A twenty-something-seat dining room in Marseille's eighth arrondissement, kept since 2014 by Alexandre Mazzia — three Michelin stars, three tasting menus called Voyages, and a…
The verdict
Twenty-odd seats, three Michelin stars, three tasting menus called Voyages, and a chef who learnt smoke and spice as a child in Pointe-Noire and has spent the last decade folding it into Marseille's marine larder. Open four nights a week and one of the hardest tables to book in France.
From the editors · Vedere House
The particulars
Setting
9 Rue François Rocca, 13008 Marseille — a quiet residential street in the eighth, ten minutes south of the Vieux Port
Room
A single dining room of around twenty seats, dark walls and oak counters, hanging cork bark, an open kitchen along the back wall
Kitchen
Alexandre Mazzia — smoke, marine, vegetable, spice — drawing on a Pointe-Noire childhood and a Marseille larder
Stars
First Michelin star within six months of opening (2014), second in 2019, third in 2021 — Marseille's only three-star kitchen
Format
Three tasting menus — Premier voyage (€295), Allons plus loin (€395), Grand voyage (€435) — Wednesday through Saturday
Hours
Single sittings — lunch at noon, dinner at eight
AM sits on a narrow residential street in Marseille's eighth, well south of the Vieux Port and the noise of the city. The door is plain. There is no awning, no menu in the window. Inside, twenty-odd guests share a single low-lit room with hanging cork bark, leather chairs the colour of clay and an open kitchen along the back wall — and the chef plating, every course, in front of you.
“
L'homme devient vivant à la découverte des cinq sens, de la connaissance et de la passion.
”
Alexandre Mazzia
Mazzia was born in Marseille and grew up in Pointe-Noire on the Atlantic coast of Congo. The cooking he learnt there — fire, smoke, fermenting fish, dried spice, papaya and chili and lime — never quite left, and Marseille turned out to be the right place to set it down again. AM opened in June 2014; the first Michelin star arrived before Christmas of that year, the second in 2019, the third in 2021, leaving the city's only three-star kitchen on a side street far from the postcard.
The Voyages are three tasting menus running Wednesday through Saturday — Premier voyage at two ninety-five, Allons plus loin at three ninety-five, Grand voyage at four thirty-five. The brief is the same for all three: the diner is told how long the meal will be and nothing else. Smoke, marine, vegetable, spice are the four words on the kitchen wall. The signature plate, served in some version since the first month, is a sun of mussels and grilled mackerel ringed in green herbs over a saffron emulsion. Lunch is twelve sharp and dinner is eight; the door closes Sunday through Tuesday. In 2024 Mazzia ran the kitchen of the Olympic Village in Paris on top of the restaurant — the only chef who did.
Signature moments
01
A childhood in Pointe-Noire
Alexandre Mazzia grew up in the Republic of the Congo, on the long beach of Pointe-Noire, where his sense of cooking arrived through the smoke of grilled fish and the spice cabinets of African and Indian cooks his family employed. He came back to France in his late teens, played junior basketball at a national level, then went into kitchens — Provence, the Rhône, Marseille — under chefs he chose for their precision rather than their cuisine. AM opened on the seventeenth of June 2014. The first Michelin star arrived inside six months, the third in 2021.
02
A small dining room with a long memory
The room takes about twenty guests. A panel of cork bark hangs from the ceiling like a relic. The lights are the colour of old bronze, the chairs are leather the colour of clay, the counters are oak and the back wall is the open kitchen — the brigade in dark uniforms, the chef in the middle, plating each course himself. The walls are deliberately bare. Mazzia keeps the room in low light so the plates carry the colour.
03
Smoke, marine, vegetable, spice
Mazzia organises the kitchen around four words. Smoke comes from the grill and from the cured fish hanging in the kitchen window. Marine is mussels, mackerel, urchin, the small Mediterranean catch. Vegetable runs the bass note; spice — saffron, sumac, espelette, kaffir lime, niora — runs the high notes. The signature dish is a radial sun of mussels and grilled mackerel set in a saffron emulsion, which has stayed on the menu in some form since 2014. The Voyages are tasted blind — the chef has a phrase for it, that you should know the length of the flight on take-off, but never the destination.
