PARIS — The pithiviers de canard at Clown Bar, a historic restaurant in Paris with circus-themed glazed tiles from the 1920s, is an exquisite rendering of a classic dish. Duck breast surrounded by minced duck meat, topped with duck foie gras and baked inside a pastry shell the color of varnished teak, it is a flaky, tender, succulent argument for why we still worship traditional French cuisine.

The pithiviers may be as French as the four-week vacation, but the one at Clown Bar is the creation of the chef Sota Atsumi, who is from Tokyo.

Mr. Atsumi, 30, is part of a new generation of Japanese chefs who set out to master French cooking and who now run some of the most acclaimed French restaurants in Paris — notable in a city known for its snobbish dismissal of outsiders. Le Fooding, possibly the most influential food publication in the country, named Clown Bar the best bistro in all of France for 2015.

Some of the chefs, such as Dai Shinozuka of Les Enfants Rouges, are so orthodox that the food they cook could illustrate a textbook. Others, like Shinichi Sato at Passage 53, a white jewel box of a restaurant with two Michelin stars, or Atsushi Tanaka at Restaurant A.T, embrace modernist cuisine. They moved to France to learn from the country’s culinary lions and to absorb its traditions and techniques.