Dining in Chartres

• Timeout.com - Good, thorough restaurant reviews that really keep on top of the latest and greatest on the local dining scene.
• Yelp.com - Though not as thorough abroad as it is in North America, this crowdsource review site remains useful.
• Lefooding.com - Great French dining guide.
• Tripadvisor.com - The Big Daddy of crowdsourced travel user reviews, offering reviews on hotels, restaurants, sights, activities, and more—though with so many millions of reviews, there are plenty (experts say 1/3 to 1/2) of fake ones, so take it all with a grain of salt.Partner

• Realadventures.com - This is not a tour operator or travel agency, but rather a clearing for independent tour operators, local adventure outfitters, and vacation agencies to offer their trips and tours direct to consumers. As such, it offers a potpourri of trips around the world, including cooking schools, and much, much more.Partner
• Viator.com - Best place to search for one-day culinary adventures (along with a few mutli-day ones)—from cooking classes to vineyard visits, market tours to memorable meals.Partner
• City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner
• Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields—whcih means your curated meal or market tour will be led by a chef or food historian, your wine-tasting tour led by a trained sommelier, Partner
• Activegourmetholidays.com - Mixing active pursuits—walking and biking, mostly, with some golf and yoga—with one-day cooking classes, longer cooking courses, wine tasting, and other culinary adventures. Nifty idea—Though far from the cheapest out there.
• intrepidtravel.com - Intrepid makes a concerted effort to travel like real independent travelers—small groups (usually a max of 8 or 12 people), staying in mom-and-pop accommodations and getting around by public transport rather than a big tour bus. Among their trips are a series of 'Real Food Adventures."Partner
• Infohub.com - Not a tour company, rather a kind of aggregator of trips offered by tour companies. it casts one of the largest nets over the industry, listing some 14,000 tours offered by 4,000 operators in more than 100 categories—including plenty of cooking courses, wine tours, and other foodie adventures.Partner

You will notice that all restaurants (and sights and hotels) on this site have a ReidsFrance.com star designation from ☆☆☆ to ★★★.

This merely indicates that I feel these eateries offer a little something that makes them special (or extra-special, or extra-extra special, etc.).

These star ratings are entirely based on personal opinion, and have nothing to do with any official local restaurant ratings or grades.

In general, a pricier restaurant has to impress me that it is worth the added expense.

This is why I give ★★★ to some inexpensive eateries or pubs that happen provide amazing value for the money—and similarly have ranked a few fancy but notable restaurants just ★★☆.

Here at ReidsFrance.com we simply provide a general price range indicating the general amount you should expect to pay for a full meal in the eatery.

Each eatery is rated into a price category, which indicates—very roughly—what you could expect to pay, per person, for a standard full meal: Two courses (appetizer and main course, main and side, main and dessert, whatever), plus something to drink.

There are three price ranges, giving you a sense of which restaurants are budget, which are moderate, and which are splurges: