My search for the perfect steak frites in Paris, the staple of French brasserie cuisine

<p>It’s on every prix fixe menu in France, but which restaurant serves up the best incarnation in the capital? I stomped and chomped my way across the city to find out</p><p>I once ate seven bowls of <em>ragù bolognese</em> over the course of a&nbsp;single weekend. I was in Bologna, to be fair, and on a mission – to get to the bottom of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/nov/25/how-to-make-perfect-bolognese">spag bol</a><strong> </strong>(yes, I know it should be served with tagliatelle). A&nbsp;few years earlier, I did something similar with a Polish stew called<strong> </strong><em>bigos </em>(a&nbsp;sort of hunter’s stew). I wanted to learn about its variations, its nuances, and I wondered what you could find out about a place if you dived into one dish&nbsp;in particular. In the case of <em>bigos</em>, I&nbsp;gleaned that the Polish are prepared to wait a long time for things to be done.</p><p>My friend Tom suffers from a similar obsession (just last month he dropped a dozen scotch eggs on a bank holiday Monday) and so when he said he was heading to Paris to eat multiple <em>steak frites</em>, I wasn’t exactly surprised. He wasn’t just going for a laugh, mind you: Tom runs a pub in London called the <a href="https://carltontavern.co.uk/">Carlton Tavern</a>, and had come to the opinion that his steak and chips could do with a bit of zhooshing up. Hence the recce in Paris. But a man travelling all that way to examine meat and potatoes cannot do so alone, so I volunteered my services.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/nov/10/perfect-steak-frites-paris-french-brasserie">Continue reading...</a>