Dame Augustine – the teddy-bear avenue's seasonal table

Dame Augustine stands at 32 avenue des Gobelins, poised between the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements of Paris, a short walk from the Gobelins metro stop. It is the first Paris restaurant from chef Lilian Douchet, a standout contestant from the 2022 season of Top Chef France who opened the address in early 2022, after years spent training in some of the country's more demanding kitchens. The room keeps the scale of a neighbourhood table rather than a stage set, and the kitchen runs a short, seasonal menu built on French produce and short supply chains. Dame Augustine is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, its cooking filed as Modern Cuisine and pitched at a moderate spend — Michelin-recognised cooking that never reaches for ceremony, in a quarter of Paris that rarely sees the Guide's attention.

01The room and the setting

Natural materials set the tone: lime-washed walls in sandy beige, a green façade at street level, and tables in solid wood give the room a warmth closer to a family kitchen than a dining room. The restaurant asks passers-by to look up at its top-floor windows, where the brigade can sometimes be seen at work over the stoves.

The room seats around fifty at a time, a scale the restaurant has kept deliberately modest after chef Lilian Douchet opened a larger, eighty-cover restaurant in Bordeaux just weeks earlier. Two distinct spaces inside can be privatised together for up to twenty-six seated guests, used for dinners and private events rather than large-scale receptions.

02The chef

Lilian Douchet's route to the stove was public before it became professional. During the pandemic he filmed his recipes under the handle Doudou Kitchen, posting on TikTok while France was in lockdown, and it was this following that caught the attention of Top Chef's casting team, who put him forward for the programme's thirteenth season.

Insider tip

Open Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday. Reserve by phone or the restaurant's own booking widget.

Behind the television profile sits a classical training: service at l'Assiette Champenoise, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Reims, followed by La Truffière in Paris's fifth arrondissement and a stint in the gastronomic kitchens of the Four Seasons George V. Dame Augustine, opened in the 13th arrondissement at the exit of the Gobelins metro, was his first solo project in the capital.

03The cooking

The kitchen works a tight, seasonal carte rather than a sprawling one, built around French products and short supply chains, with menus available in full vegetarian versions. Among the dishes noted on recent menus: seared boudin noir with a pineapple chutney and an airy potato foam finished with beurre noisette, an einkorn risotto with celeriac, hazelnuts and a Beaufort emulsion, and a dessert of flambéed banana sorbet with a spiced financier sponge and cinnamon mousse.

Other dishes that recur on the carte include a burrata served with a julienne of beetroot, raspberry and a fresh herb pesto, and whiting cooked unilaterally with spring vegetables and a beurre blanc edged with notes of vin jaune.

04What to order

On weekday lunchtimes, Monday to Friday, the set formula of starter, main and dessert runs to 35 euros. In the evening, the four-course Dégustation menu is priced at 68 euros and is also available in a vegetarian version, while the six-course Signature menu, at 86 euros, is served only in the evening, with last orders at 21:25. A children's menu of a main course and dessert costs 19 euros.

05The neighbourhood

Dame Augustine sits on avenue des Gobelins, a stretch of the 13th known locally for its giant teddy bears, adopted by shopkeepers and set out on terraces along the street as a piece of neighbourhood humour that regularly stops passers-by for photographs. The restaurant is a few steps from the Gobelins metro station on line 7, and close to place d'Italie, in a part of Paris the chef himself has noted is not overrun with destination tables.

06When to go and booking

Dame Augustine is open Monday to Saturday, for lunch from noon to 2pm and for dinner from 7pm to 10pm, the latter being the time of last orders; the restaurant is closed on Sundays. Tables can be booked through the restaurant's own reservation widget or by telephone, and the two private spaces can be reserved separately for groups and events.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.