ES – the quiet art of purity on rue de Grenelle

On a quiet stretch of rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement, ES is the only restaurant of Takayuki Honjo, the Japanese chef who trained with Pascal Barbot at L'Astrance, with Shuzo Kishida at Quintessence in Tokyo, with Andoni Luis Aduriz at Mugaritz, and with René Redzepi at Noma before opening his own address in Paris in 2012. The dining room keeps to just six two-person tables, one of the smallest rooms in the city to carry a MICHELIN distinction, and it holds one MICHELIN Star, awarded to Honjo in 2014. He builds his cooking on a direct dialogue with the market gardeners who supply him, composing each plate so that broths, herbs and vegetables support the main flavour rather than compete with it. It is a deliberately quiet kind of cooking, French in its essence, Japanese in its restraint, in a dining room designed by the chef himself to say a great deal with very little.

01The room and the setting

Honjo chose the 7th arrondissement specifically for its light stone façades and its sense of time, history and serenity, qualities that let him concentrate entirely on the cooking rather than on spectacle. Wood and stone dominate the small space, painted white for purity, a room kept simple and elegant rather than decorated. The dining room holds just six two-person tables, and Paris diners have been vying to secure one of them ever since Honjo opened the doors, making ES one of the most intimate one-star addresses in the capital.

02The chef

Takayuki Honjo arrived in Paris in 2002 to study at the Ferrandi culinary school, then built his craft through a run of demanding kitchens: Pascal Barbot's L'Astrance in Paris, Petit Nice in Marseille, Andoni Luis Aduriz's Mugaritz in the Basque Country, Shuzo Kishida's Quintessence in Tokyo, and René Redzepi's Noma in Copenhagen. He opened ES at the age of 33, his first restaurant, and received his first MICHELIN Star there in 2014. Honjo still works the small kitchen himself, keeping the team around him deliberately reduced.

Insider tip

Closed Sunday and Monday; dinner Tuesday to Saturday. Book well ahead, only six tables.

03The cooking

The menu is seasonal and built on produce chosen in conversation with the market gardeners who grow it, an approach Honjo describes as artisanal and manual, always looking to understand an ingredient before it ever reaches the plate. Broths, herbs and vegetables are used to support and magnify a single main flavour rather than multiply it, a minimalist search for purity that runs through every course. Among the dishes that have come to define that approach is a roasted cauliflower grilled on one side like a tartine and finished with grated brioche, a humble vegetable treated with the attention usually reserved for luxury ingredients.

04Wine and drinks

The wine list ranges across some of the finest terroirs in France but gives particular weight to Burgundy, the region Honjo has chosen as his own point of reference, and the cellar is built to follow the rhythm of a tasting menu that changes with the seasons rather than to impose itself on it.

05When to go and booking

As of October 2026, ES serves a Menu Saison at 150 euros and a longer Menu ES at 250 euros, with dinner service running Tuesday to Saturday; the restaurant stays closed on Sundays and Mondays. With only six tables in the room, booking ahead by phone or by email is essential, and a reservation two to three weeks in advance is a sensible margin for a dinner on a Friday or Saturday.

06The neighbourhood

ES sits a short walk from Le Bon Marché and the Rue du Bac métro, in the calm streets of the Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin quarter of the 7th arrondissement. It is a part of Paris built from the same pale stone that drew Honjo to open here in the first place, a neighbourhood of antique dealers, small galleries and quiet courtyards that matches the restraint of his dining room.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.