Family friendly, reasonable Paris restaurants

Specifically, what does family friendly mean? If you are looking for a place to take children, traditional restaurants are not generally the best option. They typically only serve between 8pm and 10pm which is probably too late for many young people and restaurants usually do not offer child menus. Moderately priced is another difficult term because moderate means different things to different people. Personally, moderate would be a menu or 3 course diner somewhere between 35€ and 45€ per person without wine. Is that what you have in mind?

Assuming you have younger children, I might recommend the chain eateries such as Léon de Bruxelles with several locations in the 6th, Hippopotamus (numerous locations), or maybe the Relais de Venise with two locations in the 6th.

For very casual dinning, there is always Pizza Chic or La Mamma on rue Vavin which has great pizza and good pastas.

Also French children tend to eat later and eat the same food as their parents, so 'Family Friendly' is not a label you find very often, I would say most restaurant welcome children with open arms, but don't pander to them.

The chains mentioned above are a good suggestion. There's always McDonald's, where plenty of locals take their lunch meal with wine. "Family-friendly" is not a French concept, beyond perhaps supplying a high chair. Children in my experience are scarce in smaller bistros for supper. The big meal out for families is midday on Sunday. Restaurants with a more ethnic slant, such as North African or Greek, may also see more families on weeknights. If your kids are picky eaters at home, Paris will really irk them. A friend survived by convincing his young son that pate was actually meat loaf.

Have you thought about Flunch? Now that is a place that makes a special fuss of smaller children and you and they can have what you want. Cheap too. It is my favourite place when driving through France. They are usually in out-of-town shopping malls so inconvenient without a car, but they have three branches in Paris.

https://europeforvisitors.com/paris/articles/flunch.htm is a very good English language primer.

http://www.flunch.fr/ is the official website and the one I use. French only I'm afraid but everything you need to know.

Le Bouillon Chartier off the Grands Boulevards may be a good option as well. For pizza, there's also the Del Arte chain which has some great French pizzas.

Thanks for all the great ideas. I should have said bistros vs restaurants. My kids are 8 and 5. They are fairly open on food - pate, French onion soup, pasta, fish, steak, etc. we live in SF and they are night owls so the 8pm dinner will Work for them.

35-50f per person works as long as the food is good. It can be super casual/hole in the wall as long as food is good. My French is passable so don’t need English speakers.

My husband is the bigger challenge since he is the foodie and loves French food but probably went to more touristy places in the past which left a bad taste in his mouth. We haven’t been in 15+ years and never together so hoping to find those 3-4 bistros that will change his impression of Paris!

Thanks again for all your thoughts!!!

35-50f per person works as long as the food is good.

With a menu at 50€ and a new Michelin star, Quinsou on rue de l'Abbé Grégoire in the 6th is outstanding. Reserve about one week in advance. However, what they do here will be lost on a 5 or 8 year old.

Rather than Chartier, where I find the simplest recommendation unwarranted, consider Polidor. It´s certainly basic but the kitchen has fewer microwaves than what one expects at Chantier and Polidor is in the 6th arrondissement.

I think this area is the 5th (Latin Quarter), but we've stayed a few time on rue des Ecoles, we didn't go but our hotel had recommended on American type, diner, I believe called Breakfast in America. Where we did go was Cafe St. Victor, which I have now returned to several times. it is at 11 rue monge. It is between Rue Monge and Rue Saint-Victor and close to Rue des Ecoles. It has great prices, good French bistro type food and good service. You can eat outside year round or a somewhat large indoor area.

P.S. I just noted that your husband is a "foodie". Keeping in mind that Victor's is a brassiere, we have found their duck confit and escargot just as good or better than any other in France. Also, I brought my daughters to Victor's, one is vegetarian and the other is a little picky and everyone was happy and found something to eat.

For me 35-50 Euros is for the entire family. I guess I'm not exactly high class!

@ MikefromWestVirginia, you can feed a family of three or four a dinner with "good food" in Paris for 35€ to 50€? Where? I am very curious.

Haven't done dining for 3-4, but we have had lovely dinners for two at Polidor (with dessert and demi-carafe of house wine) for €50. In fact, looking forward to doing just that next week!

