Hakuba – Watanabe's white horse of Japanese ritual on the Seine

On the ground floor of Cheval Blanc Paris, where Limbar once served pastries in an African-inspired room, Hakuba now occupies that same space with rice-paper screens and the hush of a Japanese ritual. It holds Two MICHELIN Stars, awarded to a restaurant built around three names: sushi chef Takuya Watanabe, Plénitude's Arnaud Donckele, and pastry chef Maxime Frédéric. The name means "white horse" in Japanese, a quiet echo of the hotel's own. Here kaiseki-sushi cuisine, a Japanese tradition of sequenced courses, meets what the house calls treasures of the French and Atlantic coasts, so that broths and dashis give way to pageot, cuttlefish and bluefin tuna, each piece shaped at the counter under focused light. Watanabe, who built his reputation at Jin and later at Taku in Mayfair, moves between the restaurant's counters himself, rolling temaki and pressing nigiri in full view of diners rather than delegating the work to apprentices as is customary in Japan.

01The room and the setting

Hakuba sits to the left of the hotel's soaring lobby, in a dining room built around rice-paper panels that slide open in the traditional Japanese manner to reveal a third, private space set around a curved wooden table. The walls are walnut, the air carries the scent of a water-filled tsukubai stone basin, and a sushi-bar counter faces away from the original one so that every seat looks directly onto the chefs at work.

The lighting was designed to follow the plates rather than flood the room, a single focal beam picking out texture and relief on each dish as it lands, as if sunlight were breaking through a forest clearing. Staff wear linen tied at the waist in a nod to Japanese craft traditions, part of what the house calls a deliberately singular, memorable meal.

02The chef

Takuya Watanabe was born on Hokkaido and grew up in Niseko, a childhood that instilled a respect for seasonal produce long before he began working with sushi at nineteen. He trained for three years at a traditional kaiseki restaurant before opening his own restaurant in Sapporo at the age of twenty-seven.

Insider tip

Dinner only, Tuesday–Saturday; book ahead and arrive on time.

In Paris he founded Jin in 2012 with Nina Niku; it earned a MICHELIN Star the following year and became the city's first starred sushi omakase, a title it held for a decade. In 2022 he opened Taku in Mayfair, which took a star of its own within four months, before Cheval Blanc Paris brought him back to the Seine in March 2024 to build Hakuba alongside Donckele and Frédéric.

03The cooking

Hakuba's kaiseki-sushi format pairs Watanabe's sushi, temaki and gunkan with Donckele's command of sauces, broths and jus. On the counter, that has meant shellfish dashi, a sweet garlic purée and a green shiso coulis, alongside the clear broth built to accompany a course of ramen. Watanabe works with fish, rice, seaweed and vinegar from the Iio Jozo brewery, given, in Donckele's words, complete creative freedom on that side of the menu.

Maxime Frédéric, the hotel's pastry chef, closes the meal, an unusual move for a Japanese restaurant where dessert is often an afterthought; here it is treated as its own course, built on his reading of rice and a cuisine that rarely leans on sugar.

04What to order

Dinner runs as a single tasting route, the Yume menu, priced at €420 as published by the restaurant in October 2026. Two supplements appear on the same page: a sea urchin temaki for an extra €30, and truffle for €95, additions meant to punctuate rather than replace the set progression of broths, sushi and dessert.

05When to go and booking

Hakuba serves dinner only, Tuesday to Saturday, according to the restaurant's own site in October 2026. The house asks that guests arrive on time, since any arrival after the booked hour cannot be accommodated, a rule suited to a menu built around precise, sequential timing at a counter of limited seats.

06The neighbourhood

Cheval Blanc Paris occupies the Art Deco Samaritaine building at 8 quai du Louvre, finished by Henri Sauvage in 1928 and reopened as a hotel in September 2021 after sixteen years of closure and restoration led by architect Édouard François, with interiors by Peter Marino. The address places Hakuba across the water from the Louvre and a short walk from Pont Neuf, inside a Maison that also houses Donckele's three-starred Plénitude, the rooftop brasserie Le Tout-Paris, and the Italian seafood restaurant Langosteria.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.