Le Gentil – a quiet French-Japanese table on rue Surcouf

On the rue Surcouf, a short street in the 7th arrondissement that runs between the Champ-de-Mars and the Palais Bourbon, Le Gentil fills barely a dozen tables behind a façade that makes no effort to draw attention to itself. It is the work of a Japanese couple: chef Fumitoshi Kumagai, who trained at Loiseau des Vignes in Beaune, and his wife, who runs the small dining room. Their own description sets the tone precisely — a cosy, relaxed place serving seasonal produce, with the chef drawing on French tradition and adding an Asian touch to every plate. Le Gentil is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, without a star, for cooking the inspectors describe as good. It sits on a street thick with restaurants, a few doors from names with far louder reputations, yet it has built a following among regulars who come back for a lunch menu that changes daily and an evening carte built on French bistro staples tipped gently towards Japan.

01The room and the setting

The address keeps its promises small. At Le Gentil, a discreet, minimalist refuge with immaculate walls and blonde wooden furniture, the Japanese chef puts forth unpretentious, seasonal fare. A visiting food writer noted that the restaurant, inside and out, does not try to draw attention to itself, and that the room is run without music, kept calm for conversation.

The welcome is part of the character. Reviewers single out the warmth of the chef's wife at the front of house, and the narrow room means she tends to know what every table needs without being asked twice.

02The chef

Le Gentil on the rue Surcouf, a street strewn with eateries, is the work of a Japanese pair, chef Fumitoshi Kumagai in the kitchen and his wife front of house. Before Paris, Kumagai worked at Loiseau des Vignes in Beaune, the Bernard Loiseau bistro built around Burgundian classics and a celebrated by-the-glass wine cellar — a training ground in French technique that shows in the restraint of his own cooking.

Insider tip

Lunch is fixed-menu only, dinner is à la carte; groups of 5+ take the carte blanche menu.

The restaurant opened on the rue Surcouf in October 2018, bringing a Japanese sensibility to a short, competitive street of Parisian addresses. The couple describe their own food simply, as seasonal cooking built on the tradition of French cuisine with a touch of Asia running through it.

03The cooking

They propose contemporary French cuisine with the occasional Asian influence, such as pig's trotters stuffed with pak choi and beef faux-filet with a Japanese sauce. Lunch runs to a short fixed menu that changes every day — on 27 October it was a velouté of potimarron squash with a soft-poached egg, filet of duckling with vegetables, and an almond tofu dessert, the kind of unfussy sequence that defines the midday service here.

In the evening the register lifts. The carte opens with crisp sweetbreads set over mapo tofu, octopus and shiitake in garlic butter with a piquillo sauce and pine nuts, and spiced prawns with a soft egg and a nest of kadaif pastry, before mains that run from red-wine braised beef cheek to pan-seared scallops in a white wine sauce and a grilled faux-filet finished with a Japanese sauce. Desserts stay close to the kitchen's dual roots: a creamy vanilla cheesecake, crème caramel, or the almond tofu that turns up on both menus. For tables of five or more, the kitchen switches entirely to a five-course "carte blanche" tasting menu at €60 a head, running from the soup of the day through a fish course and a meat course to dessert; à la carte ordering is not offered to larger groups.

04What to order

Start with the crisp sweetbreads on mapo tofu, or the octopus and shiitake in garlic butter if it is on the board that evening. For a main, the grilled faux-filet with its Japanese sauce or the pan-seared scallops in white wine sauce show the kitchen's two traditions working as one dish rather than two halves. Finish with the almond tofu — a dessert that appears on both the lunch and dinner menus and seems to be something of a house signature.

05When to go and booking

The kitchen keeps two distinct rhythms: lunch is the fixed menu of the day only, with no à la carte option, while dinner is carte only. Tables for a single diner at lunch can be turned away depending on how busy the service is, so it is worth booking ahead through the restaurant's own site regardless of party size. Groups of five or more should expect the set "carte blanche" dégustation rather than a choice from the board.

06The neighbourhood

Le Gentil sits in one of the capital's quieter residential pockets, located between the Champ-de-Mars and the Palais Bourbon, a stretch of the 7th arrondissement built for government offices and apartment blocks rather than tourists. The rue Surcouf itself is short but dense with restaurants, including addresses with considerably louder reputations nearby, and the nearest metro stations are La Tour-Maubourg and Invalides, both a short walk from the Seine and the Esplanade des Invalides.

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