paris

One of the things I admire about France is that every employee, regardless of the company they work for and their own seniority, gets a mandatory five weeks of paid vacation time per year. Even though this doesn’t include me as a freelancer, I’m happy to see others getting the time they deserve to relax and enjoy their families. I already knew that my native US was far behind other countries in this respect, but this color-coded map on Wikipedia makes the contrast even more embarrassingly clear.

Anyway, as you might expect, the most popular time to take one’s time off is the summer, and the month of August has long been a time of exodus for Parisians. Everyone seems to leave all at the same time for various destinations, be they in France or farther afield. One side effect of this is that lots of small businesses all close simultaneously. A stroll around a non-touristy neighborhood will take you past a series of shuttered storefronts and notice signs such as the ones below (click any photo to switch to slide show mode) informing customers of their re-opening dates.

I always get a bit of an eerie feeling, walking around the empty streets of my mainly residential neighborhood in August. I also often forget that things are closed and make a detour to get a coffee from Dose, for example, only to find the place deserted and to curse my poor memory.

So while it’s a good thing for people working in France, this annual departure can be a bummer for tourists who come to Paris in part to try our vegan restaurants (usually small businesses that close all of August).

If your chosen destination restaurant (or clothes shop, etc.) has a sign in their window, you can try looking for the following key phrases to decipher it and see how long it will be closed:

fermé – closed
ouvert – open
fermeture estivale – summer closing
congés d’été – summer vacation
vacances annuelles – annual vacation
horaires d’été – (shorter) summer hours
réouverture – reopening (date)
en vacances – on vacation
bel été – have a good summer (= without us) 😉

But to help make planning easier, I’ve prepared a short list of some places where you can still find vegan food the rest of this August. Note that this list is not exhaustive and that it’s a good idea to double-check their current hours on their social media pages or call ahead. Don’t rely on what Google or even their own websites say, because those won’t necessarily be updated to reflect any special summer conditions.

Vegan places that are open

Every year, a handful of vegan restaurants in Paris do stay open all summer. Here are some that I personally recommend (plus one brand-new one I’ve heard good things about). Note however that Thursday, August 15th is a national holiday and some of these places might be closed that day.

Aujourd’hui Demain
42 rue du Chemin Vert, 75011 Paris (metro Richard Lenoir)
Restaurant/café and grocery store. A good place to hang out with a coffee and catch up on your email or work. If you’re in the mood for a sweet indulgence, don’t miss their Freak Shake.

Cantine Le Myrha
70 rue Myrha, 75018 Paris (metro Château Rouge)
Spacious and well-lit, excellent place for a buffet brunch with friends on a Sunday. You may make the acquaintance of Rainette, the restaurant’s sweet tabby cat, who sometimes wanders among the customers to be petted.

Cloud Cakes
6 rue Mandar, 75002 Paris (metro Sentier)
As their name suggests, they have some heavenly cakes! Savory lunch items available too until the mid-afternoon. Limited seating at busy times, but well worth a visit.

Le Faitout
23 avenue Simon Bolivar, 75019 Paris (metro Pyrénées)
All the ambiance of a traditional French brasserie, none of the usual animal products. Live music on Thursday nights. Don’t miss their platter of housemade vegan cheeses!

Hank Burger
55 rue des Archives, 75003 Paris (metro Rambuteau)
8 rue de Rochechouart, 75009 Paris (metro Cadet)
Really nice burgers, with a choice between their standard patty and a Beyond Beef one. I also love their potato wedges with a cheese topping and their chocolate chip cookies!

Hank Pizza
18 rue des Gravilliers, 75003 Paris (metro Arts et Métiers)
Vegan pizza with a range of preset toppings, including a couple of gluten-free ones each day. They have a particularly spacious upstairs dining room. If you come here, be sure to stop by the vegan grocery store Mon Epicerie Paris on the same street (see below for a description).

Les Petites Pâtisseries Raw & Vegan
44 rue du Chemin Vert, 75011 Paris (metro Richard Lenoir)
So many creative and delightful raw desserts! I especially like their little fruit tarts and matcha opéra cakes. Rumor has it you can now also find blue mermaid nice cream bowls there! On the same block as Aujourd’hui Demain (see above).

Le Potager du Marais
24 rue Rambuteau, 75003 Paris (metro Rambuteau)
Traditional French dishes in vegan versions. I often recommend this place to visitors since it’s a way to try classic dishes without the animal products. I love their seitan bourgignon, onion soup and crème brûlée.

Sunday’s Coffee Paris
171 boulevard Voltaire, 75011 Paris (metro Charonne)
This place is so new, I haven’t had a chance to go there yet. People on Instagram seem to like it though, so take a look if you’re nearby!

