Paris Is Having a Breakfast Awakening

Weekend brunch has become fashionable in the pastry paradise.

By Kristy Alpert

It wasn’t all that long ago when one of the only ways to get a complete American-style breakfast (eggs, pancakes, bacon, even granola) in Paris was to eat whatever continental situation was being served at your hotel. Early morning cafés in the city have historically catered to the Parisian breakfast (i.e., a coffee and a cigarette), and, prior to moving to Paris a year ago, that’s the breakfast culture I knew from my many travels to the French capital. I remember feeling très French during those visits, or so I thought, dipping a croissant in my café crème while suppressing shivers from the cold sidewalk bistro tables, only to find out as a resident that most French people take their coffee at the counter (it’s often cheaper that way) or at home — and they’re rarely ordering croissants from cafés.

“Even as a kid growing up in Paris, I always heard ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day,’ but for a French person, it wasn’t so much,” explains Nicolas Piégay, owner of KB Coffee Roasters, one of the first craft coffee roasteries in Paris; KB Pigalle, reputedly the first speciality coffee shop in town; and Back in Black, one of the top coffee shops and breakfast restaurants in the city, where egg-and-bacon-topped pancakes and homemade brioche bun breakfast sammies are the product of months-long recipe developing and testing. “When I was a kid, it was either bread and butter or cornflakes, but now there is a much bigger range. French people are traveling more than the previous generations, and they’re exposed to other cultures and going for a bigger breakfast, and when people are exposed, they like it and want it at home.”

The result of this Parisian globalization has been a truly interesting mix of breakfast options available in the city of cafés, ranging from weekend brunches to all-day pancakes made with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) ingredients, and even the occasional oeufs brouillés (scrambled eggs) at neighborhood brasseries, like Les Deux Magots and Au Pied de Cochon. Things began to change a dozen years ago, when a wave of Australian, English, and American expats, as well as some well-traveled French entrepreneurs like Piégay, opened breakfast-forward restaurant concepts, thus changing the narrative of the morning meal in Paris — one egg dish at a time.

“When I moved here nine years ago from Melbourne, there were very few places you could go and take breakfast,” recalls Di Keser, co-founder of Hardware Société, an Australian-style breakfast and brunch restaurant that opened in Montmartre in 2016. “It feels like everyone is doing a breakfast now, but the ones who are doing it well aren’t just doing bacon and eggs; it’s more refined. It’s more interesting.”

Keser often makes it a point to clarify that they do not employ cooks; they hire chefs. “They understand how to plate,” she emphasizes, and they’re plating dishes like baked eggs in tiny Le Creuset cocottes and topping them with creamed leeks, mushroom duxelles, and goat cheese. They even drape their fried brioche with accoutrements like coffee-poached pears or cardamom-infused strawberries. At Rosy et Maria, a chic café inside the Maison de Beauté Carita in the 8th arrondissement, Parisienne chef and cookbook author Amandine Chaignot gives the French formule an a la carte makeover during breakfast. Her menu is intentionally limited, with an elegantly executed smoked salmon scrambled eggs acting as the standalone star on the menu.

Although weekend breakfast and brunch may have become fashionable (ahem, “trendy”) in the early stages of these restaurants opening, today it’s become an extension of French conviviality. Breakfast in Paris centers on sharing a special meal with friends, which is why many of these breakfast spots don’t encourage laptops. Like Le Passager in Bastille, where popular breakfast bagels and flat whites are served on vintage tables set over primrose blue tiled floors. The same is true at The Dancing Goat in the 20th arrondissement, where an adorable œuf à la coque with accompanying dippers (toast, ham, cheese, etc.) shines in a laptop-less glow from the limited weekday breakfast menu.

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All-day brunch menus, like the ones at Holybelly (arguably the place that brought brunch to Paris), have attracted more than just the expats and tourists, and the weekend lines at places like Holybelly, Kozy, Eggs & Co., and Immersion are often filled with more native French-speakers than non. Early morning meals at American-themed (but French-owned) restaurants like Echo and Cocoricains also attract a mainly French crowd, and are also where you can find some of the most creative mashups and collaborations, like the limited-edition Boneshaker doughnut smashburger at Echo. Even the matcha lattes and fluffy soufflé-style pancakes at Season have become Instagram sensations in their own right, while the Dutch babies at Zia and the daily breakfast sammies at Paper Boy (sometimes dusted in cornflakes or lavender buds) now have loyal followings that border on infatuation.

“For me, the attraction people here have in breakfast is not just a trend, it’s a new openness to something,” says Piégay. “It’s something that didn’t exist before. Now breakfast is another occasion to see people. It’s an extension of being a social animal, but there is a pleasure to it. I don’t see how it could go back now to what it was before. I think it will still grow.”

In a city of grab-and-go pastries and astringent espressos, the mere presence of breakfast restaurants is proof there is an awakening in Paris — or maybe just a wakening. Either way, there’s never been a more delicious time to have breakfast in Paris.