Nothing here feels new. The wood panelling has the warm patina of decades. Burgundy banquettes curve around the room. Globe lights cast a soft glow overhead, and the day's specials are still written by hand. You could walk into Au Chat Noir without knowing it changed hands in March and assume very little had happened. Until lunch arrives.
The room prepares you for one kind of meal: the comforting familiarity of a traditional Parisian brasserie. The kitchen quietly delivers another. Not because it abandons the classics. Quite the opposite. It simply treats them with an extraordinary level of care. A balance that feels entirely intentional.
When owner Damien Pépin took over Au Chat Noir earlier this year, he wasn't looking to reinvent one of Lausanne's best-known restaurants. Instead, he assembled a team of friends and former colleagues with whom he had spent years working in London, all drawn by the same opportunity: to breathe new life into an institution without taking away the very thing that made it special.
It's a philosophy that reveals itself slowly.
Au Chat Noir has welcomed diners on the corner of Rue Beau-Séjour and Rue Charles-Monnard since 1897, its name inspired by the legendary Parisian cabaret made famous by Lausanne-born illustrator Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, whose iconic black cat became one of the defining images of Belle Époque Paris.
More than a century later, the restaurant remains one of those rare places that feels woven into the city's identity. Ask almost anyone in Lausanne and chances are they'll have their own memory of eating here. Changing a place like that requires a certain humility. Fortunately, humility seems to be something this team has in abundance.
Leading the kitchen is executive chef Gaëlle Chaudat, originally from Luxembourg, while Breton pastry chef Valentin Jollivet oversees desserts. Together with the rest of the team, they bring years of experience from one of London's most demanding kitchens. Yet there is nothing performative about the cooking here. No unnecessary flourishes. No dishes created for social media. Just beautifully executed food that lets exceptional ingredients and technique speak quietly for themselves.
We visited during one of the hottest days of the summer, when even choosing lunch feels strategic. The seasonal menu felt perfectly attuned to the canicule.
A chilled pea velouté arrived with a perfectly cooked egg resting in the centre — fresh, vibrant and impossibly light. The pissaladière, arguably one of Provence's humblest dishes, emerged looking almost too beautiful to eat, yet never lost the comforting simplicity that makes it such a classic. Crisp-skinned coquelet with grilled summer vegetables and roasted potatoes somehow managed to feel both satisfying and surprisingly light, while seared tuna over citrus-laced quinoa and grilled fennel tasted exactly like the sort of lunch you hope to find when the temperature climbs well above thirty degrees.
Every dish felt considered. Nothing felt overworked. And then came dessert. The Savarin Vanille has already become something of a signature and, at CHF 20 a slice, may initially give you pause.
Then you take a bite.
Prepared the day before and soaked overnight before being finished with silky vanilla cream, it somehow manages to be feather-light while remaining deeply indulgent. It's generous enough to share, though you may quickly regret doing so.
Perhaps what impressed us most wasn't any single dish. It was the restraint. There is a quiet confidence running through Au Chat Noir. The confidence to preserve what generations of Lausannois already loved. The confidence to let the seasons shape the menu. And above all, the confidence to believe that beautifully executed food will always speak for itself.
Au Chat Noir has survived changing tastes, changing generations and more than a century of Lausanne history. This latest chapter doesn't ask it to become something different. It simply reminds us why it became a classic in the first place.
Au Chat Noir
Rue Beau-Séjour 27, 1003 Lausanne
Open for lunch & dinner Monday-Friday