Perhaps, since you're in an Airbnb, with cooking privileges, your kids might also like to visit a Picard and select something there to prepare for dinner. Every year it seems, Picard is voted France's favorite brand name. Their frozen croissants, pain au chocolat and gougerés are staples at my house.

I find restaurant recommendations so much harder than hotel recommendation because tastes in food are so individual and specific. A lot of places, especially the old school places relying on history or magnificent decor, have been mediocre to me but I know people who love them. Some people, like my husband who says that I am a picky eater (I'm not), are more concerned about quantity than quality so my suggestions may miss the mark. Also, I wonder what family-friendly means: if children know how to behave in a restaurant and sit down and eat a meal and not run around like they are in a park, then every restaurant is family friendly to me. Really, the question to me is are the children restaurant ready. So with trepidation, here is my list of some places in the 6th where, over the years, I have eaten quite happily with children, both of whom enjoyed their meals: Josephine Chez Dumonet, Crêperie Little Breizh, La Coupole, Les Editeurs, Le Danton, Restaurant La Petite Chaisse, Atelier Vivandi, and Le Petit Littre (excellent chocolate cake, by the way or so my son said). There are more that I can't remember now because I only started keeping trip notes two years ago.

Thanks for all the great suggestions!!!

Following... : )

Coincidentally, John Talbott, an American food critic in Paris, just put a list up on his blog today that talks about restaurants that are good with kids. You can also look up his reviews of those restaurants on the blog. http://johntalbottsparis.typepad.com/

Google search revealed a lot of informal pizza and burger places, and even several McDonald's.

We just got back from Paris and went to Café Trama with our 2.5 year old and 5 year old. It was delicious and we had a great time. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d5667801-Reviews-Cafe_Trama-Paris_Ile_de_France.html

Yay! Thanks for the link!

Just curious...What did you end up ordering?!

Get a copy of "The Food Lover's Guide to Paris" by Patricia Wells from Amazon or your local library. It lists and describes many different bistros, cafes, restaurants in each neighborhood, as well as gives you good input on various boulangeries, patisseries, and street markets. If your kids eat crepes, try Breizh.

You know best what you and your kids will or won't eat, so it does pay off to do some research ahead of time and get the guide I mentioned and also check websites like Eater.com, TimeOut Paris, or Paris by Mouth.

Getting lots of ideas for our mid-July visit to Paris. Hoping to have some memorable meals without breaking the bank.

For those times when you want something quick and low fuss, we had good luck with the Paul chain (locations all over Paris including the Louvre food court) for easy sandwiches, pastries, and the like.

The only place I consistently return to is small, it probably holds no more than 30 customers and usually has about half that whenever I drop in. It's affordable and I think would be family friendly. It's the Breizh Cafe near the Picasso Museum. It's typical Brittany fare, I usually get a galette or an omelet (yes for dinner in France) and a small carafe of their cider. I assume they serve cider with no alcohol for kids and non-drinkers.

"Cidre" in France, like "cider" in England, refers solely to the alcoholic drink. Asking for "non-alcoholic cider" will get you some very funny looks - it's just apple juice.

Philip, In the States there is a non-alcoholic apple juice for sale that's labeled cider. Why some bottles say juice but others cider is beyond my mental capacities, but that's where Brad got his recommendation. Maybe someone who presses the two will chime in. Our locally made product is thicker, sweet and delicious. I've never seen anything like it in France where cider in both alcoholic and preferably dry to balance the butter in the food.

I think in the USA "cider" is used to refer to unsweetened apple juice from sourer apple varieties, sometimes with seasoning added.

Adding to the confusion. In my part of the apple country of the Midwest, apple cider was the generic term for juice from apples. Sweet cider was pasteurized, hard cider or even stronger applejack was not. As the term cider was used for all labels the word "pasteurized" had to be searched out. These are not the "correct" terms but were used in my area. The term apple juice came along a lot later. Sweet cider now, like Betts says, is usually a local cider, thick, pure sugar and almost to apple juice as a spätlese is to a Riesling. There's nothing like it.