L'Assaggio – Piedmont beside Chanel's first door

L'Assaggio occupies the ground floor of Castille Paris, a five-star Starhotels address on rue Cambon, two doors from the building where Coco Chanel opened her first boutique in 1910. Before it turned Italian, this address traded as Il Cortile, a kitchen advised by Alain Ducasse that once carried a MICHELIN star. Since 2016, the menu has carried the signature of Ugo Alciati, the Piedmontese chef who holds one MICHELIN star at Da Guido, his family's restaurant in Serralunga d'Alba. L'Assaggio itself is selected in the MICHELIN Guide. Executive Chef Marco Terenghi, appointed in January 2026 after years at Alciati's side and in MICHELIN-starred kitchens including Le Jardin de Berne and Villa Pignano, now runs the stoves day to day. The result is a Parisian dining room built on Piedmontese staples — hand-filled agnolotti, veal under tonnata sauce — softened by a Mediterranean touch, with tables spilling into a frescoed courtyard once the weather turns.

01The chef

Before Alciati's name went on the door, the room traded as Il Cortile, run under advice from Alain Ducasse and MICHELIN-starred in its day. Starhotels, the Florentine hotel group that owns Castille, brought Alciati's Piedmontese cooking to Paris in 2016. He is heir to a family that has shaped modern Italian gastronomy: one MICHELIN star, two Gambero Rosso forks, two Espresso caps, and the title of Italian Truffle Ambassador all belong to his restaurant Da Guido in Serralunga d'Alba. His philosophy favours short, seasonal menus built on a handful of excellent ingredients, and two of his family recipes — vitello tonnato and his mother's agnolotti del plin — remain the dishes most closely tied to his name here.

Since January 2026 the kitchen itself has been run by Executive Chef Marco Terenghi, who spent years working alongside Alciati and across MICHELIN-starred kitchens including Le Jardin de Berne in Provence and Villa Pignano in Tuscany before taking the post. He has kept Alciati's two signature dishes on the card and added his own: a linguine dressed with lobster bisque and a quenelle of red prawn from Mazara del Vallo.

02The room and the setting

The dining room sits inside a hotel built from townhouses joined into one on rue Cambon. In spring and summer, service moves into the inner courtyard the French call la Piazzetta, set around a Roman-style stone fountain and under frescoes painted in the early twentieth century. This year the same courtyard turned into La Terrazza for the summer: open nightly from 5pm, with a pianist taking the room from 7pm and pours curated with the Bollinger group — Champagne Bollinger, Anaë gin and the wines of Domaine Chanson.

Insider tip

Courtyard tables in warm months; reserve by phone; a short walk from the Louvre and Place Vendôme.

03The cooking

The kitchen describes its own style as 'traditionally modern' — Piedmontese cuisine that keeps its reference points while letting a French, Mediterranean sensibility soften the edges. Ingredients are sourced with the same care Alciati applies in Piedmont: veal and poultry from France, Angus beef from Ireland, lobster from Canada and red prawn from Italy, according to the restaurant's own menu.

04What to order

Start with the Vitello Tonnato della tradizione piemontese (€30), veal cooked low and slow under a caper-dusted tonnata sauce, or the organic poached egg with trombetta courgette, Parmigiano cream and summer black truffle (€30). The Agnolotti del plin di Mamma Lidia (€34) — hand-filled pasta to Alciati's mother's own recipe — is the dish the address is known for, alongside tagliolini made with forty egg yolks and dressed with summer black truffle (€38), and linguine in lobster bisque with a Mazara del Vallo red prawn quenelle (€38). Among mains, the slow-braised beef cheek with lettuce pesto and oven-roasted peppers (€40) carries Terenghi's own stamp. To finish, the mountain fior di latte gelato is churned to order with salted-butter caramel and red-fruit coulis (€18), or there is the house tiramisù (€18).

05The neighbourhood

Rue Cambon has carried more history than its length suggests. The Comtesse de Castiglione, Napoleon III's famously beautiful mistress, lived out her last years at No. 14; Henry James wrote The American on the third floor of No. 29. In 1910, Coco Chanel opened her first boutique at No. 31, next door to the hotel, and the flagship still carries her name today. The Ritz keeps its rue Cambon entrance at No. 38, across the street. Castille itself has a literary footnote: in 1895, Theodor Herzl gave No. 37 rue Cambon as his Paris address while writing the pamphlet that launched the Zionist movement. The hotel, now a 108-room Starhotels property, stands a short walk from the Tuileries, the Louvre and Place Vendôme.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.