The World’s 10 Best French Restaurants
Explore ten french restaurants around the world, from Paris, France to Paris, France. Discover the restaurants and plan your next dining experience.
Guy Savoy
France
At the Monnaie de Paris on Quai de Conti, Guy Savoy places French gastronomy within a landmark setting beside the Seine. Dining rooms look towards the river and the Institut de France, while the table reflects the chef’s long interest in craft and presentation. Signature dishes remain part of the experience, including artichoke soup enriched with black truffle and served with mushroom brioche. Seasonal fish, poultry and vegetables join those familiar touchstones across the à la carte and tasting menus. Lunch also offers a shorter route through the kitchen’s repertoire. A dessert trolley of ice creams, sorbets and small sweets extends the sense of occasion into the final course.
Le Bernardin
New York
Le Bernardin is a seafood restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, New York, at 155 West 51st Street, and its official website identifies the house as Le Bernardin by Eric Ripert. The site presents the New York branch with reservations, dining-room, lounge, wine and private-dining pages, confirming an active, formal restaurant rather than a casual neighbourhood operation. Its published contact details and branch-specific information establish the exact business and location. The restaurant’s own descriptions make seafood the centre of the experience, with a stated commitment to responsibly sourced fish and menus built around that focus. Lunch and dinner pages show a structured format, including tasting-style choices and lighter midday courses, while the lounge has its own offering. That arrangement suggests a carefully paced meal in which the sequence of dishes matters, rather than an open-ended all-day menu built for quick service. Menu pages illustrate the kitchen’s scope with oysters, tuna, hamachi, lobster, striped bass, halibut and other seasonal fish, and the house also notes that its cuisine and philosophy are supported by a professional wine programme. Aldo Sohm is named as wine director on the restaurant’s team page. The presence of wine service and cocktails, alongside a formal dining-room setting, points to a polished restaurant experience shaped around food, drink and precise service. Practical information further defines the atmosphere. The restaurant asks for business casual dress, recommends jackets and does not permit children under ten; strollers, high chairs and a children’s menu are not accommodated. These policies align with an adult dining room in central Manhattan, where the emphasis is on exacting seafood cookery, attentive service and a disciplined house style. The result is a highly specified restaurant identity rather than an informal or family-focused one.
Le Louis XV - Alain Ducasse
Monaco
Le Louis XV at Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo expresses Alain Ducasse's Mediterranean cooking through executive chef Emmanuel Pilon. The kitchen concentrates on the character of its ingredients, with the vegetable-led Jardins de Provence menu an enduring reference in the restaurant's history. Set menus and à la carte dining provide different ways to explore this approach. The dining room accommodates around 50 guests, with a smaller ground-floor terrace looking onto Place du Casino in warmer weather. Its wine programme draws on the hotel's extensive cellars, which hold more than 350,000 bottles and give particular prominence to France's major vineyards.
Cheval Blanc by Peter Knogl
Switzerland
At Les Trois Rois in Basel, Cheval Blanc follows Peter Knogl's approach to French haute cuisine, drawing additional flavours from the Mediterranean and Asia. Seasonal ingredients shape both a tasting menu and individual dishes, with careful sauces and contrasts of texture running through the cooking. An autumn menu pairs young smoked eel with beetroot, fermented garlic and wasabi, followed by Breton lobster with Château Chalon and caviar. Red mullet arrives with crisp scales, saffron and tomato vinaigrette, while Styrian venison is accompanied by celeriac mousseline and Rouennaise sauce. A cheese selection from Maître Antony in Ferrette and praline parfait with lemon and Piedmont hazelnuts complete the longer menu. These combinations make Knogl's international influences tangible within a classical framework.
Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester
United Kingdom
Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester is the signature dining room of The Dorchester on Park Lane in Mayfair, London, operated by Dorchester Collection. It is presented by the hotel as a three-Michelin-starred restaurant and is identified as one of the group’s principal dining addresses in the capital, with the venue focused on evening service from Tuesday to Saturday. The setting is described as contemporary and elegant, with warm wood-panelled interiors and a formal dining-room atmosphere suited to fine dining. The kitchen is led by chef patron Jean-Philippe Blondet, who works within Alain Ducasse’s French culinary philosophy. The restaurant’s official description emphasises contemporary French haute cuisine, seasonal ingredients and dishes shaped by freshness and a lighter style. Menus include à la carte, tasting and a dedicated Menu Jardin, suggesting a structured approach that can accommodate both a more exploratory meal and a longer, seasonal progression. Food and wine service are central to the experience. The restaurant maintains a carefully curated wine list with an executive wine director and head sommelier support, and the official pages highlight a tailored wine service for guests. Dining options also include private rooms such as Table Lumière, Salon Privé and Salon Park Lane, with the private-dining spaces presented as part of the restaurant rather than as separate venues. Practical details reinforce the sense of a polished, formal restaurant rather than a casual hotel outlet. The dress code is smart-casual, with jackets and collared shirts preferred, and long trousers requested for gentlemen. Children over ten are welcome, and the restaurant states that it can cater for dietary requirements when informed in advance, making it a controlled, highly individualised dining experience within one of London’s best-known luxury hotels.
