Free self-guided itinerary. This is a travel guide, not a bookable guided tour.
This guide does not recommend individual places. Recommendations go stale, restaurants close, and anywhere that ends up on enough lists stops being the place that earned the listing. What lasts is knowing which neighbourhood is good at what, and how to read a street once you are standing in it.
Each of the five sections covers what a district does well, what it does badly, and what the street tells you before you walk in. A menu printed in six languages, with photographs, positioned where the foot traffic is heaviest, is not the place you are looking for — and that single signal will serve you better than any list.
This is the part visitors get wrong most often. Lunch service generally runs from around 12:00 to 14:30, dinner from about 19:30. In between, kitchens are closed. If you go looking for a hot meal at five in the afternoon you will struggle, and it has nothing to do with where you are standing.
Service is included in the bill — rounding up is plenty, and nothing more is expected. Tap water is free and comes if you ask for une carafe d’eau. Bread arrives without being ordered and is not charged for.
English