef Youssef Marzouk cooks up a delicious culinary symphony — think saddle of lamb done two ways, grilled summer vegetable foam, meat jus with smoked eel — in his open kitchen-bar. Flanked by two assistants with equally prestigious pedigrees (Cheval Blanc Paris, Carlton, Ritz, Jacques Faussat), at dinnertime he puts together a single surprise set menu featuring a subtle marriage of French tradition and North African flavors. His confident technique shines through in his meticulously plated creations, bolstered by his Tunisian sensibility, which you can detect in his sparing use of spices, herbs and citrus fruits.

€75 for four courses at lunchtime

"The accent tells us the origin of the person; it tells us about their country, their region and their history. It is this idea of ​​openness and discovery that I want to defend, a cuisine made up of encounters and exchanges.” So says Ayumi Sugiyama, the Japanese owner and pastry chef of this contemporary restaurant with a Scandinavian spirit. Chef Romain Mahi’s dishes combine classic recipes (tasty hare à la royale in season) with more daring creations and subtle work around roasted aromas and smoky flavors. The lunch menu is a bargain.

€65 for four courses at lunchtime, Wednesday-Saturday

MICHELIN-recommended hotel The Hoxton Paris is not far away.

In a lively working-class enclave, this place serves quality contemporary cuisine. Talented Chef Thibaut Spiwack, whose resumé includes MICHELIN-Starred kitchens, finds original ways to showcase produce from the Paris region. The emphasis is on sustainable development and a desire to challenge gastronomic rules. There’s an attractive set menu plus a few à la carte options at lunchtime; in the evening, a single set menu with several courses. A moment of gastronomic pleasure.

€49 at lunchtime, Tuesday-Friday

The Tribe Paris Batignolles hotel is just a 15-minute walk away.

This restaurant provides a chic, upscale environment where you can savor cooking with a modern edge — whether it be scallops with oyster mushrooms, grape pulp, chestnut broth and black truffle, or crispy sweetbreads with peanuts, chanterelles, dried apricots and Jura wine. The enticingly varied cooking is founded on high-quality produce and the lunch menu offers great value for money.

€47 at lunchtime

Nobuyuki Akishige, a Japanese chef with a flawless track record (L’Atelier du Peintre in Colmar, La Vague d’Or in St-Tropez, K2 in Courchevel) concocts subtle and well-crafted seasonal cuisine such as maigre fish with zucchini, razor clams and verbena. These dishes can be savored in a spot-on, unpretentious bistro environment.

€75 at lunchtime, Wednesday-Friday

Want to extend your stay in the city of light? Book the MICHELIN-recommended hotel Fabric.

“Here, the bouillabaisse cozies up to the aioli and the pissaladière competes with the socca just out of the coal-fired oven.” Chef Julia Sedefdjian (formerly of Les Fables de la Fontaine) is now happily thriving in her own establishment, where her colorful and fragrant cuisine is an ode to the Mediterranean and her native Nice. Dishes combine fine ingredients, which Sedefdjian selects painstakingly and blends creatively. Welcome to Baieta, which means “kiss” in the Nice dialect!

€60 at lunchtime, Tuesday-Friday (excluding public holidays)

Enhance your trip with a stay at the MICHELIN-recommended Monge Hotel.

Why the name? Well, the restaurant’s decor marries the old with the new, but more importantly it’s a nod to one of the Selosse family’s greatest vintage Champagnes. The short à la carte menu showcases superb cuisine packed with intense flavors, crafted around the finest produce and orchestrated by the talented Chef Louis de Vicari. The surf and turf combinations are particularly good, as are the subtle influences from the young chef’s homeland of Béarn.

€55 at lunchtime (excluding public holidays)

Book a stay at MICHELIN-recommended hotel Le Pavillon des Lettres nearby.

If you liked Itinéraires, you will love Fleur de Pavé — an establishment firmly on trend where Sylvain Sendra is pursuing his culinary research with the same enthusiasm and flair as in his previous HQ. He whips up modern dishes that draw inspiration from all over the world, featuring deceptively spontaneous plating and blue-ribbon ingredients, such as the highly exclusive vegetables of Asafumi Yamashita. Rather than bowl us over with flashy technique, the chef seeks to lay the emphasis squarely on flavor — for which he has our heartfelt thanks!

€65 for four courses at lunchtime, Monday-Friday

The Park Hyatt Paris – Vendôme is nearby. Book your stay with the MICHELIN Guide.

Chef Frédéric Simonin learned the ropes in top restaurants and alongside great chefs — from Ledoyen to Le Meurice via Joël Robuchon — before becoming a Meilleur Ouvrier de France himself in 2019. Faithful to this title, he crafts cuisine that is refined and full of precision, and a special mention must be given to the sauces and jus. The lunch offering is a good deal, as is the selection of wine by the glass.

