French Dishes by Region: Traditional French Food and Where to Eat It

French cuisine is regional before it is national. Food in France is part of French culture in a way few countries match, and the famous French dishes most travellers know, boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, bouillabaisse, quiche lorraine, choucroute, all carry the name of a region or a city, and they taste best where they were born. In 2010, UNESCO added the gastronomic meal of the French to its list of intangible cultural heritage, and the baguette followed in 2022, but the meal changes completely as you travel. The north cooks with butter, cream and apples; the east with pork, sauerkraut and white wine; the south with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. A traditional French meal in Normandy has little in common with lunch in Nice. This guide is for travellers, not cooks: it is not a cookbook of easy French recipes to make at home, but a list of classic French dishes and the places to eat them. First comes the menu, with each famous French dish and the region it belongs to. Then we go region by region, from Paris to Normandy, Brittany, Alsace, Burgundy, Lyon, Nice and Provence, Marseille and Bordeaux, with what to order there, when it is in season, and where to stay so dinner is a short walk home. If you are still planning the route through the south, our southern France itinerary connects Lyon, Provence and the Riviera.

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Short answer

• Eat each dish where it belongs: boeuf bourguignon in Burgundy, quenelles in Lyon, bouillabaisse in Marseille, galettes in Brittany.
• Lunch is the bargain: a formule or plat du jour costs far less than the same food at dinner.
• Kitchens close between about 2 pm and 7 pm outside big cities, so plan meals around the hours.

Where to eat it

Where to eat traditional French dishes, region by region

Region 1 of 9

Paris food: croissants, French onion soup, steak frites and the bistro classics

The French capital has no single regional dish, but it is where most visitors eat their first traditional French food, and it gathers dishes from every region of France. The day starts at a bakery, the boulangerie, with a croissant or a pain au chocolat and a café crème at the counter of a café. The croissant is usually traced to the Austrian kipferl and to the Viennese bakers who worked in Paris in the 1800s, which is why croissants and brioches are still called viennoiseries. Lunch is a jambon-beurre, ham and butter in a fresh baguette and the quintessentially French snack, or the plat du jour in a bistro. The classic bistro menu is the same across the city: French onion soup, the old night-time soup of the Les Halles market, then steak frites, steak tartare, blanquette de veau or a croque-monsieur, and crème brûlée or mousse au chocolat to finish. Paris is also the capital of French pastry: macarons, éclairs and the Paris-Brest, a ring of choux pastry with praline cream named after a cycle race. Buy cheese from a fromagerie and eat it in a park, or join one of the food tours of the Marais and Saint-Germain to taste your way through the streets of Paris. For named restaurants, see our best restaurants in Paris.

Order hereCroissantFrench onion soupSteak fritesCroque-monsieurMacarons

Region 2 of 9

Normandy: Camembert, cider, Calvados, mussels in cream and sole meunière

Normandy is the dairy and apple region of northern France, and its cooking is built on butter, cream and apples. It is the home of Camembert de Normandie, a soft raw-milk cheese with protected status, and of two more famous cheeses, Pont-l’Évêque and Livarot; ask for all three on a cheese board. Apples are made into dry cider and Calvados, an apple brandy with its own appellation and the classic digestif, and a small glass of Calvados between courses is an old Normandy custom called the trou normand. Dishes cooked à la normande come with cream, cider or apples: moules marinières finished with crème fraîche, chicken in cider, pork with apples. The Channel coast gives sole, which Normandy cooks claim for sole meunière, and scallops, coquilles Saint-Jacques, in season through the winter. Near Mont-Saint-Michel, look for pré-salé lamb, raised on the salt marshes of the bay and protected by its own designation. Honfleur is the prettiest base on the coast, a harbour town of tall slate-fronted houses full of seafood restaurants, and the cheese villages and cider farms of the Pays d’Auge are a short drive inland.

