Saison

The pass kept in full view

The open kitchen keeps the work close to the pass at Saison in Dijon, where the room can see the sequence of pan, plate, sauce and hand. Riccardo Maiello leads it. The restaurant occupies 17 Rue Lamonnoye in the antiques quarter, a corner previously held by Betterave, and the present kitchen opened on May 23, 2024. Its register is bistronomic rather than ceremonial: a short carte, seasonal arrivals, French structure, Italian appetite. The house describes the cooking as frank and elegant, a phrase that matters because the plates do not lean on ornament when a cuisson or a sauce can carry the course.

Maiello is Italian by origin, and his path runs through L’Hostellerie de Levernois, Le Bristol and the George V in Paris, and the Mandarin Oriental in Milan. That sequence explains the accent: French rigour carrying an Italian instinct, with quality of product placed ahead of complexity. The Dijon room asks for exactly that language, a compact French-Italian table in Burgundy where local vegetables, veal, pasta and sauces set the discipline rather than a long carte.

A short carte built from arrivals

The menu at Saison turns on restraint. Lunch moves through a daily market form, while the evening gives the kitchen room for a 6-course discovery service. The signatures named by the restaurant are slow-cooked egg with broad beans and paccheri alla carbonara, both useful markers of the house’s range: one dish held by temperature and tenderness, the other by pasta shape, fat, egg and timing. Around them, the kitchen has shown roasted pak-choï with spices and mussel béarnaise emulsion, braised veal ravioli with shiitake, spinach and garlic sauce, and a dessert of strawberry, timut pepper, rhubarb, ginger and mascarpone cream.

The sourcing sits close to Dijon. Vegetables are tied to the Potager des Ducs; veal comes from the Guyon brothers’ reasoned farm; coffee is roasted by Bertrand Dubois. Those names give the carte its proportions. The Italian side appears in ravioli, pappardelle, paccheri and tiramisu; the French side in emulsions, reductions, veal, celeriac and the habit of building a plate around the season rather than around abundance. Gault&Millau has scored the restaurant 12.5/20, a number set against Maiello’s compact kitchen and short carte.

Light tones, soft lamps, close work

The room is intimate, with light tones, soft lighting and an open kitchen that changes the pace of the meal. Diners sit near enough to read the pass without needing theatre from it. In a city where Burgundy can make dining feel inherited, Saison works at a smaller scale: a counter of decisions, a few arrivals, a dish adjusted because the market allowed it.

The antiques quarter gives the restaurant a particular grain. The street carries older objects and quiet shopfronts; inside, the cooking answers with present-tense materials. Broad beans, paccheri, veal ravioli, pak-choï, rhubarb and coffee each have their turn. The egg says more than the address does: slow-cooked, greened with broad beans, and sent from the open kitchen on Rue Lamonnoye.