Best French Restaurants Outside France

Tangará Jean-Georges is Jean-Georges Vongerichten's only restaurant in South America, set on the ground floor of the Palácio Tangará overlooking Parque Burle Marx in São Paulo, and it holds one Michelin star. Under executive chef Filipe Rizzato, the kitchen runs Vongerichten's signature French technique through Asian and Brazilian accents — sections of the menu devoted to caviar, raw dishes and a deep vegetable repertoire, alongside two tasting menus, with a cellar of more than 280 wines. Expect a serious bill befitting a five-star palace hotel. For the most refined French-rooted dinner in Brazil, in one of São Paulo's most beautiful settings, this is the room. See the São Paulo guide.

Le Bernardin, Eric Ripert's restaurant on West 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, holds three Michelin stars and a four-star New York Times review, and it is the finest French seafood restaurant anywhere outside France. Ripert's cooking is defined by restraint — fish treated 'almost raw, barely touched, lightly cooked' — and the layered, precise sauces that are the kitchen's true signature. The prix fixe and tasting menus run from roughly $245 a head. The dining room is hushed, formal and flawless. For a once-in-a-trip dinner that shows what French technique does to the world's best seafood, this is the global benchmark. More seafood restaurants.

Guy Savoy at Caesars Palace is the Las Vegas home of the Paris chef whose flagship has long held three Michelin stars, and it brings that house's grandest dishes to a room overlooking the Strip. The artichoke and black-truffle soup served with a toasted mushroom brioche, and the colours-of-caviar course, are signatures lifted straight from the Paris menu. Tasting menus run several hundred dollars a head. The service is full classical French, down to the bread and champagne trolleys. For French haute cuisine of the old grand school, delivered far from Paris, Guy Savoy is the most complete experience in America. See the Las Vegas guide.

Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand carries on the legacy of the most Michelin-starred chef in history in a jewel-box dining room styled like a 1930s Parisian mansion. The full degustation can run sixteen-plus courses, and the kitchen's signatures — the famously silky pommes purée and Robuchon's caviar and langoustine preparations — are preserved exactly. Expect the bill to climb past $450 a head with the long menu. It is a Forbes Five-Star room and one of the most opulent dining experiences in the United States. For a no-limits French dinner where the entire point is decadence, this is the table. More fine-dining destinations.

Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, on Park Lane in Mayfair, holds three Michelin stars and is London's most classical French fine-dining room. The sauté of lobster with chicken quenelles, and the kitchen's precise, ingredient-led approach to French haute cuisine, define a menu that has kept its stars year after year. The lunch menu is the value entry point; the dinner tasting runs well above £170. The 'Table Lumière', wrapped in a curtain of fibre-optic light, is the room's signature private setting. For French dining at the highest level in the English-speaking world, this is the London answer.

Daniel, Daniel Boulud's flagship on East 65th Street, is New York's grand French dining room — a Venetian-Renaissance space where Boulud, the Lyon-born dean of French cooking in America, plates seasonal French menus with a New York energy beneath the formality. The duo of beef, the seasonal tasting menus and the legendary bread service are the hallmarks, with the prix fixe running from roughly $245. It is jacket-territory and proud of it. For a formal French dinner that feels quintessentially of its city while honouring its Lyonnais roots, Daniel is Manhattan's classic. See the best French restaurants.

Caprice, the French restaurant at the Four Seasons Hong Kong, is Asia's most celebrated French dining room, a Michelin-starred kitchen led by chef Guillaume Galliot with floor-to-ceiling windows over Victoria Harbour. The cooking is refined contemporary French, and the room's cheese trolley — one of the largest in Asia, aged in its own cave — is a destination in its own right. Tasting menus run several thousand Hong Kong dollars. The harbour view at night is among the best dining views in the world. For French haute cuisine in Asia, with a setting to match, Caprice is the standard-bearer. Browse the Hong Kong guide.

Pierre Gagnaire's Tokyo restaurant, in the ANA InterContinental, brings the most avant-garde of the great French chefs to Japan, and it is Michelin-starred. Gagnaire's cooking is famously inventive — multi-part dishes, unexpected combinations, a deconstructed approach that rewards a guest who wants to be surprised rather than soothed — and the Tokyo kitchen executes it with Japanese precision and access to extraordinary local produce. The tasting menus run to the tens of thousands of yen. For French cooking at its most creative and intellectual, delivered far from home, Gagnaire's Tokyo room is the destination. See the Tokyo guide.

Jean-Georges, at Columbus Circle in the Trump International on Central Park, is Jean-Georges Vongerichten's New York flagship and the original of the French-Asian style that the São Paulo room at the top of this list carries to Brazil. The egg caviar, the sea-scallop dishes and the light, soy- and ginger-accented French sauces that made Vongerichten's name are all here, with prix fixe and tasting menus that run from roughly $228. The room looks out over Central Park. For the source of the style — French technique lightened by Asian flavour — this is where it began, and it remains one of New York's defining rooms.