Les Bols de Jean

Culinary TV’s scruffy young heartthrob Jean Imbert is already well known in Paris for L’Ajacou, a glitterati hotspot in the 16th. With his new venture, he attempts to make haute cuisine accessible to the masses – by packaging it up in a sort of French interpretation of a burger.

It all began with celebrity baker Eric Kayser creating a soft brioche-style bread in the form of the now-signature ‘bowls’. Recipe testing took two years to find the right ones to fit the brief, and the finished result is a treat. Starting at only €7, the soft bread ‘bowls’ are filled with seasonal, organic and locally sourced produce – the ‘Retour du Marché’ might bring a poached egg on winter squash, girolle mushrooms and quinoa, or the ‘Bol du Chef’, veal from über-butcher Hugo Desnoyer teamed with sprightly yellow carrots.

Tables, inevitably, are hard to bag. But service is speedy, attentive and charming, and with this mix of American-style service and French cuisine, Jean Imbert may have stumbled upon a real recipe for success.

TRANSLATION: HESTER UNDERHILL