Nosso – Paris's zero-waste table of Brazilian memory

Nosso occupies a glass-walled corner at 22 promenade Claude Lévi-Strauss, in the still-new quarter that has grown up around the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris's 13th arrondissement. It is the second restaurant of Brazilian-born chef Alessandra Montagne, who built her reputation at Tempero before opening Nosso at the end of summer 2021, next to the MK2 Bibliothèque cinema. The name means "ours" in Portuguese, and the kitchen runs on a strict zero-waste principle: every ingredient, meat and fish included, is used in full. Montagne threads memories of her grandparents' farm outside Rio de Janeiro through the produce of Île-de-France, building a modern, inventive table that is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide. Raw concrete, oak and pine, and floor-to-ceiling windows give the dining room an unusually calm, luminous register for this corner of Paris, a world away from the cramped kitchen she left behind.

01The room and the setting

Nosso sits on the ground floor of one of the new-build blocks that have risen around the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand métro and RER station, which serves the area around the François Mitterrand library building. Compared with the twenty-five-cover, cupboard-sized kitchen of Tempero, Nosso is vast — a deliberate step up in scale for a chef whose old restaurant had become too small for her following.

The architecture is by the Harari practice: raw concrete, oak and pine set against immense glass façades, with a planted terrace running along the quiet pedestrian promenade outside, a rare pocket of calm in a sector still filling in between the BnF and Station F.

02The chef

Born on a small-scale farm outside Rio de Janeiro among market gardeners and poultry farmers for whom nothing was ever thrown away, Alessandra Montagne first trained for a career in education. She came to Paris in 1999, intending only to take French classes at the Sorbonne, and never left.

Insider tip

Closed Saturday and Sunday; dinner Wednesday to Friday only. Nearest stop: Bibliothèque François Mitterrand.

She retrained in professional kitchens at the Jean Drouant hotel school, earning her CAP in cooking and pastry, then learned under Benoît Castel at La Grande Épicerie de Paris before working with William Ledeuil and Adeline Grattard. She opened Tempero in the 13th arrondissement in 2012, running it for eight years before moving to Nosso — a transition so complete that her entire Tempero team followed her to the new address.

03The cooking

The kitchen sources almost entirely from Île-de-France, with Montagne cooking roughly ninety-five per cent locally; the remainder comes from a small producer in her native Brazil, bought at a fair price for the handful of ingredients that can't be found closer to home. On the restaurant's own list of growers and winemakers sit names such as Zone Sensible, Maison Biovor, Ah la Vache, Maison Montalet, Paris Caviar and the Boulangerie Sain, chosen, the house says, for sharing its commitment to quality and to the environment.

04What to order

At lunch, the carte runs starter-and-main or main-and-dessert for 40€, three courses for 48€, or a four-sequence Menu Voyage composed by the chef for 65€. Among the dishes: a velouté of Paris mushrooms with grilled buckwheat and mushroom pickles, a lightly cured trout with celeriac cream, miso-roasted aubergine with white bean purée and caramelised onions, confit beef cheek with maize-and-comté polenta, and the day's fish roasted with leek and a verjus sauce. Desserts include a moist Pain de Gênes with fig compote and fig-leaf ice cream, and Le Café Musette, the house's own spin on Irish coffee.

In the evening the tasting menus expand: Menu Voyage in four sequences at 72€, Menu Solaire in five at 82€, and the seven-sequence Menu Paris-Rio at 98€, each available in a vegetarian version on request.

05Wine and drinks

The cellar belongs to Aurélien Gil-Artagnan, director of the dining room and chief sommelier, previously chef sommelier at the gastronomic restaurant La Réserve. He has built a list of some seventy-two references weighted toward organic, biodynamic and natural growers, mixing prestige appellations with young talent, and designed specifically to run alongside Montagne's cooking. Wine pairings are offered from 58€ for the Menu Voyage up to 85€ for the Menu Paris-Rio; Gil-Artagnan also runs his own venture, L'Atelier des Sommeliers, sharing his passion for wine beyond the restaurant.

06When to go and booking

Nosso serves lunch Monday to Friday from midday to 2pm, and dinner Wednesday to Friday from 7.30pm to 8.45pm; the restaurant is closed on Saturdays and Sundays. The nearest stop is Bibliothèque François Mitterrand, on line 14 and the RER C, a short walk from Station F and the BnF's esplanade.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.