One night in 2019, David Djian was gathered with friends to watch his favorite soccer team, Paris Saint-Germain, play a Champions League match. As game time approached, the group decided to order some food, but Mr. Djian, who had recently moved back to Paris from the United States, wasn’t in the mood for the typical fried fare.
“Are you guys down if we order salads and just enjoy the game?” Mr. Djian recalled asking. “And they all looked at me and said: What are you talking about? We have PSG playing tonight, and you’re speaking about salad.”
It was then that Mr. Djian realized that, though he had moved back to France, his North American-style appetite for healthy, fast-casual food had not abated. And though Paris had several healthy-ish chains like Cojean and Jour, he couldn’t get a big, Sweetgreen-style salad delivered to his door.
He decided to take matters into his own hands, and began spending his nights researching salad recipes. When Covid hit and everyone stopped going out to restaurants in favor of ordering delivery, he began a small, homemade salad operation in his mother’s kitchen. He also met the woman he would eventually marry, Laura, around that time. With his tech background and her hospitality experience and passion for cooking, the two were a perfect match in love and business. Together, they started Elle & Dee’s, a fast-casual salad restaurant, in 2022.
Since then, the shop has quickly become Paris’s premiere destination for gigantic, 15-euro salads, and living proof that even the chicest of Parisians hunger for the slop life, the hyper online term for a world dominated by regulated homogeneity. Elle & Dee’s, which now has three locations and a fourth on the way, has such a dedicated following that customers often post videos on TikTok in which they try the different salads. One British influencer who lives in London loves Elle & Dee’s so much, she posted a video of herself taking a two-hour Eurostar train to Paris just to procure the chain’s Veggie Madness salad. “I think it deserves the hype,” said Charlotte Girier, a 38-year-old Parisian who works in finance and recently posted a video review of the Elle & Dee’s Buffalo Bill salad. “The servings are super, super big, and you can really tell that the products are super fresh.”
The rise of healthy, fast-casual restaurants in Paris is partly the result of a cultural shift in France that has de-prioritized the long, leisurely lunch. Though many Americans picture the French enjoying two-hour, wine-soaked restaurant meals midday, lunch breaks in France have shortened over the past decade. Now, many Parisian office workers are opting for something quick and light that they can enjoy on the go.
“Before, it was this big affair: You sit down, and it was, like, the big break of the day,” Mr. Djian said. “Now, people are spending a shorter time, like 45 minutes, and they just want to have the maximum value, in terms of rapidity, price.”
“My French co-workers call it the ‘influencer lunch,’” said François Pouliot, a 28-year-old French Canadian content creator who splits his time between Los Angeles and Paris. “I always get a salad from Mister Garden or Elle & Dee’s, and my co-workers are always like, ‘Wow, you’re very efficient.’ And I almost feel a slight judgment from them with the word ‘efficient.’ So I feel like I’ve seen a shift in lunch culture here, but not as drastic as one would assume.”
Though there are plenty of fast-food places across Paris that satisfy the needs of workers with shorter lunch breaks, until recently, there were few that offered healthy options. But the rise of healthy, fast-casual restaurants also coincides with a recent rise of wellness culture in France, evident in the proliferation of Pilates studios, matcha bars and even a 20,000-square-foot wellness sanctuary in the heart of the iconic Place Vendôme.
“I think there is a cultural delay in France where anything that’s big in the States or Canada usually will be big here five years later,” Mr. Pouliot said.
Though many of Elle & Dee’s customers are office workers looking for a quick and healthy lunch option, others are tourists or transplants searching for a taste of home. When Mr. Pouliot returned to Paris from Los Angeles recently, he said his body was starved for greens. “Finding Elle & Dee’s felt like finding my ecosystem again,” he said.
Gabrielle Pedriani, a 35-year-old American writer and podcast host who lives in Paris, said that a big salad could prove a welcome departure from the traditional butter-and-carb-heavy French lunch.
“As much as people talk about the beauty of the French bringing mindfulness to eating, I think the catharsis of an endless bowl of different textures and flavors that you can enter a sort of flow state while eating is undeniable,” Ms. Pedriani said. “The exorbitant serving sizes and simple, American-esque salad recipes stand out in a city that thinks cheese and duck a salad make.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Ms. Pedriani clarified, “I adore French food. But sometimes you just need something a bit less heady.”
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