In a part of town throbbing with Irish pubs, pizza joints and kebab shops, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find a restaurant with a Michelin star, housed in a 17th century building. However, Paris is full of surprises, and many of them are good ones!

We decided to treat ourselves to a rather special lunch at La Truffière and see whether it holds its own against all the fast food joints!

Here’s how it went…

From outside, you can already tell that this is not some trendy, hyped-up place like – say – the Sergent Recruteur. The façade is pretty standard and even a little outdated, as is the interior, with some arrnagements of fake flowers that will not be to everyone’s taste. Nonetheless, the two rooms (ground floor and basement, down some treacherously steep steps) are well lit and inviting.The restaurant is as well know for its exceptional wine cellar (4,600 different wines) as its food, and the cheese trolley looked very enticing indeed!Service is unsurprisingly classic, with smiles from all the staff and people constantly looking after you at the table – every sip of a glass of water will draw a waiter to you, ready to pour you more, and as soon as you swallow a little bread, someone will appear to serve you another slice. It may be a little too much for some, and we would have welcomed a little more privacy, but you get a Michelin star by letting you diner pour their own water, so it’s all to be expected.

Also, we were one of only two tables, meaning that the five or six serving staff did not have much else to attend to.

Almost as soon as we were seated (the waiter pulled my chair back for me and showed me a little mini-pouf next to it where I could place my bag without it touching the floor!) a small pre-starter was served: a delicious cold carrot and turmeric soup served with obviously homemade bread, sliced freshly next to our table on a little trolley. Our bottle of water was kept in a little trolley too. Apparently, trolleys are chic.We also decided a glass of wine was in order, ordering a different white each, one of which was between a dry and a sweet wine and absolutely scrumptious!La Truffière has a Michelin star and the prices are unsuprisingly high. However, their lunch menus (32€ for two dishes and 35€ for three) is extremely reasonable. There are only two choices for the first and main courses, but we easily picked something that sounded appealing.

To start off with, we had iced Marmande tomato with white nectarine and basil, red pepper and cucumber gaspacho curdled sheep milk cheese and honey (all the description are written in English, so you won’t be at a loss to understand). Beautifully presented, the mix of tastes was great here, especially near the end of the dish when the ice had melted slightly and the ingredients had mixed together a little. A Small portion, but an interesting experience.As a main dish, we went for a fillet of lionfish with pearls of rice, shallot and ginger sauce and leek leaves in chive and dill butter. The pearls of rice were used as a crusty coating for this fish, which was firm but tender, and the vegtables were all perfectly cooked. The dish arrived piping hot on a slab that kept it that way while we ate, and the sauce was lovely too!For dessert you have a little more choice, with ice cream or sorbets, a cheese plate (all cheeses are from France, the menu states!) but we chose the day’s two intriguing desserts: the first was a slow-cooked pressed apple with basil and lemon foam basil sorbet and green tea crumble biscuit. An odd-looking dish to be sure, but the sorbet was a huge success, the crumble tasty, and the foam as zingy as you would expect.

The second dessert was a white chocolate and raspberry cannelloni with lime, meringue, yogurt-flavoured granita, tapioca and rhubarb. It was a strange-looking object, like some kind of alien sea slug. Although we couldn’t really discern the white chocolate (in fact, we thought the list of ingredients was a little over-the-top), the yogurt granita was amazing, and even the rhubarb tapioca (which I thought I was going to hate) was excellent.Service was very quick throughout – we ate in less than an hour, and had the room to ourselves, but before leaving we just had to have a last coffee. It arrived smartly, accompanied by three mini-bites: a ‘choux’ filled with orange cream and coated with green tea, a banana-flavoured mini macaroon, and a homemade blackcurrant marshmallow. The latter didn’t really taste of much, but the others were extremely memorable. Chef Jean Christophe Rizet obviously has endless inspiration.

Oh, and the three types of sugar were amusing too…With menus from a very reasonable 32€ to an eye-watering 225€ per person, La Truffière has food for a variety of budgets. If you reserve via The Fork you can even get 30% off the à la carte menu (does not apply for the menus or drinks).

For a special occasion, or just a treat, where cutting-edge design is not as important as inventive food, La Truffière is a sure bet.

La Truffière (here) is open for lunch and dinner from Tuesday – Saturday

Offical site: www.la-truffiere.fr

Online bookings: here

Facebook (one article in the past year): here

To check out all our photos of La Truffière, click the play button below, then click the four little arrows bottom right to go into fullscreen mode.