Otto

Binchotan at the counter

The grill sets the pace before the room fills. Éric Trochon, the executive chef at Otto in Paris and a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, works in a format built around small plates, direct heat, and sauces that do not soften their point. Lamb kebab comes with gochujang and harissa; beef takes chimichurri; aubergine is cut against pomegranate. The cooking is modern, but the method stays close to the hand, with the plate moving from fire to counter without ceremony.

Trochon brings a long career to this station. He earned his reputation at Semilla with produce-focused tasting menus and now holds a Michelin star at Solstice nearby, stepping into Otto as a partner rather than a visiting name. His stated philosophy is simplicity and the primacy of produce: short menus built on seasonal ingredients grilled over binchotan charcoal, paired with punchy condiments. Stéphane Offner and Tony Alvarez-Parage founded the room with him on the rue Mouffetard, where the chef’s task is not to produce a procession but to keep the table moving.

Small plates over white charcoal

The kitchen’s center of gravity is binchotan, the hard Japanese charcoal that gives steady heat and a clean line of smoke. Otto uses it for grilled plates built to be passed: meat, fish, vegetables, each cut down to a scale that lets sauce and surface matter. The signature lamb kebab carries two condiments with heat from different traditions, gochujang and harissa. Chimichurri gives the beef its green lift. Aubergine with pomegranate works the other side of the same discipline, softness, char, and fruit pulled into one bite.

The format borrows from the izakaya without pretending to be one, and the house calls it a franchouille izakaya. It is French in its trust of the sauce, Japanese in its comfort with the counter and the grill, and contemporary in the way the menu lets several small decisions build the meal. Plates run around 22 euros and are meant for sharing. The wine program stays curated rather than encyclopedic, chosen to sit beside smoke, spice, and salt. The house does not need a long tasting architecture here. Its grammar is repetition with difference: cut, grill, season, pass.

Concrete, counter, pass

The room keeps the work visible. Concrete floors and ceilings give Otto a spare frame, while the open kitchen counter turns the pass into part of the room rather than a threshold behind it. During peak service the atmosphere is lively, not hushed; plates arrive in clusters, glasses gather, and the counter absorbs the rhythm of a kitchen built for a la carte sharing.

That intimacy matters because the cooking depends on nearness. Binchotan is not a hidden technique when the coals sit within sight, and a small plate loses force if it waits too long between grill and hand. The minimalist setting leaves little to distract from the sequence: the lamb kebab, the chimichurri beef, the aubergine and pomegranate, each carried from the fire into the room at Otto.