Emily In France Exclusive 🇫🇷 15 Places to Dine with Your Favorite Vegetarian in Paris

Restaurants plant-based diners and omnivores can agree on

When I first moved to France, I was a vegetarian, a choice I’d made immediately upon reading the Michael Pollan essay “Power Steer” on my boarding school roommate’s recommendation. While my choice may well have been facilitated by the fact that, at the time, I was eating three meals a day in a dining hall, I had every intention of sticking with it – even once I arrived in the western French town of Royan. Things didn't go quite according to plan, seeing as my host mother had misunderstood what “vegetarian” meant and had taken the time to prepare me a whole, head-on fish in place of the cordon bleu she had made for everyone else.

Friends, I ate the fish.

That said, I did stick with at least attempting to eat a vegetarian diet for some time, something that, in 2004, was not that easy in France. (The number of times I had to explain that poultry was meat would astonish you.) And while these days, I do eat some meat (albeit far less than when I was growing up), I’m well aware of how hard it can be to eat vegetarian in France. A friend of mine spends her summers here with her family, and her vegetarian mother often quips she spends her summers eating salade de chèvre chaud.

Of course, this isn't necessarily the case in Paris anymore, which has become home to a bevy of plant-based restaurants of late – excellent places like Plan D, Mesa, and Abricot. These join a wealth of street food options with great plant-based choices like l’As du Fallafel, Le Daily Syrian, or Chez Alain, not to mention bistros that are at least offering lip service to vegetarian diners. Still, the fact remains: If you want to eat in classic French joints – or if the omnivores among you want some meat with their potatoes – the choices are still thin on the ground. (Especially if your vegetarian friends don't want to submit to the indignation of a 25-euro “market vegetable plate.”)

It’s the reason why I’ve been building the below list for so long: places that pay as much attention to plant-eaters as meat-eaters, where the dishes are creative across the board and thus sure to please a group of omnivores and vegetarians unanimously.

1. Pristine

Pristine ticks many restaurant wishlist boxes: It’s open seven days a week; the prices are almost criminally reasonable; and on my visit, seven of the nine savory small plates were vegetarian. The creative dishes are staggered manageably, giving you adequate time to truly enjoy such creative offerings as beet with charred onions and fromage frais garnished with a bevy of herbs and drizzled with apple must or deconstructed ravioli with reduced cream and sage. The bread service from Union, accompanied by smoked whipped house butter, is the icing on the cake. Five plates between two people leaves you just enough space for a chocolate mousse for dessert – and if I’m the one recommending it, you know it’s gotta be good.

Pristine - 8, rue de Maubeuge, 75009