Spring in Paris becomes a culinary pilgrimage, from the hushed elegance of L’Orangerie at the Four Seasons to the aviation‑themed heights of L’Oiseau Blanc. The writer charts meals defined by restraint, precision and seasonal produce, contrasting palace‑hotel refinement with inventive fusion at Pierre Sang and the glamorous, Nobu‑driven spectacle of Matsuhisa at Le Royal Monceau.
Spring in Paris is lovely – in spite of pollen that floods the air, and which got me down with allergies. What cheered my mood? Well, the food in Paris is always exceptional, and this visit revealed the excellence of L’Orangerie, that rare palace restaurant – it’s housed in the Four Seasons Hotel George V - that does not confuse expense with importance.
L’Orangerie knows exactly how good it is, so its tone is hushed rather than hurried and loud. Daylight floods the conservatory-like room while the ceramic art on the ceiling - as well as the plating - suggests elegance without theatrics. The blue lobster à la nage was sweet, firm, and carefully restrained, with artichoke and rosemary giving it a green, slightly bitter edge; the sabayon connected the elements without smothering them. The red mullet was even better: crisp skin, soft flesh, and a darker base note from rockfish fumet, with sea urchin, tortellini, and red cabbage adding richness. The wild turbot in bouillon was clean, almost severe, lifted by fennel, caviar, and an aniseed broth that gave the fish depth without the burden of perfume. The point is not abundance but calibration, and L’Orangerie achieves perfection through restraint. One of my best meals in Paris ever.
At Pierre Sang in Oberkampf, the usual dressage of French culinary seriousness drops its guard, and the room is entirely the better for it. The French-Korean chef, who carries laurels of Top Chef, is a charismatic fixture of the Parisian food scene. He creates dinners for heads of state—Emmanuel Macron is reportedly a fan—and European trustafarians who crave a menu that is both intellectually nimble and light enough to laugh at its own ambition.
There is no printed menu. The room carries the cool, unbuttoned informality of the eleventh arrondissement rather than the church-like hush of institutional gastronomy. Here, the plates dance between France and Seoul without bothering to show their papers. What you experience is a study in chiaroscuro: tartness cutting through fat, umami buffering sweetness, sudden surprise yielding to deep comfort. Consider his treatment of bibimbap. Rather than merely reproducing the Korean classic, Sang rebuilds it from the ground up using the French seasonal calendar—intertwining delicate seafood or raw tartare with a slow-steamed egg and the slow burn of imported chili pastes.
On a recent evening, the prawns, dictated by the morning market, provided the plate thesis. Charred asparagus, shaved fennel, and a glossy lemon-soy reduction arrived to keep the natural sweetness of shellfish in check. From across the counter of an open kitchen, the kitchen whips up spontaneous gestures—say, an improvisation of late-summer tomatoes rubbed with a deep, savory umami paste. That is the essential gamble of the house: you never quite know what is coming, and you quickly accept you are here to be surprised and delighted in equal turns.
The wine list, curated with an eye for the fluid and the unexpected, is an ever-shifting cellar full of natural, low-intervention bottles that aren’t afraid of bold, fermented flavours. Which brings us, inevitably, to the red guide. The omission of a Michelin star for Sang’s work is a topic of local gossip; the Guide acknowledges the Oberkampf dining room with a nod but stops short of the star. But the more useful question is not whether the inspectors have noticed him. It is if they know how to reward genuine originality when it arrives without the traditional costume of Parisian luxury.
At Le Royal Monceau, the Philippe Starck-designed restaurant Matsuhisa is a canvas for people-watching: backlit glass, polished wood, dramatic lighting, Parisians taking inventory of one another’s couture, models gliding through the room like shoals of glittering fish, Middle Eastern men in white Tom Wolfe suits smoking cigars on the beautiful private terrace. The food understands this Gatsby-esque world. I’ve come here for many years and loved my dinners (including the time that founding chef Nobu himself cooked for us).
Nobu’s Japanese-Peruvian culinary diction is now so familiar that it risks cliché, but the classics still dazzle because they know their raison d’être: black cod with miso, sweet and lacquered but not vulgar; yellowtail with jalapeño, clean and quick; rock-shrimp tempura, all gloss and crunch; salmon new-style sashimi, warmed just enough to change its texture.
The Miyazaki wagyu tacos are ridiculous in theory but wildly effective in practice, especially with the truffle kept to a whisper. Wagyu and foie gras ravioli with ponzu should not make sense, but they do – the pairing is surprising and exceptional. On this occasion, we were celebrating a friend’s birthday – the Matsuhisa team went out of their way to make the evening entirely unforgettable with their deep grace. There’s a chandelier at Le Royal Monceau that is like a comet tail of light, located outside the restaurant, across a flight of steps - and it is a dream.
Suspended on the sixth floor of The Peninsula Paris, L’Oiseau Blanc operates with the cool confidence of a great liner. The dining room, enclosed under a glass canopy framing the Eiffel Tower, pays homage to a pair of 1927 aviation pioneers. Here, Chef David Bizet’s two-Michelin-starred kitchen delivers an entirely different sort of engineering—one that feels edited rather than embellished.
The kitchen’s thesis is decoded through its six-course tasting menu, a progression that trades opulence for thematic tension. My own meal arrived prefaced with osciètre caviar, its dark, briny spheres arranged against the clean minerality of brook trout. A sharp, vegetal crunch of garden peas and the bright, bitter bloom of pomelo perked up the plate. Then arrived the turbot, poached and ground in a watercress meunière that carries an almost electric greenness. Their famous blue lobster was paired with a deep, earthy carbonade, and by the time the cheese course surfaced, the kitchen had gone from interpretation to curation. I marvelled at the tightly edited, rotating selection of France’s finest artisanal dairy.
A family, celebrating an anniversary at the table next to mine, was taking quiet notes. Their four-year-old child was overjoyed with his side of mashed potatoes. I had enjoyed the same dish during my own meal—good mashed potatoes are profoundly satisfying, and a French classic. I felt a deep recognition that his delight and mine had mysteriously intersected during our travels through Paris. He glanced at me once, smiled, then shied and turned. Behind us all, the grey Parisian sky fluted with dusk shades of violet and saffron. L’Oiseau Blanc is an exercise in excellence; I hope to return.