i. Biography
Masahiro Kawai has been chef of Chez Michel in Paris since 2015, and that tenure is the clearest fact in his profile: a long-running kitchen post that gives his cooking a fixed address and a consistent register. In a city where rooms and menus can change quickly, the value here is continuity—discipline in service, memory in the work, and flavors carried with intention.
Coming Up
At Chez Michel, Masahiro Kawai has held the chef position since 2015. The role is simple on paper, but it marks years of repetition, adjustment, and control. His work in Paris is tied to Niigata village memory, so the kitchen reads as both present-tense service and an ongoing act of carrying older tastes into a new setting.
Where They Are Now
Since 2015, he has led the kitchen at the restaurant as chef. That fact places his work in Paris while keeping it linked to cooking shaped by Niigata village memory. The reference point is the grandmother’s kitchen in Niigata, a province in northern Japan, and the contrast matters: Paris supplies the daily frame, while inherited domestic food ways supply the taste memory underneath. His cooking is grounded in that transfer, with the restaurant becoming the site where remembered flavors are made usable again.
Career - Chef — Chez Michel, Paris, France
Signature
Masahiro's signature dishes include Kig Ha Farz, bouillabaisse, Paris-Brest, and Poire Belle Hélène. Taken together, they show a kitchen working across savory and sweet, regional and classic, plainspoken and polished. Kig Ha Farz and bouillabaisse sit with dishes that carry strong identities, while Paris-Brest and Poire Belle Hélène bring recognizable pastry work into the same frame. The range suggests a chef who can move between registers without losing control of the line.
In Their Words “I would like to recreate my grandmother's cooking, the kind she used to simmer in her village in Niigata, a province in northern Japan.” That line puts the center of the work in the act of recreation. “Recreate” points to translation rather than imitation, and “simmer” points to heat held steady over time. Masahiro Kawai frames technique through memory here, with the grandmother’s kitchen in Niigata serving as the standard he is still working against and toward. At Chez Michel, that means the past is not discussed as nostalgia; it is treated as a set of flavors to be carried forward and made current at the table.
FAQ What is Masahiro Kawai's current role? Masahiro Kawai has been chef of Chez Michel in Paris since 2015. Where is Chez Michel based? Paris.
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