Sébastien Chabal opens a meat restaurant in Montpellier
Hume Chabal opened at the Marché du Lez on 21 October with French-farmed meat, unlimited fries and an aperitif hour in which a six on the die clears the drinks bill.
The Sébastien Chabal restaurant is open: the former France forward inaugurated Hume Chabal at the Marché du Lez in Montpellier on Wednesday 21 October, with unlimited fries, a free children's menu on Wednesdays and an aperitif hour settled with dice.
The address is a 7,500-square-metre former industrial site on the banks of the Lez in Port Marianne, at 1348 avenue Raymond Dugrand, which now groups a market square, food halls, a rooftop, bars and food trucks. Local site ToutMontpellier reported the opening on the day; Midi Libre, quoted by Blog RCT, described the evening as a pre-opening. The first night was fully booked, according to Purepeople.
What the Sébastien Chabal restaurant serves
With a fair die, the house still wins five evenings out of six.
The menu is built around meat: sirloin, Toulouse sausage and burgers, plus duck magret according to Media365. All of it comes from French farms, according to ToutMontpellier, and the dishes are meant to be shared at the table rather than plated one by one. Fries and salad are unlimited, and the menu card itself is oval, a nod to the ball, Blog RCT reports.
Two house rules have done most of the publicity. On Wednesdays the children's menu is free all day for under-tens. Between 5pm and 7pm customers roll a die, and a six wipes their drinks tab to zero. With a fair die, the house still wins five evenings out of six.
Prices for the regular menu have not been published, and none of the opening reports names a partner or operator behind the Montpellier site. For the opening night the kitchen ran a single all-you-can-eat formula of sirloin, sausage, burgers, fries and salad.
From Marseille burgers to a Montpellier meat hall
Hume Chabal is already the second Sébastien Chabal restaurant of 2026. In January the 48-year-old opened Jo's Burger in Marseille's 1st arrondissement with Joannes Richard, a self-taught cook from Nîmes who won the world burger title in 2023 and the European one in 2025. Montpellier is a different format: shared plates in a market hall rather than a burger shop.
Chabal played in the back row for Bourgoin, Sale Sharks, Racing Métro and Lyon before retiring in 2014, and his name still fills a room in a rugby city like Montpellier. Recognisable names opening tables under their own banner are a steady theme in France this autumn, from Norbert Tarayre's La Table de Norbert in Versailles to a meat-and-fries room by the Lez.
The real test for the Sébastien Chabal restaurant comes after launch week, when the dice hour has to bring in regulars rather than the curious. The kitchen has already said which evening it intends to fill on purpose: Wednesday, with the children eating free.
