In my work, I try a lot of new restaurants. (My current to-try list has just topped 300. I don’t know when I’m going to eat all those meals.) But when it’s up to me, I typically like to go back to places I’ve enjoyed – not just because I’ve got a better shot of eating well, but because it’s always a good idea to see how things are aging, evolving, and changing. After a phenomenal experience at ChoCho in July 2025, I returned with a friend recently to see how it held up.
This restaurant in the 10th arrondissement is helmed by Thomas Chisholm, a young Franco-American chef who grew up between New York and Perpignan. His résumé is Michelin-spangled résumé and includes a stint on French Top Chef. The restaurant is extremely vibey, with high ceilings, an open kitchen, clubby music, and tables meant to be shared with strangers – and as last time, I think this is a shame, given the seriousness of the cuisine, which is way more nuanced, playful, and exciting than the room would lead you to believe.
The service is a bit more cognizant of this discrepancy, with stellar pacing of the shared plates, allowing you to fully enjoy each one before the next is brought, though this does mean that dinner can stretch on for several hours, so be prepared to sit back and enjoy. (As a frame of reference, the meal below took place over three very pleasant hours.)
Diners choose between a five-course prix fixe (74) or an à la carte, with small plates meant to be shared ranging from 12 to 28 euros. There’s a good array across the board in terms of price points: Dishes on the higher end on the night of our visit included a slow-cooked calf’s ruffle (23) – an offal I’m seeing more and more on Parisian menus – with roasted oyster mushrooms, blueberry pickles, and lacto-fermented spring garlic, or beef with potatoes, aubergine, katsuobushi and “spicy” sauce (28) (don’t ask me what the scare quotes mean…)
We ordered things on the lower end of the spectrum, and still, after glimpsing the medley at a table near us, I think it’s the better deal, with the caveat that there’s a lot of richness on the menu, especially in fall and winter, so it might be a bit too much.
OK, I think that’s enough preamble. On to the food.
We started with the soft shell crab tempura (21), which was probably my least favorite of the dishes we ordered. While the crab itself was wonderfully cooked in the crispy tempura batter, and I quite liked the satay sauce it was served with, I felt that both the burnt lime condiment and bisque vinaigrette got lost beneath the powerful flavor of something that tasted a bit like Doritos powder dusting the top of the crab, a flavor I didn’t like as a child and don’t love now. But I think it would appeal to folks who do like that slightly artificial cheese powder flavor, and this is perhaps the best introduction I can give to Chisholm’s cuisine: It dares to be divisive. And I admire that.
Next, we enjoyed a dish of crispy fried Camargue rice (16) with marinated eggplant and a persimmon-butter sauce, brûléed onions, and a few wisps of salicorne. This was perfection in the flavor department thanks to the balance between that rich butter sauce, sweet persimmon, and slight brininess of the salicorne. I might have liked more of the silky eggplant or a bit of softer fried rice mixed in with all of those crispy grains, but again, I think this is a personal preference thing rather than a true technical foul.
This next dish was my favorite of the night: stuffed radicchio (19) with a briny combo of Taggiasche olives and pecorino balanced by the richness of egg yolk, poultry jus, and pine nuts. It was showered with a blend of thinly sliced raw radicchio, more pine nuts, and pecorino, with breadcrumbs for crunch. For someone who loves bitter, briny flavors, it was the perfect umami bomb – especially with the freshness of the garnish on top. (My dining companion found it a bit soft-on-soft, further confirming the divisiveness of these dishes… and doubling down on my desire for a more serious room in which to enjoy and analyze them.)
The plat à saucer (12) is the restaurant’s signature: a plate covered with a medley of sauces meant to be enjoyed with a special roll that accompanies it, in this case a dark roll made with rye and walnut.
While I found this iteration quite pleasant, with autumnal cauliflower purée topped with fig leaf oil, sherry vinegar, and a stunning coffee kombucha reduction, it didn’t quite compete with the one from the summer, a clever play on a disassembled bagel. The roll itself notably paled in comparison to the copious free sourdough.
We had two choices for dessert: a kiwi sorbet with apple jelly, wakame, and cider vinegar meringue (13) or the one we chose: roasted quetche plums with rosemary crémeux and amaretto sabayon (14). I wasn’t won over by the texture of the crémeux, which ate a bit like a not-quite-cold-enough semifreddo. The rosemary flavor was far too intense for my palate, and the tuille on top was fine but forgettable. I much preferred the bites that were more amaretto driven, paired with the perfectly in-season fruit.
While I found myself slightly less enthused by ChoCho this time around, notably with regards to the balance of acidity and richness, which seemed to skew too far into the latter camp, I’m still extremely excited about this restaurant, which is as much an intellectual experience as a gustatory one.
Chocho – 54, rue du Paradis, 75010