Baca'v par Gilles Choukroun – a starred chef's return to the bistro

On the short rue des Fossés-Saint-Marcel, between the Jardin des Plantes and the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, Baca'v looks like countless other Parisian bistros from the pavement — until the name over the door is read twice. It belongs to Gilles Choukroun, the chef who defined a generation of unbuttoned, instinct-led Parisian cooking at Le Café des Délices in the early 2000s, and who in February 2024 took over this small address first opened by Émile Cotte in 2021. It holds the Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, the distinction for good cooking at a fair price, and Choukroun has repaid the trust by stripping his food back to something plainer and more bourgeois than his reputation might suggest: terrines, calf's head, profiteroles, written in chalk on a slate. It is, by his own description, an urban inn in the heart of Paris — unpretentious, crowded with regulars, and serious about where its ingredients come from.

01The chef

Born in Argenteuil in 1966, Gilles Choukroun earned his first MICHELIN star at La Truie qui File in Chartres in the 1990s, before arriving in Paris at the turn of the millennium to open Le Café des Délices on the rue d'Assas. There, as the website recalls, he established himself as one of the capital's emblematic chefs with Le Café des Délices, giving free rein to his sensibility, unconstrained by the classic codes of starred tables, cooking that drew on a new, freer and more relaxed form of catering alongside contemporaries such as Inaki Aizpitarte, Stéphane Jégo, David Zuddas and Jean-Marie Baudic.

Angl'Opéra, a stint at the Mini Palais inside the Grand Palais, a cookery show on Cuisine TV and years of hotel consulting followed. By the time he reached Baca'v, the website notes, twenty years of cookery shows, consulting missions for hotel groups and years of travel had made him a more settled chef, rich with different and complementary experience, who felt the need to share more than just technical mastery. Gault&Millau, awarding the restaurant two toques, observed that Gilles Choukroun is just as happy in his Baca'v as he was in the good old days at the Café des Délices.

02The room and the setting

Choukroun kept the bones of Émile Cotte's bistro but rebuilt its identity from the ground up. He gave it an even more marked identity of "Vieux Bistrot Parisien" by redoing the entire decoration — Maison Mauviel copperware, new silverware and crockery, a mosaic welcome mat created by a young artist, and a large mirror hand-painted with his two favourite wine regions. The result, Gault&Millau notes, is a warm and inviting atmosphere that extends onto a sidewalk terrace, enhanced with the help of handpicked artisans. By most independent accounts the room is intimate — one visiting wine writer counted a back room and a maximum of around thirty diners, with a terrace allowing additional seating in fair weather.

Insider tip

Open Mon–Fri lunch and dinner, Saturday dinner only; closed Saturday lunch and Sunday.

03The cooking and what to order

The carte changes with the slate: dishes are written in chalk on blackboards, the plat du jour and suggestions included, following the rhythm of the seasonal produce supplied by Gilles's friends among France's producers. Starters read like a catalogue of bistro classics — terrine de jarret de porc en gelée aux herbes, crème de chou-fleur "Dubarry" en soupière, harengs marinés et salade de pommes de terre, escargots en persillade — each at 12€ when read on the restaurant's own menu in October 2026. Main courses include haut de cuisse de poulet "Vallée d'Auge", paleron confit au vin with garniture grand-mère, bavette de boeuf à l'échalote, and the dish MICHELIN itself singles out, calf's head, tongue and brains in sauce ravigote, alongside marinated herring and potato salad, and floating island with praline and crème anglaise. Among the ardoise suggestions, a côte de boeuf charolais for two, a vol-au-vent "Cardinal" au homard, and a ragoût de lentilles et lardons à la truffe du Vaucluse show the kitchen is still capable of luxury when the mood calls for it.

04Wine and drinks

The cellar is as much a reason to come as the kitchen. Choukroun shares it with Louis-Benjamin Dagueneau, a long-time friend and star Pouilly-Fumé winemaker who co-owns the place with Gilles Choukroun; together, according to the restaurant, the wine list already exceeds 300 references drawn from every region of France. Gault&Millau describes an extensive wine cellar curated by the owner, with over 400 labels ranging from today's classics — Da Ros, Pithon, Chidaine — to well-established names, which in 2026 earned Baca'v a Silver Star in the Star Wine List of the Year France awards.

05The neighbourhood and booking

Baca'v sits in the Jardin-des-Plantes quarter of the 5th arrondissement, close to the Jardin des Plantes and the Panthéon, and a few minutes' walk from the banks of the Seine and Notre-Dame, wedged between the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and the botanical garden. The nearest metro stations are Censier-Daubenton on line 7 and Saint-Marcel on line 5, both a short walk away. The restaurant keeps bistro hours: lunch Monday to Friday from midday to 2.30pm, dinner Monday to Saturday from 7pm to 10.30pm, with Saturday lunch and all of Sunday closed. Reservations are taken through the restaurant's own website or by phone, and with around thirty covers inside, booking ahead for dinner — especially on the newly reopened Saturday evenings — is sensible.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.