Bruno Verjus closes Table, calls fine dining dead
The two-Michelin-star chef will shut his Paris restaurant on 22 December after 13 years, saying its €480 tasting menu excludes too many diners.
Bruno Verjus will close Table, his two-Michelin-star restaurant in Paris, on 22 December, ending the model built around its €480 tasting menu. The chef announced the decision in a video posted to social media, telling followers that "fine dining is dead" and that he no longer wants to run a kitchen that only a small number of people can afford.
Table opened in the 12th arrondissement in 2013, near the Aligre market, with early financial backing from Olivier Baussan, the founder of L'Occitane. Verjus built the restaurant's identity around direct relationships with small producers and a single daily menu, Color of the Day, served at lunch and dinner for €480 per person, drinks excluded.
Why Verjus is walking away
"Fine dining is dead" — Bruno Verjus, announcing the closure of Table
Verjus has said he is not comfortable "excluding certain people from my table," according to Gault&Millau, and that the pricing and format of high-end gastronomy now reserve it for too narrow a clientele. He has described feeling like he was repeating a model that belongs to the past.
"We need to move forward and offer something different," he said, without detailing what that alternative will look like. He has said he wants to keep applying his knowledge of ingredients and producers, and his team's expertise, but within a different structure that reaches more people than a 480-euro menu allows.
The restaurant holds two Michelin stars at the time of the announcement. In 2024, it placed third on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list, behind Disfrutar in Barcelona and Asador Etxebarri in Spain's Basque Country — a result that made Table one of the most booked tables in Paris.
A test for fine dining's economics
The closure lands as French and international chefs argue openly about whether the tasting-menu format still works. Rising ingredient, rent and labour costs have pushed top-end menus well past the €300 mark in Paris over the past five years, while bookings at the very highest tier have grown more concentrated among a smaller pool of wealthy diners and expense accounts.
Verjus's statement does not reject fine cooking itself — he has said he intends to keep cooking and feeding people — but it does reject the structure that currently pays for it. No replacement restaurant, address or opening date has been announced — Paris has not lacked for fine-dining news this autumn, with Anne-Sophie Pic's new address at the Fondation Cartier opening a few kilometres away.
Table will serve its final guests on 22 December. What Verjus opens next, and whether it keeps any stars, remains unclear.
