These look great! I'm going to have to try some of them - particularly the pain au chocolat. My most favorite Parisian treat is the brioche, hands down. I've made them once using the recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The taste and texture were perfect, but the dough was so wet that they wouldn't hold their shapes. I want to try the version in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice too.

Add a glass of champagne to the list and I think it's good to go!

Ah, now I see. I though the pain au chocolate looked odd, like the pastry dough wasn't right--no wonder, it's not a laminated croissant dough, but frozen puff pastry. Well, I guess that would work but it's never going to be the same as a real pain au chocolate...but then again, it would certainly come together a lot faster.

Having once made croissants, it's a terrible thing to do at home because it just takes forever! But they are so delicious that in the end, it's worth taking the time.

Add a Kir Royale. Put just a couple of drops (maybe half a teaspoon) of Creme de Cassis (black currant liquer) in the bottom of a champagne flute and top with champagne or sparkling wine. I can't count the number of these I had in Paris.

While the salade nicoise is usually on every list, the better less-well-known favorite of mine is the salade au chevre chaud. It's a simple green salad with a mustardy-lemony french vinaigrette served with wheels of goat cheese hot on toast. The best one I had also had a slice of prosciutto over the top of the greens.

NSane--yes! My husband and I had some absolutely terrible meals in Paris, but the one that was actually good included the salade au chevre chaud. The greens were dressed with duck confit and fried apples. It was just to die for.

Macarons - I heart thee.

I recently got the famous French cookbook I Know How to Cook. What a huge book! All the traditional French recipes are there. The eggs mimosa were so delicious. I would like to make macarons next. They are amazing. The more I read about them the more I think I could rise to the challenge (maybe). :)

If you're going to go for pain au chocolate, it's 100% worth the effort to make a real croissant dough. And I completely disagree about it being too much work. It's about 15 minutes worth of work in between a few hours of chill time. Fresh, homemade croissants? Worth it like nothing else I can think of.

I definitely learned about the awesomeness of putting sunny-side up egg on top of the grilled sandwich...or anything else for that matter...on my first trip to Paris. How did I make it through 30 years of cooking without that little cooking trick?
SO delicious.

Kakugori * Splatgirl, I just use frozen croissant dough from the freezer, unroll it, cut it into 'pain' size bits, plonk a bit of chocolate (whatever you fancy) on it and then roll & bake. 95% as good as the real thing! ;o)

The Croque Monsieur is my all-time favourite, a luke-warm goats cheese salad (salade tiede au chevre) comes in at second place!

I spent one weekend in Paris only eating those 2 dishes and reading in the sun in the Parque Luxembourg (ok and a nice cold beer in the PMs) -- great days indeed!

Crepes have to be added: Nutella crepes!

Just in time for Bastille Day!! Happy Bastille Day!

Ermmm... don't mean to be pedantic or anything but Moules-Frites is a DISTINCTLY Belgian dish!

Poulet à l'estragon is typically French, and so easy. Take an organic, free-range bird if possible. Rub skin with good olive oil, then salt and pepper liberally. Push some garlic cloves and tarragon under breast skin. A handful of tarragon, half a bulb of garlic and half a lemon in the cavity. Medium-hot oven for about an hour, depending on size. Delicious! Oh, roasting the bird breast down keeps the breast meat nice and juicy

Being from Paris I disagree with this post (yes, how very French of me). The idea of using anything but handmade croissant pastry is unfathomable to me. Pain chocolat is a very specific thing. You cannot overload it with chocolate and it should have a nice laquered shell that is sweet and basically the first two layers should fall to crumbs in your hands.

If you do come to Paris the best pain chocolat can be had at a boulangerie (bakery) called Couderc on Avenue Flandres (metro Crimee). They also have the best croissants and desserts and handmade chocolates.

If you want the best French cookbook in the world you can either by Julia Child's 2 volumes classic Mastering the Art of French cooking or the multi-volume set written by Alain Ducasse, the master French chef.

I will also put a lot of recipes on my blog though at the moment it's light on French fare, but my Parisian grandmother was a Michelin star chef and I've inherited her recipes either through watching or because I stole her recipe book before I went off to university.

I wouldn't plug my blog normally, but just seeing fish on the list (Paris is landlocked and you do not eat fish either at home or cafes unless you happen to have isolated the best poissoneries otherwise all the fish & seafood you buy in Paris has been pre-frozen) made me feel I should speak up!