CUISINE

Control at the small-plate pass

Yuzukoshō tightens the monkfish jus before the plate leaves the pass. Takao Inazawa, chef and co-founder of CUISINE in Paris, works that line with the restraint that has shaped his cooking since Le Verre Volé. His station here is not a break from that earlier house; it is the place where the French-Japanese neo-bistro language becomes his own. He co-founded CUISINE in 2019, after beginning as chef at Le Verre Volé in 2014, and he still holds a Paris practice split between authorship and authority: chef and co-founder here, Executive Chef there. That double post matters less as a résumé than as a discipline. The cooking keeps its structure French, its pressure bistro, its seasoning alert to Japanese lift and restraint. Cured mackerel can meet leeks, miso and myoga without losing its marine line. Tempura veal brains take shiso into the fry. Crispy pigeon carries Szechuan peppercorns for heat and prickle, not noise. The plates do not lean on abundance. They rely on edges being kept clean.

Small plates held in sharp relation

The format at CUISINE is small plates, which suits Inazawa’s method because each dish has to resolve quickly. There is little room for a loose garnish or a second idea that does not earn its place. The kitchen works with organic and sustainable ingredients, and the sourcing reads best when the cooking lets texture stay legible: smoke against fat, herb against depth, fry against softness, citrus-chile pressure against white fish. Smoked bluefin tuna belly with shiso and ajo blanco sits in that register, bringing richness into contact with green lift and almond coolness. Monkfish with yuzukoshō jus does the same by another route, using the condiment’s citrus, salt and chile to cut through the flesh without flattening it. The natural wine program belongs beside that cooking rather than above it. A curated list can keep pace with plates that move between French restaurant structure, Italian-adjacent ease and Japanese restraint, provided the glass has acidity, texture, and enough nerve to meet miso, myoga, shiso or smoke. At CUISINE, the beverage work serves the same principle as the food: contrast, then control.

Fifteen seats close to the bench

The room is small enough that the work feels near the table. CUISINE holds 15 seats, a size that changes the rhythm of a restaurant: the pass has less distance to cover, the counter feels less like frontage than an extension of the bench, and the room stays conversational because it has little space in which to swell. In the 9th Arrondissement, that intimacy gives the cooking a particular frame. The atmosphere is laid-back, but the plates do not loosen their grip. Small sharing dishes move through a room built for proximity, where a sauce, a fry, a slice of cured fish or a pour of natural wine can register without ceremony. The place is tiny, and that fact becomes part of the method. Inazawa’s cooking has nowhere to hide.

A Paris line kept taut

The useful continuity here is the Paris line between Le Verre Volé and CUISINE, not a borrowed mythology. Inazawa’s first named post set the rhythm in 2014; CUISINE gave him a room of authorship in 2019. What matters now is how the kitchen keeps its contrasts disciplined at small scale. The dish is monkfish with yuzukoshō jus, carried through a 15-seat Paris dining room.