Le Cinq
France
Le Cinq gives Christian Le Squer’s contemporary French cooking an appropriately grand setting within Four Seasons Hotel George V. Marble columns, pale flowers and gold-toned chairs frame tables laid with china, silver and linen created for the hotel. The Brittany-born chef’s background appears in dishes such as sea bass with caviar and buttermilk, while a carefully constructed spaghetti gratin combines truffle, ham and artichoke. Dublin Bay prawns with buckwheat pancakes offer another expression of the kitchen’s balance between familiar ingredients and refined technique. Guests can explore the à la carte or tasting menu, with wine service drawing on the hotel’s celebrated cellar and a carefully selected range of bottles.
Le Normandie by Alain Roux
Thailand
Le Normandie has entered a new chapter as Anne-Sophie Pic at Le Normandie. Within Mandarin Oriental, Bangkok, the restaurant continues its long connection with French gastronomy while introducing Pic’s approach to aroma, flavour and the relationship between food and drinks. The dining room overlooks the Chao Phraya River, with a redesign by Humbert & Poyet giving the setting a fresh identity. Pic’s menus draw on French foundations while engaging with Thai ingredients and cultural influences. The restaurant first opened in 1958 as Le Normandie Grill, later developing into a landmark fine-dining address. That history gives the current collaboration an unusual depth: an established Bangkok institution interpreted through a different chef’s sensibility. For diners familiar with its previous Alain Roux association, the change is significant. The current experience is led by Anne-Sophie Pic, making a return visit an opportunity to encounter a new culinary direction in one of the city’s historic riverfront dining rooms.
La Colombe
South Africa
La Colombe approaches dining as a carefully staged sequence of surprises. At its Constantia restaurant, executive chef James Gaag’s menus move between seafood, game, vegetables and playful desserts, giving a meal the rhythm of a performance. Signature tuna appears alongside changing combinations such as quail with langoustine and sweetcorn, or coal-fired lamb with tomato and rosemary. These dishes show a kitchen interested in both familiar ingredients and unexpected pairings. A dedicated vegetarian menu follows its own route, with creations including beetroot, tandoori-spiced cauliflower and wild-mushroom preparations. The same attention to progression extends through the final courses, which may draw on childhood food memories. La Colombe suits diners willing to set aside time and follow the kitchen’s choices. The menu formats provide a clear structure while leaving room for the element of surprise that has become central to the restaurant’s identity.
Odette
Singapore
Inside the former Supreme Court wing of National Gallery Singapore, Odette brings together French culinary foundations and chef Julien Royer’s experience of Asia. Its name honours Royer’s grandmother, whose approach to cooking helped shape his focus on ingredients. Seasonal tasting menus combine established signatures with new ideas. Kampot pepper-crusted pigeon remains a defining dish, while other courses explore influences from Singapore and the wider region. The Nature & Découverte vegetarian menu offers a dedicated alternative, with the same emphasis on produce. The dining room’s recent redesign introduces cream and amber tones, timber marquetry and curved seating. Suspended paper sculptures by Singaporean artist Dawn Ng take their colours from botanical and culinary ingredients, creating a connection between the food, the interior and the surrounding gallery. Odette retained three Michelin stars in the 2026 guide. Its wine list is organised by style, encouraging diners to follow their tastes across regions and producers. This is a restaurant for an occasion that deserves time, whether a celebratory dinner or a long lunch combined with an afternoon exploring the National Gallery.
Plenitude - Cheval Blanc Paris
France
Plénitude is Arnaud Donckele's intimate gastronomic restaurant on the first floor of Cheval Blanc Paris, on Quai du Louvre. Its menus give sauces an unusually prominent role, building each dish around complex blends that express the seasons and the produce of French regions. Fish, meat and desserts are conceived in relation to these preparations, making the sauces the connecting thread of the meal. The tasting menus include Symphony and Sail Away Together. Service introduces the individual blends and their place within each course, extending the restaurant's attention to aroma and flavour from the kitchen to the table.