100 best restaurants: Teatime

Marlette is one of those snug little spots where people settle for hours at a stretch, whether with friends or with a computer (yes, there's wifi). The tea is served piping hot by smiling waitresses, the tiled tables have an elegant wood finish and there's an abundant supply of cushions – you'd be forgiven for thinking you've stumbled into a home furnishing advert. Yet this isn't the whole story...

Arriving for breakfast at Holybelly, you get a warm welcome from the tattooed, beanie-wearing staff. Early risers are already in place at the pretty wooden and white-painted booths over a star-patterned tiled floor, local workers smiling and chatting over their coffees. The narrow area at the front gives way to a sober and elegant back room, dominated by a big leather sofa and a pinball machine...

For a city so obsessed with good food, breakfast in Paris can be a sorry state of affairs – bad coffee and croissants eaten on the hoof at any old local café. So as the city’s first venue devoted solely to the most important meal of the day, Claus is a very welcome opening. A tearoom squeezed between luxury boutiques and offices, you can take your breakfast away or snuggle into the cosy salon...

Paris is seeing a positive nouvelle vague of creative freelance Parisians keen to escape the confines of their apartments and find trendy cafés where they can work, get good coffee and look good all at the same time. More often than not they’re stuck with the local bar (because red wine and work go so well together…), so with Café Craft, Augustin Blanchard is filling a gap in the market...

David Flynn is something of a coffee purist, and his newly opened Télescope Café has a stripped-down look to it; whitewashed walls with no decoration, a big pale blue wooden counter with a plate of cakes, Marzocco espresso machine and a strange water-heating device which he says is called an ‘über-boiler’. When he serves a glass of water with your coffee it comes from a sleek siphon rather than from the tap, and don’t ask for free Wi-Fi...

Opened in 2011 by the cheerful Portuguese barista Victor Silveira, this hole-in-the-wall bar in a chic corner of the Marais may be impossibly small, but it has become a runaway success with its irresistible freshly-baked pasteis de nata accompanied by traditional Portuguese coffee. The pasteis, succulent custard tarts, are baked according to Victor’s mother’s secret recipe, while the coffee is prepared just as if you were in Lisbon...

Hidden away in an unfashionable part of the 18th arrondissement, Lomi opened in October 2012. From the outside, this looks like a bland modern building, but Lomi’s architect has transformed a basic concrete space into a cool café that resembles an abandoned warehouse with rusty metal girders, peeling paint on the walls, simple wooden tables and old leather couches. The café has already attracted a strong local following...

Thomas Lehoux is one of the stars of the Paris barista scene, and after working in many of the best-known coffee bars here, he finally opened his own café in September 2012. Ten Belles is perfectly located just off the funky Canal Saint-Martin. The discrete pinewood storefront is decorated with plants and herbs, a few rickety stools sit on the pavement for determined smokers, and a blackboard provocatively announces – in English – that ‘drinking good coffee is sexy’...

For an unforgettably unique tea-time snack head to Zenzoo, where you can get green tea cheesecake or an excellent cake made of red bean paste. While you’re getting your (light) sugar fix, knock back a carton of bubble tea, the iced tea with tapioca balls that’s all the rage among Japanese teenagers – hot or cold, with or without milk, with almond, sesame or kumquat, it's oddly fun and refreshing. For main meals...

This English-themed café run by a Franco-British couple stands out for the quality of its ingredients – organic or from small producers – as well as the too-good-to-be-true puddings: carrot cake, sticky toffee pudding and, in winter, a chocolate-chestnut tart. The DIY salad plate is crunchily satisfying, but the thin-crusted pizzettes, daily soups and occasional risottos are equally good choices...