Order hereCamembertMoules à la crèmeSole meunièreCider and CalvadosPré-salé lamb

Region 3 of 9

Brittany: galettes, crêpes, kouign-amann and Cancale oysters

Brittany is the Atlantic peninsula of the north-west, and its food is simple, salty and very good. Breton butter is salted, and salted caramel is the local flavour. The meal everyone eats here is a galette, a savoury buckwheat pancake, followed by a sweet crêpe made with wheat flour, washed down with dry cider poured into a ceramic bowl. Order a galette complète, with ham, cheese and an egg, and a crêpe with butter and sugar or salted caramel. The great pastry of Brittany is the kouign-amann, whose name means butter cake in Breton: layers of dough, butter and sugar that caramelise in the oven. It is credited to a baker in Douarnenez, on the west coast, in about 1860. The coast supplies the seafood. Cancale, a short drive from Saint-Malo, is an oyster town where you can buy oysters at stalls by the harbour and eat them on the sea wall, and seafood restaurants serve a plateau de fruits de mer, a tiered platter of shellfish on ice. In the south, Guérande is known for its hand-harvested sea salt and fleur de sel. Saint-Malo is the base: a walled port town with crêperies on every street.

Order hereGalette complèteCrêpesKouign-amannCancale oystersSeafood platter

Region 4 of 9

Alsace: choucroute garnie, tarte flambée, baeckeoffe and kougelhopf

Alsace sits on the German border, and its food shows it: pork, sauerkraut, dumplings and white wine, served in a cosy wine tavern called a winstub. The famous dish is choucroute garnie, sauerkraut cooked in Riesling and topped with sausages, smoked pork and boiled potatoes; the cabbage itself, choucroute d’Alsace, has carried a protected geographical indication in the EU since 2018. The other must-try is tarte flambée, or flammekueche, a very thin dough spread with crème fraîche, onions and lardons and baked in a hot wood oven, eaten with your hands and shared at the table. On cold days, order baeckeoffe, a casserole of lamb, pork and beef marinated in white wine and baked with potatoes in a pot sealed with dough. Strasbourg also makes foie gras, and bakeries sell kougelhopf, a ring-shaped brioche with raisins and almonds, and spiced gingerbread in winter. The wines are white and named by grape, Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris, and the Alsace Wine Route runs through half-timbered villages such as Colmar, Riquewihr and Eguisheim. Strasbourg’s Christmas market is the busiest time of year.

Order hereChoucroute garnieTarte flambéeBaeckeoffeKougelhopf

Region 5 of 9

Burgundy: boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, escargots and Dijon mustard

Burgundian cooking gave France two of its best-known dishes, and both are cooked in red wine. Boeuf bourguignon is a hearty dish of beef from the local Charolais cattle, cheaper cuts of meat braised for hours in red Burgundy with lardons, mushrooms and small onions, and coq au vin is chicken cooked the same way. Even eggs come in red wine sauce here, as oeufs en meurette. Start a meal with escargots de Bourgogne, snails baked in garlic and parsley butter, or with gougères, warm cheese puffs served with a glass of white wine. The cheese is Époisses, soft, orange and strong, washed in marc, a local brandy. Dijon gave its name to mustard, but the name Dijon mustard is not protected and the seed mostly comes from Canada; for mustard grown and made in the region, look for moutarde de Bourgogne, which has a protected geographical indication. Dijon also gave its name to kir, white wine with blackcurrant liqueur, named after Félix Kir, a mayor of the city. Beaune is the wine town at the heart of the Côte d’Or, with wine cellars to visit, a weekly market and a famous charity wine auction at the Hospices de Beaune each November.

