Paris Makes Room for Plant-Based Eating, the French Way
Observer · · g2988507
Paris is embracing plant-based food, without abandoning butter, steak frites or its devotion to the pleasure of eating.
Plants are popping up all over Paris. Alongside the greening of the city , turning streets into parks, roundabouts into miniature forests and parking spaces into native plant walkways, Parisian menus are also turning to plants, the French way. This shift even made its way into Emily in Paris : In the fifth season, the show’s love-interest chef, Gabriel, pushes to take his Michelin-starred restaurant into a more plant-based direction.
At the same time, there is an environmental benefit to this shift: putting more plants on the plate means lower emissions and a smaller climate footprint. French schools and municipal dining services have increased proportions of plant-based dishes, and to avoid food waste, all restaurants are required to offer doggy bags; an American custom once thought unimaginable in France is now associated with being eco-conscious.
This increasing interest in plant-based foods is the result of a collective environmental shift, combined with the ever-hovering influence of food and lifestyle trends imported from the United States.
First came kale, leaving French farmers at the weekend marchés confused by American expats asking for cabbage and why exactly it had to be that particular kind. “But why kale?” one farmer at the weekend market recently asked me. “Red cabbage is just as healthy!”
Then came the “sans gluten” wave as bakeries, perplexed, began preparing gluten-free bread for American tourists. The idea that anyone would voluntarily abstain from wheat, or even a proper croissant, was hard to grasp.
Now, plant-based food is having its moment. While American wellness culture has helped shape its recent popularity, the French interpretation of it remains subtly and remarkably French .
After a decade living in Paris, I have noticed that the French are more comfortable eating between categories: choosing a vegetable tasting menu at dinner, followed by steak tartare the next time they dine out, without feeling the need to explain either choice. They might eat less meat without swearing it off forever. Americans are more likely to make the way we eat part of our identity. We are either vegans or meat-eaters; health fanatics or junk-food lovers. We place ourselves in categories and defend them with an almost political intensity. For the French, contradiction doesn’t necessarily need to be resolved.
While American food culture often seems to shun certain food groups, French food culture makes room for the full spectrum of foods as long as they remain in their proper place. The French order dessert, but enjoy it within a reasonable portion. Eating for pleasure is not treated as breaking a healthy diet, but as a part of it.
Perhaps this is why, in France, plant-based eating does not appear to be tied to wellness trends or political identity. Eating more plants is simply another way to cook and dine out. The French are not giving up meat. The steak frites are in solid supply, and the butter wall at La Grande Épicerie is well stocked, but from cold-pressed juice bars on the Right Bank to the most celebrated Michelin-starred kitchens, plants are moving from the side of the plate to the center.
The steak will surely survive, but menus are making more room for glazed and slow-roasted carrots alongside duck à l’orange. In a city known for brasseries and butter, change does not simply arrive through restriction or renunciation, but by making a little more room on the plate.
Multiple Locations Land & Monkeys , an entirely vegan bakery, proves that pastries can still be delicious even when you remove butter, eggs and cream. With multiple locations around Paris and elsewhere in France, this bakery sells the classics, from fresh baguettes and flaky pain au chocolat to rich quiches and focaccia sandwiches. Its bread and pastries rival those of its butter-laden counterparts. The popularity of Land & Monkeys proves that even the French foods most closely associated with butter can be made entirely from plants.
20 Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, 75010 Paris, France Founded by Alice Tuyet , Faubourg Daimant is one of the most talked-about plant-based restaurants in Paris. Its mushroom and vegetable dishes are marinated, roasted, stuffed and glazed the French way, with vegetable trimmings turned into deeply flavored jus. From its comfort favorites such as plant-based croquettes to elegant dishes featuring seaweed caviar, many plates are meant to be shared family style. The inspiration is a French brasserie menu, rewritten around plants, and its popularity proves that vegan food can be indulgent and healthy.
24 place du Marché Saint-Honoré, 75001 Paris, France Daimant Saint-Honoré is the fine-dining sibling of Faubourg Daimant. Set on Rue Saint-Honoré among high-end fashion boutiques and five-star hotels, this elegant restaurant shows that plant-based eating is no longer confined to juice bars or alternative restaurants in the Marais. Located near Place Vendôme, it presents plant-based dining as a form of luxury, serving algae-based vegan caviar, root-vegetable-based carpaccios and dishes constructed with intricate layers of plant flavors.
13 rue des Gravilliers 75003 Paris, France Manon Fleury , the head chef of Datil , has taken plant-based eating into Michelin-starred territory. Although Datil is known primarily as a plant-led restaurant, the menu is not entirely vegan or vegetarian, as fish and meat do appear on some plates. Dishes take on a seasonal and ecological focus with vegetables and fruits sourced from local farms around the Paris region. Datil is a clear example of the French approach to plant-based eating: It doesn’t demand a total renunciation of meat, but instead rearranges the hierarchy and places plants as the main ingredient of its menus. Datil also rearranges the gender hierarchy of traditional kitchens by having a predominantly female staff. Michelin has described Datil as a restaurant of the future, not only for its plant-led menu but also for challenging the traditional male-dominated culture of the kitchen.
Multiple Locations Wild & the Moon , the Right Bank juice bar café started by Emma Sawko, has a California-meets-Marais vibe, serving green and brightly colored cold-pressed juices with names promising energy, immunity and detoxification, as well as adaptogenic and matcha lattes and açai bowls. The menu is entirely plant-based and gluten-free, with no refined sugar or plastic packaging. The cafes, particularly the rue Charlot and rue Saint-Honoré locations, have become the unofficial refueling stations for the Paris Fashion Week crowd, with editors and models grabbing juices and salad-grain bowls. Vogue followed model Rebecca Longendyke as she stopped at Wild & the Moon during Paris Fashion Week to pick up a vegan chai latte to go, while French musician and actress Soko named the juice bar among her favorite vegan addresses in Paris. What once felt distinctly Californian now fits naturally into the streets of Paris, among its galleries and fashion showrooms.
32 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris, France A few blocks from the Tuileries, Maisie Café offers a smaller, more discreet version of Wild & the Moon, bringing together the same mix of food and wellness. Its convenient location near central Paris showrooms, the Ritz and Hotel Costes has helped this café attract a fashion-industry clientele. Christian Louboutin was among its early regulars, and Carine Roitfeld has reportedly stopped by. Maisie Café was founded by former LVMH executive Isabella Capece and her husband Xavier Galeota , who wanted to bring the American wellness-focused juice trend to Paris. Besides vegan and gluten-free breakfast bowls, salads and cold-pressed juices, one of the most popular plant-based items on the menu is “Maisie’s Cures”: hot and cold soups, elixirs and bouillons that are structured as a “cleanse” and are intended to be taken for one, three or five days, depending on the cure.
84 Rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris, France Renowned chef Alain Passard began shifting his focus to plants many years ago, and in 2025, he went a step further and removed all animal products from the three-Michelin-starred menu at Arpège , with the exception of honey from Arpège’s own beehives. The shift toward a plant-based menu might seem radical for a Michelin-awarded fine-dining restaurant, but it represents a palate evolution that Passard had been working towards for decades. His influence has traveled beyond the walls of his restaurant; Netflix devoted an episode of Chef’s Table: France to his vegetable-centered cooking. Arpège reflects what is at the heart of the French approach to plant-based cooking: it’s not about how well peas can imitate animal protein, but how to prepare a carrot or a melon with the care and technique once reserved for steak tartare, lobsters or foie gras.