19 Saint Roch – Pierre Touitou's Tunisian inflections near Vendôme

On a quiet stretch of rue Saint-Roch, two minutes from the gilded hush of Place Vendôme, chef Pierre Touitou has turned a former Japanese restaurant into one of central Paris's most talked-about counters. Raised in a French-Tunisian family and cooking since adolescence, Touitou built his reputation at the counter-dining room Vivant and the natural-wine address Déviant, as well as Drum Café in Arles and a few stints abroad, before opening 19 Saint-Roch, his third restaurant in Paris, in the spring of 2024. Behind a stainless-steel pass, he and his brigade send out a menu that borrows the shorthand of modern bistro cooking and fills it with flavours from his family's Tunisian kitchen: turnip cake treated like a Marseille panisse, beef chuck coated in a dark mloukhiya sauce, a floating island dusted with smoked Béarn pepper. It is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, and Le Fooding named it the best sophisticated bistro of 2025.

01The room and the setting

The address used to serve sushi, and the new owners kept its instinct for quiet. A former Japanese restaurant, it is now laid out in monochrome tomette tiles, solid wood furniture and long mirrors, with a minimalist black-and-white floor and an open kitchen that lets diners watch the cooking as it happens. A stainless-steel pass separates cooks from guests without hiding them — sit at the counter and the choreography of the kitchen, plates moving from pan to hand in seconds, becomes part of the evening.

02The chef

Pierre Touitou was cooking long before most chefs his age had finished training. At 31, he arrived at 19 Saint Roch with fifteen years of professional experience behind him, shaped first by high-profile stints across the capital at Vivant 2 and Déviant, a run at Drum Café in Arles, and spells working abroad. This is his third Paris address, and the one where his own history — a Paris upbringing in a Tunisian family — finally sets the tone of the menu rather than sitting in its margins.

Insider tip

Open Tuesday–Friday, lunch and dinner; book direct by phone or online; closed weekends.

03The cooking

The menu reads like modern-bistro shorthand and tastes like something more personal. One dish plays dress-up with a bistro classic: beef chuck, braised until it gives easily, is coated in a dark jute-mallow sauce drawn from the Tunisian stew his family calls mloukhîya, and plated to resemble, from a distance, a lièvre à la royale. Elsewhere the kitchen turns toward the sea and the market — recent plates have included cuttlefish glazed with saffron and pimentón de la Vera, veal tartare in green peppercorn mayonnaise with barbecued pear, and brill with chard spaghetti in béchamel. Gault&Millau, which scores the table 12.5 out of 20, has praised the kitchen's willingness to go further still, noting deep-fried veal brains with tomato pilpil, marinated horse mackerel with grilled corn and tomatillo, and an apricot cake with cocoa nibs and raw cream on a recent visit.

04What to order

Start with the lo bak go, a fixture of the menu since opening — the Cantonese radish cake reworked in the style of a Marseille panisse and served with a green-pepper mayonnaise that doesn't hold back on heat. Follow it with the glazed pork tongue skewers, seasoned with colatura until the meat needs almost no chewing, or with the white asparagus, paired with ricotta, small Basque peppers and sorrel. Save room for the ile flottante: a cube of meringue set on crème anglaise infused with smoked Béarn chile pepper, finished tableside with a trail of sesame praline.

05Wine and drinks

The list leans toward natural wine, mixing low-intervention growers with a few classics rather than chasing novelty for its own sake. Recent pours have run from a sparkling chenin by Lise and Bertrand Jousset to a Catalan red called Tot from Celler Tuets, and up to a Jura savagnin from the Domaine de la Tournelle — priced, more often than not, to invite a glass rather than a bottle.

06When to go and booking

19 Saint Roch serves lunch and dinner Tuesday to Friday only, seating from 12.15pm to 2pm and 7pm to 11pm, and takes reservations directly by phone or through its own site rather than through a third-party platform. The nearest stop is Métro Pyramides, a short walk from the Place Vendôme and the Église Saint-Roch.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.