What Is a Flexitarian Restaurant?

Understanding what a flexitarian restaurant is

What is a flexitarian restaurant? It is a table that offers mostly plant-based cooking, where vegetables, grains and pulses take the leading role, while keeping a place for meat and fish. The word flexitarian combines 'flexible' and 'vegetarian': you reduce the share of animal products without removing it, as much for taste as out of concern for the environment.

In practice, a flexitarian restaurant does not ask its guests to be vegetarian. It offers dishes where plants dominate and where meat or fish become a side rather than the centre of the meal. At Berchoux, a flexitarian restaurant located at 16 rue de la Fontaine du But in the 18th arrondissement, this is the approach we apply every day, a short walk from the Lamarck-Caulaincourt metro station.

What a flexitarian restaurant means, concretely

A flexitarian restaurant can be recognised by the make-up of its menu: more plant-based dishes, animal proteins used in measured amounts and cooking built around seasonal produce. The idea is not to set meat eaters against vegetarians, but to offer a table where everyone has a place around balanced cooking.

This approach often translates into a menu that changes regularly, with the deliveries and the seasons. Rather than a fixed menu, the flexitarian restaurant favours freshness and adapts its dishes to what producers offer. This is exactly the logic of a daily menu, which changes with the market and highlights the vegetables of the moment.

How the kitchen of a flexitarian restaurant works

In a flexitarian restaurant, the cooking most often starts from the available produce rather than from a fixed menu. At Berchoux, since 2020 we have cooked what the market offers in the morning: the daily menu is built around vegetables and the day's fresh produce, and it can be followed live on Instagram.

This way of working goes hand in hand with an anti-waste approach. Unsold items are not thrown away but become the dish of the day, which limits food waste while ensuring homemade, fresh cooking. Flexitarianism and anti-waste come together naturally: fewer animal products, more plants and a measured use of every ingredient.

Berchoux, a flexitarian and anti-waste restaurant in Montmartre

Berchoux is a flexitarian, homemade and accessible restaurant set in Montmartre. Our cooking is led by chef Julie Berchoux, with thirty years in Michelin-starred kitchens alongside houses such as Robuchon, Ducasse, Taillevent and Fauchon. This expertise shows in flexitarian cooking that gives pride of place to vegetables without forgetting lovers of meat or fish.

On the table side, lunch offers a 15 € menu and homemade sandwiches at 12 €, in the spirit of accessible, neighbourhood cooking. Our signature carrot cake, recognised well beyond the neighbourhood, rounds off an offer praised with a Google rating of 4.7/5 from 298 reviews. To discover our flexitarian approach on site, the restaurant is a few minutes from the Lamarck-Caulaincourt metro station.

Flexitarian, vegetarian or anti-waste restaurant: the differences

A vegetarian restaurant fully excludes meat and fish, while a flexitarian restaurant keeps them in reduced amounts. Flexitarianism therefore sits between conventional and vegetarian eating: it puts plants in the foreground without imposing a strict diet, which makes it accessible to the greatest number of people.

Anti-waste, for its part, refers to an approach of reducing food waste, regardless of the diet followed. At Berchoux, the two approaches combine: flexitarian cooking, where vegetables dominate, and an anti-waste approach, where we cook as close as possible to the market and where unsold items become the dish of the day. It is this combination that defines our neighbourhood table.

Flexitarianism is part of a more sustainable approach to eating and to fighting food waste, an issue detailed by ADEME.

Frequently asked questions about flexitarian restaurants