No grill at home? Here are the restaurants that'll light the flame!

Long reserved for family use, barbecues are now making their mark in professional kitchens. Grilled, smoked, burnt: cooking over a flame is winning over more and more chefs.

Bérangère Chanel Published on 7/16/25 at 12:01 PM

The brazier is back with a vengeance, while the kamado, whether gas or wood-fired, is enjoying renewed popularity... It's up to you to choose your favorite barbecue. Cooking over an open flame has become a chestnut whenever summer temperatures rise. Fortunately, you don't need your own little patch of greenery to fire up your taste buds. Chefs do it well, without offering the same culinary framework. Here are eight ways they're making flame cooking their own (and you can take inspiration from them).

AM, gourmet barbecue in Marseille

in this age of traveling chefs who draw inspiration from their escapades to other horizons to return loaded with culinary ideas, kamado, brasero, kettle and other forms of barbecue have a privileged place in France's finest kitchens. Grilled flavors have become a strong marker, even in haute gastronomy, as in the preparations of the talented Alexandre Mazzia. Fish is grilled to bring back memories of the chef's childhood in Pointe-Noire, Congo. As the former professional basketball player himself points out, brûlé is the backbone of his menu. Even the bun topped with a spicy avocado tartare is smoked, just as for dessert the watermelon is grilled before being served.

Where? 9 Rue François Rocca, 13008 Marseille
See the Gault&Millau review of AM by Alexandre Mazzia

julie Limont

Château La Coste, Argentinian cuisine in Puy-Sainte-Réparade

Cooking with a flameisnot a single cooking method. That's what fire master Francis Mallmann is all about. In the heart of Provence, Château La Coste offers this chef, who trained with some of the greatest names in French cuisine, a setting worthy of his art. A wood-fired oven and a fire dome have been specially built for the chef on the Provencal estate, enabling him to develop his seven cooking techniques using nothing but fire. Peppers are charred, beef entrecôte is slow-cooked, suspended over a grill, and bananas are cooked in ashes. Nothing is wasted... and everything is savored, proving the wide aromatic palette of the grilled/smoked/broiled flavor.

Where? 2750 Route de la Cride, 13610 Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade
Website: www.chateau-la-coste.com

richard Haughton

Fogo, the embers of Paris

From the days when Brazilian chef Raphaël Régo officiated, chef Guillaume Goupil has kept a hand-cranked barbecue from Spanish brand Josper. An invaluable piece of equipment that enables him to adapt the cooking process according to the cuts and delicacy of the meat. The Brazilian approach has disappeared, but not the intention of revealing flavors solely through the embers. The man who also runs the Episodes gourmet restaurant (in place of Oka, editor's note), relies on French meats, such as beef and lamb, but also duck. Duck, for example, is served with cherry zucchini and a tangy jus. Seafood is also on the menu, as in this Grenoble-style skate or octopus with a piquillo-cashew condiment.

Where? 8 rue Meissonier, 75017 Paris
See Gault&Millau's review of Fogo

sadik sans Voltaire

Saba, the Tokyo barbecue in Annecy

In downtown Annecy, Clément Torres hasn't forgotten the Tokyo evening that inspired the name of his restaurant. Saba means mackerel in Japanese. And just like this fish with its assertive flavor, all the ingredients on the plate make at least one return trip to the barbecue of this Gault&Millau award-winning chef. A Japanese restaurant, of course: an obvious choice for the owner, who wants to keep in touch with the land of the rising sun, of which he is a fervent admirer. The precision of the kamado allows for very short cooking times, or even the grilling of delicate meats such as monkfish kobujime (a Japanese technique for marinating raw fish between sheets of kombu seaweed). Smokiness too, to perfect eel, a must in any Japanese-inspired score.

Where? 21 Faubourg Saint-Clair, 74000 Annecy
See Gault&Millau's review of Saba

Ju-Maison de Cuisine, a local barbecue in Bonnieux

The trout is matured with salt, dried, then smoked with walnut wood before being finally caramelized over a flame. On the plate, the lemon is burnt as a reminder of the purpose of the flame, which shakes the flesh to better reveal the aromas. In the Luberon, Julien Allano has chosen the endurance of a Japanese barbecue to extract the best from the region's ingredients. While the lamb, from Chrislaine Alazard in La Roque d'Anthéron, is roasted, the panoufle is grilled, as is the white asparagus from the Vaucluse.

Where? 2 rue Lucien Blanc, 84480 Bonnieux
See Gault&Millau's review of Ju-Maison de Cuisine

Caravane Palace, wood-fired cooking in Rennes

Top Chef 2025 contestant Noémie Cadré runs a wood-fired restaurant that delivers on its promises. Selected as one of the 109 chefs to discover in 2025 by Gault&Millau, the young Rennes-born chef gets straight to the point, at lunch and dinner. For lunch, she offers barbecued pork belly on a burger, or barbecued pork sausage on a "hot dog pizza". For dinner, Noémie Cadré continues to set the scene with a more daring cuisine, always crafted around seasonal produce of the moment.

Where? 13 rue Saint-Georges, 35000 Rennes
See Gault&Millau's review of Caravane Palace

Pierre Bois et Feu, cooking... with an iron in Strasbourg

What if we told you that the taste of grilled food wasn't just obtained with a barbecue, but also with an iron? At Gault&Millau, we wanted to explore the grilled dimension in all its forms. And it's fair to say that chef Renaud Schneider takes the cake for originality with his entrecôte seared with an iron, directly on the plate (after a return trip to the plancha beforehand). Despite this cooking method, you can also order your piece of Salers beef rare, blue or medium-rare. Rest assured, we're not talking about a simple iron, but a cast-iron model that raises the temperature to 400°C.

Where? 6 rue du Bain-aux-Roses, 67000 Strasbourg
See Gault&Millau's review of Pierre Bois et Feu

Ardent, fiery cuisine in Paris

Eel, lobster, duck, scallops and even marrow bones.... Everything goes on the barbecue when Charley Breuvart is at the helm. A real tour de force for the former chef de l'Office, who even manages to light the fire for a starter as refreshing as vitello tonnato. In this case, it's the smoky flavor that the chef achieves. He then titillates the embers to cook the shrimps and break the iodized taste we're used to. Once again, the dish is eaten cold, accompanied by a pea bavaroise. The contract of trust is transparent from the moment you walk through the door at Ardent. Raw cooking" is promised on the plate. But don't take the shortcut of imagining the barbecue as a tool that only produces hot plates (even if you also come to Ardent to devour a fine rib of Aveyron pork or a veal chop from Châteauneuf). Proof of this comes at the end of the meal, with the dessert service and the essential smoked chocolate and melilot tart, also smoked (caramel and chocolate sorbet).