Wild & the Moon
Various locations throughout Paris
Another chain place with generous hours. Try one of their superfood elixir drinks or one of their dishes of the day (often a rice and curry bowl). I love their raw desserts, especially the lemon tart. Their location near Opéra is especially nice as it gets less traffic.

Other options

Certain other places are fairly reliably sources of vegan eats.

Restaurants

L’As du Fallafel
32-34 rue des Rosiers, 75004 Paris (metro Saint Paul)
Home of the best falafel sandwich in Paris! Prepare yourself for a line at the door. Closed Friday evenings and Saturdays all year round.

Ethiopian restaurants
Various locations throughout Paris
Due to a cultural tradition of abstaining from all animal products on certain days of the week and at certain times of year, Ethiopian restaurants generally always have a vegan option (sometimes labeled “vegetarian” on the menu). Be sure to specify that you don’t want fish. Google “restaurant Ethiopien Paris” plus the number of your arrondissement to find one. My personal favorite is Le Ménélik in the 17th.

Lebanese restaurants
Various locations throughout Paris
The chances of finding falafel (an accidentally vegan food) are high at just about every Lebanese restaurant. Look for places with the country’s very cute cedar tree flag.

Maison Landemaine
Various locations throughout Paris
Try their croissant ordinaire (regular croissant), which is always vegan, but be sure to specify ordinaire so they don’t give you a non-vegan butter croissant. They also have a vegan chausson aux pommes (apple turnover) and usually at least one vegan fancy dessert/pastry. Check the labels in the display case for the “VEGAN” in very small green text, or ask if unsure. They also sometimes have a vegan tofu, avocado and sun-dried tomato sandwich. Their baguettes, like all baguettes in France, are vegan by default.

Prêt à Manger
Various locations throughout Paris
This chain store is from the UK, which means it’s quite vegan-friendly. In France, they offer one vegan sandwich (avocado, sun-dried tomato and black olive spread on baguette type bread) as well as some vegan soups, chia pudding and sometimes a muesli bowl. They make coffee and matcha drinks with plant milk at no extra charge!

Vegan grocery stores

Vegan items can increasingly be found at mainstream grocery stores (check the bio (organic) aisle in particular), but with the stores below there’s no need to scrutinize labels since everything at them is fully vegan. This can be a good source for groceries for your AirBnB, or for things to pick up and put in a baguette for a DIY sandwich-on-the-go.

Aujourd’hui Demain
42 rue du Chemin Vert, 75011 Paris (metro Richard Lenoir)
Combination grocery store and restaurant/café. Also sells clothing, shoes, purses and personal care products. They offer an extensive range of vegan cheeses and certain hard-to-find items such as vegan honey and liquid smoke. Beyond Meat products are available here.

Naturalia Vegan
4 locations in Paris and the near suburbs
Part of the Naturalia organic grocery chain, these stores have a much wider selection of vegan cheeses, yogurts and plant-based imitation meats than other Naturalias. Unlike the other vegan grocery stores listed here, Naturalia Vegan locations also offer fresh produce.

Mon Epicerie Paris
31 rue des Gravilliers, 75003 Paris (metro Arts et Métiers)
This little grocery has a surprisingly wide selection of products, including Beyond Meat and some others that are found nowhere else in Paris as far as I know (for example Linda McCartney frozen items). Carries more Asian products than the other ones.

Un Monde Vegan
64 rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, 75003 Paris (metro Strasbourg-Saint Denis)
The first all-vegan food shop to open in Paris, Un Monde Vegan is still a popular source of interesting grocery products and books.

With that, I wish you a pleasant stay (or staycation) in Paris. Bon appétit!

If all the world’s a stage, it may as well be a canvas too.

As you visit Paris, scurrying perhaps between one art museum and another, keep your eyes peeled for the many works of art on display right out on the street: sprayed or stenciled on a wall, pasted to a pillar, affixed to a street corner or integrated into a road sign.

11351296_10153275909465690_1599435867358695133_n — Elf-like creatures by **Fred Lechevalier** try to get a better view of the city’s most famous landmark.

The streets are probably the best place to view the very latest, freshest contemporary art. Some of the works you see may have been added in the wee hours of the previous night. Often ephemeral, always changing, it turns a city’s public spaces into an open-air museum for all to enjoy. No entrance fee necessary.

In Paris, street art (or art de rue in French) as we know it today began to appear in the late 1960s. One of the first major works was the 1971 installation Les Gisants de la Commune de Paris by Ernest Pignon-Ernest, who is still active today. Paying homage to the Paris Commune revolt 100 years earlier, it consisted of silk-screened images of fallen men unfurled down the steps leading to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in the Montmartre district.

