Maison Avoise – one star inside an old gunpowder fort

In the casemates of the old fort of Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the vault where the garrison once produced its gunpowder, chef Alexis Voisenet runs a thirty-cover dining room that became the first restaurant in the town's history to appear in the MICHELIN Guide. Maison Avoise opened on 17 September 2024, and within seven months had already won its first star, confirmed in the 2025 selection unveiled on 31 March of that year. The restaurant holds One MICHELIN Star again in the 2026 guide, cooking what Voisenet describes as a tribute to classical French cuisine, read through a graphic, contemporary eye. He grew up a few streets from the fort, and the gamble paid off fast: a chef raised almost within sight of the ramparts now runs one of the most closely watched new tables in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, serious enough to justify the drive beyond the périphérique.

01The room and the setting

The building carries its own history. Before Voisenet signed the lease, this stretch of the fort was La Poudrière, the vault where the garrison stored its gunpowder, and the dining room's thirty covers still sit inside those same stone casemates. Stone vaults, a bar counter in white Carrara marble and noble timber set the tone throughout, and at the centre of the room the open kitchen is built around a pass finished in green onyx, the house's visual signature.

Beyond the main room, the fort unfolds: each salon opens onto its own terrace, there is a herb garden on the roof, a bar, a cave à manger and a dedicated cigar cellar, so the building works as much as a place to linger over a glass of wine as it does a gastronomic address. The cave à manger itself runs along a marble counter where guests can order saucisson, cured hams, terrines, pâté en croûte, oysters and cheeses from the ageing cupboard, backed by a list built around the Rhône's Côte-Rôtie, Burgundy, Alsace and the Loire.

02The chef

Alexis Voisenet grew up a few streets from the fort, keen to bring ambitious cooking to a part of Greater Paris still light on gastronomic addresses. He built his career methodically, chef by chef: sauce work under Yannick Alléno, modern braising and precise cooking technique under Jean-François Piège, then a spell with Christophe Raoux, a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, where he won his first star within two years at L'Oiseau Blanc inside the Peninsula hotel.

Insider tip

Open Tuesday–Saturday for lunch and dinner; booking advised, especially for the tasting menus.

He then spent five years as Guy Savoy's second-in-command, from 2019 to 2024, before leaving to open Maison Avoise as his own first restaurant, bringing with him colleagues drawn from across that itinerary and a determination to prove that serious cooking has a place outside central Paris.

03The cooking

Gault et Millau rates the kitchen 13.5 out of 20, praising a young, committed team that applies a now-familiar but carefully executed repertoire: no waste, hand-made ceramics, locally sourced produce, a beer brewed in Issy and coffee roasted by Anne Caron. The signature dish, veal sweetbread, is the one that built the chef's reputation even before Maison Avoise existed, and it remains the plate most readers are steered towards.

The cooking stays precise and product-led rather than showy: a dish built around La Carnée sees duck foie gras braised, rested on sage, then gently poached in a sparkling elderflower infusion, its cooking liquor folded back into the sauce — a technique the kitchen is happy to explain table-side.

04What to order

The carte changes with the day's arrivals, but a handful of dishes anchor it. To start, there is La Nature Vivante, confit leek with a vegetable Albufera sauce (€30); La Madrague, diver-caught scallops cured raw in seaweed salt (€36); and La Carnée, duck foie gras with a sparkling fig reduction (€36). Among the mains, La Signature is the chef's veal sweetbread; La Mer sets bluefin tuna in the style of a senator, with a royal matelote sauce (€70); and La Terre is a Mont-Royal pie (€70). To finish, there is a cheese course from the ageing cave (€25), a seasonal fruit dish (€26) and Le Souvenir, a nostalgic, playful dessert (€28).

Three tasting menus run alongside the carte, read on the restaurant's own site in October 2026: a four-course lunch at €64, served Tuesday to Friday only; the six-course Menu Maison at €110; and the eight-course Menu Avoise at €150, each offered with a wine or a non-alcoholic pairing.

05When to go and booking

Maison Avoise seats guests Tuesday to Saturday, from midday to 1.30pm and from 7.30pm to 9pm, and can take up to fifty covers for private parties across its terraces and salons.

It sits around a twenty-minute walk from Mairie d'Issy station on line 12, in a quiet, residential pocket of the town above the Seine. When the long-delayed Grand Paris Express line 15 finally reaches Issy, expected in autumn 2027, the journey out from central Paris should shrink considerably — one more reason Voisenet bet on this unlikely address.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.