How Paris Is Embracing Plant-Based Dining, the French Way

Plants are popping up all over Paris. Alongside the greening of the city, turning streets into parks, roundabouts into miniature forests and parking spaces into native plant walkways, Parisian menus are also turning to plants, the French way. This shift even made its way into Emily in Paris: In the fifth season, the show’s love-interest chef, Gabriel, pushes to take his Michelin-starred restaurant into a more plant-based direction. 

At the same time, there is an environmental benefit to this shift: putting more plants on the plate means lower emissions and a smaller climate footprint. French schools and municipal dining services have increased proportions of plant-based dishes, and to avoid food waste, all restaurants are required to offer doggy bags; an American custom once thought unimaginable in France is now associated with being eco-conscious.

This increasing interest in plant-based foods is the result of a collective environmental shift, combined with the ever-hovering influence of food and lifestyle trends imported from the United States.

First came kale, leaving French farmers at the weekend marchés confused by American expats asking for cabbage and why exactly it had to be that particular kind. “But why kale?” one farmer at the weekend market recently asked me. “Red cabbage is just as healthy!”

Then came the “sans gluten” wave as bakeries, perplexed, began preparing gluten-free bread for American tourists. The idea that anyone would voluntarily abstain from wheat, or even a proper croissant, was hard to grasp.

Now, plant-based food is having its moment. While American wellness culture has helped shape its recent popularity, the French interpretation of it remains subtly and remarkably French.

After a decade living in Paris, I have noticed that the French are more comfortable eating between categories: choosing a vegetable tasting menu at dinner, followed by steak tartare the next time they dine out, without feeling the need to explain either choice. They might eat less meat without swearing it off forever. Americans are more likely to make the way we eat part of our identity. We are either vegans or meat-eaters; health fanatics or junk-food lovers. We place ourselves in categories and defend them with an almost political intensity. For the French, contradiction doesn’t necessarily need to be resolved. 

While American food culture often seems to shun certain food groups, French food culture makes room for the full spectrum of foods as long as they remain in their proper place. The French order dessert, but enjoy it within a reasonable portion. Eating for pleasure is not treated as breaking a healthy diet, but as a part of it. 

Perhaps this is why, in France, plant-based eating does not appear to be tied to wellness trends or political identity. Eating more plants is simply another way to cook and dine out. The French are not giving up meat. The steak frites are in solid supply, and the butter wall at La Grande Épicerie is well stocked, but from cold-pressed juice bars on the Right Bank to the most celebrated Michelin-starred kitchens, plants are moving from the side of the plate to the center.

The steak will surely survive, but menus are making more room for glazed and slow-roasted carrots alongside duck à l’orange. In a city known for brasseries and butter, change does not simply arrive through restriction or renunciation, but by making a little more room on the plate.