French Restaurant Review: Datil, Paris
Chef Manon Fleury, one of France’s most intriguing rising stars, is at the helm of Datil, a restaurant in the heart of the Marais of Paris that showcases the future of French gastronomy as we adapt to the climate crisis.
Having dined several times last year at young chef Manon Fleury’s charming Scandinavian-style restaurant, which is named after an heirloom variety of plum, I wasn’t remotely surprised when in March she was awarded a Michelin star in the tyre company’s venerable red guide.
Fleury’s lyrical cooking has a heightened but innocent sensuality that recalls the poignancy of the illustrations that artist Maxfield Parrish made for children’s books during the first half of the 20th century. These dreamy, lushly-coloured drawings especially celebrated the luxuriance of nature, and this is exactly what Fleury does in the kitchen, too. In her cooking, vegetables, fruit, grains and pulses star, and she is fervently committed to an ethos of zero waste and locavore sourcing. Having trained with William Ledeuil of Ze Kitchen Galerie, Pascal Barbot of Astrance and Alexandre Couillon of La Grenouillère, Fleury’s technique is flawless too.

© KAREL BALAS, DATIL
A meal here is a pleasure for other reasons as well. The spare, white-painted interior of the restaurant, including a central section with a clerestory roof, recalls a Danish farmhouse by the sea rather than a narrow street in the northern Marais. And then there’s the young staff, who are Datil 100% + filled with enthusiasm and have a guileless eagerness to please that puts this table very much at odds with the reserve and formality of other Michelin-starred tables in the capital.
As we understand that we have to change our dietary habits for both our health and that of the environment, Manon Fleury shows that this evolution is entirely possible without sacrificing an ounce of gastronomic pleasure. A perfect example from my first lunch at Datil was the ode to grain that began the meal: a shot of warm corn velouté, a tuile dotted with whole grains, a corn flan and a corn- and multi- grained beignet. It was a composition that was at once humble and quietly ecstatic for such an intense discovery of the tastes of various preparations of corn.
Another brilliant dish was raw prawn dressed with a cream of fermented rice, peaches and shiso, and cuttlefish and courgette spaghetti with Parmesan and fresh almonds garnished with a skewer of barbecued pork and cuttlefish, an intensely satisfying umami-rich dish with an invigorating contrast of textures. Dessert that day was a roasted fig with ice cream flavoured with an infusion of fig leaf, which was as perfect an expression of autumn as the poet John Keats’ famous ode.. Every visit since has been similarly spectacular, and Fleury is one of the most intriguing talents among the new generation of chefs that is emerging in France. Be sure to book as far in advance as possible.
Datil, 13 rue des Gravilliers, 3rd arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01 80 05 74 98
From France Today Magazine
Lead photo credit : © KAREL BALAS, DATIL
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