How to Eat Healthyish in Paris
Paris: A city where wearing exercise clothes in public was long considered shameful, dessert is not to be skipped, and definitions of “health” often get lost in translation; recently, a Parisian colleague of mine opted to skip falafel for lunch in favor of the “lighter” option, namely, a baguette sandwich with charcuterie and cheese. But as the recent profusion of bright, airy coffee shops and bistros serving non-potato vegetables makes clear, “manger healthy” isn’t so foreign after all. In a way, rice bowls are just a new iteration of the France’s longstanding commitment high-quality sourcing—just without the security blankets of butter, wine, and cream. There is, as well, an unprecedented bit of humility in this openness toward foreign influences: lots of Japanese flavors and techniques, to be sure, but also “cuisine à la nord-americaine,” a phrase most people thought would never describe anything beyond burgers and dogs. Juice flows alongside natural wine, avocado toast is the new tartine beurrée, and French women still aren’t getting fat. You didn’t come to Paris to eat healthy, but now that you’re here, you just might.
Photo by Sophie Arancio1/13Otium
In the gritty but energized coin south of the sex shops and 24-hour clubs of Pigalle (just don’t call it SOPI), the fit, fashion-sneakered crowd of Parisian cool sip green juice and eat things out of bowls at Otium. The bowls skew sweet, like muesli with hibiscus-poached pear for breakfast, or savory, the veg sprinkled with buzz ingredients like sumac and black sesame. The fridge of cold-pressed juices would make a Californian smile, but there’s a slight sultriness that sets apart a Parisian juice bar from one in L.A.—the vibe here is moody nudes and mindfulness, and the cheese is very good.
Photo by @faimfatale2/13Le Petit Keller
Le Petit Keller is textbook Paris bistro: tiled floors, formica tables, mirrors and wine bottles lining the walls, the menu of the day written in chalk on slate. Except the dishes on offer are azuki hummus and soy-cured eggs, and a server is whipping up pineapple, mint, and apple smoothies in the Vitamix behind the old-school bar. At lunch, the donburi with Camargue rice and grilled mackerel in miso and red wine may be the best of the city’s bowl genre. At dinner, the daily specials (tuna with sugar snaps and lemon confit or a Big Salad–style vegetarian plate) scale up for sharing. And for the hard-working locals in the neighboring co-working spaces and arty boutiques, they even do bento boxes to go.
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Photo by @lefooding3/13Mokonuts
Paris’s cutest couple combines their respective Japanese and Franco-Lebanese backgrounds at this darling, perpetually packed luncheonette. Omar handles the savory—roasted beets with zaa’tar, deepest-green spinach soup, or squash with tahini and bergamot—while Moko takes on dessert. The French loooove les cookies [lay kook-eeze], and Moko’s super-grainy versions have furnished many a Proustian experience.
Photo by @evainthekitchen4/13Miznon
You see the tourists lining up for L’as du falafel, and you turn left onto an empty street and into Miznon, the harbinger of modern Israeli cuisine in Paris and perhaps the first place to truly char a veg. The woman behind the industrial steel counter is less than helpful—or so it seems. By accidentally ordering half of the items scrawled on the chalkboard menu—pillowy pita stuffed with slow-cooked lamb or spiced fish cakes, a whole-roasted vegetable rendition of ratatouille, and, the pièce de résistance, a blackened head of cauliflower—you’ve done perfectly.
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Photo by @lefooding5/13Abri Soba
The thing to order at Abri Soba is, as you’d guess, soba, served hot in a deep dashi or cold, the buckwheat noodles tousled on a bamboo mat to be dipped into soy and scallion. The wood-paneled walls and cool, dark interior have a soothing effect, just like the steaming noodle-cooking water that the server brings out at the end, to mix with any remaining sauce and sip like a precious tea. Start and end with egg custard, first in a chawanmushi with asparagus and clams, last with a buckwheat-scented crème brulée.
Photo by Albin Durand6/13La Fontaine de Belleville
La Fontaine was your postcard-ready Parisian sidewalk café for over a century before the local coffee celebs at Belleville Brûlerie took over, preserving all the good things—crumbling tiles on the floor, Gatti chairs on the terrace, Ricard and 1920s mirrors behind the zinc bar—but updated it with actually good coffee, overstuffed vegetarian sandwiches, and a platonic croque Monsieur that’s generous on the side salad. Come in the morning for a bowl of bircher muesli when the terrace gets full sun, or on Saturday afternoon, when the neighborhood shows up for live jazz.
