DokiDoki
Hand roll, n.m.: Japanese dish - A hand roll prepared by the chef from crispy nori seaweed filled with warm Japanese rice and a raw fish recipe that may vary. Served immediately after being rolled, the handroll is eaten by hand in four bites.
"DokiDoki", in Japanese, is the small, light and delicate sound of a heartbeat. Far from the "boom boom" that beats like a drum, it rather evokes the palpitations, just perceptible, of the excitement of the moment, of cheeks that blush and hands that tremble. At 59 bis rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, nestled in the Louvre post office, DokiDoki makes your heart beat and your taste buds salivate with its star product: the Handroll.
The kitchen
A short, very short menu with extraordinary products, starting with the star of the game, the hand roll, and its flagship product, nori seaweed. In the south of Japan, in the Ariake Sea, water flows from the mountains and feeds the nori leaves, adding to their alluvial notes, a crazy minerality, and an incomparable crunchy-smoky taste. This seaweed, an essential coat for the delicacy of the "hand rolls" made in front of the customers, is an experience in itself. Its crunchiness under the tooth does not stop there, it comes to tickle the ear, sing, seduce. This soft sound, this palpitation, literally slips in all directions.
Wrapped in seaweed, at the very last moment, a warm, vinegar-coated Japanese round rice, which itself wraps around a tartarised fish.
Six fish, a lobster, a crab and a scallop roll, edamame, a cucumber salad with ponzu, sashimi and a fish tartar are enough. More than a restaurant, DokiDoki is a small, cool and intimate urban object.
The Addresses
Romain Taieb, who is responsible for the now mythical and unmissable Piaf and Bambini, and who used to be at the helm of Nanashi, has joined forces with entrepreneur Thomas Moreau, who has just returned from New York, to create their own idea of the sushi bar: a raw and uncluttered place, with an elegant and disconcerting simplicity, where it's good to sit down... without staying long.
An experience that can be lived in a handful of minutes, as if it had been discreetly injected into the course of a day.
Rodolphe Albert, the architect of the marvelous Shabour, has created for DokiDoki an organic and mineral interior: a huge woodwork along the wall, filled with tinted mirrors, plants, glasses and bottles, a large concrete bar around which 25 people are seated, a sublime block of green tiles at the back... and suspended from a very high ceiling, the clouds of Céline Wright, poetic and aerial.
On the table, custom-made ceramics of all colors, pebbles from the sea to place one's chopsticks, and then very, very little, superfluous. The place is evanescent, the proposal is limpid: a simple, raw, insolently ephemeral enjoyment.
The experience
If the adventure can fit in a handkerchief, and be lived in a half hour out of time, it can obviously be prolonged, without counting the minutes spent... In the glasses, sake, gins and Japanese whiskies, Japanese beers, some good wines, and for dessert, the incomparable home-made mochis, imagined by the pastry chef Agathe Bernard, a specialist in Japanese pastry. Dense, elastic, melting, with red bean paste, coconut, praline or black sesame, they are models of their kind. And for those who dream of making their little heart beat at home, DokiDoki takes them away, but not just any old way: in a kit! Ariake's nori seaweed softens instantly on contact with the warm rice, so the hand rolls are ready to be rolled up at the last minute. To complete the moment, the essential condiments, delicious, sourced from Kioko, a nugget for exceptional Japanese products, from soy sauce to wasabi to ginger. You can hear it from here, this lovely DokiDoki.
Contact
Privatization - Catering
r.taieb@dokidoki-handroll.com
This address does not take reservations
DokiDoki Louvre
59 bis rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau 75001
Open Monday to Sunday
Lunch and Dinner without reservation
DokiDoki Marbeuf
11 rue Marbeuf Paris 8e
Open Monday to Sunday
Lunch and Dinner without reservation
Press contact
Alexandra de La Brosse
alexandradelabrosse@gmail.com
