If you’re looking for the best chocolate in Paris, you’ve come to the right post — and to the right city: While other places may be more closely identified with chocolate (like Antwerp, perhaps, or Switzerland), surely Paris claims the highest concentration of world-class chocolatiers and chocolate shops.
If you like chocolate, you’ll be happy here, given the seriousness of the pursuit of chocolate-making and the huge array of chocolates on sale, from the ubiquitous bars (with beans procured from cocoa farmers around the world) to elaborate gift boxes to chocolate-y spreads made creamier for kids. (Plus ganaches, pralines, bonbons, cakes, and chocolate-centric pastries, all of which you’ll find below).
All of these chocolate shops in Paris offer entry-level treats for under €10, so this is one of those pursuits where you can sample the work of world-class craftsmen for not a ton of money. And speaking of craftsmen: You’ll notice that this list of the best chocolate in Paris skews heavily toward chocolatiers — i.e., male chocolate makers — and indeed, the problem of equal opportunity for chocolatières has been widely discussed within the industry. According to one expert: “Le titre de Meilleur Ouvrier [de France — a.k.a. MOF, the awards handed out to the country’s best craft workers, including in chocolate] est toujours au masculin. Les chocolatières sont moins nombreuses et sont donc encore mises à l’écart, mais je pense que les différences vont s’estomper. Dans dix ans, le paysage aura changé.” Here’s a map of the still-active MOFs, including a few names you’ll see below — note that many work in consulting or have shops outside of Paris, like 2023 MOF Xavier Berger, who has two shops in the south, in Pau and Tarbes. If you’re looking for the best chocolate in France, outside of Paris, it is both a sobering look at male dominance in the field and a good place to start devising a very chocolate-y road trip.
Of course, that story is nearly ten years old, and if you’re wondering how much has changed, here you go. 
The Best Chocolate in Paris: Maison du Chocolat
Widely regarded as one of France’s leading chocolate brands, Maison du Chocolat is so famous that it actually might not be the best use of your time — they ship to the U.S. (with free delivery over $150) and have five boutiques in New York City, plus distribution through Bergdorf Goodman’s and Williams-Sonoma. All that said: The nearly 50-year-old brand makes world-renowned chocolates, pralines, and truffles in Nanterre, just outside the Paris city limit, “poured and smoothed out by hand on special marble tables, cut with millimetric precision, delicately enrobed and decorated piece-by-piece with a cornet or fork, always by hand.”
Chocolate assortments range from two-piece “Gesture Gift Box” to the 60-piece Coffret Maison Dark, with a mix of ganaches and pralines. Chocolate bars include the Passion Vibrante (with passionfruit, white chocolate, dark chocolate, and a wafer) and the Noisettes Démentes, with “a generous and shocking layer of caramelized whole roasted hazelnuts.”
Multiple locations, including the flagship at 225 rue du Faubourg St Honoré, 75008
Patrick Roger
Conjure up the stereotypical French chocolatier and you might indeed think of Patrick Roger: serious, daring, and enough of an actual artist that a sizable portion of his website is devoted to his work as a sculptor. It’s easy to shop at a Patrick Roger boutique (there are nine in and around Paris) because so many of his products are made to thrill, from the gorgeous, iridescent “hemi spheres” (including the Moon, with a dark chocolate shell and chocolate caramel) to its collection of chocolates with “orgines rares and exclusives,” including Madagascar, Peru, Bolivia, and Vanuatu.
Multiple locations, including the flagship at 2/4 place Saint-Sulpice, 75006
Pierre Marcolini
Belgian chocolatier Pierre Marcolini is a profoundly busy guy, expanding his sweets-based empire across four continents, winning the World Patisserie Championship at 31, collaborating with the Japan-leaning, French fashion brand Kitsuné, and appearing on Qui sera le prochain grand pâtissier? (Who Will Be the Next Great Pastry Chef, a sort of Great British Baker for the Frenchies). The brand’s five Paris shops have pretty much everything, from bars to spreads to jams to truffles to — perhaps most spectacularly — holiday gift boxes, like the 24-piece Advent calendar set with a wide array of flavors: “Madagascar vanilla, Ethiopian coffee, raspberry, lime, passion fruit, etc.” Similarly, if you’re specifically looking for the best dark chocolate in Paris, be sure to try their Madagascar tablet, a personal favorite.
