Anne-Sophie Pic Paris opens inside the Fondation Cartier

Anne-Sophie Pic Paris opened on 18 September inside the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain at 164 rue de Rivoli, the chef's first Paris dining room since she closed La Dame de Pic.

The opening runs in two stages. Utopic, the bar built into the same building, began serving on 4 September; the restaurant followed a fortnight later. The foundation's library reopens on 22 September, so the house is still filling up.

Anne-Sophie Pic Paris sets two sittings

A museum restaurant is a swap, not an expansion: one Paris room closed to open this one.

Lunch is a short seasonal menu in three, four or five courses, rewritten every month. Dinner is longer and sold as one piece, the kitchen working against the exhibition on show rather than beside it. The foundation calls it a synaesthetic experience, which is a heavy phrase for a tasting menu that changes when the art does.

The hours are unusually tight for a room of this kind: lunch from 12.00 to 13.30, dinner from 19.00 to 21.00. There are two sittings, not a rolling service, and booking runs through the foundation's own system.

The drinks are built with Paz Levinson, the Argentine sommelier who runs wine across the Pic group and has also worked on the mixology at utopic. Pic's Paris cooking is built on what she calls impregnation, a method of layering an aroma through a dish in stages rather than adding it at the end.

What closed to make room

La Dame de Pic opened on rue du Louvre in September 2012 and shut this year after thirteen seasons, carrying a Michelin star in the guide's listing. It was the group's Parisian anchor for most of that time, and its staff and its regulars were the reason the new address did not need a slow start.

Pic's estate is unusually spread out for a French chef: Maison Pic in Valence, the three-star family house, plus rooms in Lausanne, Hong Kong, Dubai and Bangkok, and a set of restaurants and cafes run with Dior. The Paris move is a swap rather than an expansion.

The city has spent the past year watching classic addresses change hands, from Lucas Carton reopening with Cyril Lignac to a run of chef-led hotel rooms. Whether a museum floor can hold a chef's Paris name is the part the first winter will answer.