Order hereBoeuf bourguignonCoq au vinEscargotsOeufs en meuretteKir

Region 6 of 9

Lyon: quenelles, saucisson brioché and the bouchon lyonnais

Lyon is often called the food capital of France, and it eats richly. The place to eat local food is a bouchon, a small, crowded restaurant with checked tablecloths and a short menu of Lyonnaise dishes, wine served in a heavy pot. Order quenelles de brochet, light pike dumplings baked in a pink crayfish sauce; saucisson brioché, sausage baked in brioche; salade lyonnaise with bacon, croutons and a poached egg; and cervelle de canut, a soft cheese mixed with herbs, shallots and garlic. Andouillette and tripe dishes are here for adventurous eaters. Dessert is a bright pink tarte aux pralines. Lyon’s cooking was shaped by the mères lyonnaises, women cooks who ran the city’s restaurants, and one of them, Eugénie Brazier, held three stars in the Michelin Guide at two restaurants at once in 1933. Paul Bocuse, who trained with her, later took Lyon cooking into haute cuisine. North of the city, the Bresse region raises poulet de Bresse, the only French chicken with its own appellation, granted in 1957. Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, the covered food market named after the city’s most famous chef, is the place to buy cheese, charcuterie and oysters. The wines are Beaujolais and the Côtes du Rhône.

Order hereQuenellesSaucisson briochéPoulet de BresseAndouilletteTarte aux pralines

Region 7 of 9

Nice, Provence and the French Riviera: socca, salade niçoise, ratatouille and pissaladière

On the Mediterranean, French cooking changes completely: butter and cream give way to olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and herbs. Nice was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia until 1860, and its food is close to that of Italy, with gnocchi, stuffed vegetables and Niçoise ravioli filled with leftover daube. The street food is socca, a thin chickpea pancake cooked on a wide iron pan in a wood oven and eaten hot with black pepper, and pissaladière, an onion tart with anchovies and black olives. Salade niçoise is the local salad; in Nice it is made with raw vegetables, eggs, olives and anchovies or tuna, and cooks argue about whether boiled potatoes and green beans belong. Pan bagnat is the same salad in a round bread roll. Ratatouille, a stew of fresh summer vegetables, aubergine, courgettes, red peppers and tomatoes, comes from Nice, and petits farcis are vegetables stuffed with meat and baked. Inland, Provence adds daube provençale, a beef stew with orange peel, tapenade and lavender honey. This is summer dining at its best: simple ingredients, vegetables and herbs, olive oil and a glass of rosé on the French Riviera. The Cours Saleya market in the old town sells fruit, vegetables and flowers each morning except Monday. Our southern France itinerary links Nice with Provence and Marseille.

Order hereSoccaSalade niçoisePissaladièreRatatouilleDaube

Region 8 of 9

Marseille: bouillabaisse, aïoli, panisse and pastis

Marseille, often called the oldest city in France, is its great port, and its signature dish is bouillabaisse. It began as the fishermen’s stew made with the unsold rockfish of the day, cooked with saffron, fennel, garlic, tomato and olive oil. A proper bouillabaisse is served in two parts: first the broth, with toasted bread and rouille, a garlic and saffron sauce, then the fish, cut at the table. In 1980 a group of Marseille restaurateurs signed a bouillabaisse charter to set out what the dish must contain, and some restaurants still display it; expect it to be expensive, and in many places you must order a day ahead. Le grand aïoli is the Provençal feast of salt cod, boiled vegetables and eggs with a strong garlic mayonnaise, traditionally on a Friday. Street food is panisse, chickpea chips fried until crisp. Marseille’s biscuit is the navette, boat-shaped and scented with orange flower water, and its drink is pastis, the anise aperitif that turns cloudy when you add water. The North African and Armenian communities make Marseille one of the best cities in France for couscous and spices, too.

Order hereBouillabaisseLe grand aïoliNavettesPastisBrandade

Region 9 of 9

Bordeaux and the South-West: entrecôte, canelés, Arcachon oysters, duck confit and cassoulet

Bordeaux is wine first, and the food is made to go with it. The local steak is entrecôte à la bordelaise, rib-eye in a sauce of red wine, shallots and bone marrow, sometimes grilled over vine cuttings. The city’s pastry is the canelé, a small fluted cake with a dark caramelised crust and a soft centre flavoured with rum and vanilla; the story usually told links it to the egg yolks left over when winemakers used egg whites to clear their wine, but nobody knows for sure. An hour west, the Bay of Arcachon is one of the main oyster areas in France, and Bordeaux eats Arcachon oysters with a glass of white Entre-Deux-Mers and, locally, a small grilled sausage on the side. Further into the South-West, the Dordogne and Gascony are duck country: confit de canard, magret, and foie gras. Around Toulouse and Castelnaudary, the dish is cassoulet, white beans baked slowly with duck confit, sausage and pork; Castelnaudary, Carcassonne and Toulouse each claim the true recipe. Bordeaux’s market at the Marché des Capucins is a good place for oysters and a glass of wine on a Saturday morning.

