Étude

Étude is a restaurant of creative French cooking on Rue du Bouquet-de-Longchamp in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Japanese chef Keisuke Yamagishi built its menus around music.

Yamagishi was born in Nagano, a rural province of Japan, and trained in some fine Tokyo kitchens. In Paris he cooked at Aida, L'Agapé and L'Abri before opening his own place. He named the restaurant and its tasting menus after the works of Chopin: Prélude, Nocturne and Symphonie, the last a plant-based suite of variations. Gault&Millau counts him among the few Japanese chefs in France with three toques, and when the restaurant moved to its present room, its Michelin star followed it.

The menus are served as surprises and change with the season, built on what small producers bring. Challans duck comes from Maison Burgaud and poultry from the Culoiseau farm in the Perche, served with a cider sauce and shiitake. Spider crab is shredded and paired with daikon, scallop sits on celeriac purée with truffle and a coral sauce, and a croquette of brill hides caviar. The menu is free of gluten, and the desserts are also free of lactose. Using a sonata form for a dinner suits a kitchen that thinks in movements, each course answering the one before.

The interior is sober and minimal, designed by Ito Masaru, with overhead lights by Serge Mouille and tableware by Sylvie Coquet. The newer room is done in beige and red, with bare tables. House Burgundies are poured by the glass, among them a white Rully from Jean-Philippe Fichet and a red Marsannay from Olivier Guyot. Japanese restraint in the room and French produce on the plate give the place a balance close to the chamber music its menus are named after.