Icons

French Café

A postcard slice of Paris that builds far cleverer than it looks.

Brick Rated Score

3.9/5

Set 10362 · 2025

Pieces1,101

Minifigsn/a

Year2025

Set number10362

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The verdict

This one won me over slowly.

It's a flat-backed facade you stand against a wall, not a full building, and there's not a single minifigure in the box, which stings if you love a bit of life on the shelf. But the building is genuinely surprising, full of little techniques I hadn't met before, and at eighty dollars it doesn't ask much of your wallet. If you want a warm, pretty display piece and you enjoy clever parts work, you'll be happy here.

Best for: Display-first builders who love clever techniques but don't want modular-sized money or shelf space

The full review

What it is

The French Café is the very first set in LEGO's new Restaurants of the World line, and I think it's a smart idea. It's a compact, bookshelf-friendly LEGO® set aimed at anyone who wants a pretty piece of architecture without the space or the price tag that a full Modular Building demands. The finished model is about 30cm wide, 17cm tall, and only 6.5cm deep, with a flat back designed to sit right up against a wall. The look is exactly what designer Hoang Huy Dang was going for, warm summery tones like a picturesque postcard, all soft green shopfront, cobbled pavement, a little brick-built tree and a lamppost. It's the kind of thing you glance at and immediately feel a bit of holiday in your chest.

The catch

There are a couple of things worth being straight about, though. The biggest one is that there are no minifigures in the box at all. LEGO decided people don't really associate roleplay with decorative pieces, so this is display-first by design, but the empty café does feel a touch lifeless once it's on the shelf, and a lot of longtime fans will miss having a waiter or a customer to fuss over. The other thing to know is that this is a facade, not a building you can open up. The set has genuinely impressive engineering, but a fair amount of it hides in corners you'll never see again once everything's clicked together, so the detail is skin deep next to a proper modular. The community rating sits at a modest 3.4 out of 5, and I think that number is really people wrestling with exactly these two caveats rather than any problem with the build itself.

Who it's for

So who ends up loving this one. If you want a good-looking display piece that won't eat your shelf or your savings, this is an easy yes, and at eighty dollars it's about as gentle as Icons gets. If you're the sort of builder who lights up at clever parts usage and techniques you haven't seen before, you'll have a genuinely lovely couple of hours here. The people I'd steer away are the ones who build for minifigure play and open-up interiors, because the café gives you neither. Heads up too, it's listed to retire at the end of July 2026, so if it's calling to you, don't leave it too long on the shelf at the store.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build is a real charmer, and it surprises you early. The cobblestone base sets the tone: you stack little 1x2 arch bricks sideways with reversed stud directions to fake an authentic bumpy pavement, and it's the kind of thing that makes you grin the first time you see why it works. From there you get a decorative arch built on hinge bricks with a proper keystone subassembly, an angled sand-green wall held at a cheese-slope lean by wedge plates arranged in mirrored triangles, and my favourite touch, the little chairs made with the newish Round Plate with Vertical Bar to join seat to backrest. Dang said he's proud of those chairs and honestly he should be. Even the book-cover style closing panel is a clever save, holding the whole right-hand end together.

For parts people there's a lot to like. You get six exclusive new prints, including trans-clear window panes and door panels with generic patterns that'll be catnip for MOC builders, plus printed round tiles and flags in pearl gold and black. There are ten recolors here, with light nougat slopes and arch bricks, several green shades on the window and door frames, and light aqua inverted round tiles and plates. The rare-part hunters get a proper prize too: a sand green 1x8 plate that hadn't shown up since 2002, and a sand green curved brick that's brand new in the colour. At 1,101 pieces for around seven cents each, the value story holds up nicely for an Icons set.

Fun facts

01This is the launch set for LEGO's brand new Restaurants of the World subtheme within Icons, so it's the one that started the line.
02There isn't a single minifigure in the box, a deliberate call by the design team after they found people don't associate roleplay with decorative display pieces.
03The model is only 6.5cm deep with a flat back, so it's built to sit flush against a wall like a framed picture rather than out on a table.
04It hides a sand green 1x8 plate that had not appeared in any set since 2002, plus a sand green curved brick that debuts in that colour here.