Charles de Gaulle ostensibly claimed that it was impossible to govern a country with 246 different types of cheese. Since France makes nearly 2,000, the fact that the French are constantly protesting kind of checks out. The lack of cows, sheep, and goats in Paris makes truly local cheeses a rarity, but since all roads lead to the capital city, it’s the best place to try so many regional fromages. Whether you’re just starting on a discovery tour of France’s dairy bounty or are a bona fide turophile (yep, a real word for cheese lover), here are the absolute must-try fromageries, cheese-stuffed sambos, planches, and gilded cheese carts in the city.
photo credit: Wenkang Shan
The Basic Etiquette Of Eating (& Buying) French Fromage
In France, cheese isn’t an appetizer but a course of its own, served after the main and before (or instead of) dessert. If you’re at a bistro, a lineup of three or four options might be served with some salad and bread, while fine dining restaurants may wheel out a massive cart so you can choose your favorites, paired with housemade jam or expertly sourced honey. Every corner supermarket has a decent cheese selection, but for the best, hit up one of the city’s many cheese shops. Just don’t expect a wealth of (read: any) free samples. You’ll need to trust the experts. Smaller cheeses are sold by the quarter, half, or piece, while larger ones are priced by weight.
What Are The Old-Guard Fromageries To Know?
The very idea of a shop peddling a wealth of regional cheeses was born in Paris at the turn of the century. Today, while cheese shops aren’t as ubiquitous as boulangeries, there are still plenty of them. 175 to be exact. And not all are created equal. Excellent fromagers are also typically affineurs, or agers, who source young cheeses from cheesemakers and age them, often in underground limestone cellars.
Marie-Anne Cantin coaxes Coulommiers and Camembert to gooey perfection before showcasing them in her shop near the Eiffel Tower. The tiny space at Chez Virginie in Montmartre is dominated by a jumble of stinky selections, such as the house special, fresh sheep’s milk Berrichon, crowned with wildflowers. At Marie Quatrehomme’s eponymous shops, you’ll find classics and house specialties like Camembert covered with fruit, nuts, and a touch of chocolate or smoked goat cheese with a rusty orange rind. Laurent Dubois’ fromageries are known for their specialty creations (and the occasional free samples of a range of ages of the Comté). Their Roquefort is sandwiched around quince paste like a beautiful layer cake worthy of the Louvre.
photo credit: Crèmerie Terroirs d’Avenir
Where Do I Find The Rare Cheeses?
Despite the sheer variety of cheeses made across the hexagon, Comté, Roquefort, Brie, and Camembert pop up again and again. But many innovative young mongers are focusing on the rarer stuff, like Crèmerie Terroirs d’Avenir, a tiny shop teeming with unfamiliar options you can pair with the bread from the same locavore team just across the narrow rue du Nil. At Fernin, rare goat cheeses are the stars of the selection. At COW (Cheeses of the World), expect Danish, British, American, and Nepalese cheeses to dominate the mix. International touches also govern the creative selection at Taka et Vermo, many of which are transformed on-site with ingredients like bottarga, black sesame, or shiso.
Nowhere is on-site cheese transformation more palpable than at Laiterie de Paris, whose boutique doubles as a production facility for its made-in-Paris chèvres, which may be topped with a combo of honey, hazelnut, and za’atar. Younger mongers are also innovating in the pairing space. At Aux Fromages de Nation, you’re encouraged to pair your punny Brit’Ney stuffed with chutney and hazelnuts not with wine but with local craft beers.
photo credit: Wenkang Shan
Where Are The Best Cheese Boards?
Let’s clarify nomenclature. A planche is a board of either cheese or charcuterie. If both are served together, call it a planche mixte. Unlike the maximalist boards stateside, Paris planches are served simply, with loads of free bread, maybe some cornichons. They’re a go-to at cafés, wine bars, and spots where the lack of a full liquor license requires you to order food if you want a drink. Sadly, most planches are full of unexciting young Cantal or industrial Camembert. But there are outliers.
Le Garde-Robe’s exquisite six-cheese boards feature raw milk cheeses made by small producers. At Les Petits Crus, your mood (strong and assertive, or reamy and supple) will dictate the six mystery cheeses delivered alongside six test tubes of the perfect accompanying wines. REDD, a cozy cave à manger, has even more choice with a mix-and-match menu: ten different cheeses—like Saint-Nectaire or goat’s tomme aged in hay—and ten charcuteries, plus marinated vegetables like artichokes. In fair weather, book it to the temporary terraces at Fromagerie du Louvre or Saisons in the Marais.
The cheese cart at Drouant.photo credit: Emily Monaco
Which Restaurants Still Roll Cheese To The Table?
Twenty years ago, cheese courses at fine dining restaurants were almost systematically trotted out on gilded trolleys. Today, that maximalist tradition has given way to small, no-choice plates of well-sourced cheeses, like the trio served with shallot compote at Lazu. Luckily, a few places still honor the French tradition of tableside cheese service.
