Les Parisiens

Palaces aside, the food inside most Paris hotels is not often worth sampling outside breakfast. (And even that meal can be questionable—you’re better off hitting up a local boulangerie instead.) But Les Parisiens, the spacious restaurant with velour banquettes and brass-edge mirrors inside the Pavillon Faubourg Saint-Germain Hotel, is an exception.

Classic plates like veal tartare and sole meuniere are tremendous (and priced as such). Take a date, your parents, or anyone you want to impress. If that person happens to be Irish or an English major, you can brag about how you booked a table at the address where James Joyce finished Ulysses over an €18 cocktail and the millefeuille.