It has remained a chasm in the heart of Parisians since the 1970s when it was demolished but now a €238 million mixed-use reinvention of Les Halles is restoring some dignity to what was once Paris’ soaring 19th-century food market. And the first piece of the new-look development, which stretches beneath an ochre-coloured canopy from the 16th-century St.-Eustache church and the Bourse de Commerce to the residential the Rue Pierre Lescot and will encompass offices and retail, is Alain Ducasse’s latest oeuvre, itself a reinvention of the archetypal brasserie. Anchored by a specially commissioned split-flap display board that lists and updates the availability of dishes in real time, the restaurant is a rousing raw-boned space, designed by Agence Ciguë and helmed by Chef Bruno Brangea, who under Ducasse’s direction will purvey traditional brasserie dishes using seasonal ingredients in a buzzy sunlit industrial chic space awash in bespoke furnishings.

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Photos: Pierre Monetta