Yoshi – Robuchon's lone Japanese table by the Place du Casino

Behind a plain wooden door inside the Hôtel Métropole Monte-Carlo, a few steps from the noise of the Place du Casino, Yoshi is the only Japanese restaurant Joël Robuchon ever created. It opened in December 2008, a year after Métropole owner Nabil Boustany asked the three-starred French chef to design a Japanese table for his hotel. The project won a MICHELIN star in 2010, fifteen months after the doors opened, and kept it for fifteen years under chef Takeo Yamazaki, who had worked alongside Robuchon for fourteen years before taking the pass at Yoshi. Yamazaki left in 2024, and the star went with him in the 2025 Guide. Today Yoshi is selected in the MICHELIN Guide, run by its former brigade under the long-standing oversight of Christophe Cussac, the hotel's executive chef, still turning out sushi and sashimi a few metres from the roulette tables outside.

01The room and the setting

French interior designer Didier Gomez created the minimalist indoor space, using clean lines, light wood accents and vibrant pops of colour to establish a serene atmosphere, built around an open kitchen and sushi counter. The restaurant opens directly onto a Japanese-inspired garden designed by landscape architect Jacques Messin, allowing guests to dine surrounded by sculpted greenery and quiet stone paths that mute the clatter of the Place du Casino just beyond the walls.

Only around forty guests share the room at any one sitting, a handful of them on stools at the counter, close enough to watch the brigade work the teppanyaki and slice for the sushi bar. It is, by Monaco standards, a small and deliberately quiet room, tucked into a hotel otherwise dressed throughout by Jacques Garcia's Belle Époque interiors.

02History and the kitchen today

Robuchon recruited Takeo Yamazaki, a Tokyo-trained cook who had spent years in his kitchens, including Château Robuchon in Tokyo and the L'Atelier restaurants, to lead Yoshi from its opening in December 2008. Reviewers at the time described a chef who approached the project with striking humility for a cook of his calibre, and the collaboration was rewarded with a MICHELIN star within fifteen months, in the 2010 Guide.

Insider tip

Open Wed–Sat for lunch and dinner; booking essential given the room's small scale.

Yamazaki stayed at the pass for a decade and a half before leaving in 2024; the Hôtel Métropole's restaurant lost its star in the 2025 MICHELIN Guide as a direct result of his departure. The hotel itself closed for renovation work around the same period, with Yoshi expected to reopen the following spring. The kitchen today continues in the hands of Yamazaki's former brigade, which Gault&Millau's 2026 guide notes still seriously perpetuates the art of sushi and sashimi, working under the broader supervision of Christophe Cussac, who also directs the hotel's two-starred Les Ambassadeurs.

03The cooking

Yoshi's own menu promises nigiri, teppanyaki, sake-marinated black cod and a bento box at lunch – a Tokyo repertoire translated for a Riviera dining room. A central ritual of the meal is the tableside grating of fresh wasabi root on a traditional grater, finished at the very last minute before it reaches the plate.

The hotel's chef sommelier builds pairings from a selection of sakes chosen specifically to match each dish, a detail the restaurant presents as central to the experience rather than an afterthought alongside the cooking.

04What to order

The restaurant's own menu singles out octopus teppanyaki, lobster ravioli with marinated turnips, and a wagyu entrecôte served with wasabi grated to order as dishes that play, in the restaurant's own words, with the codes of Japanese cooking with real freedom. The sake-marinated black cod remains one of the kitchen's enduring signatures, alongside the nigiri and sashimi prepared at the counter and the bento box offered at lunch.

05When to go and booking

In October 2026 Yoshi was listed as open Wednesday to Saturday, for lunch from 12.15pm to 1.45pm and dinner from 7.30pm to 10.30pm. Dogs are not permitted inside the dining room. Given the room's small scale, booking ahead by phone or email is the way in rather than walking up from the casino square outside.

06The neighbourhood

The Hôtel Métropole sits in the Carré d'Or, Monaco's gilded shopping quarter, just a stone's throw from the Casino de Monte-Carlo and its famous square. Beyond Yoshi's garden wall, the same hotel holds Christophe Cussac's two-starred Les Ambassadeurs, the Spa Métropole by Guerlain, and the Odyssey pool designed by Karl Lagerfeld – a cluster of very different worlds gathered around one Belle Époque address.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.