We’ve rated Bittikesu as GREAT with three stars * * *
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The door at Bittikesu opened at 1pm, sharp. I arrived too early and found it locked. Paris that day was noisy, and brutally hot. I scurried to a patch of shade and found others lingering there. We withered together until the appointed hour.
A distant bell tolled, the door opened wide, and we entered. Crossing the threshold felt like shedding urban reality for a quiet, calm world — though not a solemn one. The floor is broad pale stone, the walls are thick and bare, and the light comes down soft through a papered wooden ceiling. Sheer linen curtains hang the length of the windows and hold the street at a distance — you can see the parked cars through them, but only as shapes. There is no host stand, no bar, no second table; the entrance is left deliberately empty, so that the room reveals itself slowly.
The welcome was immediate and easy. We were shown to our seats — comfortable chairs around an L-shaped oak table wide enough to double as a kitchen counter. Gentle air flowed through the room, which was magically cool without air conditioning. Rolled cloths, icy from the freezer, were distributed to each guest. We dabbed our necks and sipped cold water, waiting for everyone to arrive.
“Everyone” — the ten guests served simultaneously — came from everywhere else. Expats from England, Spain, Japan, and America. The same was true about the cooks on the other side of the table (which was built by one of the guests). The chef, Jules St-Cyr, is from Montreal, and his entire team is Canadian.
There’s something quietly fascinating about a room like this. Every one of us had lived elsewhere and chosen France. So had the cooks. What they make isn’t French cuisine — the techniques come from everywhere St-Cyr has been — but the ingredients are: fish from French waters, herbs foraged in the Auvergne, vegetables from a garden just outside Paris. On that particular day, at least, it was food drawn entirely from France, cooked by people who aren’t French, for people who aren’t French.
St-Cyr is self-taught, and cooked his way through the new-Nordic circuit — Noma and 108 in Copenhagen, Ernst in Berlin — with a later stretch in China before opening here this spring. When we asked why Paris, the answer was refreshingly practical: he already knew the French producers, having worked with their ingredients in Denmark and Germany, and he spoke the language. The restaurant is named for his Sardinian grandfather, Bittichesu, in whose vegetable garden St-Cyr first learned what things were supposed to taste like.
There’s a single set menu, served to all ten guests at once, with no à la carte and nothing to choose. The format changes by day: fifteen courses (85€) at dinner and at Sunday lunch, and a shorter six-course lunch (55€) on Fridays and Saturdays. We went on a Sunday, which meant the full fifteen — two hours, served with relaxed efficiency, on a table that’s also the pass. Every plate at Bittikesu is built an arm’s length from where you’re sitting. Plenty of kitchens are open these days, but few bring you this far inside the work.
THE FOOD
A fifteen-course lunch in a heat wave is not, on paper, an appealing proposition — but the portions were judged almost perfectly, and so was the pacing: enough on each plate to register, never so much that the next one felt like a chore. Two hours later, I left feeling exactly right. It was one of my favorite meals of the year.
It opened with cucumber and an oyster, the oyster’s own liquor turned into a pale sauce over the top — briny, cool, and bracing.
Next, finely chopped cockles in their shell, dressed with rose vinegar, verbena, and raspberry — tart and floral, set on a bed of salt.
Then whelks with apricot, ponzu, and arugula, the sweetness of the stone fruit playing against the snap of the shellfish.
A round of squash, wrapped in a fig leaf and softened in a bamboo steamer near the fire, came topped with mussels and a light foam, carrying the first trace of smoke.
Grilled skate was spooned over shaved cucumber marinated in mugwort, with a sauce thickened by collagen — delicate but not timid.
Midway came the meal’s neatest trick: a “cold salad” served in a bowl set over a second bowl of ice, holding dehydrated strawberries, tomato gelée, fresh-sliced almonds, and fava beans. On a hot day, it was almost shocking in its chill. Then a tempura of mugwort, fried light and dusted with sancho pepper — pleasantly bitter, the herb left to speak for itself.
A set egg custard, or tamago, built on crab stock arrived next, finished with a sauce made from the crab heads, almonds, fava beans, and more sancho.
Dehydrated, lightly blackened tomatoes turned sweet and concentrated, topped with round nasturtium leaves and a citrusy ponzu made from the seeds of hogweed.
Monkfish, grilled on the bone, came sliced over seaweed in a sauce of sea parsley — the most substantial of the seafood courses.