Order hereEntrecôte bordelaiseCaneléArcachon oystersDuck confitCassoulet

How French cuisine works: the menu, the formule and the courses

French meals have a fixed order, and knowing it makes any menu easy to read. Most restaurants offer a set menu at lunch, the formule, with two or three courses at a set price, and a dish of the day written on a blackboard. The words that confuse visitors most are on the first line: in France, the entrée is the starter, not the main course.

Apéritif

A drink before the meal: a glass of Champagne, a kir or pastis, with olives or nuts.

Entrée

The starter: soup, a salad, a terrine or escargots.

Plat principal

The main course, usually meat or fish with vegetables or fries.

Fromage

The cheese course, served before dessert, not after it.

Dessert and café

Dessert, then a small black coffee, an espresso. Milky coffee after a meal is unusual.

More French dishes everyone should try in France

These popular French dishes are made across the country, so you can order them in almost any French restaurant or brasserie. They are the core of French cooking, simple French food done carefully, and every family has its own version.

French onion soup

Soupe à l’oignon gratinée is onions cooked slowly until brown and sweet, simmered in beef stock, then topped with toasted bread and grated cheese, usually Gruyère or Comté, and grilled until the cheese is gooey and bubbling, with a crusty top. It was the late-night soup of the porters and night workers at Les Halles, the old Paris market, and brasseries still serve it late.

Boeuf bourguignon and coq au vin

Both are Burgundy stews braised slowly in red wine with bacon, mushrooms and small onions, one made with beef and the other with chicken. A good boeuf bourguignon, a classic dish of Burgundy, is cooked the day before and reheated; it is served with boiled potatoes, pasta or bread to soak up the sauce.

Ratatouille

Ratatouille is a vegetable stew from Nice of aubergine (eggplant), courgettes (zucchini), red bell peppers, onions and tomatoes cooked in olive oil with garlic and herbs. Purists cook each vegetable separately before combining them. It is served hot or at room temperature, as a side dish or a light main course. The neat layered version from the animated film Ratatouille is a confit byaldi, a modern restaurant dish.

Quiche lorraine

Quiche comes from Lorraine, next to Alsace, where the classic version has only eggs, cream and smoked bacon in a shortcrust pastry, without cheese. Bakeries all over France sell it by the slice for lunch, often with cheese added.

Cassoulet

Cassoulet is the great bean dish of the South-West, named after the earthenware pot, the cassole, it is baked in. White beans are cooked slowly with duck or goose confit, Toulouse sausage and pork until a crust forms on top. It is heavy food for cold weather, and best eaten in the Languedoc rather than from a tin.

Confit de canard

Duck legs are salted, then cooked slowly in duck fat, an old way of preserving meat in the South-West. Before serving, the legs are crisped in a pan or oven and served with potatoes fried in the same fat, pommes sarladaises, with garlic and parsley.

Steak frites and steak tartare

Steak frites, steak with French fries, is on almost every bistro menu. Order it saignant (rare) or à point (medium rare); well done is bien cuit. Steak tartare is raw chopped beef mixed with capers, shallots, mustard and an egg yolk, a classic of Paris brasseries, served with a tangy mustard dressing.

French bread, French cheese and the bakery

Bread and cheese are part of every French meal, and the bakery is part of every French street.

The baguette and French bread

The baguette is bought fresh at least once a day and served free with every meal; there is no side plate, and you put your bread on the tablecloth. A baguette tradition is made with only flour, water, salt and yeast, and is worth the few extra cents.

French cheese

France makes hundreds of cheeses, and dozens have protected designations. A good cheese board moves from mild to strong: a soft Camembert or Brie, a hard mountain Comté, a blue Roquefort, then a washed-rind cheese such as Époisses or Munster. Cheese comes before dessert, with bread and red wine.

