If you’ve followed along with our travels so far, you’ll notice I don’t do tons of museums. So when we only had 48 hours in Paris, I have no shame in saying we ate great food, explored the city and didn’t set one foot inside the Louvre.
I was so thrilled to find out that Tillman’s sister and brother-in-law were going to be in Paris at the same time as us, but our trips only overlapped for one day so we had less than 24 hours to pack in all the fun! We did a little back and forth on potential options for brunch/dinner/activities/etc, but with lots of other projects going on at home we didn’t make any reservations. We got a couple recommendations to keep on the back burner though, which really ended up paying off.
A couple weeks before heading to Paris, a friend of mine put up a Facebook post asking for the best cocktail bars in Paris. Between that post and google I create a list of bars to hit up if we had the chance and added it to my notes. It turns out, some bars on this list are among the best cocktail bars in the world! Even better, a lot of them are in the same neighborhood and just down the street from a charming Paris bistro that had been recommended by another friend for dinner: Chez Janou.
I know I’m talking bars here, but let me take a minute for this restaurant. This place is not gathering any Michelin stars and that’s what makes it great. With so many restaurants in Paris it can be hard to sort though all of the “best of” lists and get to the real deal neighborhood spots. The food here is excellent, the service is friendly, and the atmosphere is very cozy and fun. It’s a classic French bistro, i.e. crowded, quick-paced, lively, in the heart of the Marais District – give it a try!
Back to cocktails! After dinner, we started talking what to do next. I pulled out my list of bars (I had come up with 18!) and started with the one closest to us. We ended up having the MOST FUN cocktail crawl. Here’s where we ended up:
What I didn’t know when we ended up at these four spots, it that three are run by the same group – Quixotic Projects (Little Red Door being the outlier.) Quixotic Projects now has five bar/restaurants in their group, each with a different style, all I can say is good job guys!
Looking forward to exploring the others on my list, here they are:
- La Commune
- Red House
- Mabel
- Dirty Dick
- Syndicat
- CopperBay
- Baton Rouge
- Lulu White
- Combat
- Pasdeloup
- Clown Bar
- Experimental Cocktail club
- Sherry Butt
- Danico