Paris has long positioned itself as the arbiter of taste—in every sense of the word. But within a city where Italian cuisine is woven into daily life and Japanese restaurants are regularly awarded Michelin stars, African cuisine has followed a different trajectory: it has long remained associated with community restaurants and street-food formats, and has rarely been framed within the realms of bistronomy or fine dining. In recent years, however, a new guard of chefs has risen to dominate Paris’s restaurant scene, integrating African flavors into the classic French culinary vocabulary.
A new generation of Afro-descendant chefs is expanding the definition of what French gastronomy can encompass. The shift has been gradual, driven by both persistence and demographic reality, with France being home to one of Europe’s largest African diasporas. A generational change is also underway. Younger diners in Paris are more multicultural, globally literate, and curious, their palates shaped by travel, streaming culture, and diasporic music. The appetite for layered identities in the food Parisians eat will only continue to grow.
Below, we spotlight the chefs shaping this evolving Afro-Parisian table.
Étienne Biloa, Touki Bouki
Paris’s Belleville neighborhood has long been shaped by migration—but at Touki Bouki, Étienne Biloa gives that spirit a contemporary voice. His path to gastronomy was anything but linear, moving through music, publishing, and creative production before turning fully to food. For years, he worked behind the scenes as an agent to amplify the voices of Afro-descendant chefs in France, including the stars Mory Sacko and Dieuveil Malonga. Eventually, he stepped forward himself.
Touki Bouki, opened in 2024, takes its name from the cult 1973 Senegalese film by Djibril Diop Mambéty—a meditation on migration and modernity. Through rotating chef residencies, Touki Bouki functions as a cultural laboratory, welcoming interpretations of African flavors from across the diaspora. Dishes such as thiep or ndolé are not reproduced verbatim, but translated into new forms. Plating leans toward contemporary bistronomy rather than comfort fare. “We’re not here to move backward,” Biloa says. “Tradition isn’t frozen—it evolves.” At Touki Bouki, that evolution unfolds in real time.
Khloe Fearnley-Derome, Pantoufle
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Born in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and raised in England, Khloe Fearnley-Derome describes herself as a nomadic chef, but her choice to eventually settle in Paris was deliberate. Through her project, Nzoto—“body” in Lingala—she moves between residencies and private dinners across the capital. She is currently in residence at Pantoufle, where her reinterpretations of Congolese cuisine are drawing new audiences.
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Her dishes function as a kind of translation. Pondu appears as a velouté rather than a stew. Peanut sauces are plated with artful precision. For Khloe, who moved to Paris at 27, the city offered what London could not: a deeper reverence for culinary refinement and the opportunity to elevate Congolese cuisine within a city that hosts a large diaspora yet rarely sees it represented. “People know Senegalese food. They know North African food,” she says. “But Congolese cuisine? It’s still invisible. And it’s one of the richest.” Beyond the plate, her work is also about archiving, as many African culinary traditions were transmitted orally. “If we don’t document recipes,” she asks, “how will they evolve?”
Christ Bikouedi, Dame
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Trained at the prestigious Ferrandi Paris and shaped by kitchens across Thailand, Lebanon, Morocco, and Japan, Christ Bikouedi has an impressive technical fluency. At Dame, near Montmartre, his cuisine reflects a global movement anchored by African identity. Sauces—central to many West and Central African traditions—are treated as architectural foundations, and spices and fermented notes are layered with precision.
His approach is unapologetically fine dining. Rather than positioning African cuisine as peripheral, he integrates it seamlessly into a gastronomic framework long dominated by French tradition. The question of representation, he insists, is not something he labored over. “I didn’t ask myself whether I was going to defend African gastronomy,” he says. “It’s a fact. It’s my culture. I’m African. I defend who I am and what I am, culturally.” His long-term vision merges gastronomy, art, and cultural transmission, situating his work within a broader global exchange of ideas.
Pierre Siewe, La Table de Penja
Named after Cameroon’s famed pepper-producing region, La Table de Penja places terroir at the center of a conversation where African ingredients are rarely framed in such terms. Located in the 7th arrondissement, just steps from the Eiffel Tower—an area historically devoid of African restaurants—the address itself makes a statement.
In Siewe’s cooking, Africa speaks through spice. Rather than reproducing traditional dishes, he introduces Central African seasonings directly sourced from the continent into refined French frameworks. As he explains, “Africa expresses itself through spices”—ingredients that function as markers of terroir as much as flavor. His cuisine emphasizes depth: slow-simmered sauces, smoky undertones, spice profiles layered with restraint. Contemporary plating deliberately distances his work from stereotypes of “rustic” African cooking. Siewe sees his role as both chef and advocate. “We need to show that African ingredients have luxury, have terroir, have history,” he says.
Glory Kabe, Soho House Paris
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Glory Kabe is one of the most internationally minded—and distinctly nomadic—chefs in Paris. As a former flight attendant, she built her culinary identity across continents before anchoring it in what she defines as Afro-veganism. At Soho House Paris, where she notably curates some dinners for Black History Month, Kabe brings a refined, plant-forward approach to Afro-French cuisine. Cassava-inflected sauces accompany seasonal vegetables, while tamarind brightens classical reductions.
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For Kabe, Afro-veganism is not a trend, but a return. “Our cultures are already plant-based. We know plants, herbs, their virtues,” she explains. “It’s not about excluding meat—it’s about recentering.” Her work challenges the misconception that African cuisine must be heavy or rustic. Instead, she highlights its vegetal intelligence—leafy greens, roots, grains, fermented elements—treated with the precision of French technique.
Diadié Dombana, Freddy’s Kitchen
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Through Freddy’s Kitchen—Diadié Dombana by his real name—Freddy has developed an Afro-French cuisine shaped by his 13 years of experience as a chef, and a childhood rooted in West African and French culinary traditions. After training in classical Parisian kitchens, what began as a personal project on social media evolved into private dinners, residencies, and international collaborations—including a stint in the United States, where he notably cooked for Madonna in New York.
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Now serving as chef at La Victoire, his cuisine revisits West African classics through a contemporary lens. A yassa chicken is finished with beurre blanc, while plantain appears as cornflake-crusted croquettes with smoked paprika mayonnaise. “I mix cultures, but I respect each one”, Freddy explains. His trajectory mirrors a broader shift unfolding across Paris, where African gastronomy is steadily asserting itself within bistronomy and fine dining. “We live in cities built on immigration and cultural exchange,” Freddy notes. “So I think this movement will continue. We’ll win them over through persistence—through quality, creativity, and consistency.” Across Paris, that transformation is already underway.