Le Violon d'Ingres – a hobby turned Left Bank institution

On rue Saint-Dominique, a few streets back from the Eiffel Tower in Paris's 7th arrondissement, Le Violon d'Ingres is named after an idiom rather than a dish. The French expression describes a pursuit followed purely for pleasure, and it comes from the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who was devoted to playing the violin in his spare time, a native of Montauban like the restaurant's founding chef. Christian Constant, who had earned his first Michelin stars running Les Ambassadeurs at the Hôtel de Crillon, opened the restaurant on this corner of the 7th in 1997 with his wife Catherine. It holds one MICHELIN Star. Since January 2020 it has been run by restaurateur Bertrand Bluy, with the kitchen shared by Alain Solivérès, formerly of Taillevent, and Jimmy Tsaramanana, who has led these stoves since 2015.

01The room and the setting

The dining room on rue Saint-Dominique keeps the elegant, warm register Christian Constant set when he opened it, a space built for a long lunch or a proper evening rather than for display, blending tradition with a few modern touches. In Constant's day, twenty-five of his protégés who went on to become chefs in their own right were pictured on the walls facing his open kitchen, a visible record of how many Paris careers passed through this address before it changed hands.

02The chefs

Jimmy Tsaramanana was born in Madagascar and trained at the Ferrandi Paris school, taking his CAP, BEP and baccalauréat before a BTS as an independent candidate in 2000. He worked for Jacques Le Divellec near the Invalides, then at L'Oasis in Mandelieu-la-Napoule under the Raimbault brothers, before moving on to the Relais de la Poste in Magescq, in the Landes, and to the Hôtel de Crillon. His first head-chef post came in 2007 at Hajime in Osaka; he returned to Le Violon d'Ingres in 2015 to take the kitchen in hand full-time.

Insider tip

Open daily for lunch and dinner; booking advised, a short walk from the Eiffel Tower.

Alain Solivérès joined him in January 2020, brought in by the new owner Bertrand Bluy, his former pastry chef at Taillevent. Born in Béziers in 1963, Solivérès trained under Jacques Maximin at the Negresco in Nice and later alongside Alain Ducasse at the Louis XV in Monaco, before taking his first head-chef position at La Bastide de Gordes in 1989. In 2002 he took over the kitchen at Taillevent from Michel Del Burgo, running the Paris institution until he was let go in 2018.

03The cooking

Together the two chefs sign a single carte built on the classics of the South-West, the territory Christian Constant made his own here from the opening day. It is cooking that favours technique and ingredient over invention for its own sake, filed by the MICHELIN Guide under Traditional and Classic cuisine.

04What to order

The duck foie gras, pan-fried and served with gingerbread, and the braised veal sweetbread in a vin jaune sauce stand as the house's two signature plates. Earlier on the card, a tuna tartare marinated with ginger, fennel pickles and red onion sets the tone, while the milk-fed veal entrecôte comes dressed in verjus. For dessert, the millefeuille, filled with a light vanilla cream, closes the meal much as it has for years.

05Wine and drinks

Sommelier Cédric Pouzet runs the cellar behind a list the MICHELIN Guide flags among the restaurant's facilities as genuinely interesting, a useful counterpart to a carte built on sauces and game.

06When to go and booking

Le Violon d'Ingres opens every day, for lunch between noon and 2pm and dinner from 6.30pm to 10pm, with no closing day built into the week. It is worth booking ahead: this is a restaurant that fills with regulars from the neighbourhood as readily as with visitors walking down from the Eiffel Tower.

07The neighbourhood

Rue Saint-Dominique runs through the quiet, residential heart of the 7th arrondissement, a few minutes on foot from the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides. It was here that Christian Constant later built out a small empire around this flagship – Le Café Constant and Les Cocottes among them – before eventually selling up and retiring to his native South-West.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.