Au Bon Boc (Montmartre)

At the foot of the Butte Montmartre, the restaurant opened its doors in 1879. It quickly became one of the landmarks of the artistic Paris of the Belle Époque, where Manet, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Apollinaire could be seen crowding in over a glass of absinthe. Today the place has been taken over by Benjamin Moréel and Christopher Prêchez — the same pair who turned around Le Petit Bouillon Pharamond — with the aim of making it a refuge for aesthetes, locals and passing visitors alike. The soul of the place has been preserved: candles, woodwork, frescoes, a grand bar, paintings by the dozen on the walls and, at the back, a piano bar available for private hire for piano-and-voice evenings. In the kitchen, French tradition rules, with even a semainier — a long-forgotten practice — offering a market dish for each day of the week: Normandy côte de bœuf to share on Wednesday, grilled sweetbreads on Thursday, Breton lobster à la parisienne on Friday. A timeless Montmartre institution, at once a restaurant with character and a gathering place, ideally set a couple of steps from the Théâtre de l'Atelier, between the Anvers and Pigalle metro stations.