Hisayuki Takeuchi’s Bentos are unique in Paris—or even in Japan, for that matter. His repertoire includes a variety of ingredients from the sea – like fish, seaweed, and shellfish –, from the rivers, and even from the mountains – such as wild plants and shoots. Seasonal forgotten fruits and vegetables feature along with more exotic ingredients such as avocado, mango, and passion fruit.
Hissa also uses typically Japanese foods like buckwheat soba noodles, tofu, matcha (green-tea powder mainly used for tea ceremonies), and yuzu, a citrus fruit somewhere between a lime, a mandarin orange, and a citron.
Colours are as important as contrasting flavours and textures. Like a painter using natural pigments, he boldly and deliciously blends ingredients in unexpected ways, both in terms of flavour (sugarloaf chicory and sprouts; parsnips and grated yuzu; fried chicken and almonds; raw fish and fruit) and colour (green matcha and carmine red maguro tuna; pink toro tuna and orange mango; white rice and light beige tofu…).
Hissa’s Bentos are unforgettably flavoursome.
