For those I’ve met who managed to dine at Adeline Grattard’s Michelin-starred restaurant before it closed in 2025, the reaction from tourists and locals alike is always the same – a look of wistfulness, followed by a stream of praise. Cantonese for “drink tea”, Yam’Tcha built a devoted following around Grattard’s fine-dining tasting menus and their accompanying rare tea pairings devised by her husband, Chi Wah Chan. After training at Ferrandi, then working with Pascal Barbot at Astrance, Grattard spent two years cooking in Hong Kong, including in local dim sum spots, before opening Yam’Tcha in 2009.
Naturally, then, I was excited to try Grattard’s new, more casual bistro near Les Halles, which opened in spring 2026. I loved the setting. The long, dark dining room has lofty ceilings, looming vases overflowing with purple and pink flowers, and outside, a sprightly terrace wedged between the Bourse de Commerce and the strikingly white Saint-Eustache Church. Once the belly of Paris responsible for feeding the city, Les Halles is now an endlessly swamped Westfield, but this little corner feels almost Mediterranean, miles away from the churn around the corner.
Talking of swampy, I should caveat everything that follows by saying I visited during the canicule – the ungodly heatwave that swept across most of Europe at the end of June. Enormous hats off to anyone working in hospitality during that inferno. Since my meal, some restaurants in Paris have temporarily closed because kitchen conditions became dangerously hot, which has been incredibly rough for small businesses. Even with that in mind, Yam’Tcha was a frustrating meal – not because it was a total disaster, but because there were several flashes of genuine brilliance amidst some glaring errors.
The whimsical spirit of Yam’Tcha’s original tea pairings has carried through to the drinks menu at the bistro. On a hot day, the smooth iced tea was exactly what I needed, though there was plenty to suit all moods and climates, like clementine kombucha, traditional Hong Kong milk tea, and a wine list spanning everything from sparkling wines made with quince by Maison Gamet in Champagne, to €500 bottles of Burgundy Grand Cru.
The meal was marred by slapdash mistakes between moments of gorgeous layering and strict attention to detail
The food menu had the same sense of play, hopping between Hong Kong and France, and pretty much everywhere in between. It proffered Stilton and amarena cherry bao to start and finished with a banana split. Mains were a Chinese-French mélange of dumplings, fish, daily specials and larger plats. None of us could wait to dive in.
The bao and dumplings we ordered for the table were very well executed. Fluffy clouds of oozing Stilton divided opinion – many at the table loved them, while others found them a little too salty. I thought they were fun and comforting, though I agreed they needed a few more cherries inside to balance things out. The siu mai were even better; succulent and generously filled with Chinese dates and sobrassada, encased in a paper-thin yellow wrapper. They carried a satisfying smokiness from smoked chilli and were confidently seasoned. The simple Sichuan cucumber salad alongside provided a sharp and cooling relief from the rich bao and spicy sausage dumplings.
The main plats were a mixed bag, and not inexpensive, with specials hovering near €50. We also waited an extraordinarily long time for them to arrive, watching a family seated after us receive theirs well before we did. There were no updates or mentions of the delay, though perhaps I was more easily riled because of the heat. Either way, when our main dishes finally arrived, we were told quickly that the chef had made a mistake and that’s why things were running late.
We weren’t informed what the mistake was, but it might well have involved the lo mai fan, a hearty Cantonese sticky rice dish with shiitakes, XO sauce, peanuts and chicken. There was little to no chicken to be seen, which was a shame given that the sticky rice itself was both gloriously unctuous and well structured. It came topped with garlicky and sweet ong choy (water spinach), but the tiny morsels of chicken at the bottom were barely distinguishable and thus hard to judge. Despite how great the rice was, the dish felt bland and incomplete.
Jersey and Sichuan pepper beef
Lo mai fan
Banana split
There were also issues with the octopus inside the coconut masala. It came served with a nutty red rice from the Camargue (I did applaud the considered sourcing at Yam’Tcha, from the white tuna from Saint-Jean-de-Luz to the sweetbreads from an ancient breed of Limousin cows), but the octopus itself was overcooked and rubbery. Plus, the vibrant orange sauce that danced around it, thick with caramelised, beautiful stained-glass onions, belied something rather lacking in substance and punch.
Perhaps all of the structural layering of flavour had instead gone into the sautéed Jersey and Sichuan pepper beef dish. It was a riot of collapsing, smokey strips of grilled bell pepper, meltingly sweet pearl onions, and slightly crisp fried fermented black beans, finished with a citrusy lift of coriander and a light Sichuan broth. The beef was tender and plentiful, easily enough for two. It’s a dish my group all agreed we would return to eat again.
Our biggest frustrations and delights came with dessert. Service was comically slow by this point as the restaurant filled up. We ordered the banana split (obviously!) and a sorrel soup topped with an orgeat (a sweet syrup made from almonds, sugar and orange flower water) sorbet. The latter was one of the most revelatory desserts I have had in years. Vibrant and verdant, the lactic, floral sorbet softened and melded through the green soup into a semifreddo-esque texture. It was ultimately a striking, addictive mouthful, and utter solace in the heat. Yet, the brandy snap on top was cardboard-like and tasteless – perhaps on account of the humidity – but given the calibre of the chef, the kitchen should have known to keep it off the plate entirely. It was such a shame to undermine something so accomplished. Likewise, the sesame clusters on an otherwise fine, if soupy, banana split, were completely burnt. They tasted twice-toasted and were actively unpleasant.
Overall, the meal was marred by slapdash mistakes between moments of gorgeous layering and strict attention to detail. I want to go back – for the beef dish, the pork dumplings, and that sorrel soup alone. They give me hope that there are other gems to find on what is a large menu, of which we only tackled a quarter. I sincerely hope, giving them the benefit of the doubt, that it was the heat that caused the errors. But paying quite heftily for inattentive service and clumsy errors did leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
7 rue du Jour
75001 Paris
France
July 2026
