Tasting Menu · Est. 2019 · Twelve Seats

MAISON NOIR

Seven fire-led courses served by candlelight. One menu, written each dusk against what the season surrendered that morning, eaten in the hush of an obsidian cellar.

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I — The Chef’s Word

Portrait of Chef Étienne Vasseur in the candle-lit MAISON NOIR kitchen, one hand resting beside a low ember, his face lit from below by the warm light of the fire.

An Open Letter

Fire, patience, and a cellar
that keeps its own counsel.

I was taught in two kitchens — one in Lyon where the fire was never spoken of, only obeyed, and one in Copenhagen where patience was measured in seasons, not minutes. I brought both here, to twelve seats and a single menu I rewrite the moment the markets decide what tonight will be.

There is no choosing at MAISON NOIR. The menu is the meal, and the meal is a sentence I have spent the day trying to finish. We work with what the obsidian cellar gives us — roots buried in ash, fish cured in cellar air, a single sauce reduced until it remembers everything it was. No substitutions. No shortcuts. Only the evening, told in seven chapters.

“Restraint is the only luxury that lasts. Everything else is decoration.”

— Étienne Vasseur

Chef & Founder · Previously: two-Michelin-star kitchens in Lyon and Copenhagen

II — The Tasting Menu

Each course is one clause of a single thought — read in order, by candlelight, at the pace the kitchen sets. Move along the ledger; the plate arrives in shadow beside it.

I

Smoked Beet, Black Garlic, Ember Oil

Roots buried in ash for seventy-two hours, lifted warm onto cold stone.
Earth
II

Cured Sea Bream, Yuzu Kosho, Cold-Pressed Cedar

A line caught at dawn; the sea still on it, the cellar air around it.
Bright
III

Chestnut Velouté, Cedar Smoke, Brown Butter

The forest floor, distilled to a single warm spoon.
Deep
IV

Hand-Rolled Agnolotti, Bone Marrow, Aged Parmesan

Folded by hand in the hour before service. Twenty-eight folds, no more.
Rich
V

Dry-Aged Duck, Pickled Cherry, Juniper Jus

Forty days in cellar air, finished over embers of vine cuttings from the Rhône.
Robust
VI

Aged Comté, Walnut Crisp, Truffle Honey

A pause before the sweet — the cellar speaking, briefly, in cheese.
Quiet
VII

Bitter Chocolate, Smoked Salt, Single-Candle Cream

The last ember, sweetened. The evening, in one spoon.
Final