Paris has a tourist version of itself that's gotten thicker since the 2010s. Café de Flore, Angelina, the rooftop at Galeries Lafayette: all real, all fine, all places where the locals are mostly the staff. The Paris people actually date in is quieter and less photographed, and the rules are different. Smaller rooms, longer dinners, and almost nobody on their phone.
Le Baron Rouge in the 12th
Le Baron Rouge on Rue Théophile Roussel, around the corner from the Marché d'Aligre, is what every wine bar in the world wants to be when it grows up. Barrels for tables, wine straight from the cask, a chalkboard of charcuterie and cheese. On Sunday mornings the market spills onto the street and the bar serves oysters from a folding table outside.
The 12th is a residential arrondissement and Le Baron Rouge is a residential bar. Couples come here on date four or five, when they've stopped trying to impress each other and just want a glass of Chinon and something to nibble. It's also one of the few places in Paris where it's easy to talk to strangers, which is useful if the date is going badly and you need a third party.
Le Café du Coin in the 11th
Le Café du Coin on Rue de la Forge Royale is the kind of neighborhood place that gets harder to find every year. Small kitchen, natural wine list, twenty-five seats. The owners cook what they feel like cooking. Reservations are essential and they don't always answer the phone, so go in person on a quiet afternoon.
This is where people in the 11th take a date when they want to demonstrate that they live here without saying so. The room is too small for performance. You sit close to other tables and you keep your voice down and the food is honest.
La Buvette in the 11th
La Buvette on Rue Saint-Maur is twelve seats and one woman, Camille Fourmont, behind the bar. The menu is short, the wines are natural and well chosen, and the white beans in olive oil are the most famous side dish in eastern Paris for good reason.
It's not a place to start an evening. It's where you go after dinner somewhere else, around 10pm, when the night is already going well and you want to extend it. Two glasses of wine and a plate of beans, twenty-five euros, and the date suddenly feels like it's been going on forever in a good way.
Café Charbon and the Rue Oberkampf strip
Rue Oberkampf has been the going-out street of the 11th since the 1990s and it has not really changed. Café Charbon is the anchor, a converted dance hall with high ceilings and patinated mirrors that has somehow not been ruined by its own popularity. People meet here at 7pm, drink a pression for around five euros, and figure out where to go next.
The whole stretch from Parmentier to Ménilmontant is full of these places. Aux Folies on Rue de Belleville for a cheap glass of rosé and a mostly local crowd. Le Perchoir up the hill if you want a rooftop that isn't full of bachelorette parties. None of it is fancy and that's the point.
La Rotonde de la Villette and the Bassin
In the 19th, the Bassin de la Villette is where Parisians who can't afford the Canal Saint-Martin anymore go on summer evenings. The quais are wider, the crowd is younger and more mixed, and you can rent a small electric boat from Marin d'Eau Douce for about forty euros an hour and putter around the bassin without a license.
La Rotonde de la Villette, the Ledoux building at the end of the bassin, has a terrace that catches the sun until 9pm in July. Drinks are reasonable for what they are. The MK2 cinemas on either side of the water connect by a small ferry that's free, which is the kind of detail that makes Paris worth the rent if you can find it.
Belleville for a Sunday
Belleville is where I send people who think they've already seen Paris. Climb up Rue de Belleville from the metro, eat dim sum at Le President or one of the Vietnamese places on the way, and walk to the Parc de Belleville. The view from the top of the park is the best free skyline in Paris, better than Montmartre because there are no tour buses.
Afterward, walk down through the 20th to Père Lachaise. The cemetery is open until 6pm and it is a strange but genuinely good date if you both have the right temperament for it. Or skip the cemetery and head to Aux Folies for a beer.
A note on tipping and timing
Locals don't reserve for two people at 9pm on a Saturday at a small place; that's a tourist move. They go at 7:30pm, eat for two hours, and leave before the second seating. They tip a euro or two on a thirty-euro bill, not fifteen percent. They don't ask for tap water in English, they ask for une carafe d'eau in French. Small things, but the rooms read them, and the service changes accordingly.