The Best Food Halls in Paris: Affordable Food Courts for France’s Modern Style

For a quiet, outdoor experience in a chic neighborhood, try Beaupassage, or “beautiful passageway,” a long L-shaped courtyard hidden away from the bustle of nearby Blvd. St-Germain. You can enter from rue du Bac or rue de Grenelle, but the entrance on Blvd. Raspail is the most impressive: a tunnel lined with a spectacular forest wall sculpture (made of cardboard!). The courtyard is lined with several miniature cafés (primarily for lunch, but some open for dinner) that target various budgets. The most affordable range includes the Thierry Marx Bakery, which serves excellent salads and sandwiches, including its signature “breadmaki,” a French version of a sushi roll made with bread. Marx is a famed chef who appears regularly on French television, so don’t hesitate to indulge in a pastry for dessert. The Italian-flavored Cantinetta Ventura, in the same price range, is where locals line up to order house-made pasta tossed with truffle cream sauce or fresh pesto before their very eyes. Non-pasta options include lasagna, focaccia, and salads—everything is made with fresh, Italian ingredients, delivered every week.
For a more classic restaurant vibe, Bistrot du Passage has full service and a killer wine list, or the splurge-worthy Pierre Hermé Café, where you can finish your meal with his famous Ispahan, a macaron-like pastry made with rose, raspberry and lychee. Finally, if you are disappointed with the limited coffee options in Parisian cafés, try Certified, a NYC-style expert java spot with a wider range of preparations and access to oat milk. 

Lafayette Gourmet is a convenient choice if you are doing a shopping tour of the grands magasins on Blvd Haussman. Like other famous European department stores, such as Harrods in London, the épicerie fine (gourmet grocery) at Galeries Lafayette has grown into a full-on food extravaganza. Covering three floors, Lafayette Gourmet includes a basement gourmet supermarket, a ground floor laden with high-end take-out, and a floor above that harbors a dazzling assortment of places to sit and eat. Called Les Tables du Gourmet, this first floor (for North Americans, the second floor) is a wonderland of teeny restaurants, each an offshoot of an establishment by a top chef. Each café has its own décor and menu, as well as a profile of the overseeing chef posted at the entrance. The prices are higher than what you might expect for so-called “street food” (mains €11–25, US $12–27), but the quality is impressive.

Options (partly pictured above) include unbearably light and crispy fried chicken with peanut sauce at Mosugo by young rising star Mory Sacko, Peruvian delicacies like lomo saltado and ahi de gallina at Yora by Peruvian maestro José Arias, and inventive twists on the traditional Provençal full-meal-in-a-sandwich pain bagnat at the Mediterranean-themed Bagnard, by the talented Yoni Saada. Primarily a lunch option, you could also come here for an early dinner as most restaurants stay open until around 9pm, 8pm on Sundays.

What is a food court anyway? Perhaps the French have had their finger on the pulse for centuries, since many long-running covered markets already offer prepared dishes as well as produce and poultry and such to cook at home. Some even provide a place to sit down and eat, café style. A good spot for a bite to eat before taking a train from the Gare de l’Est or Gare du Nord train stations (a five-to-10 minute walk),  Marché Saint Quentin is a real, live market, which means people also come here to buy carrots and lamb chops as well as affordable ready-made meals from traiteurs, that is, vendors who also cook.

A personal favorite is Oh Africa, which serves delicious dishes like poulet yassa, a West African chicken stew with onions, lemons, and olives, and maffé, or stewed beef with peanut sauce. However, there are plenty of other good stands, like Ti Caz which serves creole cuisine from the French island of La Réunion, La Bahianaise, which offers generous portions of Brazilian feijoada, a slow-cooked bean stew, as well as French options like Un Poisson en Ville, a fishmonger/oyster bar where you don’t have to worry if the oysters are fresh. Its seasonal dishes include seafood stews and steamed mussels. Meat lovers will appreciate Boucherie Constantin and its bar à viande (meat bar), while Pardi! has burgers, salads, and a plat du jour (daily special) as well as a nice selection of wines by the glass. Your best bet is lunch at this 19th century cast-iron market hall; while some stands stay open until 8pm, others close earlier and on Sundays the whole market closes at 1:30pm. Note that the market is also closed all day Monday.

Now we move into another food court dimension, one that is younger, more playful, and stays up late at night. In 2014, this former hangar for sorting postage next to the Gare de Lyon was transformed into  Ground Control, a giant multi-purpose venue for eating, meeting, drinking, and dancing, with a dose of socially responsible ateliers to boot.  This massive, 6,500-square-meter (70,000-square-foot) space has both indoor and outdoor areas for eating and various festivities. Outdoor food stands are made from repurposed city buses, indoor spaces run from a gymnasium-sized cafeteria to an intimate airplane fuselage, and include a podcast studio and a game room, not to mention a French-language bookstore, ping-pong tables, and a place to have your tarot cards read. Things really get going at night: there’s a concert space, a dance floor, and four bars to choose from. Events range from roundtables and exhibits around issues like climate change and social exclusion to karaoke fiestas and Soul Train parties.  Ground Control has 12 food stands, all with a sustainability label and good intentions. The food is tasty and copious, and the price is altogether reasonable (in the €12–16, US $13–17 range).

One of the best vendors is Burning Naan, which offers accessible Indian food: naan wraps, samosas, and biryanis. Kalimera serves “extra virgin Greek food,” i.e., souvlaki pitas, hummus, tzatziki, and other Greek mezzes. La Résidence is part of a solidarity project; it is staffed by refugee cooks-in-training, who have brought their culinary traditions with them: Nigerian chicken suya sandwiches, Côte d’Ivoire attiéké salad, Syrian falafel, etc. The hours reflect the spirit of the place: closed Mondays and Tuesdays, but for the rest of the week it opens at noon and closes from 11pm to 1am, depending on the night. Check the website for updated hours and for the event schedule.

If you would like a glimpse of the French start-up culture while eating focaccia, a novel atmosphere awaits you at La Felicità, another transformed industrial space near a train station. In 2017, a disused train depot next to Gare d’Austerlitz was turned into Station F, the self-declared “world’s largest start-up campus” and one end of its ginormous building harbors an appropriately vast and spectacular Franco-Italian food hall. Sit at long wooden tables with hundreds of young and imaginative tech mavens who have no problem with the order-and-pay-on-your-phone policy (there is a special ordering stand for the rare low-tech cash customer) and belly up to one of the four food stands serving pasta, pizza, burgers, and focaccia. The menu is casual and limited, but the ingredients are top notch, many imported directly from Italy, as is much of the staff. Pastries and ice cream can be found in a converted train wagon. There’s also a cocktail bar and a biergarten (the definition of Italian is a little loose here) as well as a cozy corner for those who just want coffee and a pastry.

The entire effort is a part of Big Mamma, a wildly successful group of Italian restaurants started by two French business school graduates, but the décor alone is its own reason to visit. Do not miss the restrooms—each stall has a different theme: a pink womb, geometric icicles, neon lights. Nightlife seekers will appreciate the evening event schedule, which includes concerts and dance parties, from salsa to swing to rock. 

You can come for coffee and a nosh as early as 8:30am on weekdays, but meals are only served at lunch and dinner hours, and the bar stays open late. Check the website for details.