Sushi Yoshinaga – ten seats, one chef, Two MICHELIN Stars

Reach Sushi Yoshinaga by lift, or by climbing a spiral staircase after crossing the ground-floor sake bar that shares its address, and arrive at a counter with only ten seats, curved around a block of pale wood where one chef works entirely alone. Guests reach the restaurant by lift or by climbing a spiral staircase, having first crossed the sake bar that is part of the same address known as 27/4. A counter, ten seats and a single workbench inside a case of pale wood: this is Sushi Yoshinaga, a few steps from the Palais Garnier, sitting halfway between the Opéra and Paris's Japanese Quarter. There is no card, only chef Tomoyuki Yoshinaga's single nightly omakase, run across two services that serve no printed menu and build each dinner around some twenty-five sequences. The restaurant has been open since July 2023. Success came quickly: a first MICHELIN Star arrived in March 2024, followed by a second in 2025. It holds Two MICHELIN Stars.

01The room and the setting

The architects Sala Hars and Agathe Marimbert Architecte designed the space through a series of doors evoking ancient temples, with soft, modern lighting built to serve the presentation of the sushi rather than the room itself. The result has a faintly sci-fi, monastic atmosphere, built from maple wood and dazzling light. Yoshinaga stands at the centre of his own counter, cutting in full view of every seat.

The ceramics are the work of the Japanese artist Masanobu Ando, chosen so that everything in the room, from the nigiri to the sake, expresses one guiding idea: an unmistakably traditional base that plays against contemporary provocations. His pieces, finished in a silvery glaze, have the rough, precious look of fragments of meteorite.

02The chef

Tomoyuki Yoshinaga has practised the art of sushi for almost twenty years. He came to it sideways: a literature student who once planned to teach English, he learned to cook through casual jobs taken to pay his way through university. A strictly traditional training in Japan followed, and it was there that he met the highly reputed chef Okuda and decided to join him in Paris.

Insider tip

Dinner only, Tuesday to Saturday, two seatings; single omakase menu, booking essential.

That apprenticeship with the multi-starred Toru Okuda sharpened his technique for seven years, before Yoshinaga was ready to fly on his own. In France he found a different fish from Japan's: good quality, he judged, but one that needed handling differently to draw out its best. He built his own distinct technique from there, one still rooted in the heritage of edomae sushi.

03The cooking

There is no à la carte at Sushi Yoshinaga, only the chef's omakase. It runs to roughly twenty-five sequences a dinner, with no printed menu at all. The fish comes from the day's catch or, often, from several days before: Yoshinaga prefers to let certain fish mature before he serves them, judging it sharpens both flavour and texture.

A recent evening opened on warm, seasonal dishes: a salad of marinated mackerel with daikon and myoga, lightly seared toro dressed with sansho leaves, and a scallop dumpling served in a warm broth. Ten nigiri followed in succession, placed by hand onto stoneware plates: squid, sea bream, amberjack, bluefin tuna, toro, shima aji, lobster marinated in miso, California sea urchin, negitoro crowned with caviar, and eel.

04Wine and drinks

The wine and sake list runs under the direction of Damien Melon, the restaurant's director and in-house sommelier. His selection moves from Fukunishiki junmai and Gikyo junmai ginjo sake by the glass to serious Yamazaki whiskies, and from an Alsace riesling by Josmeyer to a Montrachet from Jacques Prieur at the far end of the list.

05When to go and booking

Sushi Yoshinaga serves dinner only, Tuesday to Saturday, with two seatings at 19:00 and 21:30, each lasting around two hours. The restaurant sits in the Bourse-Opéra quarter, close to the Palais Brongniart and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, served directly by the Bourse and Quatre-Septembre metro stations.

With only ten covers a sitting, booking is essential and the wait for a seat has only grown since the second star arrived — what's left, as the house puts it, is the waiting list, which keeps lengthening for a place among the ten privileged seats at the counter. The omakase is priced at 330 euros, rising to 360 euros from January 2027.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.