Prévelle – Romain Meder's own village, rebuilt as a dining room

Prévelle sits on the quiet rue Saint-Dominique, close to the Invalides, in the space once occupied by the restaurant Garance in the 7th arrondissement. It is the first restaurant Romain Meder has opened as chef-owner, after more than twenty years inside France's grandest kitchens, among them the three-starred Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, where he helped shape the plant-and-sea cuisine known as naturalité. The restaurant opened in April 2025, and the MICHELIN Guide awarded it One Star less than a year later, in 2026. Its name comes from La Combe au Prévelle, a hamlet on the land in Haute-Saône where Meder grew up, and the room is built to feel like a cook's own house rather than a gastronomic set-piece — a place he describes as orchestrated by sommeliers as much as by chefs. The cooking is vegetable-first, instinctive and unapologetically seasonal, with fish, shellfish and poultry used sparingly, almost as condiments.

01The room and the setting

To give the address its own character, Meder called on architect Rebecca Levy Sitbon of l'atelier Siel, who brought his aspirations to life and reworked the architecture and decoration, with the guiding idea to create spaces that are warm, raw and soft at once. The result mixes lime render, Burgundy stone and light wood, with lime-green tones and soft lighting, topped off by a striking backlit staircase linking the ground-floor kitchen to the dining room upstairs.

Walk in and the first room you meet is the kitchen itself: a small table sits against the open kitchen for guests who want to watch the brigade at work, before a stair leads up to a calmer dining room. Upstairs, raw-clay walls by the specialist Sylvie Wheeler meet a polished concrete floor and vintage seminar armchairs reupholstered in green, softened with rugs and a pale wood sideboard.

02The chef

Romain Meder was born on 31 October 1978 in Neurey-lès-la-Demie, in Haute-Saône, into a family originally from Franche-Comté. He trained as a butcher and caterer before beginning his career at eighteen with the prestigious Parisian caterer Potel et Chabot, then joining the team of chef Hélène Darroze. In 2006, Alain Ducasse noticed him and brought him to the Plaza Athénée as sous-chef, later sending him to run kitchens in Mauritius and Doha.

Insider tip

Lunch Tue–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat; closed 24–27 December 2026.

Meder returned to Paris in 2014 to lead the reopening of Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, where he built the naturalité concept — a three-Michelin-starred table that had served no meat since 2014 — and the restaurant received three stars from the Michelin Guide on 1 February 2016. After the Ducasse partnership with the Plaza ended, he joined the pop-up ADMO aux Ombres, open for 100 days between November 2021 and March 2022 alongside Alain Ducasse, Albert Adrià and Jessica Préalpato, then took over the kitchens of Les Chemins at the Domaine de Primard. In April 2025 he opened Prévelle, his first restaurant, on the site of the former Garance, working alongside his deputy Nicolas Parage, who has worked with him for nine years.

03The cooking

Every dish at Prévelle starts from a vegetable or a fruit rather than a protein: Meder decides what will best bring it out, then lets a piece of fish, shellfish or poultry punctuate the plate almost as a condiment would — a raw oyster left to show its own power, a scallop barely coloured so it eats like a sweet, a jus of cuttlefish ink built to carry a piece of poultry. It is a cuisine of texture and instinct rather than display, built plate by plate around what the market and the weather bring in that morning.

The approach draws on a network of more than 140 small producers who supply almost one ingredient each — among them the Taxil family in Haute-Provence for chickpeas, Frédéric Poupard in the Maine-et-Loire for asparagus, and Emmanuelle Marie in the Manche for lobster. It is the same logic of naming the hands behind every ingredient that Meder practised at the Plaza Athénée, now applied on his own terms and his own account.

04What to order

The spring menu has included a turbot with artichoke poivrade and almond, and a dish pairing lobster with peas and mint, mixing rawness and refinement in unexpected combinations. Several dishes carry over, refined, from his time at the Domaine de Primard — a tuile of vegetable peelings, a brioche-and-beetroot plate, butter and bread, and a dessert of chocolate, coffee and lentil — each a step more intense, as if the city itself sharpened the cooking he developed in the countryside.

05Wine and drinks

The wine list is built around personality rather than prestige alone, mixing grand appellations with natural wines chosen by Meder together with restaurant director Alexandre Montré, who also oversees the floor. Both insist on knowing the face behind every bottle, a philosophy that mirrors the kitchen's own insistence on knowing the producer behind every vegetable.

06When to go and booking

In October 2026 the restaurant's own site lists a lunch menu of two or three courses at €65 or €85, alongside tasting menus of five or seven courses at €155 or €175, served at both lunch and dinner. Lunch runs Tuesday to Friday and dinner Monday to Saturday; the restaurant is closed from 24 to 27 December 2026. On 9 June 2026 Meder is hosting a four-hand dinner with chef Guillaume Monjuré of Palégrié - Chez L'Henri, a five-course wine-paired menu priced at €245, for which reservation is required.

07The neighbourhood

Prévelle stands two steps from the Invalides, on a residential stretch of rue Saint-Dominique in the 7th arrondissement — a left-bank street of embassies, ministries and quiet apartment buildings, a world away from the grand hotel dining rooms where Meder made his name, and exactly the kind of neighbourhood he wanted for a restaurant built to feel like home.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.