Photo by Patricia Khan7/13Bob's
There is no Bob. Bob is Marc Grossman, the New York expat behind a little empire of vegetarian Americana that comprises a juice bar, a diner, and a café. The man is famous for his bagels, and these are probably the only bialys for miles, but Parisians and expats alike come for the smoothies and gluten-free pancakes. Also find Bob’s nori-rice-avocado rolls and veggie dal across the Seine at the café adjacent to famed English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Co.
Photo by Maud Bernos8/13Chambelland
You wouldn’t know it to drool over the display case, but all the breads and pastries at this café and bakery in Oberkampf are gluten-free. The owners mill their own rice, buckwheat, sorghum, and millet at their facility in Provence to make naturally leavened, flatbread-like loaves, all with an I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Glutinous crumb. The whole-fruit-and-nut packed pain des athletes should be the new protein bar of the Parisian gym scene (lol, Parisian gyms), and there are also sandwiches, soups, and the now de rigeur detox juices. Throw in ten sugar-studded rice-flour dough puffs (chouquettes) because, hey, they’re gluten-free.
Photo by @j.esther9/13Boot Café
The booming third-wave coffee scene in Paris has also proved an incubator for Aussie breakfast vibes and a butter-free lunch. Boot Café is a prime and very pretty example; their two locations—one tucked behind an old cobbler’s storefront in the Marais and a second in Saint-Germain-des-Prés—offer vegetable-leaning plates like bok choy with cashews and farmer’s cheese or tofu in dan dan sauce, among fresh flowers and vintage travel books. The left bank shop, with its bright green plastic stools and exposed stone walls, is a welcome relief in a neighborhood short on places Hemingway never went.
Photo by Nicolas Maday10/13Orties
When you want that tasting menu experience but haven’t quite gotten the angel investor for your sportswear start-up to warrant a splurge at l’Arpege, get thee to Orties. At 45 euros for six courses, plus the house-made pain soufflé—a plate of fluffy bread puffs with a squash spread that will hopefully come as a starter—this is bistronomie at a relative bargain. Self-taught chef Thomas Benady relies on meticulous sourcing without ramming it over your head: The menu is a folded sheet of (recycled) printer paper that simply says, “Tasting menu.” Said menu may include spelt risotto with shaved raw mushrooms out of a rough-hewn wooden bowl someone must have swiped from Noma, a raw nettle soup (ortie means nettle), or tuna littered with fava beans. The scene is mature Parisian-dinner-party, from dreamy hanging plants to the frequent cigarette breaks that cancel out at least some of the menu’s virtue.
Photo by Terroirs d’Avenir11/13Terroirs d’Avenir
Skin-care fiends go straight from the plane to French pharmacies for micellar water; food people go to Terroirs d’Avenir. The string of four specialty boutiques—fishmonger, butcher, baker, epicerie—on rue du Nil, with a new fruit and veggie shop in the 11th , is where many of the city’s meticulous restaurants source their super-high ingredients. Spelt from Provence, fermented milk (gwell) from Brittany, clementines from Corsica. Great for weighing down your suitcase, or tote some produce back to your Airbnb if you dare try to cook in Paris’s tiny kitchens.
Photo by @merciparis12/13The Can't-Miss Shop: Merci
See all these expats moving here to start coffee shops? That could be you! Start picking out the trappings for your future dream life at Merci, the two-story temple to good taste that has thought of everything, from cubiform hand soaps to mid-century lounge chairs. Take a break after the bedding section for a salad or juice at one of three beautiful in-shop cafés.
Photo by @lydie_picturezz13/13The Activity: Bike the Seine
Paris’s mayor Anne Hidalgo recently barred all cars from the right bank of the Seine—not so great for Uber drivers, but excellent for anyone who wants to stroll, cycle, or drink along the stone banks of the river. Rent a Velib’ from Paris’s bike-share service, and pedal along the right bank and out to the Bois de Boulogne, a former king’s hunting ground turned massive public park, with nine miles of easily accessible bike paths.
