Anonymous wrote:OP here. If you don’t speak French, is the Fork app best way to make reservations?

PP who visited in April. For our reservations, we went to the restaurant's web site and made reservations through there. We visited a smaller town before Paris, and the one restaurant we really wanted to try had no reservations available; my H just stopped in one afternoon and they fit us in. We found most of the hosts spoke English but sometimes the servers did not. At the veg Italian place, our server did not speak English but did speak Spanish...my H speaks Spanish so went went from there. And everything arrived perfectly.

Anonymous wrote:I went in January and I found reservations to actually be pretty important for most restaurants, including at lunch time. If the place takes them, and has higher than a 4.0 on google reviews, I tried to have reservations just to minimize the risk of being in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no plans. Plus, I don't speak French. Sometimes they weren't necessary, sometimes they 100% were, but it's hard to know for sure until you're there.

I’m not opposed in theory, I just don’t understand how you know where you will be exactly and what time you will be hungry. It also seems like we are going to be eating a decent amount of our lunches at museum/attraction cafes. I know this isn’t ideal, but if you want to spend more than an hour or two at an attraction, it’s almost unavoidable.

OP here. If you don’t speak French, is the Fork app best way to make reservations?

Anonymous wrote:We stayed in the St. Germain neighborhood and didn't have trouble finding dinner places without reservations. Granted, we have to ES- age kids, which meant we were eating at fairly casual places and on the early side. There was one night where we jussst sneaked into a yummy and popular Vietnamese restaurant before it was full, but otherwise it was fine.

OP here. We are staying in that neighborhood. Any specific recs?

For dinner, Paris is worse than New York when it comes to reservations. You need one literally everywhere.

I made reservations for just about every lunch and dinner while we were in Paris. We didn’t go to all of them, but it was just nice knowing we had a guaranteed spot that I had vetted beforehand. After 2 weeks in Paris, only one dinner where we had a reservation was less than excellent. I’m sure there would’ve been more duds we had just winged it. That said, I understand there are those out there who enjoy spontaneity and don’t like pre planning every minute. You’ll definitely have some great meals that you probably never would have if you planned in advance. We actually had some nice surprises when we deviated from our plan. But I don’t enjoy not knowing that someone has a plan. I also liked maximizing our odds of success.

We were there in April/spring break time and there were a couple of places my H really wanted to try, so we made reservations. And it seemed that both places only let reservations in. Many restaurants in France will look like they have tables open, but don't actually fill up all of the tables at once. I think some places focus on a positive, relaxed dining experience rather than filling up and turning over tables quickly.

The two restaurants we reserved and both were excellent.

Big Love
Vegetarian Italian; all of the food was amazing, I would definitely go here again on my next visit
https://www.bigmammagroup.com/italian-restaurants/biglove

Peppe Pizzeria
Appetizers were okay; pizza was excellent
https://www.peppeparis.fr/en/

Anonymous wrote:We had an airbnb in a great neighborhood, were there during the Olympics, and never made any reservations for a meal, just sort of wondered around where we ended up and had some great meals. We didn't want to be tied down by having to leave xxx to get to yyy if we were having fun where we were. Worked out great, even when the city was teaming with people

Tourism was actually down during the Olympics. Your experience was a little different than the norm.

We stayed in the St. Germain neighborhood and didn't have trouble finding dinner places without reservations. Granted, we have to ES- age kids, which meant we were eating at fairly casual places and on the early side. There was one night where we jussst sneaked into a yummy and popular Vietnamese restaurant before it was full, but otherwise it was fine.

I went in January and I found reservations to actually be pretty important for most restaurants, including at lunch time. If the place takes them, and has higher than a 4.0 on google reviews, I tried to have reservations just to minimize the risk of being in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no plans. Plus, I don't speak French. Sometimes they weren't necessary, sometimes they 100% were, but it's hard to know for sure until you're there.

A Michelin Bib Gourmand rating is an excellent (but not perfect) indication. There are 39 in Paris: https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/ile-de-france/paris/restaurants/bib-gourmand

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maje reservations

Right now Americans are not welcome much

They turn you away…..

If you speak French how do they know you're American?

How do you know when a French person is speaking English ???

Are you 12?

Anonymous wrote:We had an airbnb in a great neighborhood, were there during the Olympics, and never made any reservations for a meal, just sort of wondered around where we ended up and had some great meals. We didn't want to be tied down by having to leave xxx to get to yyy if we were having fun where we were. Worked out great, even when the city was teaming with people

+1 I didn't want to have to worry about dinner reservations on top of all the other reservations we had. We didn't have any issue finding a place to eat, which was probably helped by the fact we eat earlier than the French do. If we were trying to eat at 8:00 that might have been different.

We were just there and made no reservations, it was totally fine and we never had a problem finding something with no real wait.