Contraste – one star, two terroirs, and a toast to Jacques Selosse

Contraste occupies a Haussmannian room on rue d'Anjou, a few streets from La Madeleine in Paris's eighth arrondissement, where period mouldings meet leather banquettes, marble tables and a glass-fronted wine cellar. It opened on 9 September 2019 as the second restaurant from Stéphane Manigold's Groupe Éclore, following the success of Substance in the sixteenth arrondissement, built initially around two young chefs, Kevin de Porre and Erwan Ledru, who split the kitchen between their Catalan and Breton roots. The stoves have since passed on: Antoine Perchoc came to cooking at twenty-six after a career in sport, trained alongside chef Louis Devicari at the Pré Catelan, followed him into Groupe Éclore's Bistrot Flaubert and then Contraste, and took over as chef in March 2026 when Devicari left to start his own project. It holds one MICHELIN Star, and is also listed in Gault&Millau.

01The room and the setting

The decor was drawn by architect Michel Amar, who set the building's Haussmannian bones against deliberately contemporary counterpoints: tables in dark green and black marble paired with soft leather seating, under a crystal chandelier and tall gilded mirrors. The decoration, carried out by architect Michel Amar, harmoniously combines noble materials such as green and black marble with soft leather seating, creating a room that reads intimate rather than grand. The dining room seats only thirty-four at a time, keeping the rhythm of the kitchen close to every table.

A glass-walled cellar of wine bottles runs along one side of the room, and for private groups the whole address can be booked out for up to thirty guests, the menu built directly with the chef amid the same mouldings, mirrors and glass cellar.

02The chef

Antoine Perchoc's path to the stoves was not the usual one. After studying sport, he turned to cooking at twenty-six out of a passion for fine gastronomy. He met Louis Devicari at the Pré Catelan, where they worked together, before joining Groupe Éclore, first at Bistrot Flaubert in the seventeenth arrondissement, then at Contraste. When Devicari announced his departure to open his own restaurant with his partner, a pastry chef at Marsan, Perchoc stepped up from sous chef to run the kitchen in March 2026.

Insider tip

Open Monday–Friday only; closed weekends. Book online, by phone or by email.

Gault&Millau, reviewing the handover, judged that the cuisine is lively and inventive, now led by Antoine Perchoc, the former sous chef who took the helm this spring. He now works alongside chef de service Baptiste Latil and pastry chef Alice Denéchère in front of house and dessert.

03The cooking

The kitchen's logic sits in the name itself: an intimate address in the heart of the 8th, where the pared-back setting leaves centre stage to the plate, and Contraste is the play of opposites, hot and cold, crisp and melting, garden and sea, in the service of genuine emotion. Dishes are built on produce first, with texture and temperature doing the work of contrast on a single plate rather than between two cooking styles.

There is no à la carte at Contraste: the kitchen works exclusively through a ladder of seasonal tasting menus, from a short lunchtime version to the seven-course Instant Contraste, that change with the market and the time of year.

04What to order

The entry point is a goat's cheese raviolo with mustard shoots, fennel, black garlic and parmesan cream, which opens several of the set menus. From the sea, scallops arrive with chervil root, nasturtium and a cream made from the scallop's own skirt, while tuna seared on one side is finished with a fishbone jus spiked with ponzu and a sorrel velvet. The main-course register runs from monkfish and seaweed with chanterelles, sea herbs and a shellfish broth to a Royal hare prepared in the Antonin Carême manner, served as a supplement, or a beef fillet with pointed cabbage and a mint-infused meat jus.

Dessert closes on contrast too: a chocolate, miso and buckwheat plate with a crisp layer, praline and ice cream, baked apples with kadaif, parsley and apple sorbet, or grapes worked through several textures with a rum baba, celeriac and granita. The seven-course menu alone adds a mallard duck with confit legs and a selection of aged cheeses. On New Year's Eve, a single-seating menu moves from barbecued langoustine and lacquered scallop through pan-seared foie gras, steamed turbot and roast venison to a frosted clementine and a chocolate-and-whisky soufflé.

05Wine and drinks

The restaurant's own name is a nod to Champagne: Contraste's name is also a tribute to the eponymous cuvée of the icon Jacques Selosse, and the ambitious wine list was drawn up in collaboration with Anselme Selosse himself. That partnership shows in the detail of the cellar rather than its size: Selosse had a hand in developing the list to provide old and unique wines, including some not available publicly, with roughly forty champagnes by the glass or bottle spanning Jacques Selosse, Tarlant, Egly-Ouriet, Jacquesson, Frédéric Savart, Cédric Bouchard, Charles Heidsieck, Billecart-Salmon, Louis Roederer and Dom Pérignon.

Each tasting menu can be matched with a pairing of wines, soft-drink pairings for non-drinkers, or a shorter flight built around the cheese course, letting the sommelier's choices track the kitchen's own play of contrasts glass by glass.

06When to go and booking

Contraste serves lunch and dinner Monday to Friday only, with last orders at 9.30pm, and is closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Tables can be booked online, by phone or by email, and the restaurant can be privatised in full for groups of up to thirty. Each October the house takes part in Pink October, partnering with the charity RoseUp, which supports women affected by cancer.

For New Year's Eve, Contraste is offering a dinner at €250 per person on Thursday, 31 December 2026, with chef Antoine Perchoc presenting a menu that moves between seafood and game, served in a single prepaid seating. The address sits between La Madeleine and Saint-Augustin, within easy reach of Madeleine, Saint-Augustin and Havre-Caumartin metro stations.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.