dining in France - pre-plan or go with the flow?

IMO you will enjoy it more if you just go with the flow.
As you yourself said, OCD is not going to maximize your vacation enjoyment, and it will sure add to the stress.
It's different over there in France, esp. regarding dinner at more formal restaurants. Just go with the flow and observe and then decide what's best for you, you can't decide that (not in France) without some actual experience.
Go ahead and research, so that you know in general what's going on over there food-wise,
but make lists of restaurants for every day.
Anyway, that's my approach, what it's worth.

Dining out has been a big part of what we enjoy about Paris. I will normally make several reservations before leaving, for dinner spots that we want to try, but there is certainly a middle ground you can occupy. Just doing a bit of research on restaurants that appeal to you gives you options that are, if not tried, at least quantified to some degree so you're not dithering when it comes to meal time. It's not ocd, it's smart planning.

You'll need to define what dinner on a budget means to you, but there are lots and lots of very, and I mean very, good places in the 25-40 euro range, per person not including wine. Note also that you can make your main meal lunch, and prices are generally less at a given place. I like to read a couple of blogs for suggestions, and then cross-reference the bloggers take with reviews on Yelp or Le Fooding. For popular places a reservation is necessary, you might consider making just one or two.

If food is a priority at all, I would suggest that you just make that short list of places you know you have a good chance of liking, instead of relying on dumb luck. There is also lots and lots of very not so good restaurants in Paris. Can't help with Normandy ;-), but in Paris you may like to get warmed up by checking out Breizh Cafe for crepes and cider.

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/paris/

http://parisbymouth.com/our-guide-to-paris-restaurants/

good places including nice little local places, often book up. A reservation the day before or even noon of the day often is enough. You will always be able to find a place to eat, but the worst meals we have had in France (in addition to the Airport Hilton) have been restaurants that had room when nearby small places we had hoped to dine at were, were full. We also got the last table at a cafe near Vincennes. The place looked empty, but we had trouble getting a table. Everyone after us was turned away unless they had a reservation and the place was full by 8. Same deal in a little cafe in Semur en Auxois with outdoor seating. The place looked empty we went to sit at a table and the waiter rushed out and told us everything was reserved. They did manage to create a table for us -- hauled one out of the restaurant after I apologized for presuming in my very bad French. The place was totally full within the hour with the people who had reserved.

There is a lot of bad food in Paris; it will be served in places pretty easy to just walk into.

That said -- you will always be able to eat somewhere and sometimes you luck out with a good meal that way. Best bets are larger brasseries with continuous service.

Paris is a place where your OCD will serve you well. Unfortunately, as Ben, Dave, and Janet have mentioned, booking is de rigeur at Paris restaurants to an extent it's almost impossible to understand until you experience it. Thus, without reservations, you run a big risk of not getting in to where you would like to eat, and then wandering the street and paying the same money for something substandard that you could have spent on something special.

Paris By Mouth and David Lebovitz are excellent browsing recommendations. Another is John Talbott's Paris (he's a Paris by Mouth contributor).

Good luck and smart thinking to focus on something ahead of time that's important to you!

Go with the flow. On this trip (I am in Paris now), I've been to a couple of restaurants that I had been to before and liked but were a disappointment to me this time. So, even if a restaurant has good reviews, it doesn't mean it will meet your expectations. When I travel, I have learned to keep my expectations on the low side, then I am rarely disappointed, but often surprised and amazed. Happy travels.

Thank you all for your replies! I am so glad that I asked this question...I didn't know that dining in France relied so heavily on reservations. Ben, I can't imagine the frustration of being turned away from an empty restaurant...but it makes sense. Based off everyone's responses, it sounds like we will greatly increase our chances of having a good dining experience if I go ahead and do some research. I hate throwing our money away on mediocre food/experience. It happens, but it's so much better if you can avoid it. It will be a bit of a trick to figure out what time to make reservations since we will be sight-seeing each day, but I think that certain days I'll know more based off our daily itinerary and those can be the days we set reservations. The other days, perhaps we play by ear.

Dave, point taken on the "dithering when it comes to meal time". That is so true. We have done that before and why waste our time if we can have a plan? We have never taken the approach for our big meal being at lunch. I have read that suggestion somewhere else, either on the forums or in a book. I think that approach is very worthwhile to look into, especially if we can stretch our dollars further. Our bodies would probably thank us to not eat a heavy meal at night, too. Thank you for the website suggestions and the note on Breizh Cafe...it looks fantastic!

Again, thank you all for taking the time to respond and shedding light for me on dining in France...I think that doing some planning ahead is definitely the way to go. We work hard to be able to go and take trips like this, and food/drinks/atmosphere is always something we enjoy very much. I'm not sure how to describe our dining-style -- we have never been the "fancy" dining type, we just love finding a place with good and authentic food at a reasonable price point. I'd like to increase our odds of having a great experience so I'll be doing some planning. :)

On our trip to Italy and Germany last summer, I researched ahead of time where we wanted to eat, and made reservations. Even looking at all the choices on the tripadvisor map is overwhelming, can't imagine having to decide while actually standing there.

