Anona – the MICHELIN Star built on zero food waste

On the boulevard des Batignolles, in what MICHELIN calls a lively, working-class enclave of Paris's 17th arrondissement, Anona has spent less than a decade redefining what a starred table can be. Chef-owner Thibaut Spiwack opened the restaurant on 8 May 2019, naming it after the annona, the custard-apple genus whose many species carry overlooked gastronomic, medicinal and pharmaceutical value - a nod to the kitchen's appetite for the unfamiliar. Having travelled the world for a year before coming home to cook on his own terms, Spiwack built a restaurant around French, seasonal, short-circuit produce rather than around hierarchy or spectacle. The Guide noticed twice: a Green Star arrived in 2020, recognising the restaurant's environmental practice, and the red MICHELIN Star followed in March 2023, for the cooking itself. It holds one MICHELIN Star. Vegetables, not proteins, carry the weight of the menu here, treated like jewels.

01The room and the setting

Anona sits at number 80, a corner address ten minutes' walk from the Gare Saint-Lazare and close to Parc Monceau and the Place de Clichy, with the métro stops Rome or Villiers on line 2 closer still. In a lively, working-class enclave, this place serves good contemporary cuisine. Unglamorous by Paris standards, which is precisely the point: Spiwack wanted a neighbourhood restaurant, not a monument. Inside, the dining room is kept deliberately calm, with soft lighting and balanced volumes built for lingering rather than rushing between courses. For private dining, the restaurant runs Salon 82, an independent apartment at number 82 next door that seats up to fourteen; the restaurant itself can be privatised entirely for up to forty-six guests.

02The chef

Spiwack's apprenticeship reads like a tour of grand Parisian kitchens: at only twenty, Thibault Spiwack joined the Four Seasons George V palace in Paris, then crossed to One O One in London, before returning to France to join Jérôme Banctel's team at Senderens and being promoted to sous-chef at the Jules Verne, Alain Ducasse's dining room inside the Eiffel Tower. At thirty he took his first head-chef post, at the restaurant of the Hôtel Particulier Montmartre in Paris, where he tested his creations and refined his style, before taking a year off to travel before creating his own restaurant. On 8 May 2019, at thirty-two, the young chef opened his first restaurant, Anona. A stint as a candidate on Top Chef in 2022 filled his reservations book from the broadcast of the very first episode; he has since also opened Starving Club, a street-food restaurant in the 15th arrondissement, in September 2022, and, in January 2024, a new restaurant, L'Envol, on the roof of the Philharmonie de Paris. Less widely known: Spiwack is the chef behind the culinary creations seen on screen in Emily in Paris.

Insider tip

Lunch Tue–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat; book ahead, especially weekends. No formal dress code.

03The cooking

The sustainability came first. In 2020 the Michelin Guide awarded Anona a Green Star, making it one of the first fifty restaurants to receive the distinction; the red star followed in 2023, after the Green Star obtained in 2020. Every bulb in the kitchen is an LED, cooking is done by induction, the motors of the refrigeration units sit inside a heated chamber, and steam from the dishwashing station is recovered. Anona's rate of food waste runs at zero, against an average of 20 per cent for a typical restaurant, and since the Michelin Star, the kitchen buys exclusively ikejime-killed sea bass, a Japanese slaughter method prized for both welfare and texture. None of this reads as a sermon on the plate: the cooking itself is contemporary and precise, built around vegetables handled with the technique usually reserved for luxury proteins, alongside rather than instead of meat and fish.

04What to order

At lunch, the Menu Initiation opens the gastronomy at an accessible price, running through amuse-bouches, a starter, a main and dessert. In the evening, two blind tasting menus carry the kitchen's ambition further: a six-course vegetarian blind menu called Racine, and a six-course blind tasting menu called Symbiose that folds seafood, fish and meat around the vegetal core. On the à la carte list, look for bouillabaisse of coastal fish with timut pepper, Francilian king trumpet mushroom with Perche celery and roasted coffee, and spiced cauliflower tempura with triple jus and kimchi. Critics single out the roasted and toasted eryngii mushroom with a coffee emulsion and walnut oil, and a layer-by-layer celery topped with a creamy Madagascar vanilla sauce.

05Wine and drinks

The wine list is built to be read like a book, leafed through online, with bottles chosen jointly by Spiwack and his floor team. Both evening tasting menus can be taken with a food pairing or, for guests who prefer it, a non-alcoholic route built with the same care.

06When to go and booking

Anona serves lunch Tuesday to Friday between noon and 1.45pm, and dinner Monday to Saturday from 7pm to 9pm, according to the restaurant's own site in October 2026. There is no formal dress code: the mood is elegant and relaxed, shirt and trousers welcome but nothing stricter, and tables - especially for weekend dinner - are best booked well ahead.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.