During our trip to Europe in the spring of 2025, we stayed for 5 nights in Paris and 5 nights in Milan. In between, we spent 7 nights on a Viking River Cruise with 2 nights in Zurich.
Breakfast - During the days in Paris and Milan, I almost always had something like a chocolate croissant and a juice or water as I don't drink coffee. I don't like starting off the day with junk food like that, and sometimes got a ham and cheese sandwich instead. One time we did eat eggs for breakfast in Milan and they weren't very good. Italian pastries and French pastries are equally good, so I'd give breakfast a tie between the two cities.
Lunch - Hands down, Milan. We often walked into restaurants, carefully avoiding the ones too close to tourist attractions. Usually, we checked to see if they'd been rated online, but I think I had my best lunch in a tiny restaurant in Milan that was maybe a half mile from the Castello Sforzesco. Just simply the best bolognese of the trip. We'd stumbled into a tiny restaurant with good ratings in Verona the previous day and had a similarly excellent meal. These were also the cheapest lunch (or dinners) of the trip - each lunch cost 30 Euros for two which included a glass of the house wine. We also had our priciest lunch at the Armani Food Hall in Milan, which included a 9E cover charge (and an interesting view of Il Duomo ten floors up).
Now I'm not saying lunches in Paris were bad. Our very best lunch was at the big crepe place on the edge of the Latin Quarter. Very good food and reasonable prices despite it being very close to Notre Dame and San Chapelle. I had a surprisingly elegant (and pricey) lunch at the Musee d'Orsay. We had a picnic lunch in the Tulleries our first day and a great cheese selection as part of a wine tasting at O Chateau on our second day (this is within a mile of the Louvre so is a good place to stop for lunch but get your ticket in advance). As it was kind of chilly when we were in Paris, we really only had one meal where we sat outside and people-watched and that was during our last lunch in Paris.
Dinner - This is tough. Except for our two trips to The Inn at Little Washington, we've never been to a Michelin-starred restaurant. We did some research before we went to Paris and most of the highly-rated restaurants didn't feel right to us. OK, I admit it - I'm kind of picky and kept seeing lists of food I didn't like prominently appearing in the high class restaurants. What's the point of paying a lot of money for food you don't like? So we went with Canard et Champagne as our pre-planned big meal out and that was terrific. Our last night, we were staying in a different part of Paris and had excellently-prepared fish at La Cagouille. Went to a neighborhood bistro our first night which was very good, and stumbled into another one our second night which was OK. The worst food was at a place within a half mile or so of the Eiffel Tower. I sort of knew we shouldn't go there, but we were tired and starved at the point. I wish we'd walked a little further as they served a Beef Bourguignon that was extremely disappointing - tough meat and it didn't taste like there was any wine in the sauce.
Milan - we stayed very close to Il Duomo and the large Galleria filled with fancy shops and restaurants. The biggest line every day was for a gelato stand near the main entrance to the Galleria (which we never got to). Since it was frequently raining on that part of the trip, we ate in or near the Galleria every night, and still had excellent food. Before we got to Milan, we'd done almost no restaurant research for that city. However, a person on a Milan group said that since we really liked risotto, we had to go to La Locanda del Gatto Rosso which was in the Galleria and was perfect. It also had the best bread basket of the entire trip. Restaurante Galleria was a close second choice (though we wound up going there twice). The other two restaurants we went to were within a block of the Galleria; one was OK and I don't remember the name but the other one was Salsamentaria di Parma. This is one of those "hole in the wall" kind of places but the food is so good that didn't matter. Jim found that one due to his deep devotion to charcuterie platters. They served wine in little bowls rather than in glasses. Different and wonderful.
So I have to say - I preferred the restaurants in Milan to the restaurants in Paris. It's not just that I tend to prefer Italian food to French food - Beef Bourguingnon is one of my favorite dishes. But, even in the densely touristy areas of Milan, that food was almost always excellent, with only one exception, which was still an OK dinner. And the only really bad meal we had was in Paris. Even though the Armani Food Hall in Milan was pricey, the food was very good and being able to see the top of Il Duomo from the windows was special.
