Customer Reviews

Time Out Paris Eating and Drinking (Time Out Guides)

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

One of the other reviews complains about the print quality of this book, but I want to talk about its content. If you want a beautiful book, go elsewhere -- but if you want an excellent guide to all kinds of food options in Paris, this is the single best book. (I'll compare it below to Pudlo, Clotilde's guide, and general guide books).

I've used the Time Out Paris Eating and Drinking (TOPE&D) guide in the last two editions on a total of 10 trips for work and leisure to Paris. I'm a foodie and find it to be my must-have guide for Paris. Why? The recommendations are uniformly outstanding. I've not yet picked a restaurant from the book that has disappointed. Yes, the reviews are of mixed quality and are occasionally snarky -- but they do cover all kinds of food in the city, cover all the areas not just tourist places, and will point you to the best places. Info such as phone numbers and hours has been correct every time I've used it.

In addition to restaurant coverage, it has sections for bakeries, chocolate makers, wine shops, tea rooms, and other kinds of food purveyors. Those are almost as helpful as the restaurant listings, since they can point you to outstanding shops for everyday items (e.g., if you're renting a vacation flat in Paris) and gifts.

As mentioned by another reviewer, the maps are extremely poor. That is a general problem with Time Out guides. But if you're in Paris, you should pick up Paris par Arrondissement or a Michelin pocket city atlas. Both are available at the airport and many bookstores in Paris. Using any guidebook map is inferior to what the French use.

The paper quality and printing in the book are indeed poor and the ads are annoying. However, in a way, this became almost a benefit for me: the book is (barely) small enough to fit into an overcoat pocket and the like, and the thin pages served in better to be able to take everywhere.

Now for the comparisons. First, if you have a general guide, do you need this book? That depends on how much you're interested in finding the best places to eat and shop for food. If you don't really care and just want to find good-enough places while seeing the sights, then you don't need this. Use a general guide such as Time Out Paris or Rick Steves instead.

Compared to Pudlo: TOPE&D fits in your pocket, covers shops in addition to restaurants, has more focus on ethnic restaurants, and has longer and in my opinion more helpful reviews than Pudlo for each restaurant. However, Pudlo is more complete and is better for finding options within neighborhoods, esp. more traditional French restaurants. I find Pudlo to be interesting but probably better for residents than visitors.

Compared to Clotilde's guide: TOPE&D is much more complete, but Clotilde's is a great way to find shops and markets. They really serve somewhat different purposes: TOPE&D attempts to be fairly complete and comprehensive, while Clotilde's is more like having your own personal guide to just the high points, with extended narration and guidance that is fun to read in its own right. I like both and Clotilde's is the second guide that I take with me (reading it in the room rather than on the go).

A couple of final notes. Unlike some food guides to Paris, TOPE&D does not have a menu reader or attempt to teach you French. Deciphering French menus is indeed difficult but I seriously doubt that any book can help a lot with that. If you want to look up an ingredient here and there, a menu reader book may be useful, but I usually just guess and do OK. If you have a special need such as vegetarian, TOPE&D will likely serve you better than trying to use a menu translator.

Second, the edition may appear to be a year or two out of date -- but I wouldn't worry about that. Restaurant turnover in Paris is relative slow, slower than in the US and much, much slower than in countries like Japan. I've used editions of TOPE&D as much as three years out of date with no problems. Just get the latest one available (do a couple of extra searches to make sure) and you'll be fine.

Summary: if you want excellent coverage and recommendations, and can tolerate magazine-type print quality, then TOPE&D is an excellent choice. If you want a personal guide, supplement it with Clotilde's; if there for more than a month, add Pudlo. Bon appetit!

The authors have listed the restaurants,bistros, cafes, they recommend in each district of Paris. There is an attempt to cross reference by name and district but I still found it confusing to navigate. The reviews detail and critique one or two meals the authors ordered in each place but did not give an overview of the menu. This is probably fair to the establishment but not particularly helpful. I found the book helpful as a cross reference when combined with other restaurant guides and advice from locals.

First and foremost, the maps section of this book is HORRIBLE. The book is geared towards people unfamiliar with Paris, and as such it should do a good job of cross-referencing its material by map location, type of food, area location, etc. It's bad bad bad. The only reference to any of the restaurants on maps is at the back of the book on a series really bad quality maps that have no keys, legends, grids, nothing. Just the names of every restaurant mentioned in the book scattered about. Nice. This makes it needlessly difficult, if not impossible to, for instance, find a good Italian bistro near the Louvre. The only easy way to use this book is to find a restaurant you like, punch in its address on your GPS device, and then make a special trip to that restaurant. That is how the authors must have envisioned this thing working.

There's also annoying ads scattered throughout the book, the typeface is a difficult-to-read serifed font, and the print quality is horrible. Several pages had "ghosting" of the text, which made it even harder to read (and as a print designer, I won't even go into how this should NEVER EVER happen).

It's a very low quality product, and the publishers really cut corners in the production of this book. Even the reviews are very hit and miss. The authors often spend half the review writing about his/her dining partners, or the conversation they overheard at the next table. How is this useful?

Not good, not good.

I'll be in Paris again this summer. The last time I was there I bought the Cheap Eats in Paris book which was pretty good, but this time I wanted something with more up to date information. This book looks great; I've been to Paris enough times to know that this book has good, current restaurant info