Pouliche – Amandine Chaignot's own stable on rue d'Enghien

Pouliche opened at 11 rue d'Enghien on 21 October 2019, the first restaurant chef Amandine Chaignot built entirely in her own name after two decades cooking inside some of Paris's grandest hotel kitchens. The address, in the cosmopolitan 10th arrondissement, carries a nod in its very name: pouliche is French for filly, the nickname chef Le Prince gave her at the 2012 Bocuse d'Or, and a wink to rue d'Enghien, which once housed the capital's horse stables. Before striking out alone, Chaignot had passed through the kitchens of Maison Prunier, the Plaza Athénée, the Bristol, the Ritz London, the Meurice and the Crillon, before taking the stoves at the Hôtel Raphaël from 2012. Pouliche is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, its kitchen built around a single, daily-changing set menu where the diner's only real decision is the main course — meat, fish or vegetarian — the rest left entirely to the chef and her team.

01The room and the setting

The shopfront announces itself in intense blue before you've read the sign. Inside, Pouliche runs across two rooms: a front room that is bright and calm, looking out onto the street, and a livelier back room that flirts with the open kitchen, where the team works in full view through the evening service.

Between the two, the restaurant seats sixty-six at table — twenty up front, forty-six behind — and can be privatised for groups and events, stretching to a hundred guests for a standing reception across both rooms.

02The chef

Amandine Chaignot was born on 1 May 1979 in Orsay, the daughter of a scientist and an excellent student who passed her final school exams a year early. She began a pharmacy degree in 1996, dropped it in 1998, and retrained in the kitchen instead, starting as a waitress in a pizzeria before enrolling at the École Ferrandi.

Insider tip

Closed Sunday evenings; Wednesdays go fully vegetarian; call ahead for the day's menu.

She trained at the Maison de l'Aubrac and then at Prunier, where she was picked as commis for the French Bocuse d'Or team — the posting that earned her the nickname that would later become Pouliche's name. Three years followed at the Plaza Athénée under Jean-François Piège and at the Ritz London, then three more with Éric Fréchon, before she moved on to the Hôtel Meurice under Yannick Alléno and the Hôtel de Crillon alongside Christopher Hache.

In 2012 — the year she also competed as Bocuse de Bronze for France — she took over the restaurant at the Hôtel Raphaël on avenue Kléber, a post she held before leaving for London to run the kitchens of the Rosewood between 2015 and 2018, and signing the menus of L'Adjugé in Drouot. Since September 2013 she has sat on the jury of MasterChef France alongside chefs Frédéric Anton and Yves Camdeborde and journalist Sébastien Demorand, and in the same year was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

03The cooking

The kitchen works a short, market-led carte that turns with whatever a loyal list of small producers delivers that morning — close enough to the day that regulars know to telephone ahead if they want to hear what is actually on the stove before they book. Every Wednesday, lunch and dinner, the entire menu goes vegetarian.

04What to order

Dinner runs as a set menu at 65 euros: a 'Mise en selle' opener, shared starters, a main of meat, fish or vegetable, cheese and dessert. Lunch splits in two — the 28-euro 'Au Galop', a starter-and-main or main-and-dessert for a quick midday sitting Monday to Friday, and the more unhurried 'Au Pas' at 34 euros (36 on Saturdays), with shared starters, a main and dessert. Sunday belongs to the house fixture, the 36-euro 'Poulet du Dimanche' — shared starters, the chicken of the moment or a vegetarian option, and dessert.

05Wine and drinks

The list is built by Jérémy, the restaurant's general manager, who buys bottles directly from French winegrowers rather than through a merchant, keeping the selection close to the same sourcing principles that shape the plates.

06The neighbourhood

The street sits in the part of the 10th arrondissement where Turkish, Indian and Chinese kitchens dominate, and Pouliche offers the bistronomic alternative that fills its tables at lunchtime with a local crowd. The nearest métro, Strasbourg - Saint-Denis, is four minutes on foot, served by lines 4, 8 and 9, close to the Porte Saint-Denis arch that gives the neighbourhood its name.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.