Some of Paris’s top chefs are going plant-based—but what do Parisians make of it?

It’s May 2026. I’m in Paris with my six-year-old—his first time, my umpteenth. But this time, it’s different. Although I am mostly omnivorous, my son is largely vegetarian. A Google search assured me that the French capital has, alongside traditional steak restaurants and fromageries, plenty of plant-based offerings. Certainly, the places I’ve booked promise vegetarian options on their menus.

But now, I’m sitting in a traditional bistro in Montmartre, looking at a menu which suggests ‘plant-based’ may mean including a side salad with your steak. I look at my son, as convincingly as I can. “How about… fish?”

Four months later, I return to Paris, alone and on a bit of a mission. I’m determined to find the plant-based city I know is out there.

I begin in ‘Veggietown’ in the 9th and 10 arrondissements, between the artists’ quarter of Montmartre, and the opulence of the Palais Garnier. Jumping off the metro at Poissoniere, I walk up a fairly typical Parisian street: Cafés alongside electrical stores; restaurants, closed at this time of the morning, sit beside toy shops.

As I walk down one of its main thoroughfares, Rue de Chabrol, frontages become brighter and more international: A scarlet Korean eatery with vegetarian options; a lime-green café which advertises itself as ‘ethical and eco-responsible’; the vibrant red-on-stark-black of a vegetarian Indian restaurant. I’m certainly in the right area for plant-based cuisine, and it’s a wonderful example of Paris’s diversity, if not traditional French cuisine.

“People came to me for meat; poultry, prime rib of beef, and so on.” But a moment of realization changed everything.”

- Alain Passard, chef, L’Arpege restaurant

I’m well aware French cuisine is big on dairy and meat. But equally, in a city famously ahead of the curve and a trendsetter in its own way, I’m also surprised Paris isn’t embracing more sustainable eating habits. A 2023 Oxford University Study revealed that vegan diets produce 75 percent fewer greenhouse gases than high meat-eater diets.

For lunch, I’ve booked self-described ‘carbon-neutral-cuisine’ restaurant, La Table de Colette, just north of the Pantheon, a studenty area full of classic French restaurants. Chef Josselin Marie founded the restaurant after forging a career in some of France’s leading food institutions; Plaza Athénée, The Ritz, Hôtel de Vendôme.

His mission is to serve plant-centered, micro-seasonal produce, with minimal waste and no red meat. Products, recipes and ingredients are prioritized using an eco-calculator developed by Bon Pour Le Climat, an association which offers “concrete and positive actions to change our eating practices … to preserve the planet and its climate.” He tells me that 400 years ago, a plate consisted largely of vegetables in France. Over time, animal proteins were used to show status—which gradually became the norm.

La Table de Colette’s sous-chef Ismaël Hermantin, who’s also translating for us, echoes this. “The soul of French cuisine is one product—it was usually the fish or the meat. But here, we turn this around.” I see this first-hand. I’ve enjoyed a plate of fennel, served two ways—braised, and prepared as a crisp, fresh salad. On the side are slices of homemade monkfish chorizo, and a garnish of perfectly pan-seared monkfish. Role reversal.

Marie makes reference to legendary chef and trailblazer Alain Passard who, in 1998, made the decision to remove meat from his three-Michelin-star restaurant L’Arpege. Located in Paris’ cultural center, next to the Musée Rodin, L’Arpege originally opened as a rotisserie. In a conversation with Garden Collage Magazine, Passard said, “People came to me for meat; poultry, prime rib of beef, and so on.” But a moment of realization changed everything. Speaking on Netflix documentary Chef’s Table in 2016, Passard describes his sudden change of heart. “Was it the idea of a dead animal? Was it the blood? Working with meat became very painful.”

And it’s not just the old guard. Across the Seine in fashionable Le Marais, is the founder of largely plant-based restaurant Datil, 35-year-old Manon Fleury—described as a leader of a ‘new generation of chefs’ by Monaco Life when she took over Michelin-starred Elsa in 2021. Celebrating a return to ‘peasant common sense’, she puts plants front-and-center with dishes like galettes de sarrasin (savory buckwheat crepes), lentilles du Puy (French lentil ragout), Ratatouille—the diet of the average French citizen, before adding meat and fish became normal practice.

