Originally Posted by
menton1
France is nowhere near as late as Spain for dinner hours. Most restaurants open for dinner at 8, reach their peak at 9-930, and do the last seating at 10 or 1030. After 1030 there will be only a scattered number of places with the opportunity to dine.
This is correct. 8pm is considered the early seating in most locations. If you show up at 7-7:30 you're likely eating with the restaurant staff (no kidding).
Summer months have Parisians a bit time-shifted to later dinner hours. In Paris dinner seatings can run to midnight at the more popular places particularly on Thursdays-Saturdays.
There are lots of online booking sites for Paris like
http://www.lafourchette.com/ to help you out.