French Restaurant Review: Prevelle, Paris

In response to another eruption of the periodic brickbats hurled at French cooking in the English-speaking press (the accusation in an essay in the Washington Post was that it has become dull, stalled and increasingly mediocre), I am happy to retort with chef Romain Meder’s new restaurant, Prévelle. The meal I had here recently was full-stop brilliant and showed off the sinewy talent of a chef who is boldly but perspicaciously leading French haute cuisine into the 21st century.

To wit, if the Escoffier-vintage version of haute cuisine has been based on luxury produce like foie gras, lobster and truffles and cream-and-butter rich sauces, Meder’s kitchen spins on an axis of sustainability and zero waste. Before you roll your eyes and I’d agree that there is something intrinsically irritating, verging on pretentious, about sustainability – rest assured that the wick of Meder’s cooking remains gastronomic pleasure.

He’s not seeking to give explicit lessons about the necessity of healthier and more ecologically-friendly cooking across the plate, but rather to show that these virtues are wonderfully compatible with some seriously excellent food.

Meder knows exactly what he’s up to, too, since he was the culinary lieutenant of Alain Ducasse’s La Naturalité (Natural Cooking) as executive chef at the Michelin three star Restaurant Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée (he also ran the Ducasse restaurant at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha). His first restaurant as chef-owner resides in the improbably Brutalist duplex space (formerly occupied by La Garance) in a silk-stocking Left Bank neighbourhood that’s the cockpit of Gallic politics and grandeur (Les Invalides, the Assemblée Nationale and the Quai d’Orsay are on the doorstep). Here, he tempers the gastronomic austerity of Ducasse’s original kitchen with wit and sly sensuality, rendering it entirely different from that of his former maestro.

Dining alone, I noticed how much the clientele in this restaurant space had changed. Instead of men in the dark ill-fitting suits oddly favoured by French male politicians, or tweedy bourgeois types from the Faubourg Saint-Germain with their wives (or mistresses), a pair of Asian men with dragoon tattoos sat in front of me, with an art gallery owner on a date to my right, and a food-loving young married couple celebrating a birthday on my left (I have big ears). Tellingly, a corner table in the snug, partially oak-panelled dining room was occupied by the ostentatiously locavore American chef Dan Barber and two French friends. Word about Meder’s new place had clearly spread rapidly.

A friendly young server in a wheat-coloured linen tunic came to pour me a glass of champagne and explain the five- or seven-course tasting menus offered at dinner (lunch tasting menus run to two or three courses), and wary as I have become of tasting menus, which too often involve too much food and a very long time at the table, I chose the five-course version and had a superb experience of Meder’s quietly avant-garde cooking.

Standout dishes included roasted cabbage with caviar and a resonantly fruity fig leaf gelée, a thrilling transformation of the homely vegetable into something provocatively succulent and full of flavour, and chicken in a glossy black sauce of squid’s ink with shaved fennel and crunchy ribbons of raw squid. Many of the wines poured by the amiable sommelier through my meal – I chose the wine pairing option – came from his native Loire Valley, and the wine list here has one of the best lists of Loire Valley wines in Paris.

With its recurring tones of bitterness and astringency, Meder’s cooking is so intriguing that I forgot all about sustainability and zero waste during my meal, and I think this is precisely the point. The new French cuisine prescribed by the ecological challenges of the 21st century can deliver just as much gastronomic pleasure as the recipes of yore, without requiring you to take statins or feel guilty about what you’re eating. This is why this restaurant becomes my enthusiastic new recommendation for anyone seeking cutting-edge French cooking in Paris.

34 rue Saint Dominique, 7th arrondissement, Paris.

Tel. (33) 01 40 67 12 12,

lunch tasting menus €65 and €85; dinner tasting menus €145 and €165.

www.prevelle.fr