Tomy & Co – the Cambodian-French address that started it all in the 7th

Two minutes off rue Saint-Dominique, on a quiet stretch of rue Surcouf in the 7th arrondissement, Tomy & Co is the address where Tomy Gousset's career as an owner-chef began. He opened it in September 2016, his first restaurant after more than a decade cooking in some of the grandest kitchens in Paris and New York, and it remains, a decade on, the flagship of a small Parisian group that now also includes Hugo & Co and Marso & Co. It holds one MICHELIN Star, awarded in January 2019, recognition for a cooking style built on precise seasonal produce and a refusal to be pinned down as either classical or modern. The room is small, warmly lit and distinctly personal, its walls illustrated with vegetables that trace the chef's own potager through the year. For a restaurant this close to the Invalides, it still feels like a neighbourhood secret kept by people who know exactly what they are doing.

01The room and the setting

The dining room was designed to feel convivial rather than formal: low, warm lighting, tight spacing between tables, and a rigour in the kitchen and service that the restaurant has kept deliberately understated. Its signature detail is on the walls, painted with vegetables representing the four seasons, a reference to Tomy Gousset's collaboration with Tomato&Co, the kitchen gardens at the Château de Courances near Fontainebleau that supply much of the produce on the plate. The restaurant's three addresses, including this one, were conceived with architect Richard Lafond as spaces built around conviviality rather than spectacle.

Ten years after opening, the room was given a gentler, warmer refresh to mark the anniversary. Although the dining room was elegantly redone to offer an even warmer atmosphere, the soul of Tomy Gousset's cooking remains intact: showcasing seasonal produce picked at full maturity, while gently shaking up the codes of French tradition with a well-judged touch of originality.

02The chef

Tomy Gousset was born in Cambodia and moved to France with his family at the age of three. With no family background in the restaurant trade, he found his calling relatively late, not stepping into a kitchen until the age of twenty-three, after training at the École Ferrandi. What followed was an apprenticeship in some of the most demanding houses in French gastronomy: at Taillevent alongside chef Alain Solivérès, where he learned rigour and the classics of grand French cuisine, then at Le Meurice under Yannick Alléno, where he sharpened his eye for detail and plating, and finally at Daniel in New York under chef Daniel Boulud, to round out his open-mindedness and creativity.

Insider tip

Open Monday–Friday only; book for the six-course tasting menu.

He opened his own restaurant in September 2016, taking the name Tomy & Co, and the same year won the Tremplin prize from Le Chef magazine. In 2017 he added the Lebey award for best starter, for a beef-tongue tartlet with gribiche and pickled turnip, before the star arrived in January 2019. Gousset has since gone on to run three addresses in the French capital — Tomy & Co, Hugo & Co and Marso & Co — built on vegetables he grows himself and a career path that was never a straight line, with Tomy & Co still the house he cooks in himself.

03The cooking

Gousset describes his food as neither classical nor modern, aiming instead for something timeless, a philosophy that in practice reads as precise, produce-led bistronomy rather than technical display. He sums up his approach in a phrase he likes to repeat: "simplicity and sophistication." The cuisine, bistronomic and generous, relies on organic vegetables grown in the Essonne, not far from the Château de Courances, sourced locally with evident pride.

The carte turns with the calendar rather than fashion: black-truffle gnocchi in winter, asparagus with mimosa egg, orange vinaigrette and nasturtium leaf in spring, chanterelles with roasted apricots and verbena in summer, and a chestnut-and-mushroom velouté in autumn. A vegetable plate from the kitchen garden stays on the menu year-round, changing shape and colour with the seasons.

04What to order

In October 2026 the carte runs an entrée-plat-dessert menu at 80 euros alongside a six-course tasting menu at 110 euros, with a wine pairing at an additional 90 euros. Among the dishes worth seeking out: gnocchi with ricotta and autumn truffle, shiitake and miso butter; a game tartre with capers, mustard and Jerusalem-artichoke crisps; roasted guinea fowl with autumn truffle, crisp potato and poultry quenelles; and a six-hour-cooked shoulder of venison with seared foie gras and celery-butternut purée. For two, there is a one-kilogram sole meunière from Le Guilvinec or a one-kilogram roast veal chop, both at 120 euros, and a hare à la royale with celery purée and gnocchi at 70 euros. To finish, a chocolate ganache with corn ice cream and peanut-butter granola, or Ossau-Iraty cheese cooked with quince jam and Espelette pepper. At lunch, a tighter 49-euro menu runs a soft egg with parsnip cream, roast guinea fowl with black-truffle mash, and pear with kumquat and fromage-blanc ice cream.

05Wine and drinks

The by-the-glass list leans toward producers rather than labels: a 2016 Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage or Taittinger prestige rosé among the Champagnes, a Pouilly-Fumé from Domaine Michel Redde, a Hermitage Chante Alouette from M. Chapoutier, and reds running from Château Cantemerle in the Haut-Médoc to a Cornas from Domaine du Tunnel. For something outside the French canon, two Japanese sakes feature by the glass, including a Dassai DEX45 Junmai Daiginjo from Yamaguchi.

06The neighbourhood

Tomy & Co sits just steps from Rue Saint-Dominique in Paris's 7th arrondissement, in the quiet residential quarter known as Gros Caillou, closer to the Seine than to the tourist flow around the Eiffel Tower. The nearest metro is La Tour-Maubourg on line 8, around 324 metres from the door, with Invalides station a similar distance in the other direction. It is a part of the 7th arrondissement built for embassies and apartments rather than restaurant rows, which makes the quiet, curtained front of Tomy & Co easy to miss and worth seeking out deliberately.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.