On September 4, Anne-Sophie Pic will open Utopic inside the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. It will be the first cocktail bar conceived by the world’s most Michelin-starred female chef, and the first glimpse of a larger Parisian project: her new restaurant at the Fondation will follow on September 18. The bar therefore arrives as an opening chapter, introducing the liquid language that will later accompany the cuisine.
The setting gives the project a particular resonance. Since October 2025, the Fondation Cartier has occupied a nineteenth-century building opposite the Louvre, transformed by Jean Nouvel into a vast, shifting architecture of glass, light and movable platforms. Utopic has its own discreet entrance on rue de Marengo and an intimate interior designed by Moinard Bétaille. It places Pic’s work within one of Paris’s most compelling new cultural spaces, where creation is expected to move freely between disciplines.
Its name already carries part of the idea. Utopic allows Pic to appear inside a word associated with imagination, projection and the freedom to invent another reality. That sense of possibility runs through the drinks programme, developed with Mike Kassabian, executive mixologist for Groupe Pic, and Maël Jego, formerly of Little Red Door, who will lead the bar. Here, the cocktail is approached through the same aromatic precision that guides the chef’s cooking.
At its core is Imprégnation, the philosophy Anne-Sophie Pic has gradually made the thread of her work. Infusions, fermentations, clarifications and decoctions allow ingredients to exchange their aromas and create an expression that belongs fully to neither of them. Plants, teas, spices and fruits become materials for composition, while the distinction between cuisine and drink begins to soften. Utopic gives this research a space of its own, extending the explorations already developed around alcohol-free pairings and creative beverages at Maison Pic.
Open every day from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., Utopic will precede the arrival of Anne-Sophie Pic’s new Parisian table by two weeks. Together, the two spaces will bring gastronomy into the daily rhythm of the Fondation Cartier and place the chef’s aromatic thinking in conversation with contemporary art. Orange is the New Chef will be there for the inauguration next week, ready to discover how this utopia tastes when it finally reaches the glass.
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