At this tiny restaurant, getting to know the chef is part of the pleasure.
There are just a few tables downstairs and a few more tucked into a minuscule mezzanine above. On the ground floor, you sit right beside the kitchen, close enough to watch chef Frédéric Charrier put each dish together. He frequently comes out to chat and suggest wines.
Frédéric takes care of the savoury dishes, while pastry chef Sakura Charrier makes the desserts. Their cooking follows the seasons, and our dinner had a distinctly autumnal flavour: chicken quenelles with girolles and pear, monkfish with more mushrooms and coco beans, Simmental beef that melted in the mouth, millefeuille with pistachio and blackberry, and a tart of figs and grapes with pumpkin ice cream. The dishes were inventive and delicious, with real thought behind the combinations.
We followed Frédéric’s suggestions for wines to go with the food, which added another pleasure to the meal. I loved the easy conversation and the chance to watch dinner taking shape so close by. It made for a sociable, thoroughly entertaining evening.
