Best Food Tours in Paris

By Chef Karl Wilder

I have worked for two of the companies on this list.

So has Chef PJ, who runs two of our Paris food tours.

Before we started The Chef Tours, both of us guided tours for Secret Food Tours and Eating Europe. PJ collected 111 pages of five-star reviews at Secret Food Tours and hundreds more at Eating Europe. I was the expansion manager for Secret and initiated tours in 50ish cities, and I learned a lot doing so.

We left because we wanted to build the tour our way. Not because those companies are bad at what they do. If you want a large group or corporate tour, we will be the first to refer you.

That is the disclosure.

Here is the honest version of who does what well in Paris, including the parts where I would send you somewhere other than my own tour.

The Short Version

I guided for Secret Food Tours and Eating Europe before I helped start The Chef Tours, so treat everything here as an informed opinion with a stake in the outcome.

The three things that actually change your experience are group size, who is guiding, and how long you are out. Price barely correlates with any of them.

Most good Paris food tours run about three hours with 8 to 20 people, and cost between 65 and 157 euros or dollars. If you have one free morning, book Secret Food Tours. If you care most about wine, book Paris by Mouth. If you want a chef and have a whole day including food and wine, book The Chef Tours.

Why I Am a Biased Source

Every “best food tours in Paris” article you will read is written by somebody with an interest.

Affiliate sites earn a commission on the booking. Operators rank themselves first. Marketplaces rank whoever pays for placement. I am no different, except that I am telling you.

What I can offer instead is the inside of the business. I know what a guide gets paid. I know how many people a company will squeeze onto a walk when August gets busy. I know which tastings are chosen because they are good, and which are chosen because the shop gives a volume discount.

Read this as my opinion, not a neutral review.

What Actually Makes One Tour Different From Another

Three things. Everything else is marketing.

Group size. Eight people fit inside a small cheese shop. Sixteen do not. At sixteen, you stand on the pavement while the guide goes inside. You eat what is handed back out to you.

The number in the small print is the best predictor of the day you will have.

Who is guiding. Most food tour guides are trained on a script and a route. The good ones are excellent company. But there is a difference between someone who has learned that a baguette de tradition contains only flour, water, salt and yeast, and someone who has made two hundred of them at four in the morning.

Length. A three-hour tour is a tasting walk. A five-hour tour is a day. Neither is better. They are different products, and price per hour tells you nothing about which one you will enjoy.

Which Neighbourhood Should You Choose?

Less than you think. But it is the first question everybody asks me, so here is my read on the four that operators actually run.

Le Marais is the busiest and the safest choice.

It has the Marché des Enfants Rouges, founded in 1615 and the oldest covered market in the city, plus falafel, Jewish bakeries and a dense run of good shops in a small area.

It is also where most companies run their flagship, which means it is crowded with other tour groups by eleven in the morning.

Montmartre is the one I know best, and it splits people. The top of the hill around Sacré-Cœur is a tourist trap and I would not eat there. Two streets down, it becomes an actual neighbourhood with actual bakeries. A good guide takes you down. A lazy one keeps you up top where the photographs are.

Saint Germain is the expensive one. Excellent producers, high rents, smaller shops. I send serious cheese people here.

Groups have to be smaller here because the spaces are smaller, which is why Eating Europe caps its Saint Germain tour at 8 rather than 10.

The Latin Quarter around Rue Mouffetard has a market street and a lot of student-priced food.

I rate it the weakest of the four for quality, and the strongest for atmosphere on a Sunday morning. It can be a great place to get a coffee and watch the crowd.

My advice is to pick the company first and take whichever neighbourhood they run best. A great guide in the Latin Quarter beats a bored one in Saint Germain.

What You Actually Eat on a Paris Food Tour

Nobody sets expectations properly on this. In my experience it causes more disappointment than anything else.

A standard three-hour Paris food tour is four to ten small tastings. Not six meals. Tastings.

You will almost certainly get a viennoiserie, usually a croissant. Bread from a bakery that won something. Two or three cheeses. Charcuterie. A chocolate or a pastry. Maybe a glass of wine.

You will probably also get a stop that exists to break up the walk rather than because the food is remarkable.

Here is what I watch people get wrong. Most arrive having eaten breakfast, because they do not believe a “tasting” tour will fill them.

Then they are full by the fourth stop and stop enjoying it.

Come hungry. Eat nothing beforehand except coffee. Every guide in this city tells people the same thing, and half of them ignore it. Now we know some tours give tiny tastes and can leave you hungry, but eat afterwards, just in case you have a generous host and are full. Bottom line: skip breakfast.

The other expectation to manage is the walking. Three hours of a tour is roughly two to four kilometres, in stops and starts, mostly standing. I find that harder on the feet than a straight walk of the same distance.

Secret Food Tours

Secret Food Tours Paris

The biggest operator in the city, and the one I would send certain first-time visitors to.

Their Montmartre tour runs three and a half to four hours; it often caps at 12 people and costs 119.99 euros. They also run an Express Food Tour at two hours and costs 74.99 euros, capped at 16.

