What You Eat on a Paris Food Tour

Every dish named below appears in the inclusion list of at least one listing on this grid of a food and wine tour paris visitors can book today. Nothing has been added because it is famously French. If you are about to pay for tastings you cannot name, this is the page that names them.

Bread and viennoiserie, and why the croissant comes first

Almost every walk opens on something baked, and usually on a croissant. It is not sentiment: a bakery is open early, the product is finished on the premises, and it gives a guide something to explain before anybody has relaxed.

You will meet the croissant and its chocolate-filled cousin the pain au chocolat; the baguette, which has its own annual city competition; praline brioche on the express Marais walk; and on the Devour route, bread from Poilâne, whose sourdough miches are among the few loaves in Paris people cross the city for.

Cheese — the ones that keep turning up

Cheese is the item these listings include most often, and one name recurs: Comté, the hard alpine cheese from the Jura, which the listings specify by name and by age. Aged Comté develops crystals you can feel; that crunch is the thing your guide will point out.

Beyond it, expect a board rather than a list: soft cheeses, blues and goat's cheeses chosen by the fromagerie that morning. The Eating Europe Marais walk takes you to cheeses aged in a 17th-century cellar by a master cheesemonger, which is as close to a named stop as cheese gets here.

Charcuterie, foie gras and the savoury middle

The middle of a Paris walk is cured meat. Foie gras appears by name on the Saint-Germain tasting walk; four types of cured meat on the same one; pâté en croûte — a terrine baked in pastry, and a technical showpiece — on the Latin Quarter walk.

This is where a walk separates from a restaurant. You are eating three or four producers' work in an hour, which is the one thing a single kitchen cannot give you.

The hot dish: croque-monsieur, boeuf bourguignon and aligot

Three hot dishes turn up often enough to name. The croque-monsieur — ham and cheese, grilled, with béchamel on top if the cook is doing it properly — appears on both Secret Food Tours Marais routes, once with truffle.

Boeuf bourguignon, beef braised slowly in red wine, is on the Eating Europe Marais walk alongside choucroute garnie, and reviewers on the Do Eat Better Montmartre walk single it out. Aligot is the outlier and the best reason to book the Eating Europe Montmartre walk: mashed potato beaten with fresh cheese until it stretches like rope, from the Aveyron in the south, served with sausage.

Falafel in the Rue des Rosiers

One street, one dish, and the reason a Marais walk tastes different from a Saint-Germain one. The falafel counters of the Rue des Rosiers are the edible survival of the quarter's Jewish history, and several listings put a handmade one in the fare.

It is also the stop that most often surprises people who booked a French food tour. Paris has been eating this for decades; it is as Parisian now as the croissant.

Sweet: macaron, chocolate and the secret dish

The macaron — two almond meringue shells with ganache between them, judged on the ruffled foot at the base of each shell — is on more of these listings than any other sweet item. Alongside it: fine chocolates, choux pastries, shortbread, and bean-to-bar chocolate on the morning walk from makers who roast in the city.

Several listings also include a secret dish the operator will not name in advance. It comes back differently in every account, which suggests it changes; it is usually the thing they mention first.

What is in the glass

Wine is poured on all but a few of these walks, and the quantity is stated where it matters. The private Marais walk names three glasses and a soft drink; the seated tastings pour five and six; the Champagne day trips run to six, seven or more.

What you will not get is a wine list. The pour is chosen against the food, one or two glasses across an afternoon, and on the Latin Quarter walk it is apple cider rather than wine — a Normandy and Brittany drink that goes with galette in a way wine does not.

Which quarter hands you what

The same operator will feed you quite different things depending on where the walk goes, so this is the quickest way to match an appetite to an afternoon. Everything in it is drawn from the listings’ own inclusion lists.

Compare every Paris Food tour

If you cannot eat something

Read the listing before you book, because these operators are unusually blunt. Four state that vegan diets cannot be accommodated; two rule out coeliac disease by name, one because of gluten cross-contamination; two more say they cannot cater for lactose intolerance. Vegetarian options are offered without qualification on the Do Eat Better and private Marais walks.

Severe allergies are the hardest case. Three operators state that their walks are not suitable for severe or life-threatening food allergies, and one requires a waiver at the start. That is not a reason to give up on eating in Paris — it is a reason to contact the operator first rather than on the day.

Frequently asked questions

Where these things are sold rather than served is on the markets and streets page, and which quarter does which is set out quarter by quarter. The tours themselves are on the Paris Food Tours grid.