Maison Ruggieri Palais Royal – cooking written as poetry

At 111 galerie de Valois, under the arcades that ring the gardens of the Palais-Royal a few steps from the Comédie-Française, chef Martino Ruggieri has turned a storied address into a manifesto written almost literally as poetry. The space was once home to the Restaurant du Palais Royal, run under the Evok group by Greek chef Philip Chronopoulos, before Ruggieri, a Puglian chef and former right-hand man to Yannick Alléno who won Italy's Bocuse d'Or in 2017, took it over. He had already proven himself a few streets away: his first Maison Ruggieri opened in the 8th arrondissement in October 2022 and earned two MICHELIN stars in 2024, before he relocated to the Palais-Royal and that original address was rebranded Héritages. He opened this second Maison Ruggieri in January 2026 and earned a star within two months of opening. It holds One MICHELIN Star. The carte itself arrives as a collection of free verse.

01The room and the setting

The Palais-Royal is where the modern restaurant itself was born, and Ruggieri's dining room sits inside that lineage as the palace approaches its 400th year, the opening having coincided with preparations for the quadricentennial of the Palais-Royal. Tables run along the galerie de Valois side of the arcades; across the gardens, on the rue de Beaujolais flank, stand the black-and-white striped columns that Daniel Buren installed in the palace's main courtyard.

Inside, the room favours a discreet elegance, noble materials, old parquet and soft light, and the tables that open onto the Palais-Royal's galleries give the dining room a rare visual breathing space, away from the bustle of the rest of Paris.

02The chef

Ruggieri's path to the Palais-Royal began far from Paris. Born in Martina Franca, in Puglia, he is a chef trained at the Institut hôtelier de Castellana Grotte who won the Bocuse d'Or Italy in 2017 after eight years as executive chef to Yannick Alléno at the three-MICHELIN-starred Pavillon Ledoyen. There he built an exceptional command of sauces, jus and balance, inherited from the grand French tradition. He describes his cooking in terms borrowed from dance rather than the kitchen, likening gastronomy's relationship to cooking to that of dance to walking, with every plate built around tension and chiaroscuro. The restaurant was awarded its MICHELIN Star in March 2026, just months after opening.

Insider tip

Open for lunch Tuesday–Friday and dinner Monday–Friday; closed weekends and Monday lunch.

03The cooking

There is no carte in the conventional sense. Rather than a printed list of dishes, the menu reads as a collection of poems, dish titles set in free verse by Ruggieri's wife Mariella, who translates the sensations he describes to her into words before the plates ever reach the table. The meal opens quietly with an amuse-bouche of set mozzarella water, almond, mushroom and Colonnata lard, designed less as a dish than an unsettling of the palate.

From there the menu builds through a signature combination of foie gras, sea urchin and burnt grapefruit, where the richness of the liver meets the iodine of the urchin and the caramelised bitterness of the fruit, and a sequence pairing duck with bottarga and Sichuan pepper that closes the savoury half of the meal on a note of umami. Other dishes seen on recent menus include turbot with white truffle, samphire, shellfish and spätzle in warm butter, and a dish of beef with eel, crisp rice and razor clams. Desserts move in a deliberate decrescendo: fresh meringue, deeply candied kiwi, and a final dark, fondant note that leaves the palate at rest.

04What to order

Elsewhere on the menu, look for langoustine with a lovage mayonnaise, udon noodles served alongside pan bao, and a crisp, yielding sweetbread, plus a mushroom and chocolate soufflé served with whisky ice cream.

05When to go and booking

The restaurant closes Saturday and Sunday, both lunch and dinner, and Monday lunch, opening instead for lunch Tuesday to Friday and dinner Monday to Friday. Tables are best booked well ahead directly through the restaurant's own site; a full dinner tasting menu runs to nine courses, three of them dessert, so an evening here takes its time.

06The neighbourhood

The restaurant sits just a short walk from the Comédie-Française, inside the arcaded galleries that have drawn cafés and food lovers to the Palais-Royal for centuries. Step outside after the meal and the gardens, the arcades and Buren's striped columns across the courtyard are all within a minute's walk, along with the jewellers and boutiques that have lined these galleries since long before the Revolution.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.