L'Ami Louis

L'Ami Louis is the kind of restaurant you have to argue about before you even enter. A back-alley dining room in the 3e where the carte hasn't really moved in decades: roast chicken, foie gras the size of a fist, escargot, frites cooked in goose fat. Critics split sharply, half call it the most disappointing legend in Paris, half call it the last real bistro. Either way, you don't go to discover; you go to participate in a piece of post-war Parisian dining theatre that the city's never quite reproduced. Pricing is unapologetic. So is the cooking. Decide which camp you want to be in, and book a Saturday lunch.