Lafayette – Xavier Pincemin's Asian-fusion playground in Versailles

Lafayette sits immediately beside Le Pincemin, the gastronomic restaurant that made Xavier Pincemin's name in his home town of Versailles, and it plays the louder, more permissive half of the chef's small empire. On its own site, the restaurant describes itself as creative and unbuttoned Asian fusion, where influences cross, flavours collide and recipes evolve with the mood of the chef and his brigade. It functions as steakhouse and cocktail bar at once, built around matured meats held in a visible ageing cabinet and a menu that borrows from Mexico, Peru and Asia with equal confidence. The MICHELIN Guide notes that, abutting his first restaurant, Pincemin opened this trendy bistro with a series of adjoining Art Deco rooms, serving tacos, ceviche and tiger beef alongside outstanding matured beef such as the black Baltic rib steak. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, recognition for a kitchen that treats its borrowed references with real technique rather than novelty for its own sake.

01The room and the setting

The restaurant occupies its own run of interconnected spaces next to Le Pincemin, and the MICHELIN Guide describes a trendy bistro built from a series of adjoining Art Deco rooms, a deliberate contrast to the more composed dining room next door. Gault & Millau's 2026 review calls it the chef's canaille, more assertive side, noting that the room stays very lively and that the clientele remains loyal to Versailles even as the bill rises with the kitchen's ambitions.

The same review describes a young front-of-house team that is well supervised, and notes that the chef is happy to come out and tour the dining room during service, a detail that matches the restaurant's own description of itself as a lively place built for sharing bold dishes in a convivial mood.

02The chef

Xavier Pincemin was born on 8 November 1989 in Versailles and started in the kitchens of La Véranda, the second restaurant of the Trianon Palace, before being spotted by Simone Zanoni, chef of the MICHELIN-starred Gordon Ramsay au Trianon, who recruited him into his brigade and promoted him to sous-chef. In 2015 Zanoni entered him for the seventh season of Top Chef on M6, and Pincemin won the title in a final recorded in January 2016 against Coline Faulquier.

Insider tip

Open Tuesday to Saturday; book by phone, closed Sundays and Mondays.

He opened his own restaurant, Le Pincemin, in June 2019 at 10 boulevard du Roi, a few streets from where he grew up, and used the gastronomic table's success to build a small Versailles group that now includes Lafayette as his bistronomic address, alongside a later brasserie, Rescator, and an épicerie.

03The cooking

Lafayette's own menu is pitched as Asian fusion and steakhouse in one breath, with a cocktail bar, matured meats and the flavours of Asia listed as its three pillars. The kitchen's references keep shifting: the MICHELIN Guide singles out tacos, ceviche and tiger beef as regulars on a card of varied influences, served next to a selection of outstanding matured beef kept in an ageing cabinet, the black Baltic rib steak among the standouts.

Gault & Millau zeroes in on the restaurant's signature tiger beef, noting that the bill runs as salty as the tiger tear sauce that dresses it, a nod to the South-East Asian seasoning the kitchen leans on across much of the menu.

04What to order

The Lafayette Tiger is the dish the restaurant itself promotes hardest: a beef fillet in tiger tear sauce, the same preparation Gault & Millau singled out for its punch. Small plates lean toward Asian street food, including steamed bao filled with confit beef and a spiced Chinese sauce, and crisp Shrimps Dynamite dressed in dynamite sauce with wakame seaweed.

From the ageing cabinet, the black Baltic rib steak is the dish the MICHELIN Guide calls out by name, alongside tacos and ceviche on a menu that changes with the chef's mood. To finish, the kitchen keeps a panna cotta and a chocolate mousse sharpened with olive oil and fleur de sel.

05Wine and drinks

Lafayette bills itself explicitly as a cocktail bar as much as a dining room, pairing its Asian-fusion plates and matured meats with a drinks list built around mixed cocktails rather than a conventional wine-led format, in keeping with the louder, later mood the chef sets here.

06When to go and booking

Lafayette opens Tuesday to Saturday, from midday to 2.30pm and again from 7.30pm to 11.30pm, closing on Sundays and Mondays. Reservations run through the restaurant directly on +33 9 83 74 20 05 or by email, and the kitchen's menu changes with the chef's inspiration rather than on a fixed seasonal rhythm, so it is worth checking the current card before booking.

07The neighbourhood

The address sits on boulevard du Roi, not far from the Château de Versailles, in the same stretch of the town where Pincemin has since opened a food shop next to Lafayette. It is a short walk from Le Pincemin, meaning the chef's two Versailles dining rooms, gastronomic and bistronomic, sit back to back for anyone wanting to compare them in the same evening.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.