€65 for two courses at lunchtime, Monday-Friday
€85 for three courses at lunchtime, Monday-Friday

Stay at the nearby MICHELIN-recommended Saint James Paris Hotel.

After training at L’Oustau de Baumanière and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, Irwin Durand fine-tuned his skills working for Alan Geaam and Guy Savoy (sous-chef at La Monnaie de Paris, chef at Le Chiberta). Not yet 40, he’s used his time well so far! His elegantly appointed restaurant nurtures an intimate vibe with just seven tables and a table d’hôte opposite the open kitchen. Backed by Executive Chef Camille Larquemin and Pastry Chef Tessa Ponzo, Durand rolls out a seasonal surprise menu. Market-fresh ingredients are showcased with bags of flair and technical skill: ballotine of croaker à la grenobloise; calf’s sweetbread in Meaux mustard with green peas and veal gravy; and a decadent creamy vanilla and miso delight to finish with a flourish.

€68 at lunchtime (excluding public holidays)

Chef Jacques Faussat loves nothing more than the simplicity inspired by his roots and his childhood in Gers. This simplicity was also nurtured by Michel Guérard and especially Alain Dutournier: Faussat’s meeting with Dutournier, who shares the same origins, was decisive in his career — starting with 10 years spent in the kitchen at Trou Gascon. His own restaurant offers cooking that’s full of flavor, basing everything around good produce prepared in a way that brings out its best. It represents good value for money too.

€60 at lunchtime

At this luxury neo-brasserie, the duo of Alain Solivérès (the highly experienced former chef of Le Taillevent) and Jimmy Tsaramanana celebrate the southwest of France with impressive technical skill and high-quality ingredients. The sautéed sweetbreads served with a vin jaune sauce and the mille-feuille with a light vanilla cream are two of the restaurant’s great classic dishes. As for the feel of the place, authenticity and conviviality reign supreme thanks to a highly professional team. This is a restaurant frequented by bon vivants and reservations are essential, as tables get snapped up fast.

€65 at lunchtime

Almost next-door to Place des Victoires, youthful Chef Omar Dhiab, who boasts a rock solid resumé (Lasserre, l’Abeille, Loiseau Rive Gauche), has found himself a minimalist lair with an open-plan kitchen and a splendid white marble counter. His cooking revolves around flavorful dishes rich with creative flourishes, and his light, tempting desserts are an ode to the seasons. In the company of an enthusiastic young team, the chef is equally at home in the front of house as in the kitchen.

€58 at lunchtime (excluding public holidays)

Need somewhere to stay? Book Hôtel Madame Rêve with the MICHELIN Guide.

In this contemporary restaurant, Aveyron-born Chef Julien Boscus fine-tunes bold, crisp cuisine thanks to a solid classical background. His genuine à la carte lineup (something of a rarity these days) showcases intelligently crafted, flavorful dishes made with first-class seasonal produce. Examples include a delicious crispy tartlet filled with morel mushrooms creamed in sous-voile wine, or sautéed calf sweetbreads with green asparagus from Vaucluse steamed in citron, while his amazing hare à la royale, reworked in a more modern vein, deserves a special mention. The wine list stars an impressive selection from France’s vineyards served by a slick, professional team. Friendly and endearing!

€62 at lunchtime

This pleasant and cozy little restaurant in the Étoile neighborhood near the Arc de Triomphe serves delicious, contemporary Mexican-influenced cuisine. French ingredients are infused with condiments, herbs and spices by a talented and passionate Mexican chef who also gets involved with the service. He turns out savvy and perfectly cooked dishes that are skillfully prepared with invigorating seasoning, like marinated sea bream with a turnip medley and salsa tatemada. This colorful, punchy and well-seasoned food is so good you’ll soon be back for more!

€69 at lunchtime

Behind the large bay window of his kitchen, the chef shows the full range of his talents through dishes presented on small plates — from the play on textures to the interplay between land and sea via smoking and condiments. Take the smoked beetroot with sardines, for example, or the blue lobster prepared in three ways.

€65 at lunchtime, Monday-Friday

After two years at Duende in Nîmes, Masaki Nagao is back on a pilgrimage to the capital as he breathes new life into this establishment. In the wake of Vantre and Le Clarence, the Japanese chef prepares a crisp, modern, subtly inventive Gallic repertoire of dishes guided by the seasons. He admits a weakness for briny shellfish, which he adds raw, cooked and in broth to structure his culinary score. Try a vegetable composition of carrot, radish and turnip laced with a shellfish consommé, or sashimi of first-class scallops flanked by pear, smoked ricotta and Castelfranco greens. There’s a more concise menu at lunchtime.

