As spring turned to summer in 2018, one of the most coveted reservations in Manhattan offered a taste of a Paris restaurant that hadn’t yet opened. At Chefs Club, the NoLIta venue that invites culinary talent from around the world to take over its kitchen, the chef Sota Atsumi shared a preview of his eagerly awaited Maison, set to open in Paris this September. Over the course of the three-month residency, the Tokyo-born chef — who electrified the French food scene with his fresh interpretation of bistro dining at Clown Bar in Paris — served dishes like sardine beignets and savory pain perdu with lentils, egg and cuttlefish ragù, and with them, a thoughtful new proposal for French cuisine.

Atsumi, 33, is a member of a new guard of Parisian chefs who have shrugged off their starched kitchen whites and traded the foam-finessed-foods of la grande cuisine française for something more personal and spontaneous. Along with Taku Sekine of Dersou and Bertrand Grébaut of Septime, Atsumi infused casual French bistro cuisine with the artistry of gastronomy, highlighting the integrity of biodynamic produce and funky natural wines. From the kitchens of small informal restaurants, these chefs embraced a more accessible attitude (and price point), distilling the best produce available into deceptively simple dishes with sometimes revelatory effect. Now, with Maison, Atsumi is about to make what might be his most rebellious move yet — with a turn toward traditional fine dining.

Though undeniably entrenched in the adventurous bistronomie scene, Atsumi holds his formal training in the highest regard. “The chefs I worked with really respect classic cuisine,” Atsumi said one spring afternoon in Paris, in off-duty chef attire of baggy black pants, a white T-shirt and slip-on shoes. Tradition, for him, is the starting point in a quest for new and unexpected ways of working with familiar ingredients and flavors. “If I hadn’t had those foundations, I wouldn’t be able to do my work now,” he said.