The story
Chez Michel sits at 10 rue de Belzunce in Paris's 10th arrondissement, a bistro that Le Fooding listed in 2026 and Michelin recommended the same year. The kitchen has changed hands several times since it opened in 1939, and today it serves French bistro cooking with Japanese, Breton and Spanish touches.
Masahiro Kawai, known as Masa, took over the restaurant in 2015 after working for Yves Camdeborde. He says he wants to recreate the cooking of his grandmother, who cooked in Niigata. The base stays in the traditional French register, with a few Breton, Tokyo and Spanish dishes that honor the chefs who trained him. He also kept some Breton dishes from his predecessor, Thierry Breton.
Le Fooding's most recent visit noted a crab salad with avocado and buckwheat chips, a saffron bouillabaisse with lobster and sea bream, and skate à la grenobloise with capers and new potatoes. Desserts have included vanilla crème brûlée and cherry clafoutis. The menu shifts with the season, and recent listings have included kig ha farz, ris de veau with truffles and Paris-Brest.
The dining room has a worn, timeless character, with extra-tall rafters, tired tiling and paneled walls. It sits a short walk from the Gare du Nord, beside the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
In the kitchens of this timeless taverna (XL rafters on the ceiling, tired tiling, paneled walls), the nimble footsteps of Masahiro Kawai blend seamlessly into the path carved out by Thierry Breton. After working for Yves Camdeborde, the Japanese chef eagerly continues his tour of France’s bistronomic scene, serving up complex, brutalist dishes, which sometimes appear simpler than they really are. The last time we went, we had all of the following: punchy tourteau crab salad with avocado, celery and buckwheat chips; a noble and multi-textural bouillabaisse with lobster cooked in broth, sea bream and palourde crabs swimming in a perfectly concentrated saffron-spiced soup that would make chefs from Marseille blush; perfect skate à la grenobloise under a sprinkling of capers, served with new potatoes; before an (almost too) traditional vanilla crème brûlée or a minimalist cherry clafoutis. Depending on the chef’s mood and the season, there’s the occasional abalone, pigeon from Poitou or even soubressade. // Ninsu
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