Multiple locations, including the flagship at 5 rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, 75004
Franck Kestener
Franck Kestener is a fifth-generation pâtissier whose youthful ambitions to work as a chef were redirected into the family business. Like everyone else on this list, he’s won a laundry list of titles, including Meilleur Ouvrier de France (chocolate and pastry division) in 2003. A native of Lorraine, Kestener opened the brand’s Paris boutique in 2010, and it’s most famous for his ganaches, plus the ever-popular Atlantique bar with shortbread and salted caramel — or just keep an eye out for his various characters in pâte d’amande, like a singing angel and Father Christmas’s red hat. (That’s also his work shown at the very top.)
7 rue Guy Lussac, 75005
Edwart Chocolatier
Founder Edwin Yansané opened his first Marais boutique while still in his 20s in an effort to bring some new ideas to the chocolate world — here’s an interview with him on France 24 explaining how some of his flavors include cayenne pepper, wasabi oil, and yellow mustard seed. If you’re seriously into chocolate, they also offer private and public workshops — the current offerings include the “fun workshop” and the “alchimie technical workshop.”
Four locations, including the original at 17 Rue Vieille du Temple, 75004
Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse
Just one small part of the Alain Ducasse empire, Le Chocolat encompasses chocolate-focused boutiques in four countries, with the expected assortment of bars, gift boxes, and little treats, including an extra-creamy chocolate spread specifically for kids with almond and hazelnut praliné. Coffee and ice cream are present and accounted for here, along with my personal favorites, the Corsican orange and grapefruit (and lemon and ginger) covered in cocoa powder and then dipped in dark chocolate. Definitely stop by Le Manufacture, the spot in the 11th where it’s all hand-crafted using vintage machinery.
À la Mère de Famille
Absolutely positively the lowest-key entry on this list of the best chocolate in Paris, A La Mère de la Famille is (by a f-ing lot) the oldest chocolate shop on this list/in Paris (depuis 1761!) but not the fanciest — it’s downright approachable, in fact. I don’t know if it offers the best chocolate in Paris — for that, I’d look to one of the makers above or below — but in terms of the best chocolate shop in Paris? Five stars, this is a total winner. The interiors are straight out of a chocolate-themed romantic comedy (“tout ici rappelle la Belle Époque, depuis laquelle la boutique historique À la Mère de Famille n’a pas beaucoup changé”) and the range of candy is immense, from bars topped with immense quantities of dried fruit to marshmallows coated in chocolate to jarred babas au rhum and €450 Christmas boxes.
16 Paris locations, including the flagship at 35 rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 75009
Jean-Paul Hévin
Closing out our list of the best chocolate in Paris: Another Meilleur Ouvrier de France, Jean-Paul Hévin was a farmer’s son in Mayenne who ended up in the most unlikely of places: working as an apprentice at the Nikko Hotel in Tokyo, under chef Joël Robuchon. Several decades later, his chocolates are still distinctly Japon-ified (and indeed, he has over a dozen shops in Japan, and about half that in France). Maybe see the pastries section of his website for a best look for what’s on offer, as some of his most famous flavors (like chocolates filled with mixtures like Pont-l’Évêque and thyme, goat cheese and hazelnut, or roquefort and walnut) are in-store only — many (like this Bergamotte cake with praline, dark chocolate ganache, almond cocoa biscuit, orange creme brulée, and bergamot-flavored milk chocolate mousse) are delightful.
Nine locations in Paris, including the flagship at 231 rue Saint-Honoré, 75001
You must be logged in to post a comment.