Paris Restaurant Reservations

I am leaving next week, and asked essentially the same question about a month or 2 ago. I decided to make some reservations (I made mine about 4-5 weeks in advance - no rhyme or reason, just when I did it). I did research on this board (some great suggestions), and just good ol' Google search, and found the restaurants I wanted to go. Went to their sites, and booked through their site. They all seem to use the same reservation software system (much like Openable here). Was pretty easy. Allow a few days for a response, and you should be good to go.

Glenn

Not really necessary at cafes, but I always reserve for restaurants. Whether it's done an hour in advance or a month in advance depends upon the restaurant.

I always call but some restaurants accept reservations made on their own websites, others are connected with www.thefork.com, but typically for the best restaurants, calling is often required.

As others have suggested, visit the website of the restaurants you wish to dine at and they’ll either have a link or let you know how to reserve, or indicate (casual, cafe) no reservation needed.

When we were in France last fall, including Paris for a week, we had success by emailing restaurants a few months in advance. Some restaurants had a reservation request form on their website, others had an email address listed with their contact info. I just entered our message into Google translate and then sent them a message in French specifying the number of people, and the requested date and time. I think booking directly with the restaurant is more common than using a third party website or app (and probably is nicer for the restaurant, too).

Even little local neighborhood spots that are good fill up and it is prudent to reserve the day or two before. Any 'nice dinner' out should be reserved; places do fill up and you are likely to get a better table and in many cases a table at all. When we did an anniversary lunch at la tour d'Argent, we reserved 2 or 3 months in advance (whenever booking opened) and ended up with the fabulous table in the corner window looking out on the Seine and Notre Dame.

We learned this the hard way -- getting turned away from places we wanted to eat and having to walk into places that had plenty of room --- there is a reason they weren't full. If it is a well known fancy place, it doesn't hurt to book months or at least weeks in advance. Most of the places we eat at we book anywhere from a week to a couple of days ahead. This fall we several times were behind other couples entering a restaurant and watched them turned away without reservations.

We had the front desk person at our hotel call the restaurant for us and obviously there was no problem getting in

Thank you for the tips!