Paris (AFP)

Its 30-seat restaurant in Paris near the Louvre received a thousand reservation requests in a few hours, but Japanese chef Kei Kobayashi, who has just won the third Michelin star, remains calm.

"For me personally, nothing has changed. Michelin is Michelin, but what is important is our work for the customer, the excellent product, our daily search for good food," says T he at AFP.

At 42, this native of Nagano with peroxidized blonde hair, giving him a teenage look, is the first Japanese in France to have obtained this supreme gastronomic award for the establishment "Kei", opened in 2011 with barely visible signs. and the minimalist gray and silver decor.

A choice that surprised some critics who considered that this framework was too simple for Michelin, which generally awards the three buttons for "unique" plates and interiors.

But it unexpectedly received approval from the number one enemy of the Red Guide, French chef Marc Veyrat, demoted last year from three to two stars and who launched and lost a lawsuit against Michelin.

"I say bravo. It takes a generational mix, it's great that people from elsewhere come to our place," said Marc Veyrat to AFP while again accusing the guide of undermining "identity" French by downgrading restaurants like his in 2019 or that of Paul Bocuse this year.

- "Difficult boy" -

Identity is a concept dear to Kei who spent 21 years in Japan where his father was a cook in a traditional Kaiseki restaurant, a gastronomy served in small dishes, with techniques comparable to great Western cuisine. He remains attached to Japanese aesthetics which pushes him in search of finesse, elegance, simplicity. "In France, Versailles is beautiful. In Japan it's different: a slightly dark space, a small flower".

Before putting his pans in Paris, he worked "in Alsace, in Provence and a little in Brittany". He became French, having learned to say what he thinks while remaining a Japanese perfectionist.

"I am a very difficult boy, working with me is a lot of stress, I monitor everything, I validate everything. Compared to a Frenchman, it may be more difficult," he said.

"I was born and raised in Japan, I have to adapt French cuisine, that there is my world in it. Otherwise, the three stars, it's impossible."

He cites as a counterexample a chef who taught him French cuisine in Japan and who wanted to copy everything blindly: "He had a head like that", he says, tapping his fingers on his head, then on the map job.

He pays attention to salt - because "to salt too much is to break the product" and to butter because eating habits have changed.

"Twenty years ago, the French who had lunch at noon in a 3 star hotel returned home at 4:00 pm. Now we eat an hour and then we go back to work. We have to think about health and also watch the line."

His signature dish is a salad made up of around fifty vegetables and seasonal plants with smoked salmon, arugula mousse and citrus emulsion.

This "Crunchy Vegetable Garden" that the customer mixes on the table and where each bite tastes different has particularly marked the Michelin inspectors.

The black kitchen where the chef receives AFP between the two departments is like the room: expertly laid out and immaculate.

"Cooking starts with cleaning," says Kei Kobayashi, a principle reminded to him by French multi-star chef Alain Ducasse, one of his mentors.

He invites customers there if they wish and the framework must correspond to the rest of the experience.

Those who are lucky enough to have lunch at a Kei Kobayashi's freshly triple-star take a picture with him. Others call a young woman at the reception slightly overwhelmed by the events who notes the numbers, promises to call back "in case of withdrawal".

© 2020 AFP