I had been a vegetarian for about a year when I spent the summer in the seaside town of Royan, where my well-meaning host mother offered me, as an alternative to cordon bleu, a whole baked fish. I quickly embraced pescatarianism, but I spent the remainder of the summer explaining why I could eat eggs but not chicken and cheese but not beef. Honestly, it was an excellent opportunity to interrogate the reasoning behind my own choices, and while I’m now a happy omnivore, I’m still extremely mindful of provenance, particularly when it comes to meat – something that proves a bit of a struggle in a country where, historically, meat is the centerpiece of most meals. While this is changing, particularly in Paris, choosing to focus on plants first, as Romain Méder does at his Prévelle, remains a bit of an anomaly. And that’s not the only way this young chef is turning heads.
At lunchtime during the week, diners choose from among four options: a 65-euro two-course prix fixe, an 85-euro three-course prix fixe, or the tasting menus, at 145 for five courses and 165 for seven. We opted for the five, which elides the cheese course and gives you a choice of desserts.
Every meal at Prévelle starts with house-made kombucha; on the day of our visit, it was made with pine buds and was truly one of the more delicious kombuchas I’ve tried. (And I’m quite the afficionado). As a good amuse always should, it above all whetted our palates for the marriage of brightness and slight bitterness that was to follow.
We were given a warm, mint-scented hand towel before our first chewable amuse arrived, a cracker made from nuts and seeds topped with radishes and a compote made from rose hips whose acidity really made the earthy notes of the cracker pop.
The amuses continued with a bitter duet. First, radicchio was draped over a mussel compote with a touch of cornel, a wild fruit that’s a member of the dogwood family. This chorus of bitter radicchio, sour fruit, and a touch of brininess from the mussel would prove to be Méder’s best calling card, and it was in hewing to this pairing that I found his cuisine most attractive and, ultimately, successful.
The accompanying salsify played the same notes: fried salsify, also known as oyster root for the saline way it echoes the flavors of the eponymous bivalve, was paired with a coffee espuma and a bit of sherry reduction.
Contemporary fine dining chefs can’t quite help adding “playful” interaction to menus, which is more or less successful depending on the spot. I found myself a bit skeptical regarding the consignes given by our lovely waitress regarding this delicious broth, served in a bowl that’s rounded on the bottom so you cannot put it down. While unconvinced by the utility of my hands needing to be occupied to drink it, I was convinced by the flavors here: a deep, rich broth with miso vibes in which floated a few perfect cubes of seasonal potato, which added just a touch of sweetness.
The soup was paired with a beet-driven duo that may have been my favorite of the amuses. A piece of enriched pain au lait encased a few chunks of fermented beetroot, and it was served alongside a bowl had an acid-forward beet compote. Diners are encouraged to drag the bread through the dish, immortalizing the French tradition of saucer. I loved the rich, funky beetroot paired with the rich, buttery bread and, once more, that welcome acidity tying everything together.
For the bread service, rustic sourdough was paired with raw milk salted butter in a more minimal approach than most, not that I’m complaining. It was dense and flavorful, exactly as it should be. When the bread and butter are this good, I need no further bells and whistles.
This gorgeous, colorful dish was the first “course” of the five, a seasonal plate of roasted pumpkin topped with a sheet of watercress gel and accompanied by toasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seed praline, and a chile-driven condiment. I was unconvinced by the need for the tiny gnocchi poured over the dish tableside (and, for that matter, the suggestion that the dish be topped with caviar), but these qualms aside, this dish encapsulated perfectly Méder’s love and appreciation for plants.
This pervaded the next two courses, where the accompaniment rather than the protein consistently felt like the star of the plate. These scallops, for example, were perfectly fine, but they seemed almost an afterthought as compared to the tender, ultra-sweet leeks and jumble of craterelle mushrooms, which had been both slow-cooked and simmered into a broth. A touch of black lemon condiment on the side provided, once more, that lingering acidity and bitterness, and we were encouraged to dab it on various bits of the dish, almost like mustard.
I found it more successful than this sea bass dish, paired with juniper-encrusted Jerusalem artichokes and a clementine marmalade of sorts.
The fish was set atop a thin piece of bread, meant, our server told us, to provide “gourmandise” (moreishness). But ultimately it ended up soggy in the jus that was poured over the top, and while the bitterness and acidity were still present on this dish, they had become a bit more muted.
Even the plant-driven portion of the dish – the Jerusalem artichoke – felt less daring than earlier vegetables had been. I started to get the sense that we had already seen the best of Méder.
And then, he pulled out all the stops with this glorious creation: a sausage of offal evoking his past as a charcutier, paired with a leaf of offal-encrusted cabbage, a cabbage jus, and a single, perfect oyster.
On paper, this pairing should have been odd, and yet the sweet brininess of the oyster balanced the richness of the sausage perfectly. My favorite bite, though, was that cabbage, with its sulfury sweetness balanced by a thin layer of the offal mixture, lending a lovely crisp texture. It was playful and delicious, and ultimately, it showed that for a dish to successfully be a love song to plants, it doesn’t actually need to be vegetarian.
From there, however, things backslid, with fairly ho-hum desserts. The persimmon baked in crispy pastry was pretty, but it had an unfortunate stringy texture and barely any flavor. My favorite part of this plate was the purée of nèfles, a winter fruit common in eastern France, which had a rich texture and loads of floral aroma.
An accompanying dish of persimmon ice cream drizzled with rosehip reduction was perfectly fine but nothing to write home about.
The signature dessert is a study in chocolate, coffee, and lentils, and I found it slightly more interesting, mainly for the lentil praline, but it honestly was just fine.
The mignardises, however, were excellent: a square of dark chocolate studded with cocoa nibs and pumpkin seeds melted luxuriously on the palate, and the perfectly ripe yellow kiwi was a lovely evocation of the French tradition of finishing a meal with fresh fruit. (And a nice reminder France is Europe’s third-largest producer of kiwis, making this the perfect alternative to citrus if you’re looking for French-grown fruit in winter.)
Méder’s mastery of French technique is palpable, and his clever winks at tradition, from cultural norms like fruit as dessert or the concept of dragging bread through sauce, to the austerity-driven reliance on offcuts like offal or forgotten vegetables, like Jerusalem artichoke, make this menu a fun, stalwartly French alternative to tasting menus that seem hell-bent on magnifying the traditions of elsewhere.
Ultimately, he is at his best when he treats each dish as a love letter to produce – and when he balances bitterness and acidity on the plate. These flavors are typically sidelined in French cuisine – something that I still remember Canadian Chef Haan Palcu-Chang musing is likely due to the assumption you’ll be drinking wine with the meal. Approaching plates without the idea that wine is needed to find balance is yet another way that Méder is keeping with the times in a way that feels wholly authentic.
Prévelle – 34, rue Saint-Dominique, 75007