As I leave La Table de Colette in the late afternoon sunshine, I realize my idea of ‘vegan’ and the Parisian concept of cuisine végétale (plant-based food) are perhaps not identical. To my mind, plant-based food involves the removal of any and all animal products. But here, in France, it can often mean a reduction of these products, and a centering of the vegetable.

The following day finds me on the Boulevard de Clichy, down the road from the Moulin Rouge in the 18th arrondissement, wondering where I’ve landed. The street is lined with adult entertainment stores and shops displaying their novelty wares in neon-lit windows. I’m not convinced the Eiffel Tower should be used in quite the manner it’s being showcased, but who am I to judge?

I’m starting to wonder if I got the question wrong. It’s not ‘Is Paris going plant-based?’, but rather, ‘How plant-based can Paris go before its residents realize?’

I’m here for Green Farmer’s. It stands out as a jungle-hued beacon along this one-track-minded strip and Manuel Gonzales, the burger joint’s co-founder, welcomes me in. He starts telling me the story of a diner who hadn’t realized until he’d demolished his meal that it was plant-based. “I see a message with 30 or 40 lines, usually when it’s like this, it’s not good,” he tells me. But the customer loved what he ate. In his review, he admitted that had he realized it was a vegan venue before ordering, he’d have left.

“We get a lot more people coming from different [backgrounds]—vegetarian, vegan, flexitarian, curious,” Gonzales says. Many have made this place their go-to for vegan nuggets, chili ‘sin’ carne, and the crousty green, a vegan take on a popular Parisian street food, consisting of crunchy vegan chicken pieces over rice, served with lashings of vegan mayo and crispy onions. I opt for the Smash Truffle burger—double smashed plant-based steaks and signature truffle sauce. It’s huge, but so tasty I can’t put it down.

I make my way south, through Saint-Georges, busy with a lunchtime crowd dining on street corners, to the busy, opulent Avenue de l’Opéra. It’s like stepping into the Paris of yesteryear, of fancy stores and tall, pale, cream limestone facades. It’s here where Jade Genin, chocolatiere, creator and artist, has created her namesake chocolaterie, renouncing butter, cream, and refined sugar.

Genin has not only replicated the richness of traditional French chocolate, but surpassed it in the flavors and textures. While she sources her cocoa beans from Xoco in Honduras, a business dedicated to paying its farmers a fair wage, being fully sustainable is difficult, she tells me. “For chocolate, we have to use air conditioning. We do our best.”

My final meal is at Daimant-St-Honoré, across from the Louvre, I sit acoss the table from chief-of-staff, Joséphine Van Eecke, Tiffany lamps on each table giving the space an autumnal glow. Daimant now proudly advertises itself as a restaurant of ‘plants and wines’, but this wasn’t always the case. “Alice [Tuyet, founder of Daimant] said, ‘We won’t be able to have this restaurant for decades if we market it to vegans’.” Deciding that the term ‘vegan’ was too military, with connotations beyond diet itself, Tuyet and her team made the choice to not market their restaurants as obviously plant-based.

I choose crunchy mushroom croquettes, skewered mushrooms on crushed potatoes, and a creamy Snickers cake. At the next table, diners feast on eggplant Milanaise and an enormous sharing-size chocolate mousse. “We get plenty of businessmen who come here on their lunch break and have no idea we’re vegan.” I note that it’s a younger crowd here now—diners in their 20s and 30s appear to make up the clientele. “Younger people are more open-minded,” van Eecke tells me. “They are more sensitive to climate change.”

There’s no doubt traditional French fare continues to thrive in Paris—every street appears to have a classic bistro overflowing with diners, and signs for specialist stores selling oysters, shellfish and cheese. I’m starting to wonder if I got the question wrong. It’s not ‘Is Paris going plant-based?’, but rather, ‘How plant-based can Paris go before its residents realize?’

I’m taken by the idea that there’s no need to point out if the cuisine is ‘vegan’ or not—and let the dishes speak for themselves. As Green Farmer’s Manuel Gonzales says, “We’re a fast food place first, vegan second.”

I’ve seen this first-hand—that the signposting of anything overtly plant-based is deliberately small, tempting those who may otherwise avoid a meat-free meal. As I remember the burger I ate there, I recall how even I had momentarily forgotten that the cheese and creamy truffle sauce were both entirely plant-based. How quickly I could have been fooled too.

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The research for this story was largely funded by the writer with extra assistance from La Table de Colette and Daimant.

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