The story
Freia, at 22 boulevard de Berlin in Nantes, is a seasonal restaurant that earned one Michelin star in 2026. The menu follows the garden and the producers who supply the kitchen, so it changes with the year.
The garden is the starting point. Herbs, small fruits and vegetables grow on the site, and Alice Ménard, who also supplies the vegetables, tends the plot through the seasons. Sarah Mainguy, who previously ran the sister restaurant Vacarme, leads the kitchen. Fishermen and farmers provide the fish and meat that appear alongside the garden produce.
Le Fooding listed Freia in 2026 and described a vegetarian menu built on layered flavours. Asparagus is brushed with a vegetarian XO sauce made with smoked seaweed and served with fermented apple compote. A buckwheat blini comes with smoked buttermilk butter and samphire. Beetroot pearls arrive in a ravigote with flame-charred onions, and dessert pairs flame-charred strawberries with a pumpkin seed flapjack in homemade kombucha.
Dinner is served in a greenhouse on the sixth floor, with views over Nantes and the garden beyond the glass. Tables are oak and the bar is granite, according to the Le Fooding review. Pairings can be taken with or without alcohol, and most wines are natural or biodynamic. Non-alcoholic drinks are made in house from garden herbs and seasonal produce.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
High quality cooking
Sarah Mainguy isn’t done making noise! After Vacarme (of which she handed over control of the kitchen to her sous-chef Naila Bellanger), the Nantes-native is now raising the bar atop the Malakoff parking structure, with a little help from her partner Damien Crémois. In a greenhouse equipped with second-hand furniture (oak tables, a granite-topped bar) and lined by a vegetable patch, she calls upon Freia (Freyja), the Nordic goddess of the earth and fertility, for a vegetarian ceremony that strikes the perfect balance between modernity and purity. The dinner menu featured all of the following the night we went: focaccia topped with a delicate rose jelly, lardo and whelks, served with dashi broth strewn with navelwort, purslane leaves and radish blossoms; sublime and perfectly executed asparagus brushed with a vegetarianized XO sauce made with smoked seaweed, and served with a fermented apple compote; an unforgettable buckwheat blini topped with smoked buttermilk butter and samphire; beetroot pearls drizzled in an intense sauce ravigote with sunflower seeds and flame-charred onions, plus an elderflower-infused hollandaise sauce… which had us wiping the plate clean with the incredibly tender bread that got tossed on the barbecue and sprinkled with aged Ossau-Iraty cheese; before a magical trio of desserts, composed most notably of flame-charred strawberries with a pumpkin seed flapjack bopping around in tangy homemade kombucha. // Lester Grossman
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