The 5 Falafel Marais You Can’t Miss in Paris
Falafel in Paris means one street before it means anything else: Rue des Rosiers, the spine of the old
Pletzl in the 4th, where the queue outside a takeaway window has been a fixture long enough to become a
landmark in its own right. But the Marais is bigger than that one block, and the falafel counters that have
opened north of it — along Rue Rambuteau behind the Pompidou, and further up towards Turbigo in the 3rd —
are mostly Lebanese kitchens rather than Ashkenazi ones, which is a genuinely different plate of food under
the same word. We went through every falafel and Levantine counter with a Google Business listing across the
3rd and 4th, ended up with 9 that qualified, and weighted each one’s rating against how many people actually
left it, because 4.8★ from 392 reviews and 4.3★ from fourteen thousand are not making the same
claim at all. Five came out ahead, and between them they map the whole argument: the institution everybody
queues for, the 1976 mezze house next door to it, two near-identical Lebanese counters eighty metres apart on
the same street, and a late-night kitchen in the 3rd that stays open past one in the morning.
L’As du Fallafel, Rue des Rosiers
Start with the one that needs no introduction and gets one anyway. L’As du
Fallafel carries 14,653 Google reviews — more than the other four on this list combined, several times
over — at 4.3★, and it is the only one of the five that Google classifies as a falafel restaurant
outright rather than a Lebanese or Mediterranean one. Its own website was not reachable when we checked, so
there is no house story to quote here; what the listing does tell you is more useful anyway. The opening
hours are the tell: 11:00 AM to 11:30 PM Monday through Thursday and again on Sunday, but Friday
service stops at 3:30 PM and Saturday it does not open at all. That is a kitchen keeping shabbat, in the
middle of the street that has kept it longest, and it is the single most practical fact on this page —
turn up on a Saturday afternoon expecting the famous queue and you will find a shutter. 34 Rue des Rosiers,
in the 4th.
Chez Marianne, Rue des Hospitalières Saint-Gervais
Fifty-five metres from L’As — around the corner, literally the next building but one — and a completely
different proposition. Chez Marianne has been open since 1976 and calls itself a
maison de qualité working from recipes “elaborated by grandmothers,” which it delivers in generous
portions and warm colours, in its own words. The kitchen is Mediterranean and Eastern European at once: falafel
pita, yes, but alongside kefta, pastrami, and mezze plates you order by the number of items on them, finishing
with homemade apple or poppy-seed strudel, halva and Turkish delight. It is the only place on this list where
falafel is one dish among many rather than the whole point, and the only one that will feed you at
9:30 AM — it opens earlier than every other name here and runs to 11:00 PM, midnight on Friday and
Saturday. 4.1★ from 5,467 reviews, which is the lowest rating on this list against the second-largest
review base; a fifty-year-old restaurant on a tourist street accumulates opinions the way a young counter
never will.
Falafel du Liban, Rue Rambuteau
Half a kilometre north, behind the Pompidou, the falafel stops being Ashkenazi and starts being Lebanese.
Falafel du Liban at 35 Rue Rambuteau is the best-established of that group: 2,831
Google reviews at 4.6★, which is a higher score than either Rue des Rosiers name manages on a review
base large enough to mean it. It lists no phone number and no website at all, which tells you what kind of
operation it is — a counter that expects you to turn up rather than call ahead, open 11:00 AM to
11:00 PM every day of the week without exception, including the Saturday when the 4th arrondissement’s
most famous falafel window is closed. If you are in the Marais on a Saturday, this is the answer.
Falafel du Liban bis, Rue Rambuteau
Then, seventy-nine metres down the same street, Falafel du Liban bis — and
bis in French is exactly what it sounds like, the second one, the address that repeats. Whether this
is a sibling branch or a neighbour trading on a good name, Google holds them as two separate businesses with
separate listings, separate hours and separate reviews, and we are not going to assert a relationship the data
does not state. What the data does say is striking: 4.8★ from 392 reviews, the highest rating on this
list, on much the smallest sample of the five. It has a mobile number rather than a landline — 06 21 07 90 95
— and stays open half an hour later than its namesake, 11:00 AM to 11:30 PM daily. Eighty metres is
close enough that the honest recommendation is to look at both windows and pick the shorter queue. 18 Rue
Rambuteau, in the 3rd.
