Butter, pastry and sauce, all taken very seriously
How this city's signature food scores on the six taste axes the quiz uses. A match means the food here will feel familiar to you.
Paris tastes of butter, long-risen bread and sauces built on patience. A taste test here moves from a warm pastry at the counter to a steak with a heap of chips, then to something sweet and jewel-coloured. Keep portions small and go often, because the pleasure is in precise things.
Laminated dough is folded with butter many times over, then baked until the layers split into flaky shards. The inside should be honeycombed and elastic, pulling into ribbons instead of crumbling.
What to judge: Layer shatter, honeycomb crumb, butter aroma, browning
Where to find it: a morning bakery counter
A split baguette is spread with butter and filled with thin ham and a few cornichons, and nothing else goes in. The crust should crackle, the crumb stay tender, and the butter hold its ground against the salt.
What to judge: Crust, butter quality, ham saltiness, bread freshness
Where to find it: a corner sandwich counter
A seared steak arrives with a pile of twice-fried potatoes and a small pot of peppery sauce. The chips decide the plate: crisp outside, fluffy inside, still hot when the meat is half eaten.
What to judge: Sear, sauce, chip crispness, potato fluff
Where to find it: a bistro table by the window
White bread is filled with ham and cheese, covered in béchamel and grilled until the surface blisters. A knife cuts through the molten layers, and it is always eaten with a fork.
What to judge: Béchamel, cheese pull, toast on the bread, seasoning
Where to find it: a zinc-topped café counter
Two smooth almond shells sandwich a ganache or fruit cream, and they should give slightly before the centre yields. The pleasure is the thin crackle first, then the soft, sharply flavoured middle.
What to judge: Shell crackle, filling flavour, chew, sweetness
Where to find it: a pastry shop counter
Duck legs are salted, then cooked slowly in their own fat until the meat slips from the bone, and finally crisped in a pan. The skin turns brittle while the flesh stays dark, salty and rich.
What to judge: Skin crispness, meat texture, salt level, fat balance
Where to find it: a neighbourhood bistro
About $50–80 for six tastes
Early morning for pastry, then a late, slow lunch
Buy pastries before nine in the morning and eat them within the hour, standing up if you can.
Start with the lighter dishes and move towards the rich ones, which is roughly the order these 6 foods are listed in. Serving sizes are the real constraint: ask for one portion between two people at the heavier stops, and you will still want the last one.
Budget for the day with the range below, and keep a little back for the stop you will inevitably add. Most of the money goes on the savory stops; the sweet finish costs the least.
Timing matters more than most people expect. The best window is listed below: kitchens run at their best before the crowd arrives, and the dishes that need a queue are worth it mainly when the queue is short.
Score each dish out of ten on flavor, texture, value and whether you would order it again. Write the note before the next plate lands, because after two more stops every dish starts to sound the same.
Rate every dish out of ten on four criteria and watch the ranking build itself.
Ranked by how close their taste profiles are to Paris.
Half a day for all 6 stops at a walking pace, or a full day if you sit down at each one and let the food settle.
No. Two or three stops a day for two days is easier on the appetite and gives you better notes.
The planner rebuilds the route around a vegetarian, vegan, halal or gluten-free diet, and the scorecard works for whatever you taste.
With the first dish on the list at the time of day given further up the page. From there the route runs light to heavy so the last stop still tastes like something.
Yes, and the dish list doubles as a shot order. A custom plan adds hooks, a shot list, a caption and hashtags for the city you name.
No. They are the widely documented signatures, which is what makes them comparable. The planner will build a route around street food or sweets instead if that is what you want.