Mavrommatis – Greek gastronomy's one star in the Latin Quarter

In the Latin Quarter, a short walk from rue Mouffetard, Mavrommatis has been the reference for Hellenic cooking in Paris since 1993. The address was built by three brothers from Cyprus who had arrived in the city as students and, in 1981, bought a small grocery-deli at the foot of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève before opening the bistro Les Délices d'Aphrodite the following year. Andréas, the cook of the family, trained at the École Lenôtre to sharpen the technique behind his Greek and Cypriot repertoire, and the flagship restaurant on rue Daubenton opened its doors in 1993. It holds One MICHELIN Star, awarded in 2018, the symbolic consecration of decades spent marrying French gastronomic technique with the produce of Greece and Cyprus. Andréas died on 14 March 2026, aged sixty-nine; his brothers Evagoras and Dionysos have made clear that the house's work goes on.

01The room and the setting

The dining room is built on restraint rather than spectacle: raw-plastered walls hung with paintings, pale parquet underfoot, and an atmosphere the house itself describes as one of sober elegance. The tableware carries a logo drawn by Georges Moustaki, the singer and long-time friend of the three brothers, a detail that quietly ties the room to the family's own story rather than to any borrowed idea of Greece.

A private salon on the first floor is reserved for dinners and small gatherings, set apart from the main room where a discreet service style has become part of the house's identity over three decades on rue Daubenton.

02The chef

Andréas Mavrommatis crossed from his home village of Agios Ioannis, in the Troodos foothills of Cyprus, in 1977, arriving in Paris at twenty to study psychology and sociology near Jussieu. He paid his way working in Greek restaurants around rue Mouffetard, and it was there, alongside his brothers Evagoras and Dionysos, that cooking turned from a way to make ends meet into a vocation worth building a house around.

Insider tip

Closed Sunday and Monday; book ahead, especially for the first-floor private salon.

By 1981 the three had bought a grocery-deli in their adopted quarter, and a year later opened Les Délices d'Aphrodite, the taverna that launched the family name in Paris. Andréas went on to train at the École Lenôtre before opening the flagship restaurant in 1993, the project that would earn One MICHELIN Star in 2018 and establish him as one of the main ambassadors of Greek and Cypriot cooking in France. He died on 14 March 2026, after more than forty-five years spent championing that cuisine; the house has said that the work he began will be pursued with engagement and determination.

03The cooking

The kitchen sets Greek and Cypriot produce against classical French technique. Grilled octopus arrives with crisp phyllo pastry and onions confit in Xinomavro red wine, a dish that has become something of a signature on the à la carte menu. Other plates move between the sea and the mountains of the Mediterranean: red mullet grilled on the plancha with citrus, pepper and a chorizo-stuffed octopus, or a whole seabass roasted with lemon leaves and organic Greek lentils.

On the meat side, a dish built around suckling lamb pairs a confit shoulder with a roasted saddle dressed in PDO halloumi cheese, chard dolmades and a Volos olive condiment — a plate that keeps returning across menus and tasting formats as a measure of the kitchen's ambition.

04What to order

Among the starters, barbecued green asparagus from Provence comes with smoked sheep's graviera, Aegina pistachio and a basil-flavoured Greek yogurt, while a petimezi-lacquered Saint-Pierre is served with kritamo, zucchini flower and an iodised cardamom and Timur-pepper jus. Free-range quail, marinated in vine leaves and accompanied by keftedes made with Cretan snails, white asparagus and morel mushrooms, is dressed in a honey-and-cinnamon juice.

To finish, an Aegina pistachio tart comes with poached rhubarb and coconut sorbet, and a crisp phyllo pastry is served with orange confit, creamy vanilla and a mandarin-yuzu sorbet. The restaurant structures its tasting menus as acts rather than courses: an Initiation menu in four, a Discovery menu in five, and a seven-act Signature menu built, in the house's own words, as a tribute to Greek terroirs.

05Wine and drinks

The wine list leans deliberately towards Greece and Cyprus, a project overseen within the family by Dionysos Mavrommatis, who has built an interactive viticultural map of the Hellenic world for the house's own cellar, ranging from the Cycladic islands to the Peloponnese and Macedonia. In the dining room, a young sommelière guides guests towards bottles chosen to match the kitchen's use of olive oil, citrus and smoke rather than overpower them.

06The neighbourhood

Rue Daubenton sits at the quiet edge of the Latin Quarter, close to the market stalls of rue Mouffetard and the slope of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève where the Mavrommatis brothers first set up their grocery in 1981. The nearest metro, Censier Daubenton on line 7, places the restaurant within a few minutes of the Jardin des Plantes and the university buildings around Jussieu where Andréas once studied — a short walk, in effect, between the student years that started the story and the dining room that became its landmark.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.