The contest for the best baguette in Paris is filled with beautiful stories and beautiful surprises. This year, it is an allergic to flour who was crowned: the baguette of Tharshan Selvarajah, owner of the bakery of Levain des Pyrénées, in the twentieth arrondissement of Paris, was named best baguette in Paris.
The baker of the twentieth arrondissement thus joins the long list of sacred bakers since 1994. The year of its victory, the bakery that wins the title has the opportunity to deliver bread to the City Hall and the Élysée. It also benefits from guaranteed publicity through this price. The showcase offered by the contest for the best baguette in Paris applies not only to the winners, but also to the ten finalists who appear alongside them.
If the winners are banned from entering the competition again for four years, the finalists can try their luck again at will. The panel of finalists of the last four years allowed Le Parisien to map the bakeries that offer the best baguettes in the capital. Only bakeries for which Le Parisien was able to ensure that they were always open and that the baker was always the same were placed on the map.
Six finalists in the thirteenth arrondissement
The Parisian arrondissement with the most finalists is the XIIIth arrondissement, awarded six times. Rue de la butte aux Cailles, you can still taste the baguette of Ahmed Ounissi, ranked seventh in 2020 and eighth in 2021. Another star bakery in the thirteenth arrondissement: Aux Délices de Glacière. Baker Khemoussi Mansour successively obtained sixth, fifth and second place in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and still shapes the baguettes of the establishment.
The Fifth arrondissement is just behind, with five appearances in the ranking. Here, it is notably the know-how of Thierry Guyot that has been honored twice, in 2020 and 2022. In the I, IIIe, and VIIe arrondissement, only one classified is to be noted.
"The Grand Prix de la baguette de Paris rewards the ancestral know-how of our bakers in Paris. For the winner, it offers great visibility and a reputation that goes well beyond the borders of Paris as well as significant economic benefits, "says Olivia Polski, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of trade and crafts.