LA MAISON COURTINE

Experience and Creativity in Cuisine, Flowing From France to Japan
[published June 2023]

La Maison Courtine is an upscale French restaurant located in the Asagaya neighborhood of Suginami, Tokyo, a short walk from JR Asagaya Station and just next to Smile Hotel Asagaya. Opened in 2011, the restaurant showcases the culinary masterpieces of Mr. Kazuyuki Zento, the head chef who spent roughly 7 years of training in various places in France. La Maison Courtine is currently by reservation-only, so please make a reservation online (external link) the day before at the latest.

Mixing traditional French cuisine with his own ingenuity and sensitivity, Chef Zento has created highly original cuisine with a favorable reputation. The monthly flower-based dinner course (12,100 yen or 19,100 yen with wine pairing), including 8 dishes from hors d’oeuvre to dessert, changes monthly based on a theme of a different seasonal flower per month. Wine pairing is a given, but customers who do not drink alcohol can also enjoy their popular “tea pairing” (course 17,100 yen). For an additional main dish, add 1,000 yen for meat pie made using 4-week aged kuroge-wagyu beef. The pie crust and duxelles, a mince of mushrooms sauteed with butter and herbs, forms 2 layers wrapping the thick cut of beef. The flavorful beef, mushrooms, and butter mix in a satisfactory way that is just right and not too heavy. A fond de veau sauce also matches perfectly and leave you feeling on top of the world. For those who want to go all out, the Specialty Course (18,400 yen or 25,400 with wine pairing) features prime dishes using long term aged beef. While the standard is about a month, La Maison Courtine uses wagyu Japanese beef aged for 100 days in order to release the prime flavors and umami. Chef Zento then releases the full potential of the beef by matching it with other optimal ingredients for the perfect dish.

Inside the restaurant, there is room for 20 to be seated among the orange and bright ambience. A painting titled “Three Chefs” watches over the restaurant. This painting serves as the namesake for the restaurant, painted in 1901 by the artist Courtine. This painting was also on display at the original Michelin star-rated La Maison Courtine in France that Kazuyuki Zento was a chef at.

Regarding Chef Zento’s choice for Asagaya as the location of La Maison Courtine when he returned to Tokyo, he stated, “I chose the location that was bright. It’s not that there aren’t tall buildings necessarily, but that the people walking around have bright expressions on their faces, and I could tell that the people really like it here… I decided to open here because I wanted to be the favorite restaurant for those local people.”

As a result of the recent, long COVID-19 pandemic, seating at La Maison Courtine and the number of staff have been reduced. While the uncertainty of the situation was certainly strenuous, Chef Zento put a positive spin on it telling us, “A lot of what I had been entrusting to my staff has fallen into my own hands, and so the additional time that I have been able to put into each dish and personally interact with each customer has actually been a blessing. Steps can be taken in any situation in life, and rather than lamenting what cannot be done, I think it’s best to put your all into what you can do, one step at a time.”

Chef Zento will continue to advance the art of his cuisine so that every time customers visit La Maison Courtine, there is no mistaking they will be greeted with something exquisite and surprising.

ACCESS

writer: Imagawa
photographer: Fukuyama
translator: Greg