At Marsan, five regional cheeses, mainly from Chef Hélène Darroze’s native Landes, come with housemade pear jam and pepper. At Drouant, cheese from Chez Virginie is wheeled on a wooden trolley and served with quince paste, honey, and crackers. La Tour d’Argent maintains the most prototypically over-the-top cheese cart: about 20 French cheeses arranged on a marble slab and what can best be described as a wooden cheese staircase. If you’re not wedded to wheels, the board at Le Bon Georges is a tableside delight, with over a dozen mostly familiar faces to choose from. At Plénitude, in the Cheval Blanc hotel, you’re invited to choose your cheeses from an antique dishware cupboard, evoking time-tested country tradition.
photo credit: Wenkang Shan
Which Spots Serve Local Cheese-Centric Specialties?
Paris isn’t just home to countless cheese shops—it’s the birthplace of some of France’s most iconic cheese-driven recipes. French onion soup—a.k.a. gratinée des Halles—originated in the once-bustling market district Emile Zola dubbed “the belly of Paris.” You can still find it in brasseries in Les Halles, and all over town, where it’s typically topped with melted Emmental. Our favorite is at Brasserie des Prés, where deeply caramelized onions are deglazed with port and veal stock, then blanketed with nutty Comté. The version at Bofinger is less traditional thanks to the layer of funky washed-rind Munster. Croque monsieur, a toasted ham and cheese sandwich covered in béchamel, is another Parisian classic. Cheesemonger Laurent Dubois makes a standout version at his restaurant at the top of Printemps department store, spread with walnut mustard and filled with his own Comté. For a rich, shareable take, head to Bistrot des Tournelles, where the hors d’oeuvre portion is packed with Comté and fried in butter.
photo credit: Nora Hauber
How Do I Eat Cheese On The Go?
You can get a baguette stuffed with some combination of cheese and charcuterie at pretty much every bakery and café in town, but for the very best, head to a specialist like Olga, a tiny cheese shop near Gare de Lyon with a daily sandwich special like Bleu d’Auvergne with housemade amarena-pickled cherries or sheep’s milk tomme with quince paste. Fromagerie du Louvre’s seasonal sandwiches pair fresh goat cheese and aged feta with ham and vegetables in summer or charcuterie with melty raclette in winter. Bistro Le Petit Vendôme is famous for its baguettes stuffed with Auvergnat specialties like Fourme d’Ambert, Cantal, Saint-Nectaire, or Bleu d’Auvergne. Enjoy on the go or elbow-to-elbow at the counter.
Where Can I Get A Vat Of Melted Cheese?
Melted cheese dishes like fondue, raclette, and tartiflette—a bacon, potato, and Reblochon casserole—are typically associated with the après-ski culture of the Alps. Thankfully, a few Parisian places are doing the mountain vibes and food justice. The dining room decked out in pine panels and exposed stone at Le Chalet Savoyard is the best place for fondue or a real raclette experience. A half-round of the washed-rind cheese is affixed to a massive machine with a hot plate, making it easy to scrape the melty cheese onto potatoes and charcuterie. Monbleu’s raclette looks more demure, served in portioned rectangles you melt in individual frying pans over a tabletop broiler, but given the assortment of flavors from smoked to truffle-infused—and the free refills—it’s still easy to go hog-wild.
Pain Vin Fromages makes one of Paris’ best tartiflettes and serves it in a 17th-century stone cellar. For melted cheese that departs from the Alps, go for the aligot (a central France dish) at L’Auberge Aveyronnaise. To make it, copious amounts of fresh tomme cheese are stirred into mashed potatoes, creating the ultimate cheese pull with every bite.
photo credit: Wenkang Shan
What Out-There Cheese Dishes Should I Prioritize In Paris?
Bistrot des Tournelles revisits a French childhood classic—cordon bleu—with a more-is-more mindset. Rather than the small patty most French kids grew up with, turkey breast lined with ham is stuffed with a softball-sized mound of Comté cheese before it’s breaded and fried. Le Servan marries French and Asian flavors, resulting in cheeky cheese dishes like Comté croquetas with XO sauce or egg with miso cream and mimolette. At the Eiffel Tower’s Le Jules Verne, prioritize the truffle-spiked cheese course with perfectly aged Saint-Nectaire baked with chicken jus and potato emulsion and served with truffled brioche. If you want to go deeper, go to a cheesemaking class at the Musée du Fromage, Paris’ first cheese museum, which also offers dynamic exhibits and tastings. Or swing by Au Coeur du Marché, a cheese shop known for its Museum of Horrors, a bin of extra-aged cheeses that’ll put hair on your chest.
photo credit: Wenkang Shan
How Do I Bring Cheese Home?
Hauling cheese back to the U.S. is far more pleasant for everyone involved if you buy it as close as possible to your departure date. Choose hard cheeses or whole cheeses rather than pieces of larger gooey ones, and ask your monger to seal them in a vacuum pack (sous vide, in French). Once you’ve got your cheese past customs, store it in cheese paper, not in plastic—those babies want to breathe. When you’re ready to share the wealth, take them out of the fridge an hour before serving, and follow the rules. (What, you’re surprised the French have rules about cutting le fromage?) Luckily, they boil down to one governing idea: Don’t f*ck up the cheese for anyone else. Cut round cheeses like a pie, hard cheese like Comté into batons, and slice doorstop-shaped cheeses like Roquefort into triangles, including both exterior and interior. And remember—rinds, especially for soft cheeses, are intended to be eaten.