That Express tour is the most useful thing on this page for a lot of readers.

If you have one morning in Paris and a list of museums, two hours and 75 euros is the right answer. Nobody selling a five-hour experience wants to tell you that.

The weakness is consistency. A company that size runs on freelance guides, and the gap between the best and the worst is wide. You are booking the brand, not a person. Some days, that is fine. Some days you get someone reading the script for the eleventh time that week.

Eating Europe

Eating Europe Paris

The tightest small-group numbers of the big corporate operators.

Their Montmartre and Marais food and wine tours run three hours at 124 euros, capped at 10. Saint Germain caps at 8. They also run a 90-minute Marais breakfast tour at 65 euros, which is the cheapest serious tour in this article.

A cap of 8 in Saint Germain is a real commitment and it costs them money. It shows.

Their tours are well built and the food is chosen properly. The house style is a little polished for my taste.

There is a warmth that comes from standing in somebody’s actual neighbourhood with somebody who actually lives there. A well-run tour does not always have it.

That is a preference, not a fault.

Paris by Mouth

Paris by Mouth Food & Wine Tours

Three hours, 8 people maximum, 150 dollars per person, led by English-speaking food and wine specialists. The format is roughly ninety minutes of walking and shopping, then a seated tasting for the rest.

That seated half is the point. Standing on a street corner is a bad place to taste four wines against four cheeses. Sitting down is how you actually learn something.

They come out of food writing rather than restaurant kitchens, and it shows in both directions. Deep knowledge of producers and regions. Less of the how and why of the cooking itself.

If you want to understand what you are drinking, they are the strongest choice in Paris.

Devour Tours

Devour Tours Paris Food Tours

The most reliable option for families.

Their Ultimate Paris Food Tour covers Le Marais in three hours, caps at 12, and starts at 153 dollars with 10 or more tastings and two glasses of wine.

Devour operates across 17 cities in Europe and North America. That scale brings the good and the bad of any large operation.

The logistics are dependable. Dietary requirements are handled properly.

Their guides are used to children, which is not a small thing when you are four hours into a walk with an eight-year-old.

Volume of tastings is their pitch. Ten items in three hours is a lot of eating and not much time per stop. Some people want exactly that. I find it rushed.

Context Travel

Context Travel Paris Food Tour: Baguette to Bistro

The academic option, and the most expensive per hour on this page.

Their Baguette to Bistro food tour runs two and a half hours, caps at 10 and costs 157 dollars. They describe their guides as local food writers and chefs.

Run the maths and that is around 63 dollars an hour, against roughly 41 for Paris by Mouth and 30 for Secret Food Tours Montmartre.

I do not think that makes it bad value. It makes it a different product.

You are paying for the guide’s depth rather than for the food. Context built its business on scholar-led tours of museums and history, and the food tours inherit that seriousness.

If you read about food for pleasure, you will get your money’s worth. If you want to eat a lot, you will not. Go in knowing which of those you are.

Viator, GetYourGuide and the Marketplaces

These are not tour companies. They are shop windows, and it matters.

Most operators in this article, ours included, sell through them.

The listings look identical, so travellers assume they are comparing like with like. They are not. You are comparing whoever bought the placement.

Two practical warnings.

Cancellation terms are set by the platform, not the operator.

Our own policy is 48 hours. But guests who book us through Viator cannot be refunded for any reason. That is Viator’s rule and we cannot override it.

Check the terms on the platform you actually use.

Second, the commission comes out of the tour.

When a marketplace takes its cut, the operator either raises the price or spends less on the food. Booking direct is usually cheaper for you, and better for what ends up on the plate.

The Chef Tours

The Chef Tours Paris Food & Wine Tours

Ours. Read this section with the disclosure in mind.

Chef PJ’s Montmartre Food Tour runs for five to six hours, caps at 10 participants, and meets at Blanche metro station. It includes a French breakfast, a dessert tour, four wines, and a sit-down meal at Le Petit Moulin, PJ’s own restaurant on Rue Tholoze.

Montmartre Confidential with Chef PJ is a four-to-five-hour evening wine tour.

Chef Sophie’s French Market Tour takes place at Marché d’Aligre with French food writer Sophie Brissaud. It starts with breakfast and ends with a full lunch and dessert.

What is genuinely different is that a working chef guides it, and cooks for you in his own restaurant.

That is the thing I could not do inside a larger company. It is why we left.

Now the honest part.

Five to six hours is too long for many people.

If your Paris trip is three days and tightly planned, do not book us. You will spend a third of a day on one activity and resent it.

Book the Secret Food Tours Express instead, and go and see the Musée d’Orsay.

We are also not the cheapest. We do not run daily departures in all weather. And we ask solo travellers to wait until a group of two has booked before we can confirm their booking.

Solo Travellers, Couples and Families

Who you are travelling with changes the answer more than the neighbourhood does.

Solo. A food tour is one of the few things you can do alone in a strange city without it feeling like eating alone.

