Lucas Carton reopens in Paris with Cyril Lignac in the kitchen

Lucas Carton, the 1839 restaurant on Place de la Madeleine in Paris, reopens on Friday 25 September with Cyril Lignac in charge of the kitchen.

Lignac succeeds Hugo Bourny, who had run the kitchen since 2021 and held on to its Michelin star. The house now belongs to Lapérouse Holding, the group founded by Benjamin Patou and Antoine Arnault, which bought it from the Vranken-Pommery group and already operates Lapérouse, Prunier and Lafayette's.

The brief, as Sortiraparis relays it, is French cooking that is generous, built around the product and resolutely classical while staying of its time, with freshness and lightness as the watchwords. No menu or prices had been published when this piece went live; bookings are open online.

Lucas Carton has changed owners, chef and ambition; only the Majorelle woodwork is staying put.

What Cyril Lignac brings to Lucas Carton

Lignac, 48, is best known to French audiences through M6, where he started with Oui Chef! in 2005 and now presents Le Meilleur Pâtissier. His restaurant Le Quinzième won a Michelin star in 2012 and closed in 2019. He still runs Le Chardenoux, a bistro in the 11th arrondissement, and on 2 October publishes Fait Maison, a best-of cookbook with 155 recipes, according to Gault&Millau.

The appointment carries a personal twist. On 14 September 12actu, a news site from his home region of Aveyron, reported that the young Lignac sent his CV to the great Paris houses, Senderens among them, and got no answer there; Alain Passard was the one who gave him his chance. Twenty-five years later, the room is his.

A listed dining room, a different ambition

The room matters as much as the plates. Its Art Nouveau woodwork by Louis Majorelle, in maple, sycamore and citron wood, is listed as a historic monument, and the restaurant won three Michelin stars in 1933. Alain Senderens took over in 1985 and in 2005 gave back his three stars to cook in a more accessible register.

Trade title Le Chef reads the move as part of Lapérouse Holding's strategy of buying historic, high-profile addresses without chasing stars. Nouvelles Gastronomiques expects the house to aim at bringing Parisians back to the Madeleine, possibly in a looser style closer to bistronomy.

It is the latest in a year of Paris kitchen handovers, after Taillevent named a new head chef and Anne-Sophie Pic moved into the Fondation Cartier. Bourny's star belongs to the old team; the new owners, by Le Chef's account, are not counting on keeping it.