Datil – the one-star table built on two Paris market gardens

Datil occupies a modest corner of the Haut-Marais, at the edge of the French capital's smallest Chinatown, on rue des Gravilliers in Paris's 3rd arrondissement. Chef-owner Manon Fleury opened the thirty-three-seat dining room in September 2023, in the space that once housed Café Ineko, and within six months the MICHELIN Guide had taken notice: Datil was awarded one star in March 2024. It holds one MICHELIN Star. The name is itself a small manifesto: Datil is a nearly forgotten heritage plum, and also, by coincidence, a South American pepper and the Spanish word for dates — all roads leading back to the vegetable. Fleury, a former competitive sabre fencer who traded the piste for the stove, runs a kitchen built on direct relationships with two market gardeners in the Paris region, where meat and fish are given the same reverence as a rare vegetable, their skin, shell and texture preserved rather than hidden.

01The room and the setting

Datil seats only thirty-three people, a scale that keeps the dining room close to the pass and close to the stories the kitchen tells about its producers. The design is deliberately understated and calm, with a Scandinavian-inspired restraint that reflects Fleury's focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients rather than decoration. Ceramic pieces by Judith Lasry sit among the tableware, and the restaurant's visual identity was designed by the Paris studio Helmo, with photography throughout by Pauline Gouablin, who has documented the kitchen and dining room since opening.

02The chef

Manon Fleury was born in Dijon in 1991 and raised in a village in the Yonne, near Auxerre, one of several lives — sportswoman, literature student, kitchen apprentice — she lived before settling into cooking. As a teenager she competed at national level in sabre fencing, a discipline that gave her the strict focus and concentration she later brought into professional kitchens. She retrained at the CFA Médéric, taking her first placement with William Ledeuil at the one-starred Ze Kitchen Galerie after finding his name in a restaurant guide, then completed a cuisine Bachelor's at Ferrandi.

Insider tip

Closed weekends; lunch Wed–Fri, dinner Mon–Fri; book via Zenchef; private events from 9 guests.

From there she cooked under Alexandre Couillon at La Marine in Noirmoutier, under Pascal Barbot at L'Astrance, and in 2015 at Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. She took the stoves at Le Mermoz in Paris at twenty-seven in 2018, then led the kitchens of Elsa in Monaco and Le Perchoir in Ménilmontant, before opening Datil in September 2023 on rue des Gravilliers. She runs the kitchen with Laurène Barjhoux, whose own career passed through the Mandarin Oriental under Thierry Marx and the three-MICHELIN-starred, Green-starred Arpège under Alain Passard. Between them they lead a kitchen of five co-chefs, all women, deliberately run without the traditional titles of chef and sous-chef. Fleury also co-founded Bondir.e, an association built around the place of women and minorities in professional kitchens and new ways of working together.

03The cooking

At Datil the plate is built from the ground up: two market gardeners in the Île-de-France are the anchor of the menu, and animal protein is used sparingly, with particular attention paid to texture, skin and shell rather than to volume. The kitchen also works directly with a fourth-generation citrus grower in Occitanie and a fisherman in the Pays de la Loire who catches crab, lobster and shrimp with handmade traps, and dishes are said to begin in conversation with these producers rather than on paper.

One dish traces its origin to Fleury's time at Blue Hill at Stone Barns: inspired by Dan Barber's teaching on crop rotation, she developed a congee-style rice porridge, served at Datil with petits pois and baby broad beans — a quietly political dish in a kitchen that treats vegetables as the main event.

04What to order

Datil runs two set menus and nothing else: a five-course tasting menu at lunch and a seven-course version at dinner, each with an optional wine pairing. Beyond the congee, look for a lemon dessert — the fruit hollowed out and filled with lemon sorbet blended with Jerusalem artichoke — and a madeleine that Fleury serves as a direct tribute to her grandmother's kitchen. In winter, a dish built around a poularde raised for 120 days in the Sarthe, layered with caramelised endive, French peanuts, apple and a lemon condiment, shows the kitchen's instinct for balancing fat against bitterness.

05The neighbourhood

The 3rd arrondissement around rue des Gravilliers holds the smallest of Paris's Chinatowns, a cluster of streets near the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers settled largely by families with roots in Wenzhou. Datil sits at its edge, close to a Chinese hairdresser's and a short walk from the Musée des Arts et Métiers and the Métro station of the same name — proof that the Haut-Marais still mixes its grand gastronomy with its everyday street life.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.