I figure get the reservations, and then if see something else that strikes your fancy you can always cancel. But you will have a back up plan with no stress! I love planning (every detail) - and then the actual trip is very enjoyable because I know exactly where we are going and what we are doing. However, I am always open to change it up if something better comes along! :)

Enjoy your trip!
Kim

I'm going to agree with janettravels44 that you can indeed eat poorly in Paris, just like anywhere else.

However, my meal at the CDG Hilton while pricey was one of the best I had in France.

I think a traveler has to know themselves well enough to know if they live to eat, or eat to live. I'm definitely in the latter camp.

phread -- glad you had good luck at the CDG Hilton. We had arrived rather late having lunched with friends in Tours and so didn't have time to go into the city for dinner. The meal at the Hilton was perhaps the worst meal I have ever had in a restaurant anywhere in the world. The food was very expensive and dried out and overcooked -- close to inedible. It was topped by deeply rude service. I am not all that picky about food and didn't expect much but I would never use that hotel again and certainly not eat there again. It was not just disappointing, it was flat out terrible.

I have never been to Normandy although I am planning a trip to the region this fall as well. In Paris we like to look up recommendations ahead of time and the resources we use have already been listed. Sometimes we decide to take a chance by just wandering around but this often means getting there early (say 7pm) compared to what many Parisians would consider a standard starting time. And we have seen what others say; at 7:30pm we are one of the only people in the bistro but they are turning people away. One easy way to make reservations is to ask the front-desk staff to call for you; they speak French fluently and I also wonder if it makes the place more likely to try to find a place for you if seating is tight; an English-speaking customer is not likely to be the source of as much business as a local hotel, and when they call they always announce themselves as calling from their hotel.

Paris is an easy town to get around in, at least if you're in the heart of the city, and we like to go back to the hotel to clean up and change before dinner. Which is a way of saying that even if you are spending the day in one area, say the Marais, its easy to eat dinner in a different area at a restaurant that seemed intriguing when you saw it a day or two earlier. This way you can mix spontaneous (to a degree) meals at places you've found once you're in Paris with ones you've decided on well in advance.

I am a foodie, so picking the right restaurant for me is paramount.

I also am a planner. If I know where I'm having lunch and dinner I can plan the rest of my day (or vice versa! Ha!).

I find that whenever I "wing" it on a restaurant I end up at a chain (which can be good) or somewhere that is just mediocre. If I plan, I get exactly what I want. You plan everything else for your vacations, food (for me) is no different

Julie - I've gotta commend you, I really think you're doing the right thing. Since for YOU, food is an important part of what you want to experience on your trip, you're increasing exponentially the chances that you'll have a good experience by doing your homework now. That's an investment whose return you will reap when you are here !!

I am all for being a "go with the flow" kinda gal during the day, when my energy is up, my feet feel great and I am ready to take on the day. At the end of a long day, not so much. We had our worst travel moments at night with hunger raging, feet barking and low blood sugar taking it's toll, trying to decide where to have dinner. In London it resulted in Pub food about 1/2 the time (very satisfying but We Were in LONDON!!), our best meal was a planned Fish and Chip place, plus getting there was fun. So for Paris it will be reservation for about 80% of our meals and street food for the rest. I like the big lunch idea, although we are not the type to stop and have lunch in a restaurant, waste of time for me, I would rather grab and go and use all our daylight out and about and not in a restaurant. But I also want to enjoy the Parisian lifestyle of sitting and having that 2 hour lunch...I think that having a smart phone on this trip will also help. I can Yelp places close by.

The OCD planning I have done for my current trip has been paying off. If you dont care about possibly being disapointed with your meal just wing it but to maximize chances for good food, plan ahead. I find this to be more the case in larger cities and more so in France than Italy. Don't order the steak.

I'd have a list researched in advance but choose when there what I felt like each day. If I want to go to a popular restaurant where you need reservations, I make them but otherwise see what we feel like eating at the time and depending on where we are when hungry. Keep in mind that meal hours are different in France than the USA.

Our hotel concierge was helpful in making recommendations for good restaurants in our price range. Again, depends on how much you want to spend, but two of our three meals were in the $70-90 range US including entrees, wine, and tip. The last night there we splurged a little more, but I don't think that meal was more than $120. We ate at a brasserie called Chez Flottes twice, once for a late night dinner when we arrived, and another day for lunch. It was near our hotel (close to the Louvre), good food, and good service. We also really enjoyed our meal at Vagenende, which I believe was in the Latin Quarter. Enjoy!