Rannouch City, Rue de Turbigo
The furthest north and the one that keeps the strangest hours. Rannouch City
lists itself on Google under the not-especially-modest banner MEILLEUR LIBANAIS À PARIS 3e — best
Lebanese in the 3rd — and 2,006 reviewers at 4.8★ have declined to argue, which makes it the
best-rated place on this list with a serious sample behind the number. It sits at 44 Rue de Turbigo, nearly a
kilometre from Rue des Rosiers and past the point where most falafel guides stop looking, which is probably
why the rating has stayed as high as it has. The real distinction is the closing time: 1:00 AM Sunday
through Thursday, 1:30 AM on Friday and Saturday. Nothing else here is open past midnight. If the
craving arrives after a late dinner or a longer night out, this is the only one of the five still frying.
Phone 09 84 15 64 19.
All five, on the map
The interactive map has all 9 qualifying falafel and Levantine counters we found
across the 3rd and 4th, these five marked and numbered, and a button that hands the walking route between them
straight to Google Maps on your phone.
Getting the most out of a falafel crawl in the Marais
Unlike most food crawls, this one is genuinely walkable: the two furthest apart, Rannouch City and L’As du
Fallafel, are 909 metres from each other, and the middle three fall on the line between them. An afternoon on
foot covers all five with no Métro at all. Two things make that afternoon smoother if you are visiting rather
than living here. A local eSIM from Airalo means Google Maps, opening
hours and the map above all work the moment you land at CDG instead of after you find café Wi-Fi, and a booked
transfer from Welcome Pickups removes the one genuinely stressful
part of arriving in Paris. Most of these counters are cash-and-card affairs in the five-to-fifteen euro range,
so the foreign transaction fee on each one is small and relentless — a Wise
card or a Revolut account handles euros at the real exchange rate and stops
the crawl quietly costing more than the food. The Marais is also the densest museum quarter in Paris, with the
Musée Picasso and the Musée Carnavalet both inside this walking radius, so
Tiqets for skip-the-line entry turns the gaps between lunch and dinner
into something better than queueing twice in one day. And if the Marais is somewhere you want to stay rather
than pass through, HousingAnywhere and
Spotahome both list medium-term furnished rentals in the 3rd and 4th,
which is the realistic route into a neighbourhood where short-term listings are heavily restricted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is the best falafel in the Marais?
It depends entirely on which number you trust. By rating, Rannouch City and Falafel du Liban bis tie at
4.8★ — but Rannouch City earns it from 2,006 reviews and Falafel du Liban bis from 392, so they are not
equally proven. By sheer weight of opinion, L’As du Fallafel’s 14,653 reviews at 4.3★ make it the most
tested falafel in the city by an enormous margin. Falafel du Liban, at 4.6★ from 2,831 reviews, is the
best compromise between the two measures.
Why is L’As du Fallafel closed on Saturdays?
Its listed hours stop at 3:30 PM on Friday and it does not open on Saturday at all — the shabbat
pattern, on the street that is the historic heart of Jewish Paris. It is the only one of the five that closes
for a full day; the other four open every day of the week. Plan a Saturday visit around Falafel du Liban,
Falafel du Liban bis, Chez Marianne or Rannouch City instead.
Is Marais falafel Israeli, Lebanese or Jewish-Parisian?
All three, and the split runs roughly north-south. Google classifies three of these five — Falafel du
Liban, Falafel du Liban bis and Rannouch City, all in the 3rd — as Lebanese restaurants; Chez Marianne is
listed as Mediterranean and describes its own cooking as Mediterranean and Eastern European at once; only
L’As du Fallafel on Rue des Rosiers is typed as a falafel restaurant outright. The chickpea is the same. The
pickles, sauces and bread are not.
How late can I eat falafel in the Marais?
Rannouch City on Rue de Turbigo runs to 1:00 AM Sunday through Thursday and 1:30 AM on Friday and
Saturday, and it is the only one of the five open past midnight. Falafel du Liban bis is next latest at
11:30 PM daily, matched by L’As du Fallafel on the days it opens.
Can I do all five in one afternoon?
Comfortably, on foot — the whole set spans about 900 metres. Chez Marianne and L’As du Fallafel are 55
metres apart, and Falafel du Liban and Falafel du Liban bis are 79 metres apart on the same street, so the
crawl is really three stops with two pairs inside it. The one thing to check first is the day: Saturday takes
L’As off the board entirely.
- 1. L’As du Fallafel — 34 Rue des Rosiers, 75004 Paris
- 2. Chez Marianne — 2 Rue des Hospitalières Saint-Gervais, 75004 Paris
- 3. Falafel du Liban — 35 Rue Rambuteau, 75003 Paris
- 4. Falafel du Liban bis — 18 Rue Rambuteau, 75003 Paris
- 5. Rannouch City — 44 R. de Turbigo, 75003 Paris