Whether you live in Paris or you’re just visiting, chances are you spend a lot of time thinking, reading, talking, and fretting about restaurants.

It’s entirely natural. Paris is an international capital of good food and gastronomy (the birthplace of it, even) so you want to make every meal count, yet you know its 40,000 restaurants are not created equal.

This is fertile ground for FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and its sneaky cousin, FOPTWR (Fear Of Picking The Wrong Restaurant).

So before you make yourself crazy, let me offer you my Ten Paris Restaurant Tips.

Tip #1: Be clear on your wants and needs

This is the most basic thing, but many people skip that part.

Before you go down the rabbit hole of searching for “Best Restaurants in Paris”, take a moment to list (in your mind or on paper) the features you’re looking for. How many people are you eating with and what kind of diners are they? What style of cuisine are you into? What kind of ambiance do you want to spend the night in? What price level do you want to go for? Any food preferences or dietary constraints?

Keep all of those at the forefront of your mind during your search, so you can swiftly brush aside anything that looks kinda cool but isn’t the focus du jour. A huge time saver.

Tip #2: Follow the locals

It is generally more reliable to get recommendations from people who actually live in the city, and can put a restaurant, chef, cuisine, or trend in the context of many more dining experiences. This is not to dismiss the reports of short-term visitors; I myself like to write about my forays in other cities, but I don’t claim expertise and expect my readers to double-check against local sources.

Take the time to identify a few locals (native or not) whose voice and opinions resonate with you, whose dining temperament seems to align with yours, and follow their restaurant adventures. It can be bloggers, magazine columnists, or collective websites; what matters is that there be a consistent viewpoint from one review to the next.

I like to follow friends such as Caroline Mignot, Lindsey Tramuta (author of The New Paris!), and Aaron Ayscough. I get the weekly review from Le Fooding and the My Little Paris newsletter. I use the website Paris by Mouth and keep an eye on Esterelle Payany’s reviews in Télérama and François-Régis Gaudry’s blog at L’Express (he has a TV show on Paris Première and a radio show on France Inter if you can’t get enough of him). I don’t read everything they write (hello, overwhelm!), but when I need fresh recommendations, these are my go-to’s. (For content written in French, Google Translate is your friend!)

I have no use for crowd-sourced review websites: without knowing the people writing and their background, the litany of random opinions is meaningless to me.

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I have been meaning to share my review of the Instant Pot for a while now, and since I’ve received several inquiries about it, today I am sharing my recipe for this Slow-Cooker Filipino Chicken Adobo, and taking the opportunity to tell you about this seven-in-one appliance I love.

I have been hearing about the Instant Pot for years through the cooking websites I read, and my interest grew and grew as I noticed the adoration some bloggers have for it. It is an appliance sold by a Canadian company, and offers seven main programmable features. It is all at once:

• A slow-cooker, for low-temperature cooking over several hours,
• A pressure cooker with two pressure settings, high or low,
• A sauté pot, to brown ingredient before stewing or pressure cooking,
• A rice cooker, to cook rice, grains, and legumes,
• A steamer,
• A yogurt maker,
• A hot plate to keep dishes warm, which is very convenient for entertaining and parties.

I finally took the plunge and bought myself the 6-quart model last fall, taking advantage of a good deal on Amazon. I immediately adopted it, thereby replacing my pressure-cooker, my steamer, and my yogurt maker, which I gave away or sold. (For now we are keeping our rice cooker because we are very attached to it; I told you about it when I shared my recipe for coconut spiced rice.)

My Instant Pot, available on Amazon.

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Father’s Day is celebrated on the third Sunday in June in many countries in the world, including the United States and France. In 2017, we will celebrate la fête des pères on June 18.

If your Papa (or significant other, if you’re getting him something on behalf of your children!) is a lover of all things French, I have gathered a long list of French-inspired gift ideas that will show how much you love him, and how highly you think of him.

Not knowing the particular tastes of your own father, I readily admit to playing into a number of gender generalizations; I hope you’ll forgive me. Feel free to draw even more ideas from my French Gift Ideas for Mother’s Day and my Best Gifts for the French-Loving Cook.

Bonne fête to Papas everywhere!

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• The manuscript for my upcoming cookbook Tasting Paris is fully edited, and the photos have all been shot by the amazing Nicole Franzen. We are now working on the layout of the book, and I will soon get the manuscript back from the copy editor whose job it is to make sure everything is straightened out. I am loving how it is taking shape, and I look forward to giving you a sneak peek soon. The book will be published in the US in the spring of 2018.

• I have been leading quite a few private walking tours this month — May is deservedly a popular month to visit Paris! I’ve had guests of all ages, children, students, chefs, teens, passionate cooks, cheese fiends, chocoholics, writers, dreamers, all of them Paris lovers. I get such a thrill out of showing them around, being their best Parisian friend, and sharing everything I know about French food culture, and how to make the most of every meal in the city. If you’re planning a trip of your own, please get in touch and we’ll discuss the possibilities.

Steak au poivre at Champeaux; Australienne at Comptoirs Poilâne.

• I returned to Champeaux for a wonderful dinner with friends from out of town. I love the space, under the new canopy of Les Halles, and the menu of renovated French classics, such as the steak au poivre above, which figures in my Tasting Paris book! I also have a version of their lemon spatchcocked chicken in there. Both have been hits with my recipe testers and I’m excited to share them with you when the book comes out.

• The Poilâne team has rebranded the Paris lunch counters from Cuisine de Bar to Comptoirs Poilâne and updated the menu to feature innovative recipes around their high-quality flours and grains, such as a delicious corn bread and a barley muesli. Don’t worry, the tartines are not going anywhere, and naturally I love their avo toast, dubbed l’Australienne.

Breakfast with a fine book and my mostest beloved mug.

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