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You don’t need a car or a fat bank balance to experience the pleasure of lunch by the river within an hour of Paris. But you do need a sense of adventure. I’m talking about modest places where you can sit for hours over lunch surrounded by local families, and the bill is around 20€ per person including wine. Here are three such establishments, all family-owned, that I discovered by chance while exploring the train network around Paris.

Le Bord de Seine
Issy les Moulineaux, 20 minutes from St Michel to the RER C station Issy Val de Seine, plus a 15-minute walk

A humble-looking café/restaurant, it is opposite the Ile St Germain, but you would not guess this from the outside. I discovered its enviable location by going through an unobtrusive door at the back marked ‘Toilettes’. It leads to a terrasse complete with cane-backed chairs and tables, overlooking the boats moored on a narrow stretch of the river and the park on the island opposite, framed by pots of geranium and ivy. The little green bridge with red criss-cross iron railings on the right is actually the side road which leads to the island.

The café is Algerian-owned but seems to be the restaurant du quartier for the neighbouring French families. The decor is restfully out of date, with blue, grey and white floor tiles and a vintage table football machine in good working order. The couscous is excellent, home-made and generous. You can have more conventional French dishes, but nothing fancy. The bill for a couscous merguez, a bottle of their best Algerian wine and coffee came to 40€ for two, but would have been half that had we contented ourselves with a 50 cl carafe of Côtes du Rhône.

Getting there
From the station at Issy Val de Seine take the Rue Rouget de l’Isle which leads to the Pont d’Issy. Do not cross this bridge. Instead, follow the river south along the Quai de Stalingrad with the park of the Ile St Germain on your right for about 600 metres until you come to the restaurant at the corner of another small bridge.

This bridge is a good starting point from which to explore the Ile St Germain. Looking over its railings to the right you can see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. The park, full of families with prams on Sunday afternoons, contains a tall fibreglass sculpture, La Tour aux Figures, by Jean Dubuffet, if you like that kind of thing. West of the bridge, the island is mainly residential with an interesting mixed legacy of styles: older housing originally built for the Portuguese and North African workers at the Renault factory (closed down in 1989) on the neighbouring Ile St Séguin, and modern housing for the recent wave of French yuppies. The CLM-BBDO advertising agency has its headquarters here, designed by Jean Nouvel. The short riverside walk from the western tip of the island to the Pont de Billancourt, overlooking the barges moored along the Issy side, has been carefully signposted, complete with orientation tables.

A good free RATP map of the area is available – ask at the ticket-office for no. 5, Ouest Parisien.

The Guinguette Auvergnate
Villeneuve Triage St Georges, 15 minutes from Gare de Lyon to the RER D station at Villeneuve Triage, plus a two-minute walk.


The food is traditional family cooking with some Auvergnat specialities, such as saucisson sauce Aligot, a sausage served with a cheese-pungent potato purée and lots of garlic. The three-course menu at 17€ is good value and there is a wide choice of dishes à la carte. The plats du jour at around 12€ might include tête de veau sauce gribiche (calf’s head with caper sauce, President Chirac’s favourite dish) or civet de biche (stewed doe) in season. A bottle of St Pourcain, the house wine is 9.50€. I recommend starting with a kir Birlou, an aperitif made with white wine delicately flavoured with chestnut and apple, an Auvergnat speciality.

Getting there
The restaurant is on the river just opposite the train station, a great advantage if you don’t want to walk much. If you do, there is a pretty 3½-km walk north along the river to another station at Choisy-le-Roi. Turn left as you leave the restaurant and follow the Avenue de Choisy for 150 metres before turning onto the towpath. Continue, past the railway bridge, until you come to the next bridge, the Pont de Choisy. Take the steps up from the towpath to cross the bridge to Choisy-le-Roi station on the RER C line, 15 minutes from St Michel.

The RATP map of the area is no.13, Sud Parisien.

La Terrasse de la Plage
Samoreau, 50 minutes from Gare de Lyon to the SNCF station at Vulaines-Samoreau sur Seine, plus a 20-minute walk along the river

The Terrasse is the poor man’s answer to the Riviera, a kilometre south of the riverside cottage of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who retired there in 1893. It is picturesquely situated on a rustic stretch of the Seine facing the forest of Fontainebleau and a sailing club, beside a path leading from the river to the old village of Samoreau. The ‘plage’ is a grassy stretch of towpath, and the ‘terrasse’ is a circular wooden stand surrounded by shaded tables and chairs. You can sit here for hours facing the river, listening to the peaceful murmur of local families lingering over traditional snacks such as salade de lentilles avec saucisse Montbéliard (a bargain at 7€), merguez/frites with salad, or gauffres (waffles). The plats du jour, such as chicken or steak, are around 10€. A 50 cl pichet of a good vin de pays from Perpignan will set you back 6€.

Getting there
From the Gare de Lyon take the SNCF line to Melun and change there for the train to Montereau (6-min wait), getting off at Vulaines-Samoreau. Cross to the other side of the tracks via a little underpass and follow a side road, the Voie de la Liberté, across the D39 to the roundabout which leads to a bridge across the river. The pretty towpath walk to the Terrasse starts just under the bridge.

If you also want to visit Mallarmé’s house, which has been restored as a small museum, turn right at the roundabout onto the road instead of left onto the towpath, and continue for about 100 metres. The little landing stage where Mallarmé kept his boat is opposite the house, which contains the original furniture. It has a restful, not too tidy garden, with green slatted chairs shaded by old fruit trees.

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