Are vegetarian dishes served in average restaurants in Paris?

Question

Okay, I’m going to Paris soon with a group of friends, but being the only vegetarian in the group I don’t want to be a pain to get food for, like having to go to specifically vegetarian restaurants and whatnot. So if we go to normal restaurants, what am I most likely to be able to eat? As I’ve heard that France isn’t particularly veggie friendly...

Also, any recommendations of restaurants would be awesome. Thanks in advance :-)

Answer 1

You will find quiches and tarts, pizza too, however the concept

of vegetarian cheese (i.e. not containing animal rennet) doesent exist in france. I found it very hard, plus most places are so full of smoke, it's hard to breathe.

Answer 2

The solution in Paris is to contact the Buddhists there, they will have a list of "Buddha" restaurants ie veggie.

Answer 3

I saw a show by Gordon Ramsey (Kitchen Nightmares) about a Veggie Restaurant in Paris that was struggling.  The cook was a pot head(he was fired in the first ten minutes of the show) and the food was terrible.  Gordon said that vegetarian restaurants barely exist in Paris and the ones that do usually cater to tourists.

Answer 4

A salad would be promising.

Answer 5

I had some very bad vegetarian food when I went to Paris. I had a soya burger in one restaurant which was quite disgusting, and every single meal I had was served with green beans. Are you a proper vegetarian, or a pescetarian, because  I did have some good fish there- in a west African restaurant in Montmatre.

Answer 6

hi! I've been vegetarian for more than a decade and I live in Paris. I know what it's like to be the only vegetarian in a group. But finding normal restaurants where you can eat veggie meals is not particularly difficult in Paris. Any restaurant has one veggie dish at least (but try to avoid traditional French restaurants, it's more complicated to find what you want here!).

If you go to an Indian / Chinese / Nepalese / Italian / Greek/ Lebanese / African / Southeast Asian restaurant or a pizzeria, I'm pretty sure you' ll find something vegetarian to eat! Cafes and creperies are also very good places (and perhaps it is the only way to eat vegetarian French meals),

So there's something for everyone! ;-)

here is a good link for you (in English, of course): http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/20...

Answer 7

No, not all restaurants will have a veg dish, but you will be able to have a salad, bread and cheese every where.

Careful when you order something too as a lot of things you wouldn't expect to have meat in them (tomato and onion soup), the server ill probably tell you that they don't have meat but once you get it you will find meat balls in your tomato soup.

If you eat fish, you should be fine as fish is quite big in France. But if not... it's going to be pretty hard if you don't speak French.

Look for more New Age hipster places.

Answer 8

A traditional restuarant can be pretty tough. We had to compromise somewhat and ate a bit of fish for the main courses, but that won't  appeal to all strict veggies. Starters are quite easy to come by as veggie dishes.

You can always pick something off the menu with ham and ask them to leave the ham out, another fairly typical thing we have done, although can be tricky to communicate. You may need to say "Je suis vegetarienne" Don't says "I don't eat meat" in french, as they don't seem to see ham as meat!

You can eat in non-traditional places, like we found aTexmex place that did bean burritos etc. Or you can find veggie pizzas in Pizzerias.

Sorry I can't recall restaurants names. You could check out something like the Rough Guide or Lonely Planet guides on Paris, as they will have lots of restuarant info, including veggie friendly stuff (plus will be handy for lots of other stuff too). Otherwise you could end up with very tired feet, trawling the streets, as we did find most traditional menus did not have anything veggie as a main course.

Afterall you want to enjoy Paris, not stress about eating!

Answer 9

Check out www.happycow.net or www.vegdining.com.  They'll find veg-friendly places where you can get your veg dish and your friends can get their meat dishes.

Answer 10

I very recently came back from Paris, both me and my boyfriend are vegetarian so I made sure I did some research before hand. I can highly recommend le potager du marais, check it out on google maps. Really lovely vegetarian food that I don't think meat eaters would mind partaking it, really friendly staff, who speak brilliant english too! I also found a couple of other vegetarian places within the marais area, the names escape me though, sorry, but we both preferred the above restaurant anyway. We also found that some places had a ' salade végétarien' on their menus, and pizza places almost always had a vegi option. Italian places will often have a few dishes without meat, I had a delicious bruschetta and salad, and my boyfriend had mushroom pasta, also delicious, on our final day. I don't think you need to be too worried, but make sure you learn, if you don't know already, words in french for various meats, so you don't get caught out! Hope that helps, and I hope you have a lovely time, I am very jealous!

Answer 11

You can dine at vegetarian-friendly restaurants so that everyone will have a choice.  There are many listed on VegDining.com.  Here's the link for France:

http://www.vegdining.com/GetRestList.cfm...

Just flip from page to page till you get to the Paris listing.

Good luck and enjoy your trip!