Laid-back bistro among world's best

A PARIS restaurant with no Michelin star, no choice, and a set menu at €50, has been voted the best in France - and one of the world’s top ten.

Le Chateaubriand, in the 11th Arrondissement has taken ninth place in the San Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants.

The awards, organised by the UK’s Restaurant Magazine, are based on votes from 800 leading food experts around the world.

Danish restaurant Noma has topped the list for the second year running, but Le Chateaubriand was the only French restaurant in the top 10 - rescuing France from the ignominy of having none as happened last year for the first time in the awards nine-year history.

Anne-Sophie Pic of la Maison Pic in Valence, France’s only three-Michelin star woman chef, has also helped save France’s reputation by winning the inaugural Veuve Clicquot World's Best Female Chef award (though she came 67th overall). France had eight restaurants in the top 50 in total, compared to four for the UK (including Heston Blumenthal’s the Fat Duck at number five.)

A spokesman for the organisers said that it was hard not to be excited by Le Chateaubriand. “It is effortlessly cool, understated yet accomplished, democratic, affordable and, perhaps most importantly, fun. Its lack of airs and graces - hard chairs and bare tables, the take-it-or-leave-it five-course fixed-price menu and the championing of natural wines - is not to everyone’s tastes, but Le Chateaubriand doesn’t really care.”

A Le Figaro reviewer called Le Chateaubriand a “néobistrot” (gastropub) with a very successful look and a chic and relaxed atmosphere, to which people go for the “culinary creations of its talented chef”.

French Basque Inaki Aizpitarte took over as chef at the restaurant in 2006. “What with his regulars and the groupies who have been following him for years, it’s essential to book,” the paper said.

Restaurant review site Cityvox said it has been seeing “devastating success”.

The restaurant serves small portions in a “tasting menu” style that changes daily, with dishes like home-made black pudding with baked apple, seaweed tartare, cube of tuna steak with green chilli or fat Vendée prawns with citrus butter.

Michelin, who describe the venue’s style of cuisine as “fashionable”, note Le Chateaubriand is “in vogue”, its chef is “high-profile”, its menu is “unique” and it is “worth visiting for the presentation alone”. However it has so far awarded no star, merely a one knife and fork mark, meaning it is “a quite comfortable restaurant”.