LAVA – where a former Top Chef cooks entirely by fire in the Latin Quarter

LAVA holds a narrow address on the rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, the steep lane that climbs from the Seine toward the Panthéon, in the heart of the Latin Quarter. It is the first restaurant of chef Wilfried Romain, who appeared on the thirteenth season of Top Chef before opening the address with his friend and business partner, sommelier Rémi Badjoint, at the end of 2023, when the two men were thirty and twenty-seven. Everything here answers to fire: embers, smoke, reduced jus and sauces that run across the plate like lava, built on a decade Romain spent cooking between Chile, the Pacific and Asia. The dining room, dressed in volcanic stone and tucked beneath the Panthéon, seats fifty-five. LAVA is selected in the MICHELIN Guide and carries two Gault&Millau toques, rated 13/20.

01The room and the setting

The dining room plays entirely on one idea: ebony walls, textured black tables and black chairs behind glass frontage, a decor built to look like the inside of a volcano. The space seats fifty-five, with an open kitchen where the wood fire never stops running and a sunny terrace used for lunch service in the Quartier Latin.

Tucked into what the restaurant calls the heart of the Volcano is the Basalt Salon, a private table seating up to fourteen guests for a more intimate version of the experience, reserved exclusively for the five-course Carte Blanche menu "L'Éruption" at €75 a head. Full privatisation of the restaurant is possible for up to sixty-five people.

02The chef

Wilfried Romain grew up near Metz and trained for five years in hospitality school before spending more than a decade working under chefs including Thierry Marx. He cooked in the kitchens of Sur-Mesure and L'Orangerie, both two-MICHELIN-starred addresses in Paris, at the one-starred Baudelaire, and at Borago in Santiago, Chile, a restaurant that has ranked among the world's fifty best. He appeared on Top Chef's thirteenth season before opening LAVA, his first restaurant, with sommelier Rémi Badjoint as his business partner.

Insider tip

Lunch and dinner served seven days a week; book via Zenchef, phone or email.

Badjoint's own path ran through service and sommellerie studies, with stints travelling in Australia and Mexico before he returned to Paris to work at Le Divellec and then at Le Burgundy, where he met Romain. He went on to the Trianon Palace and to Nomicos before the two friends launched LAVA together at the end of 2023.

03The cooking

At LAVA, fire is treated as an ingredient rather than a technique: octopus cooked over binchotan, Axuria beef grilled on the barbecue, smoked sauces, peanut-butter mousselines and reductions of hazelnut milk all pass through the embers before they reach the table. Each dish is built as a memory of a journey, blending Latin America, Pacific Asia and French technique without ever turning into fusion for its own sake.

The signature style has included smoked scallops cooked over binchotan, broccoli in a sauce the kitchen calls "5C1M", pork from the Perche region seasoned with coffee and chilli, and confit yellow pollock in a ginger-infused agedashi broth. A black ceviche seasoned with merken, the Chilean smoked chilli condiment, has been a constant on the menu alongside a veal tartare dressed with Madagascan voatsiperifery pepper, pecorino and a South American-style chimichurri.

04What to order

The black ceviche with merken remains the dish most associated with Romain's travels, alongside the veal tartare with chimichurri and voatsiperifery pepper. From the fire side of the menu, look for plaice prepared ikejime-style with green curry and a lamb saddle lacquered with dates, both built around the restaurant's embers-first philosophy. The carte changes with the seasons and the chef's mood, so exact dishes shift through the year.

05Wine and drinks

Rémi Badjoint built a short, fire-focused food menu around a broad list of wines by the glass, and the pairing options follow the same logic as the tasting menus: a shorter pairing at €25 alongside the three-course "L'Embrasement" menu, and a fuller €45 pairing designed to run through the five courses of "L'Éruption".

06When to go and booking

LAVA serves lunch from midday to 2.30pm and dinner from 6.30pm to midnight, seven days a week, with the terrace reserved for the lunch service. Vegetarian dishes are available on request and allergies can be flagged when booking. Tables can be reserved online through Zenchef, by phone on +33 1 43 29 12 12, or by email.

07The neighbourhood

The restaurant sits on the heights of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the street that gives it its address, in a Latin Quarter pocket between the Panthéon and Notre-Dame. It is a few steps from the Panthéon itself, in a part of the 5th arrondissement still built around steep, narrow lanes, student life and some of the oldest streets on the Left Bank.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.