Eating On Budget In Paris

Paris: Grin if you can bear the prices!

Paris seems to have it all! The world’s most visited museum, the world’s most famous painting and a giant iron tower shaped like a woman’s leg that you can climb right to the top of. That said, Paris has a well deserved reputation as an expensive destination and eating out can chew through a budget in no time. There are a few tricks of the trade that locals and savvy visitors alike use to eat well in the world's most romantic city and still have enough money left over for a glass of wine.

Breakfast in Paris involves hitting the nearest backery and tucking into their fantastic assortment of pastries. Parisians are fussy about their bread and almost every loaf eaten in the city is baked on the same day. The law prevents bakeries from using any ingredients other than flour, yeast water and salt . Try the traditional baguette still warm from the over or the delicious sourdough bread.  If you have a sweet tooth go for the brightly colored macarons and rich madeleines. Don't hit the first bakey you find as many down the back streets do a cheap breakfast deal with coffee and a pastry for half the price of sit down cafes and tourist oriented backeries..

French law also obliges restaurants to provide an affordable lunch menu to all comers. These will set you back between 13 and 15 Euros for two courses, either a starter and main or main and dessert. There is something about a visitor taking advantage of the cheap lunch menu that tugs at the purse strings of the average Paris restauranteur and they have devised numerous ways of bumping up the basic price; watch out for water that is more expensive than wine and for supplementary charges for better cuts of meat or fresh seafood. As for a carafe of water rather than a bottle and you will perfectly drinkable tap water rather than overpriced tapwater from a bottle.

Most neighborhoods in Paris have a local speciality. The old Jewish Marais quarter has lots of falafel carts and the 13th arrondissement is full of affordable Chinese and Cambodian restaurants. The Latin Quarter rivals Montmartre for its density of crepe stands serving huge and filling crepes. Whatever you do, avoid any restaurant with a menu board in multiple languages as they are virtually all overpriced and serve poor quality food to foreigners.

Other things to try in Paris include Croque Monsieur, essentially a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. This becomes a Croque Madame if it has an egg on top! Escargots or snails also appear on menus and are tastier than you would expect for a lettuce eating animal and not slimy at all. For seafood lovers, mouclade is a must try dish made of mussels backed in cream and white wine. Onion soup makes a great, and very filling, meal for vegetarians. For duck lovers, Confit de Canard is an essential dish to try, while Coq au Vin is a good example of the time-honored French way of cooking almost anything in huge amounts of wine.