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Restaurant in Paris serving 3 menus in Omakassa mode and dishes with fresh products.
No storefront or sign here, even less indication, even discreet, of the name of the restaurant, an opaque curtain completely hide the room and the only visible marker of the institution outside is a small sign showing the prices of the three menus. It would be a shame to keep moving without stopping, because as you may understand, the restaurant of Tarayuki Honjo, a young chef of about thirty years who has worked at some very beautiful tables including the Astrance, Le Petit Nice and Noma, has settled down surprisingly, all of a sudden, in an address which is to be included in the Parisian gastronomic landscape.
In the programme, therefore, three menus in Omakasse mode: the opportunity to taste, among other things, a ewe's curd cheese with its urchin and black olives sauce, accompanied by oxalys (a signature that is found regularly), a poultry enhanced with hazelnut cream, a baby asparagus, chanterelles and rockets or a turbot from Brittany., caramelized, grey shrimp juice and thyme. Each dish is made at the last minutes and all the products used are fresh.
Takayuki Honjo aims at a certain form of essentialism and counting. His cuisine? Contemporary, precise (including for the cooking), light, studied and inspired with his use of herbs and aromas. Audacious on the occasion (a pigeon cocoa sauce, verbena oil and chanterelles), while remaining harmonious and without violent contrasts. The dishes are simple and very straight to the point.
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So perfectly French, it’s Japanese.
What’s interesting here? I guess this is the perfect example of a Japanese chef establishing himself in Paris and opening a restaurant in hommage to the French cuisine.
Let’s start with the obvious. It’s a Japanese restaurant. The chef is Japanese, alone behind the bar where he works. Nearly a one man show. He is only helped by a Japanese lady that does mostly the service for some happy few. Because, there’s the counter and only two/three tables (one is taken for the service). Just like in other Japanese restaurants, the master only cooks for an handful of customers per day (when I came, he wasn’t doing lunches anymore, with some exceptions for special groups). And the design is very zen, very minimalist. Even the charcoal used to cook the meat is Japanese. It’s totally Japanese but….
It’s French. It’s French first because the products are French. You sense the respect for the product and therefore for the local producers, and that means that there must be some sort of dialog, exchanges. It’s French because there’s a love, an admiration for the French products but also for our cuisine. If you look at the pictures, it’s a French haute cuisine restaurant, a tad minimalist (and with dessert de chef).
It’s really interesting because you can see what’s left of the French cuisine when you remove the decorum, the French service, the bourgeois atmosphere and even a French chef. You just have the products, the essence.
This will not be complete nor possible without the perfect execution, and even sensibility of the chef.
Perfect for a date or a dinner with a foodie friend (or both!)
A very solid one star.
Update 2023:
I went back. The level is very similar with two notable things. One difference and one i realized this time.
The first one is I think the chef rely less on the nobility of the ingredients, and more on himself.
The second is more important. It has the Auberge (inn) spirit. It’s actually the Japanese Auberge. Obviously you can not sleep there, but the couple is running the operation, giving a family spirit, and the proximity with the chef, a certain warmth that transpires from all of this.
With the time, I realized how great the memories were created that night.
An extremely solid Auberge Star!
La cerveza me la sirvieron desde u tuper y no desde el grifo. Tocaban el pan que volvía de las mesas y si estaba blando lo volvían a servir a otra mesa.
El camarero se confundió dos veces con la bebida y con la comida . Y nk fuimos la única mesa.
Los camareros manipulaban la comida de los platos con las manos