À La Renaissance
When Carina Soto Velásquez and Joshua Fontaine, the team behind the bar Candelaria, took over À La Renaissance, they kept its red neon crown and its infinity mirrors.2
Why go
This century-old café on rue de la Roquette, near the Voltaire métro, changed hands in 2025.6 Gilles Pudlowski had called the old room in 2013 the archetype of the old café that escaped ruinous renovation (l'archétype du « vieux café » qui a su se prémunir contre les dangers de la rénovation outrageuse
).7 Min Wou Choi, who had cooked at Saturne and Le Dauphin, took over the kitchen. Le Fooding named it the best neighborhood café of 2026 in November 2025: The Renaissance is dead, long live the Renaissance!
(La Renaissance est morte, vive la Renaissance !
).2 Lindsey Tramuta of The Infatuation wrote: Most exciting about the Renaissance's, well, renaissance, is a food menu that's actually good for the first time in at least 30 years.
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Le Fooding ate lunch here in December 2025 and found traditional bistro fare done just right.
Order the pork if it's on. Le Fooding's was an Iberian pork rack in pink perfection, glistening in its juices and served with wilted chard and half a roast onion, with meltingly soft layers and beautifully charred edges.
1 Not everyone was won over. Meg Zimbeck of Paris by Mouth rated it FINE
with one star in November 2025 and summed it up as A neighborhood café with impressive wine + simple food.
5
Order this / avoid
- Order: the beef tartare and the flounder at dinner. Lindsey Tramuta, The Infatuation (guide updated June 2026):
try the beef tartare with perfectly crisp fries, a bearnaise-soaked flounder filet, and the vegetarian vol-au-vent.
4 - Order: the vegetable vol-au-vent (a puff-pastry case), and expect a small one. Le Fooding, December 2025:
a seasonal vegetable vol-au-vent (carrots, button mushrooms, turnips) – mouthwatering, yet a tad on the stingy side.
1 - Order: the île flottante (floating island). Le Fooding, December 2025:
a classic floating island, with chewy meringue atop a wonderfully silky crème anglaise.
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Good to know
- Where to sit: ask for a booth in the alcove near the kitchen, as Tramuta advises.4
- Price: the set lunch cost 23 euros and the carte 35 to 55 euros in December 2025.1 Sortiraparis, invited by the house in February 2026, gave the lunch as 17 euros for the dish of the day, 21 for two courses and 23 for three.6
- Drinks: in December 2025 natural wine started at 7 euros a glass, a mini dry martini cost 8 and a pint of Guinness 9.1
- August: open through August 2026.3
- Getting there: Métro Voltaire.2
Verdict
could-visit — Go to À La Renaissance for Min Wou Choi's bistro plates, the Iberian pork rack above all, in a century-old café by Voltaire. Paris by Mouth was cooler, rating it fine in November 2025. Lunch is the cheaper way in: a 23-euro set menu in December 2025, against a carte of 35 to 55 euros.