“Places are my essential materials,” the artist told biographer André Velter in a 2014 interview. “I try to understand, to grasp everything that can be seen there—space, light, colors—and at the same time everything that cannot or can no longer be seen: history, buried memories.”

For more about the history of street art in France, I recommend this Widewalls article. Also check out the highly entertaining Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop for an insider’s view of installing art around the city in the dead of night (Paris features prominently).

One of my favorite street artists is Invader, who in 1998 began his ongoing project Space Invaders. As of this writing, there are now 3,564 of his tile-mosaic creatures in 74 cities around the globe. See him at work here.

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In homage to the 1980s video game that inspired his characters, the artist created a game, Flash Invaders, in which players compete to scan as many mosaics as they can with their mobile phones. Each piece has its own number of points depending on size and elaborateness, and when you scan Invaders in new cities you get bonus points. Since the artist is French, Paris is the city with the largest number of these creations (1,305 as of today), and finding new ones as I go about my daily life is always a little thrill.

Street art is something you will inevitably notice as you stroll around Paris, but the works are often enigmatic. Why do Kashink‘s faces always have four eyes and a mustache? What does it mean when a little crown is spray-painted above a head by another artist?

Whether you live here or will be passing through, a fun way to learn more about street art in Paris is to join one of the English-language street art walking tours offered by Kasia Klon, who is an artist herself. During each three-hour tour, she focuses on a specific district of Paris (La Butte-aux-Cailles, Belleville, Montmartre and others) and also offers tours in a few of the near suburbs. Kasia takes you straight to the most interesting works, often pointing out pieces that you wouldn’t have noticed on your own, explaining their significance, back stories and how they fit in with the history of Paris. When a series of pieces by different artists appear together on a single wall, she highlights the subtle common themes between them, showing how the artists have responded to and built upon each other’s work. As she knows many of the street artists in Paris personally, she can offer insights that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

Kasia’s tours are now listed above all other street art walking tours on Tripadvisor and were named Second-Best Tour of Paris in 2016 and 2017 (for all tour categories combined) by Expatriates Magazine as well as Local Experience of the year 2018 for Paris by Travel & Hospitality Awards. She is also the only official guide for the Street Art 13 mural project launched by Galerie Itinerrance.

The following are some noteworthy pieces I photographed in Paris and the suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine, either on my own or during one of Kasia’s tours.

Robert Dalban from Les Tontons Flingueurs, revisited with nicer weapons by Jaeraymie.

A Space Invader eyes the road construction with some trepidation, while a calmer person with ruffly clothes takes it in their stride (Invader and Kam & Laurène).

Muhammed Ali and Ryu from Street Fighter face off in the Butte-aux-Cailles district (Combo).

Yarn bombing (artist unknown).

A mural by German artist MadC.

Fierce warriors guarding (or menacing?) Vitry-sur-Seine (Kouka).

A decidedly chill Zelda Bomba face looks over toward Canal Saint-Martin.

A cat and some other creatures brighten the way to this parking garage thanks to Lala Saidko and Bebar.

A wheat-paste figure gives me a taste of my own medicine (Noar Noarnito).

A street sign revisited by Clet Abraham next to yet another Invader.

American artist Alloyius McIlwaine brings life to this wall (see it happen here).

A unique figure in the Batignolles district by Anne-Laure Maison.

A portrait of late singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and (not late!) partner Jane Birkin on the façade of their rue de Verneuil residence, which keeps getting covered by more layers of new street art paying tribute to them (Jo Di Bona).

A few of Kashink‘s four-eyed characters, this time in a special project called Kashink Kids, in which local children are invited to fill in the faces.

A crow’s nest in the Batignolles district (artist unknown).

Heartcraft‘s stickers spread kisses and love all over the city.

A collaboration in Vitry-sur-Seine (artists unknown).

Persian calligraphy by Iranian artist A1one.

Kabuki theater with Irish artist Fin Dac.

A portrait of French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who helped legalize same-sex marriage in France (C215).

A decidedly French robot in Vitry-sur-Seine by Italian artist Pixel Pancho.

And sometimes all it takes to create a work of art is a well-placed heart (artist unknown).

Finally, whether you join a street art tour or strike out on your own, be sure to wear comfy walking shoes!

More information about Kasia’s street art tours can be found on her website. Also check out her Facebook page and Instagram.

	Leonard on How to be French
	Elisabeth on Earl Grey lemon cake
	Sereen on Earl Grey lemon cake
	Elisabeth on Sauerbraten meatballs
	janeishly on Sauerbraten meatballs

Solid gold vegan recipes and more from a United Statesian living in Paris, France.

Tag: paris

Ghost town

Vegan places that are open

Other options

Restaurants

Vegan grocery stores

Street art in Paris