Sépia

A 64°C egg at the pass

A 64°C egg asks for patience before it asks for garnish. At Sépia in Nantes, Lucie Berthier Gembara works as executive chef and owner in a room built for close attention: the pass, the counter, the plates leaving in sequences rather than in a loose run of courses. A Nantaise by birth, she traces the beginning of the work to her grandfather's cuttlefish preparations, and the marine and vegetal preferences in her cooking have never left that starting point. She trained through France's top institutions and learned Provençal cooking as something frank and product-driven before defining her own register: marine recipes, a vegetal prism, exclusively fresh ingredients with a Provençal accent.

Her most consequential training came in Marseille, under the Michelin-starred Gérald Passedat and Alexandre Mazzia, and it shows in the intricate plating Sépia is known for. A 2022 Top Chef appearance gave her national visibility and a platform for an eco-conscious position; her stated pedagogy is quality over quantity, with sourcing kept local, seasonal and mostly organic. In service, that plainness is a method. It sets the temperature of the kitchen as much as the sauce does.

Mediterranean sequences, cut close

The cooking at Sépia moves through plant and animal sequences, with a tasting-menu rhythm and a prix fixe discipline. The plate language is Mediterranean without leaning on travel-poster shorthand: aubergines with charred baba ganoush and feta crumble; smoked eel; ravioli with brousse de vache and almond milk; white coffee with orange blossom and blood orange. The register is bright, vegetal, marine when it wants to be, and willing to place a bitter green or a floral note where a safer kitchen might reach for butter.

The egg cooked at 64°C with cima di rapa gives the method away. A temperature that specific does not tolerate approximation; the yolk has to arrive coulant, the greens still carrying their edge, the crumble doing its small work of salt and texture. Elsewhere, Anjou asparagus may take citrus and wild garlic, or salsify may be pulled toward carbonara with house pork, hazelnuts, kaskavali, and confit yolk. These are not tricks so much as decisions made at the bench, one ingredient pushed until its place on the plate becomes clear.

Stone walls, ceramics, a lively room

The room keeps the work near the guest. Exposed stone gives Sépia its older bones; golden touches and artisanal ceramics keep the surface warm rather than severe. It is a small, bright neo-bistro, the kind of room where a plate crossing the pass changes the conversation before it reaches the table. Service has a relaxed, humorous edge, which matters in cooking this composed. Too much ceremony would tighten the room around the food.

The beverage program follows the same scale. Natural wine and local beer sit beside the kitchen’s local sourcing, chosen to meet dishes that carry smoke, orange blossom, tahin, almond milk, eel, and bitter greens. The pairings do not need to announce a cellar philosophy; they need to keep pace with the plate in front of them. At Sépia, the concrete thing to stay with is the 64°C egg, held between cima di rapa, vegetable juices, and feta crumble.