Bonjour! From the French capital of Paris! We’re here along with Bindi of course, to explore this amazing city. Since there is already tons of content showing you the highlights and tourist attractions of Paris, we thought we’d focus on the food in our content.

There’s one food in particular that we love to eat when we’re in Paris, and that’s the croque monsieur. Of course, there are plenty of places to get this classic dish in France, but in this video we’ll search for the best croque monsieur in Paris. Check out our video below, or keep reading to learn more!

Paris is famous for so many things, but in our opinion, the best part about coming to this city to eat our way through it!  The French are known for countless great dishes, but one of our favorites is the croque monsieur, and we’re using this trip to attempt to find the best croque monsieur in Paris.

A croque monsieur is a classic French sandwich filled with ham, cheese and a béchamel sauce.  It’s salty, cheesy and very satisfying.  

We’re starting this mission off at a classic cafe, Les Deux Magots in the upscale Saint Germaine neighborhood.  This cafe is over 100 years old, and is famous for its well known past patrons such as Ernest Hemingway and Simone de Beauvoir.  The ambiance of the cafe feels grand, yet approachable and the staff was very attentive.  Before jumping into the croque, we started off with a beetroot gazpacho.  The bright color and flavor of this soup immediately transported me to a sunny Spring day.  Then, it was on to the main attraction, the croque.  It was a good, but fairly standard croque on simple sandwich bread, but with the cheese on top griddled to perfection.  I also enjoyed the small lettuce wedges that accompanied it, helping to balance all of the butter and cheese in this dish!  We enjoyed our time at Les Deux Magot, but we can definitely say that at 33 euros for these two dishes, it was definitely one of the more expensive places we visited for this meal, though I guess with the reputation and history of this space it’s hard to complain about that.

Next up, we wanted to try something a little different, and we had heard that the croques at Buvette in the Pigalles district would be a good contender.  We immediately loved the relaxed atmosphere of Buvette, it’s exactly what you want from a small, French cafe.  We also appreciated that they offer a vegetarian version of a croque filled with mushrooms instead of ham.  Since Mehmet doesn’t eat pork, he opted for the mushroom version, while I indulged in the traditional one, piled high with french ham and topped with an egg, making it a croque madame.  We found both to be delicious.  We appreciated their use of a thicker, heartier bread as well as the accompanying cornichons and small salad.   Another great thing about Buvette is that they serve food throughout the entire afternoon, which can be difficult to find in Paris.  

Two croques in a day was quite filling, so we decided to spend some time wandering through the streets of Paris, and taking in as much of the city’s charm as possible.  We’ve been to Paris a few times, and we noticed that the city seemed especially crowded on this trip, perhaps its just post covid travel coming back to normal, but it definitely felt more full of people than it had on previous visits.  The city is also under a lot of construction right now, presumably in preparation for the olympics, so keep that in mind if you’re planning to visit before this Summer.

Our next croque stop was at Brasserie Bellanger in the 10th arrondissement.  At this spot, we both opted for the veggie version, which was filled with three types of cheese, including one of my favorites, comté, as well as plenty of onion compote, which gave this croque the most subtle sweetness that balanced all of the salty cheeses.  Mehmet went with the madame version, topped with an egg which added extra richness.  At midday, this brasserie was bustling, but they were still extremely welcoming to Bindi tagging along with us and found us a table where she wouldn’t be disruptive.  

Despite feeling very full at this point, we had one more croque on our list to try, so we had to power through.  And our last croque was a special one because it was from a restaurant called Artisan de la Truffe, which specializes in dishes enhanced with truffles.  This final croque was topped with a truffled gouda cheese, truffle bechamel and some fresh truffle shaved on top.  It was a truly decadent one to end our croque adventure with.  

So which croque monsieur was the best?  Of course, we only tried a few in a very large city, so it’s impossible to say, but there were elements of each that we enjoyed.  We really liked the thick bread from Buvette, the option for a veggie friendly version at Brasserie Bellanger,  the perfectly grilled cheese on top at Les Deux Magots and of course, the addition of truffles at Artisan de la Truffe.  We’re planning to combine our favorite elements of these croques in an upcoming video where we try to recreate this at home, so keep an eye out for that upcoming video!

Of course, there’s more to eat in Paris than just croques!  A few other notable mentions from this trip include the boeuf bourguignon and the steak from Aux Crus de Bourgogne as well as some delicious pastas from a place called La Fabricca in the Saint Georges neighborhood.    

We also found a few great wine bars.  We loved Willi’s, a wine bar named after a dog with a great selection and a friendly atmosphere.  We also had a great evening of wine and cheese at Wine Therapy in the 9th arrondissement.  And on our last day we discovered an amazing wine shop near the Eiffel Tower called Les Petits Domaines.  We were able to sit down, taste a few bottles and chat with the very friendly owner.  This shop was a great experience and we definitely recommend stopping in if you’re nearby.

We’ve always found France to be very dog-friendly, and Paris is no exception.  We found a great dog-friendly hotel and all of the places we ate allowed us to enter with Bindi, we’ll link all of the details below.  The one thing we noticed was that Bindi wasn’t ever really allowed into any bakeries, even if we were just grabbing a quick pastry.  We don’t remember this being the case in previous trips, but perhaps something has changed.  Let us know in the comments if this is common or if we just had bad luck.  Nevertheless, Bindi enjoyed her trip to Paris as much as we did.