Plant-Based Arpège Keeps All Three Michelin Stars as Vegan Plates London Holds Its Star

Paris restaurant Arpège has kept all three of its Michelin stars in the first French guide since chef Alain Passard took meat, fish, eggs and dairy off the menu. The MICHELIN Guide France 2026, revealed today (Monday, March 16), lists Arpège among just 31 three-star restaurants in France, out of 668 starred restaurants in total.

Arpège, in Paris's seventh arrondissement, has held three stars since 1996. Passard dropped red meat back in 2001 to focus on vegetables from his own gardens, and on July 21, 2025 he went almost completely plant-based. The only animal product left on the menu is honey from the restaurant's own hives. This is a chef who made his name with chicken cooked in hay, so it was a seismic move in a country whose cooking is built on meat and dairy.

At the time plenty of people wondered whether he was risking his stars. Asked about it, Passard said he had "never thought about that". He told AFP:

There's light in this cuisine. There are taste sensations that I've never experienced anywhere else. We're going to have to deliver. If we can maintain this level of quality, then I'm extremely confident.

And to Reuters: "Everything I was able to do with the animal will remain a wonderful memory. Today, I'm moving more towards a cuisine of emotion, a cuisine that I could describe as artistic. It's closer to painting and sewing... Today, I'm a different chef."

Well, he delivered. Michelin's own write-up of this year's selection says plant-based dining and vegetarianism "continue to take root, bolstered not least by the influence of Alain Passard, who banished all animal protein from his kitchen in 2025."

There was good news across the Channel too. Plates London, the Shoreditch restaurant run by chef Kirk Haworth and his sister Keeley, kept its star in the Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland 2026, unveiled at Dublin's Convention Centre in February. Last year Plates became the first vegan restaurant in the UK to win a Michelin star, and it has proved it was no one-off.

Fine dining has a habit of setting the direction for everyone else, and the direction is plants. That matters well beyond the white tablecloths: Oxford University researchers found that a global shift to a vegan diet would save more than 8 million lives by 2050 and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 66%.

Arpège follows in the footsteps of New York's Eleven Madison Park, which ditched meat in 2021 and kept all three stars, and of ONA, the first vegan restaurant in France to win a Michelin star. It's a long way from the days when we were celebrating a London cafe ditching dairy and a popular pizzeria going 100% vegan, but it is the same story, told on a bigger stage.

No meat, no problem. Not even at the very top.