Greg Marchand

The Climb

Cooking school in Brittany gave Greg Marchand the base, and London gave him the next layer of pressure. Working as cook at Fifteen in London (from 2003), he moved through the kind of early professional training that sharpens timing, service sense, and attention to detail. The result is a kitchen manner built on control without stiffness: precise, but still geared toward pleasure at the table. The Frenchie group is the clearest expression of that approach. As chef and founder of Frenchie (since 2009), Greg Marchand set the first marker; chef and founder of Frenchie wine bar (since 2011) carried the idea into a format where food and glass sit closer together; chef and founder of Frenchie street food restaurant (since 2013) widened the register again; chef and founder of Frenchie wine merchant (since 2015) extended the name beyond service; chef and founder of Frenchie chic bistro (since 2016) added another layer of finish; and chef and founder of Frenchie Pigalle (since 2020) kept the project moving. Taken together, these addresses read less like expansion for its own sake than a structured way of working across different rooms, different tempos, and different uses of the same core identity.

Today

Frenchie Bar au Vins in Paris, France is where Greg Marchand’s role as chef still anchors the broader operation. In a city with a heavy culinary memory, that kind of anchoring gives the project weight without needing to overstate it. The cooking itself is described in direct terms: simple, but not plain; sophisticated, but not busy. That balance is the point. It suggests a kitchen that trusts restraint, keeps its lines clean, and leaves room for the plate to breathe — the sort of approach that can evolve without losing form.

In Their Words “When I opened Frenchie, it was to create a place I would want to go to myself and, more importantly, one I would want to go back to again and again.” That line sets out a practical standard for restaurant-making: build a room that holds up under repetition. In trade terms, it points to consistency, comfort, and enough substance in the cooking and the room to make return a natural response rather than a marketing idea. “Our ceaselessly evolving cuisine is very instinctive, unstinting and authentic.” The phrasing is useful because it names the working method plainly. “Ceaselessly evolving” signals motion, “instinctive” places trust in judgment, “unstinting” speaks to effort, and “authentic” locates the work in something durable rather than decorative.