Croissants and viennoiseries

Croissants and pains au chocolat are breakfast food, sold in the morning and rarely eaten after lunch. In bakeries, a croissant au beurre is made with butter, which is the one to order.

French desserts: from crème brûlée to tarte Tatin

French desserts fall into two families: the simple bistro desserts and the fine pastries of the pâtisserie.

Crème brûlée

An indulgent vanilla custard baked in a shallow dish, chilled, then covered with sugar that is burnt with a hot iron or torch until it sets into a thin crust you crack with a spoon.

Tarte Tatin

An upside-down tart of apples cooked in butter and sugar under the pastry, then turned out so the caramelised apples are on top. The story goes that it was first made in the late 19th century at the Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, in the Loire Valley, by the Tatin sisters. It is served warm with crème fraîche.

Chocolate soufflé

A soufflé rises in the oven on beaten egg whites and is served at once, with a light, airy texture that falls within minutes. Order it at the start of the meal, as it is baked to order. The French word soufflé means blown up.

Crêpes, mousse au chocolat and profiteroles

Crêpes come from Brittany but are sold from street stands everywhere. Mousse au chocolat and profiteroles, cream puffs of choux pastry filled with ice cream under hot chocolate sauce, are the classic bistro desserts. A café gourmand is a coffee with three or four small desserts, good when you cannot choose.

French drinks: wine, cider and the aperitif

Each French region has its own drink, and ordering the local one is half the pleasure. Wine is ordered by the glass, the carafe or the bottle; a carafe of house wine, the vin de la maison, is cheap and usually good.

French wine by region

Burgundy makes Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Bordeaux red blends of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Alsace dry white Riesling and Gewurztraminer, and Provence pale rosé. Champagne comes only from the Champagne region east of Paris, and Beaujolais is drunk young and cool in Lyon.

Cider and Calvados

Normandy and Brittany do not grow grapes; they make cider from apples, served in a bowl with galettes, and in Normandy Calvados, an apple brandy aged in oak.

Pastis and kir

Pastis, an anise spirit mixed with five parts cold water, is the aperitif of Marseille and Provence. Kir, white wine with blackcurrant liqueur, is the aperitif of Burgundy; with Champagne it becomes a kir royal, the best-known French cocktail.

French dishes that are not French

Some foods called French outside France are rarely eaten there, or go by another name.

French toast

In France it is pain perdu, lost bread: stale bread soaked in milk and egg and fried, served as a dessert rather than breakfast.

French fries

Frites are eaten all over France with steak or mussels, but Belgium claims to have invented them, and the name French fries came from English speakers.

French dressing

The orange American dressing is unknown in France. A French salad comes with a vinaigrette of oil, vinegar and Dijon mustard.

When to eat what: French food by season

French cooking follows the market, and menus change with the seasons. Look for the dish of the day and order what is in season.

• Spring (March to May): asparagus, spring lamb at Easter, strawberries, and the first goat’s cheeses.
• Summer (June to August): tomatoes, melons, apricots and peaches in Provence, salade niçoise and ratatouille, mussels on the Atlantic coast.
• Autumn (September to November): the grape harvest, mushrooms and game, apples and cider in Normandy, and the Hospices de Beaune wine auction in November.
• Winter (December to February): oysters and scallops at their best, foie gras and Champagne at Christmas, choucroute and cassoulet, and the galette des rois in January.

Ordering words

Formule

A set menu of two or three courses at a fixed price, usually at lunch.

Plat du jour

The dish of the day.

Entrée

The starter, not the main course.

Saignant, à point, bien cuit

Rare, medium rare, well done.

Une carafe d’eau

A jug of tap water, free with every meal.

Un café

A small black coffee, an espresso.

L’addition, s’il vous plaît

The bill, please. Waiters will not bring it until you ask.

Bon appétit

Enjoy your meal.

When the French eat

Meal times are stricter than in most countries. Restaurants serve lunch from about noon to 2 pm and dinner from about 7.30 pm, and outside big cities the kitchen closes in between. Brasseries and cafés serve food all day.

Famous French food: FAQ