Gaya par Pierre Gagnaire – the Left Bank's seafaring table

On a quiet stretch of rue de Saint-Simon, a few minutes from boulevard Saint-Germain, Gaya par Pierre Gagnaire occupies ground that carries its own history: the address was for decades La Ferme Saint-Simon, a bistro institution dating from 1933. Pierre Gagnaire transferred his seafood table here from rue du Bac in October 2018, swapping a smaller room for one with a bar, private salons and a bright blue façade that still catches the eye on the street. It is a left-bank annexe to the three-star house on rue Balzac, built entirely around fish, shellfish and the produce of the sea, with vegetal notes and, increasingly, a handful of dishes from the land. It holds one MICHELIN Star. The kitchen belongs to Jacky Tauvry, one of Gagnaire's longest-serving lieutenants, who returned from running the chef's restaurant in Hong Kong to settle back into French seafood cooking at Gaya.

01The room and the setting

Gagnaire took over the former Ferme Saint-Simon in 2018, a move that gave the restaurant far more room than its previous rue du Bac site, with a bar for quick plates, two private dining rooms and a decor signed by designer Marcelo Joulia, founder of the Naço agency and a long-time collaborator of the chef's, also responsible for Virtus and Unico in Paris. A fooding review of the rue de Saint-Simon room described a space finished in fine woods, with light fixtures shaped like golden scales and Carrara marble under the elbows of diners.

The two private salons can seat parties of six to sixteen, and the whole restaurant can be privatised, with capacity for sixty seated guests or eighty for a cocktail reception. A free valet parking service is offered to diners arriving by car.

02The chef

Jacky Tauvry was born in La Guerche-de-Bretagne, a small town in Brittany, and started working in kitchens at the age of fourteen. He trained at Alain Passard's three-star Arpège before spending two years in Guy Savoy's kitchen on rue Troyon, honing the fundamentals of French technique before joining Pierre Gagnaire's own Paris brigade.

Insider tip

Closed Sun–Mon; two private salons; free valet; book direct to avoid fraudulent sites.

From there Gagnaire sent him to Hong Kong, where Tauvry became chef de cuisine of the two-MICHELIN-starred restaurant Pierre at the Mandarin Oriental in 2016, running the kitchen in daily collaboration with Gagnaire. He returned to France in 2020 to take charge at Gaya, where he now cooks the seafood of his native Brittany under Gagnaire's supervision.

03The cooking

Every savoury dish on the menu is created by Tauvry and his brigade, then tasted — and, if needed, corrected — by Gagnaire himself, with each plate governed by a technical sheet precise to the milligram so the kitchen can reproduce his compositions exactly. The register stays essentially marine, but the carte has widened since the move to make room for vegetable-led plates and the occasional dish built around meat, continuing Gagnaire's signature balance between bare, barely-touched produce and subtler, more worked constructions.

04What to order

The current carte runs from a Mediterranean red tuna tartare with a slice of roasted Otti tomato to grilled and lacquered sardines with a spinach pressé and lemon segments. Among main courses, sliced turbot poached in Froment-du-Léon butter with a fine-herb zucchini mousseline sits alongside roasted Racan pigeon with plum and bigarade-onion marmalade and almond Agria croquettes. To finish, there is a confit Royal Gala apple with redcurrant jelly and Mexican vanilla ice cream, or a Latour chocolate cookie with Guanaja chocolate and cocoa-powder ice cream.

05When to go and booking

Gaya seats lunch from noon to 2.30pm and dinner from 7pm to 11pm, Tuesday to Saturday; the restaurant is closed on Sundays and Mondays. A lunch formula and a lunch menu are offered on weekdays alongside the full carte. Given reported cases of fraudulent sites using the Gagnaire name, the house advises booking only through its own domain or pierregagnaire.com.

06The neighbourhood

The address sits in the 7th arrondissement's Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin quarter, a pocket of antique dealers and publishing houses just off boulevard Saint-Germain, with the Rue du Bac métro station a short walk away — the same stop that served Gaya's previous incarnation before its 2018 move a few streets over.

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