Disclosure: I was a guest of the property for this meal.
Plant-based fine dining is not fully rooted in France yet, but at Vivide, the new fine dining spot from the team behind Pristine, it is definitely taking on a French accent I cannot help but fall for.
The space is lovely, at once contemporary and evocative of the fine dining approach here, with judiciously spaced tables and tapered candles dripping gorgeously on each concrete table. Each evening, there’s one 75-euro prix fixe on offer – and your first choice is whether you’d like to see it ahead of time or not. (I couldn’t help myself.) You can also opt to add a 45-euro wine pairing, 25-euro non-alcoholic pairing, or 35-euro pairing with a bit of both. Most options on either list are natural and sustainable, in keeping with the philosophy shared by the restaurant’s co-owners, Michelle Primc and Jérémy Grosdidier.
The meal beings with a few amuses, my favorite of which was the first: a rich broth made with vegetable peelings. This is starting to become a trend in fine dining spots with even a wisp of a no-waste mindset, but I’ve never had one quite like this, with a rich, almost acidic quality and earthy undertones of beet and mushroom. A touch of lavender oil on top adds more aroma than flavor – and welcomely so. The resulting broth is far from overly floral and is just warming and restorative. The broth was only further improved by the attention to the servingware: It was poured from an antique silver teapot into an earthenware bowl that was warm to the touch. The tableside service nodded not just to the fine dining appeal of the space but to the overarching theme to follow: food that is unapologetically plant-based but also hews closely to French traditions, expectations, and flavors.
The next amuses were also quite tasty: Crackers drizzled with a sweet, umami-rich miso glaze and nutritional yeast arrived alongside bao buns generously seasoned with white pepper and served in a folded dish towel to keep them warm. A small bowl of a smoky tarama-inspired dip made with white beans and seaweed was a clever allusion to the brininess of the original. While all were tasty, I would later wonder if this was the best way to open a meal that otherwise clung to that original promise of Frenchness.
Our first of the seven announced dishes was an absolutely gorgeous seasonal carpaccio of butternut squash and pear dotted with several sauces, including a rich, pleasantly fatty seed purée, dots of lacto-fermented chile and lemon, and a few leaves of mélisse. Mixing and matching the elements meant that each bite could be different, if you wanted it to be, and as a result, the dish was a beautiful adventure of flavors.
There was a massive lag between our first course and our next one, one of just a handful of unfortunate hiccoughs. But when the plate finally arrived, it was worth the wait.
This hearty play on a French classic of pommes boulangères paired tender potatoes cooked in a moreish broth and black hazelnut. While the tuile on top offered nice texture, it wasn’t the most flavorsome part of the dish. That honor went to the sauce: rich and creamy with almost cocoa-y vibes.
We eagerly mopped up what remained with pieces of a phenomenal sourdough boule.
The next dish was undoubtedly my favorite of the night: a fan of smoky, slow-roasted beetroot slices that had been cooked in embers until they were reduced and almost buttery. As with the butternut dish, a panoply of accompaniments joined the beetroot, most of which were pleasantly dominated by horseradish: a beetroot and horseradish purée sat in the middle of the plate, drizzled with a red wine reduction, and a quenelle of house-made horseradish mustard could be integrated (or not) as you liked. On the whole, the plate was giving major roast dinner vibes – and challenged any assertions that plant-based food cannot be comforting.
At this, the halfway point of the meal, we were served the only perennial dish since the restaurant opened this fall: a play on a trou normand, albeit devoid of alcohol. An herb-infused sorbet was topped with threads of sucrine lettuce and fermented red cabbage as well as a few nasturtium leaves. A shallot-infused vinaigrette at the bottom of the plate offered a lovely counterplay to the slight sweetness of the sorbet for the ideal palate cleanser before the final savory dish.
But while this was meant to be the pièce de résistance, it was ultimately the dish I found most disappointing. Oyster mushrooms had been cooked over coals and were served over a sunchoke-dominant root veggie purée dotted with oxalis. While nice enough, the pleurotes lacked some of the umami richness of other dishes we’d encountered thus far, and moreover, there were bites that had carbonized to the texture of actual charcoal. The purée was lovely, and the sunchoke chips added a nice textural contrast. I also really liked the oxalis, which, in the manner of sumac, contributed some lovely acidity. But this dish just didn’t wow me the way so many of the others did.
The pre-dessert was a marriage of rice and aspérule odorante (sweet woodruff), a plant I’m seeing more of, in France, seeing as it’s a locally-produced alternative to the floral depth of tonka and vanilla. Here, the earthy, floral herb was infused into a soy milk-based ice cream with a lovely creamy texture and a vegetal note slightly evocative of matcha. A tuile over the top had all of the crunchiness and slight sweetness of cornflakes, and a few bits of puffed rice contributed even more texture.
The true dessert would undoubtedly delight any chocolate fan, and even I, who am rather chocolate averse, was charmed by this nostalgic wink at a s’mores. A thin gavotte tart base was brushed with yuzu, filled with a rich chocolate ganache made with single-origin chocolate from Plaq, and topped with a brûléed pea protein meringue infused with lemon, for a texture reminiscent of marshmallow. The chocolate itself stands out with a lovely fruitiness devoid of too much bitterness and mouth-drying tannin. Indeed, the acidity from the dish seemed to come, not from the citrus, but from the chocolate itself, with the yuzu and lemon lending, instead, a floral quality. It was an adventure of a dessert, and while my personal preference led me to like the ice cream a bit more, it was definitely a cool creation.
We finished with a delicious coffee and a mignardise: a verbena “gummy” bear with a far more melting texture than a more typical gelatin-based gummy. It was relatively mild and not the best pairing with the coffee; my favorite part was the sugar-dusted head, which also had a touch of acidity, which again felt like a nostalgic wink, this time to Sour Patch Kids. But ultimately, the mignardises and amuses (with the exception of the broth) were, for me, the weakest points of an otherwise incredibly accomplished menu.
I often find fine dining to be a bit of a mixed bag: In attempting to be too cerebral, sometimes it distances the food from what it’s meant to be, sustenance. But Vivide manages to satisfy both the food nerd and the gourmand in me, wedding awareness of French tradition, plant-based innovation, and, above all, warmth and heart, which means that, even when it stumbles, it’s a real gem even omnivores will fall for.
Vivide – 3 rue Dancourt 75018 Paris