€55 at lunchtime

The restaurant’s lyrical name perfectly reflects Chef Romain Meder’s cuisine. Alain Ducasse’s former protégé pays homage to his rural upbringing with a plant-centric menu that is rooted in local Île-de-France produce and complemented by poultry, fish and shellfish. His modern and resolutely seasonal dishes demonstrate impressive technical skill: Vegetables are roasted with the same care as meats, in pursuit of the deep, rich juices and flavors born of the Maillard reaction, a culinary process favored by his mentor. Beyond the open kitchen and its adjoining table, a staircase leads upstairs to a hushed, understated dining space that exudes a peaceful atmosphere.

€65 for two courses at lunchtime
€85 for three courses at lunchtime

Qui Plume la Lune is welcoming, picturesque and romantic. Bare stone walls and natural materials (untreated wood, twigs and branches) set a poetic scene, and one of the walls bears a quote from William Faulkner: “We ran out into the moonlight toward the kitchen.” This temple of culinary delicacies is the work of a dedicated team determined to select only the very best produce. Diners are invited to sample dishes that are a masterclass of expertise and precision, overflowing with vitality, freshness and flavor. A feast of culinary delights guaranteed to lift your spirits awaits all who enter this sanctuary of good food.

€45 at lunchtime

In a stark, modern interior (cement tiles, bare light bulbs), Chef Antonin Bonnet offers a refined, delicate, sensitive and unpretentious take on artisanal cuisine. The ingredient-led dishes put the focus squarely on premium-quality produce: Axuria veal, hand-dived scallops from Erquy, matured trout from Asturias. The lunch menu offers the best value at this fine restaurant headed by a passionate chef.

€58 at lunchtime

Located in a bourgeois district of Paris, the crack kitchen team at this fashionable restaurant rolls out a surprise menu that favors local, seasonal ingredients. This is unorthodox, vibrant cooking with a creative streak and a weakness for vegetables. Combine that with low-sugar desserts in a modern vein and a splendid list of mostly organic or natural wines, and what’s not to like?

€68 at lunchtime (excluding public holidays)

Two minutes from Rue Saint Dominique, this establishment bears the hallmark of Cambodian-born Chef Tomy Gousset, who is forging ahead with a gleeful, no-holds-barred approach. A relative latecomer to gastronomy when he was 23 years old, Gousset perfected his skills at Le Meurice, Taillevent and Boulud in New York. Today he plays a gourmet-bistro score, firmly in tune with his era, placing his “karma” (his own words) at the service of taste and the ingredients with a genuine commitment of local sourcing. His motto is “Simplicity and sophistication,” or — in our words this time, “A slap-up good meal!"

€49 at lunchtime

Chef Adrien Cachot has been a familiar face since appearing on French TV’s Top Chef in 2020. In this intimate, minimalist space he puts his creativity to the test with dishes that often feature unexpected pairings, such as the show-stopping Cachot e Pepe Mochi, prepared in the manner of a pepper and citrus risotto. He has a penchant for less conventional ingredients like offal, which contribute unusual textures, as well as the marriage of surf and turf, such as his superb black ruff judiciously combined with tripe and vin jaune. Over the course of a carte blanche menu that is unapologetically playful, a singular culinary personality emerges, shaking things up and winning diners over from start to finish.

€60 at lunchtime, Wednesday-Friday

Offering an oasis of greenery in the heart of the urbanized Parisian suburbs, cross the wooded park of this 19th-century villa and you’ll come across a vegetable garden, beehives and even a citrus greenhouse. In fine weather, guests are welcomed on a terrace covered by white parasols and enlivened by garlands. Chef Sylvain Grosjean’s dishes are classically inspired but not lacking in pizzazz, such as the barbecued duck with red cabbage and spicy verbena jus.

€55 at lunchtime

Do we still need to introduce the understated William Ledeuil? For over 20 years, this permanently inspired chef has been offering personal cooking with a welcome freshness. Plenty of this is in evidence on the lunch menu, which offers superb value for money and is a real Parisian favorite.

€49 at lunchtime

In a residential neighborhood in the 16th arrondissement, Julien Dumas (previously of Lucas Carton and Bellefeuille - Saint James Paris) has set up shop in this elegant, tastefully decorated eatery, previously the fine-dining restaurant Le Pergolèse. This talented chef’s love of the Atlantic finds expression in flavorful and remarkably delicate seafood cuisine, and the restaurant itself is named after a seagrass. Tender Arctic char with butter and tansy, asparagus confit in wax, or premium hand-dived scallops simply seared: The precise seasoning, accurate cooking and delicate combinations reveal the full potential of meticulously sourced seafood. Supported by flawless technique, the menu also shines the spotlight on vegetables, the chef’s other passion. Charming and attentive service.

€55 for four courses at lunchtime