Adraba – Montmartre's charcoal-lit ode to the Levant

On a quiet corner of rue Véron, where the lower slope of Montmartre tips down towards Pigalle and the lights of the Moulin Rouge, Adraba has been lighting its charcoal grills since 2023. It was opened by four friends, Eden, Elior, David and Shlomit, who met while working together at the now-closed Balagan, the festive Israeli address that introduced Paris to the cooking of chef Assaf Granit. At Adraba they turned that same appetite for spice and spectacle towards the wider Levant, a region stretching from Iraq to Greece whose forgotten dishes, condiments and grilling traditions form the spine of the menu. The restaurant is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, recognition for a cuisine that reaches past the usual hummus-and-falafel shorthand towards hilbeh, amba, zaatar and tulum. The result is loud, warm and unapologetically festive, the sort of dinner that is as much about the room as the plate.

01The room and the setting

Adraba occupies a glazed corner building near Place Blanche, and inside the dining room runs in an L-shape that seats around fifty guests. The palette leans on wood, lime plaster and waxed concrete, with notes of olive and white earth running through the banquettes and shelving.

At the back, the open kitchen reveals charcoal grills where the kitchen works through dinner service, the smoke and clatter becoming part of the show. A large wall fresco by Eyal Eliezer, an artist who specialises in Aramaic calligraphy and the ancient cultures of the Levant, runs across the room, a reminder that the restaurant's name itself comes from Aramaic, the Levant's mother tongue, where it signifies perseverance through time.

02The chef

Chef Elior Benaroche leads the kitchen, having previously cooked at Balagan as an associate of chef Assaf Granit since his early days in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City. That grounding shows in a cuisine built on family memory and regional technique rather than imported trend, a festival of condiments, fermentation and live fire rather than a greatest-hits menu of Middle Eastern staples.

Insider tip

Open nightly from 19:00; book ahead, the L-shaped room seats around fifty.

He runs the kitchen with the same three friends who founded the restaurant with him: Eden on the floor, David behind the bar, and Shlomit overseeing the business, all four having met years earlier working the floor and stoves of Balagan together.

03The cooking

The menu reads as a journey rather than a list, moving from small snacks for the table through heartier, fire-cooked plates to dessert. Spices and condiments recur throughout: fenugreek paste, Iraqi amba, Turkish tulum cheese, marinated chillies and charcoal-roasted vegetable salads, each pulled from a different corner of the old Levant and reassembled with a contemporary, playful hand.

Dishes are conceived for sharing, arriving in the centre of the table rather than as individual plates, which keeps the pace of the meal loose and sociable rather than formal.

04What to order

Start with the Esh Bread, a samna-brushed pita braised to order and served with tahini, green chilli and smoky eggplant aïoli, alongside the Black Ikra, a whipped black fish-egg paste finished with Roscoff onions and Tunisian olive oil.

From the heartier plates, the Shishlik, traditional Turkish lamb skewers served with fresh cherries, skordalia and celery relish, and the King Size Mesachen, an entire poussin confit in hawaiedge spice and finished on the charcoal grill, show the kitchen's grasp of live-fire cooking. For dessert, the Shokolade pairs salted almond cacao crumble with chocolate-and-coffee mousse and olive oil caramel.

05Wine and drinks

The bar leans into the same Levantine seam as the kitchen, built on the idea that bartenders were once shamans, fermenting and infusing to ease pain long before cocktail menus existed. David, one of the four founders, built the drinks list around Levantine spirits and ingredients, and reviewers have singled out cocktails such as the Téhéran Twist, made with gin, Persian lemon and cardamom.

06The neighbourhood

Adraba sits in the Lepic-Abbesses pocket of Montmartre, a short walk from Place Blanche and the Moulin Rouge, and close enough to rue des Abbesses to make it a natural stop before or after an evening on the Butte. The nearest métro station is Blanche, on line 2.

The same team now also runs Zoutra, a sister wine bar and Levantine eatery a few streets away at 6 rue Aristide Bruant, extending the project across the hill.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.