You are seated with a group and given something to talk about. I have seen a lot of solo guests leave with dinner plans.

Check the departure guarantee before you book. Small operators, us included, need a minimum number before a date is confirmed, so a solo booking on a quiet Tuesday in February can get moved.

Bigger operators run whatever the numbers. That is the argument for booking one of them if you are alone on fixed dates.

Couples. Most people book a food tour as a romantic thing, then look mildly surprised to be spending three hours with ten strangers.

That is worth knowing in advance. A group food tour is sociable, not intimate. If you want intimate, book a private tour or a seated tasting rather than a walk. Eating Europe’s private option costs 300 euros.

Families. I would look at the walking distance and the timing before you look at the food.

Three hours of stop-start walking is a lot for a child under about eight. Five hours is too much for most of them, Fortunately, much of the time at The Chef Tour is spent inside a restaurant so families are welcome.

Devour is the strongest here.

Ask any operator directly about children, and be specific about ages. A good company will tell you not to book if it is wrong for you. I have turned families away.

What to Do Instead of a Food Tour

Sometimes the answer is not to book a tour at all. Three alternatives I recommend regularly, including to my own guests.

A cooking class. You learn a skill rather than a route, and you eat what you made. I am biased towards these, because I teach.

La Cuisine Paris baking and pastry classes offers hands-on French pastry and baking classes in English, including croissant, baguette and other pastry classes. (La Cuisine Paris)

Classes suit people who cook. If you do not cook at home, a tour will give you more.

A market on your own. This costs almost nothing, and most visitors never do it. Chef Sophie can help you understand the market, but you can pick up figs on your own.

Go to Marché d’Aligre or the Marché des Enfants Rouges on a Sunday morning, buy bread, cheese, charcuterie and fruit, and eat it in a park. You will spend fifteen euros and remember it.

The catch is knowing what to buy and how to ask for it. That is what a guide is for. So my honest suggestion is to book one early in the trip, then go back alone later in the week.

A seated wine tasting. If wine is the real interest, a tasting gives you more per euro than a walking tour. Nobody is spending your time on logistics.

The best pattern I know is a tour on your first day and a tasting later in the week, once you know what you like.

Which One Should You Book?

By what you actually want:

One free morning and a packed schedule: Secret Food Tours Express. Two hours, 74.99 euros.

You mainly want to learn: Paris by Mouth. Eight people, seated tasting, 150 dollars.

Travelling with children: Devour Tours Paris. Three hours, dependable logistics, guides used to families.

You want the smallest possible group: Eating Europe Saint Germain, capped at 8, or Paris by Mouth.

You read about food for pleasure: Context Travel’s Paris Food Tour. Two and a half hours, capped at 10, 157 dollars.

You want a chef, a real meal, and a whole day: The Chef Tours Paris.

You want the cheapest way in: Eating Europe Paris. Ninety minutes, 65 euros.

You cook at home: Skip the tour and take a class at La Cuisine Paris.

One last piece of advice that costs me money.

Do not book any food tour on your arrival day or your departure day. We tell guests this and they book anyway.

Flights are late, you are tired, and a five-hour walk on three hours of sleep is not a good introduction to a city.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should a Paris food tour cost?

Between roughly 65 and 249.00 euros or dollars per person for a group tour. The cheapest serious option here is Eating Europe’s 90-minute Marais breakfast tour at 65 euros. Most three-hour tours land between 129 and 197. If food and drink are not all included in that price, keep looking.

What is a good group size for a food tour?

Twelve or fewer. Eight is better. Six is best. Above twelve, you stop fitting inside the shops, which is where the good part happens. Every operator publishes this number, so check it before you book.

Are Paris food tours worth it?

On the first visit to a city, usually yes, because you are buying a filter. Paris has thousands of places to eat and a few hours of your attention. On a fifth visit, less so. By then you have your own list, and your money goes further at a table you chose yourself.

Should I eat before a food tour?

No. Coffee only. A three-hour tour is six to ten tastings and most people are full by the fourth stop because they had breakfast first. Arriving hungry is the single easiest thing you can do to enjoy it more.

How much walking is on a Paris food tour?

Roughly two to four kilometres over three hours, in short stretches with a lot of standing. That is harder on the feet than the distance suggests. Wear shoes you would walk a city in, not shoes you would look good in.

Which Paris neighbourhood is best for a food tour?

It matters less than the guide. Le Marais is the safest choice and the most crowded. Montmartre is excellent below the hill and a tourist trap on top of it. Saint Germain has the best producers and the smallest groups. Choose the company first.

Are food tours good for solo travellers?

Yes, and they are one of the easiest ways to eat well alone in a strange city. Check the departure guarantee first. Smaller operators need a minimum number to confirm a date, so a solo booking in low season can be moved.

Should I book direct or through Viator?

Direct, where you can. The marketplace takes a commission that comes out of either the price or the food, and its cancellation terms override the operator’s. Our own policy is 48 hours’ notice, but Viator bookings cannot be refunded at all.

Sources