Nonos par Paul Pairet – the three-star chef's Paris grill

Nonos par Paul Pairet occupies the brasserie address inside the Hôtel de Crillon on Place de la Concorde, run by a chef whose reputation was built on the opposite of simplicity. Paul Pairet's career carried him from Sydney and Jakarta to Shanghai, where his restaurant Ultraviolet earned three MICHELIN stars for an experience built around a single long table, twenty courses, and food paired with projected light, sound and scent for ten diners a night. At the Crillon, that showman's instinct has given way to oeufs mayonnaise, onion soup and a roast of the day carved at the table, described by the house as recipes simply revisited or modified, served alongside a selection of cheeses and desserts. The restaurant is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, under the Modern Cuisine category, and holds a special-occasion price position — a palace room given over, deliberately, to an unpretentious grill.

01The room and the setting

Designer Tristan Auer built the dining room as a 400-square-metre restaurant inside the Crillon, opened in 2023, photographed for his portfolio by Amaury Laparra. The name comes from the dry-ageing meat cave on display in the room itself, the device Pairet uses to reinvent what the house calls le grill à la française. Tristan Auer's interiors are equal parts glamorous modern restaurant and traditional Paris brasserie, with a variety of seats spread across the room, from bar stools for a quick bite to plush booths for long lunches.

In fine weather, tables move onto the terrace of the Cour d'Honneur, the Crillon's internal courtyard, where the restaurant invites guests to make the most of the last warm days of the season.

02The chef

Paul Pairet was born on 29 June 1964 in Perpignan and trained at a hotel school in Toulouse after a background in scientific study. He left France for Hong Kong in 1993, moved to Sydney's Mesclun in 1995–96, then to Jakarta before returning to Paris in 1998 to open Café Mosaïc. In 2005 he moved to Shanghai to run Jade on 36 at the Shangri-La, opened Mr & Mrs Bund in 2009, and Ultraviolet in 2012.

Insider tip

Open daily; weekday Déjeuner Express at lunch; terrace seating in the Cour d'Honneur weather permitting.

Ultraviolet, a single table built around a twenty-course avant-garde menu for ten diners a night, earned two MICHELIN stars in 2016 and a third in September 2017. The restaurant also picked up the Chef's Choice Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. Pairet joined the jury of Top Chef France in September 2019, and Ultraviolet closed for good in 2025 — a closing he describes as peaceful, on his own terms, with the menu and the guests he wanted, calling what comes next the third phase of his career. He opened Nonos at the Crillon on 25 January 2023.

03The cooking

Pairet calls the Nonos menu an exercise in simplicity, almost home-style cooking, and warns guests not to expect gastronomic pirouettes. Pricing was built to be democratic: small "distractions" start under ten euros, hot and cold starters stay under twenty, and portions run large enough to share, up to a 2.5-pound Black Angus porterhouse for two or more at the top of the card.

The kitchen's signature roast is not grilled but cooked slowly for twelve hours and then rested, in the American or British way, while the Dover sole arrives with its skin seared crisp on both sides rather than filleted away.

04What to order

The oeufs mayonnaise are the dish regulars single out, revisited from the classic bistro starter, alongside a cheese soufflé finished tableside and built around gruyère. The roast of the day is sliced from its trolley at the table, and from the sea there is lobster fricassée à l'Américaine, sole meunière, grilled sea bass with aïoli and Hong Kong-style black cod. For the grill itself, steak frites comes with béarnaise sauce and a reduced beef jus.

To finish, a chocolate soufflé is flambéed at the table, alongside three "tradition" soufflés — Grand Marnier, chocolate and praline — plus riz au lait, tarte à la crème and baba au rhum.

05When to go and booking

Nonos is open every day, with lunch service from noon to 2.30pm and dinner from 7pm to 10.30pm, as published on the Crillon's site in October 2026.

In fine weather, ask for the terrace in the Cour d'Honneur rather than a table inside; next door, the counter Comestibles par Paul Pairet runs daily from midday to 8pm for take-away charcuterie, smoked fish, cheese and seafood.

06The neighbourhood

The address sits directly on Place de la Concorde, a few minutes' walk from the Tuileries Garden and the Champs-Élysées, inside a hotel built on Louis XV's vision in the 18th century and restored with rooms by designers including Karl Lagerfeld.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.