The lamb arrived in two parts. First, a braised shoulder, falling apart and ladled family-style from an earthenware crock with diced ramps. We were told the lamb comes from a farmer a couple of hours out who sends three animals a week — a relationship that began over his dairy and cheese.
Then the leaner cuts, grilled and served simply with bay leaf and ramps, finished with a sauce made by curing lamb liver with juniper, almost like charcuterie, then infusing it into a sauce — deep, but never overpowering.
Dessert began with a granita of fig-leaf stems and sliced apricot, cold and green-tasting.
A rolled crepe, grilled until caramelized, was spread with a lightly algae-infused cream and topped with macerated strawberries.
And it closed with milk ice cream under concentrated elderflower syrup — plain, clean, and just sweet enough.
THE DRINKS
The wine list is compact — around thirty bottles on a single page, natural-leaning and built around Burgundy, the Loire, and the Jura, with a handful from Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. It follows the same instinct as the kitchen: mostly France, with an eye on everywhere else. Most bottles fall between 50€ and 85€, topping out at 140€, which is restrained for a restaurant of this ambition. The printed list is bottles only, but the sommelier was also pouring options by the glass. You can also do a five-glass pairing that’s built to span the fifteen courses.
On a day this hot, we opted instead for the sommelier’s own non-alcoholic syrups: strawberry, rhubarb, and fig leaf, lengthened with sparkling water and poured over copious ice in a wine glass. We worked through all three over the course of the meal. They were a highlight in their own right — bright, barely sweet, and clearly built to sit beside the food rather than stand in for wine. Four of them, plus water, came to 55€.
THE VIBE
A room this spare can go wrong in a particular way: strip a dining room back to stone and bare walls and a single table, and it can start to feel like a place where you’re expected to be quiet.
Other writers have looked at this space and seen a monastery. That isn’t what it’s like to sit in it. The cooks talk easily with you across the table, the mood loosens as the afternoon goes on, and nobody is whispering. Bittikesu has pulled off something remarkable: a room that feels genuinely removed from the city, as comfortable as being in someone’s home.
It’s also the work of many hands. The table is Burgundy oak, built by the craftsman Antonis Cardew; the stone was cut by a mason in Chartres; Douglas pine runs through the room, a nod to the chef’s Canadian roots. The ceramics are made by potters from around the world, and the little wooden spoons were carried back from Korea by St-Cyr himself. Dried bay laurel hangs by the door, a quiet rhyme with the bay leaf on the lamb.
The same care reaches the washroom, where a handmade ceramic basin sits on a charred-wood stand beside the restaurant’s own eau de parfum.
THE VERDICT
A clear three stars, and a place on our 50 Favorites update that will publish later this week. I should say plainly that I was moved by this meal. Some of it was the room — calm, beautiful, and cool on a punishing day — and some of it was the welcome, which was warm and easy and switched between languages without effort. But most of it was the food. First and foremost, it was delicious. And it was made in front of us in an almost mesmerizing display of coordinated, gentle movement — calm, collaborative, and a real pleasure to watch, with none of the awkwardness that open kitchens tend to invite. Fifteen courses, assembled and handed across the table by cooks who never once made it look like work.
Bittikesu won’t be for everyone, or every occasion. Come alone or with one other person; sitting among strangers is part of the appeal, and a shared table isn’t the place for a group. Come when you’re willing to give a meal your whole attention, and come hungry for whatever arrives — it’s a tasting menu, and there is nothing for you to decide. At 85€ for fifteen courses, it is also, right now, one of the best values in Paris at this level of ambition. Book well ahead: there are ten seats and one seating, and the food is paid for in full when you reserve. Then hand yourself over to it, which is the only way to eat here, and the whole reason to go.
BITTIKESU
4 Rue de Brissac, 75004
Open Wednesday-Sunday for dinner
Open Friday-Sunday for lunch
Closed Monday & Tuesday
Reservations online or at +33 (0)7 44 79 42 96
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Choosing where to have a meal in Paris can feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland facing the EAT ME dilemma… but this review Meg! Everything about how Bittikesu is described makes me want to go… I particularly like the NA beverage options, a rare thing, which shouldn’t be these days. (I usually love my glass of wine with a meal but in this heat? ) Thank you Meg! I will be reserving here!
A very special meal especially for single diners. I would prefer to have a small glass of wine with each course and pay the inclusive cost.