Yushin – a six-seat Japanese counter in quiet Neuilly

Yushin sits on a quiet residential street in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a few minutes from the Pont de Neuilly and the Île de la Grande Jatte, in a part of town that, as one specialist guide noted when the restaurant opened, had no Japanese table of its own. It opened in early January and has built its following around a six-seat counter, where chef Shuhei Yamashita cuts, grills and plates within arm's reach of his guests. The room keeps to pale wood and white walls, a pared-back frame for whatever fish arrived that morning. Yushin is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, recognition for a kitchen that treats sushi, bento and omakase with equal rigour, built around nightly deliveries chosen for freshness above everything else. It is a small, serious table that regulars tend to find almost by accident, then keep returning to.

01The room and the setting

Behind a discreet, distinctly Japanese shopfront on rue Chauveau, Yushin keeps a low profile even by the standards of this residential stretch between Levallois and Neuilly. Inside, pale wood runs across the counter and the handful of tables, with white walls that leave nothing to distract from the plates. Six stools line the counter directly opposite the pass, close enough to watch the chef score the skin of a kingfish fillet with a blade before plating it as sashimi. The service follows its own quiet choreography: staff explain each course without hurrying it, and at least one table has been walked out to the door and watched off the step before the waitress returned inside - a parting gesture that feels distinctly Japanese.

02The chef

Shuhei Yamashita grew up in Mie prefecture and worked his way through Kinugawa Vendôme before taking the head chef's position at Ran, in the eighth arrondissement, when it opened. He followed his father, also a professional cook who ran his own restaurant in Japan, into the trade, and still shares technique with a wider audience through his own YouTube channel. At Yushin he mans the counter himself most services, pressing rice and cutting fish to order rather than handing the final steps to a brigade.

Insider tip

Closed Sundays and Mondays; only six counter seats, so book ahead.

03The cooking

The kitchen follows the market rather than a fixed script, built on daily deliveries of fish chosen above all for freshness. In the evening, Yamashita runs a tasting menu that alternates cooked courses with nigiri - typically a run of starters, a piece of grilled fish and a long sushi course, finishing with dessert. Recurring reference points, Gault&Millau has noted, include a chawanmushi custard and a piece of fish lacquered in soy with a dashi made from fish bones, alongside nigiri the chef cuts to order at the counter, in full view of the room.

04What to order

On recent tasting menus, standouts have included a sashimi of yellowtail dressed in ponzu, black cod marinated in miso and grilled, and a tartare of tuna and sea urchin sharpened with ponzu that regulars rate among the kitchen's best cold dishes. A plate of plaice and a second, more expansive round of nigiri usually close the savoury courses. Earlier menus have opened with a jellied purple sweet potato amuse-bouche, followed by seaweed-marinated sea bream sashimi and maki of lightly fatty tuna with house-pickled ginger.

05Wine and drinks

Sake, rather than wine, is the natural match here: Yushin keeps its own dedicated list, singled out by one local critic as a highlight in itself. Another diner summed the table up as a place of "quality, precision, service, harmony" - praising the sake selection in the same breath as the food.

06The neighbourhood

Yushin sits apart from Paris's established Japanese quarter around the Opéra, in a residential stretch of Neuilly where, as Gault&Millau pointed out, locals previously had nowhere equivalent without crossing into the capital. The nearest stop is Pont de Neuilly, on line 1, a short walk from the edges of the Île de la Grande Jatte. With only a handful of seats at the pass, booking ahead is essential.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.