Cent33

Robata heat at the pass

At the pass the black cod takes its lacquer, and Cent33 builds the rest of the meal around seasonal French cooking and Japanese heat. The room is in Chartrons, on Rue du Jardin Public, close enough to the Garonne for the city's wine gravity to feel present without turning the meal into a Bordeaux postcard. Cent33 works as a small fine-dining restaurant rather than a grand house: tasting menu, prix fixe rhythm, a curated wine program, and a kitchen language that moves between French structure and robata technique. Fabien Beaufour opened it at the turn of 2019, a Grenoble native who was thirty-three at the time, after three years at Dyades at Domaine des Etangs in Charente. He trained under Anne-Sophie Pic in Valence and Patrick Henriroux in Vienne, with further time in New York and London.

The house identity has long been tied to a chef's table sensibility, not in the theatrical sense, but in the way each course asks for close control. Miso-glazed black cod, octopus with avocado, foie gras with mandarin, langoustine, duck breast with lavender, and Piedmont hazelnut with mushroom ice cream are not a list of signatures so much as a map of the kitchen's range. Sweet, bitter, smoke, fat, acidity. Each has to land in sequence. Cent33 holds a Michelin star, and the house keeps returning to dishes that can bear repetition.

Charcoal, miso, mandarin, lavender

The technique here gathers around contrast. Robata brings a slower, more direct heat to fish and meat, while the French base of the cooking keeps sauces, reductions, and texture in disciplined proportion. The miso-glazed black cod is the clearest expression of that method: a fish built on lacquer and fire rather than decoration. The dish can sit beside foie gras with mandarin because the kitchen does not treat Japanese influence as a surface note. It uses fermentation, smoke, citrus, and fat as working parts.

Cent33’s menu format gives the kitchen room to adjust with the season. The approach is stated plainly as seasonal, with local sourcing, organic produce where the restaurant can secure it, and a farm-to-table instinct that suits Bordeaux’s surrounding producers. The wine program follows the same scale. It is curated, with pairings and sommelier recommendations rather than cellar spectacle, and that matters in a city where wine can easily overrun the meal. Here, the glass is asked to hold the line beside langoustine, duck breast with lavender, or a dessert built from Piedmont hazelnut and mushroom ice cream.

Red chairs, wood tables, white walls

Natural light comes through the large openings by day; at night, contemporary lamps tighten the room into a more intimate register. Red chairs, wood tables, and white walls give Cent33 a clean frame, not a blank one. The setting is modern and sleek, but the noise stays conversational, which lets the pass keep its own tempo. Plates arrive with enough space around them for the work to read.

That balance suits a small room. Guests can follow the kitchen’s shifts without the room announcing each one, and the counterpoint between Bordeaux wine culture and robata smoke remains legible. Cent33 ends where it began: black cod, mandarin, lavender, and a kitchen that reissues its signatures rather than retiring them.