Les tantes Jeanne, Octave Kasakolu regales in Montmartre

Open since 2012, the Les tantes Jeanne restaurant is getting a new lease on life. While Les tantes Jeanne was originally conceived as a good old-fashioned inn, in 2018 Les tantes Jeanne has become a true gastronomic restaurant, with all the associated codes, beautiful crockery, good products and a top-flight menu. We come here to discover fine products, new flavors (from Turkey and Asia) and to share moments of gourmet pleasure.

Alongside Octave and his wife Laetitia, a fine team provides moments of tranquility and culinary pleasure for their loyal clientele, who come from all over Paris. To keep on top of things, Octave reads a lot of magazines, tastes everything he can find and finds time to travel!

At Montmartre, the chef takes great pleasure in working the finest meats on the market (Black Angus entrecôte, Galician meat, Wagyu filet, Kobe filet and Kagoshima entrecôte, whose marbling is worth the detour) with the best condiments in the world, and accompanying them with tasty wines, presented by the dozen!

The menu is a mix of fine products. For starters ,scallops in a rosette from Erquy Bay, lemon caviar vinaigrette & sorbet, citrus supreme (24€) rubs shoulders with a destructured organic hen egg, Melanosporum truffle cream (24€), Carpaccio de foie gras à la vanille sur crumble de sarrasin, poêlée de mûrier-platane (24€) and potimarrons & Châtaignes, in their buckwheat tartlet, vegetables marinated in citrus vinegar, cucumber emulsion (12.5€).

We put our trust in the chef, who invites us to try the scallops and discover the lemon caviar sorbet. What a discovery, an explosion of flavors in such a light dish... we'd ask for more, if only we didn't eat more afterwards.

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Then, for the main course, the choice becomes a Cornelian one. The chef prepares heart of veal sweetbreads and bouchot mussels, iodized veal reduction and yellow wine, chanterelles & shitakés (€39), milk-fed lamb from the Pyrenees, organic seasonal vegetables, lamb jus (€38), steamed arctic char, pearl barley risotto with caramelized mint butter (€39), as well as fine meats with miso sauce and beechwood-smoked purée (€33 to €135, depending on the cut).

For us, it's the Kobe piece, which we've been eyeing since the start of the meal, sporting a beautiful marbling in its cupboard, and then the beechwood-smoked purée, which we've got to try.

What can we say, except that the meat is deliciously melting, and that the purée is a marvel, a fine piece of work that makes our taste buds go wild? That we'll have to come back for Octave Kasakolu's other dishes!

After this feast, the desserts still hold a few surprises in store: Dôme of Antioch terebinth pistachios, pistachio seed flowing heart, pistachio seed, buckwheat crumble & its Kashk? Black Iranian lemon or the Black lemon tartlet & sorbet, shortcrust pastry, melting meringue (14.5€). So, having heard Octave's attachment to the Térébinthe d'Antioche, the tree that cradled his childhood, and knowing that Octave's mother is on a mission to bring pistachios back to Paris, we give in to temptation, with no regrets.

Well, what can we say except that we're under the spell! Prices are a little high, but the 6-course formula at €85 makes us forget this gourmet sin...

Please note that it's been over 4 years since our last visit, so the place and experience may have changed.