Bruno Verjus was born in October 1959 in Renaisson, near Roanne in the Loire region of France, according to Gastromondiale. He studied medicine in Lyon, stopping short of completing a full medical career, before an unusually varied run of jobs that took him to Los Angeles as an advertising photographer and then to China, where he headed a medical device and packaging company for nearly two decades, working across China, Japan, Indonesia, the United States and Europe, per the same profile and Gault&Millau. He sold that company in 2005, a sale that would later help fund his move into restaurants. He is married to the novelist and food writer Ingrid Astier, with whom he later co-authored cookbooks, and the couple have a son, Stanislav, who worked as a server during one of his father’s earliest restaurant ventures, according to Gastromondiale.

On returning to France in 2003, Verjus spent seven years running the Chateau Yvonne wine estate near Saumur, developing an interest in natural wine that would later shape his approach to sourcing, per Gault&Millau. He also began writing, running the blog Food Intelligence from December 2004 to 2017 and contributing to publications including Le Fooding, Omnivore and Identita Golose, according to Gastromondiale. From around 2010 to 2012 he joined the editorial team at L’Omnivore and co-hosted the France Culture radio programme On ne parle pas la bouche pleine with Alain Kruger, spending years visiting professional kitchens as a critic rather than a cook, per Restaurant Times. He picked up cooking technique informally, including guidance from Frederick Ernestine Grasser Herme, the former wife of pastry chef Pierre Herme, and ran an early, low-key restaurant venture on the Ile d’Yeu before settling in Paris, according to Gastromondiale.

Verjus opened Table on April 11, 2013, at 3 rue de Prague in Paris’s then-overlooked 12th arrondissement, near the Marche d’Aligre, self-funding the venture with proceeds from the 2005 sale of his China-based company, according to Jancis Robinson and Restaurant Times. He was 54 years old, had no formal culinary training and had never worked a service in another restaurant’s kitchen, building the 24-seat room around a single tin counter and an open kitchen with no back-of-house, per The National. The original lunch menu was priced at 25 euros, and low rent in the then-unfashionable district gave him room to learn the trade; he has said it took roughly eighteen months to feel he had mastered running a kitchen and a dining room at the same time, according to Restaurant Times.

Table earned its first Michelin star in 2018, a Michelin Green Star for sustainability in 2020, and a second Michelin star in 2022, according to Reporter Gourmet. The restaurant entered The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list inside the top ten on its first appearance in 2023, held that position through 2024, and rose to number 8 in 2025, making it the highest-placed restaurant in France on that year’s list, per Jubilee Talent and The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Gault&Millau rates Table at three toques with a score of 16 out of 20, its “remarkable restaurant” tier, according to Gault&Millau.

Table is now booked out for months at a time, though Verjus deliberately holds back a handful of seats each service for same-day, walk-up diners rather than filling the room entirely in advance, according to Fine Dining Lovers, which profiled him under the headline “I’m the oldest, youngest chef” in reference to his decades as a diner and critic before ever cooking professionally. Pricing has climbed sharply alongside the restaurant’s reputation, from the original 25-euro lunch in 2013 to a tasting menu reported at around 400 euros per person in a 2024 profile by The National, and closer to 480 euros per person in Gault&Millau’s current listing. Food press coverage consistently frames Verjus’s path from gastronomic critic to two-star chef as one of the more unusual career reversals in modern French dining.

Verjus has not put his name behind consumer product campaigns or brand ambassador deals in the way many celebrity chefs do. His outside commercial relationships are professional rather than promotional: his advisory role with agri-food investor Astanor is a paid position tied to his food-industry expertise rather than a marketing endorsement, according to Astanor, and his book deals with publisher Gallimard function as authorship income rather than sponsorship, per Reporter Gourmet. No outlet reviewed for this profile documents a paid partnership with a food, drinks or lifestyle brand of the kind common among chefs with a television profile.

Verjus has kept his core business deliberately small: Table has never expanded beyond its original 24 covers or its four-day operating week, and he has not opened a second restaurant under his own name. His broader business activity sits outside the kitchen. He serves as an advisor on the value creation team at Astanor, an investment firm focused on agri-food and sustainability, drawing on his network of producers and his food-industry credibility, according to Astanor. He is also a published author with Gallimard, including the 2021 book The Art of Nourishment, which traces his path from critic to chef, per Reporter Gourmet, and he has co-authored earlier cookbooks with his wife, novelist Ingrid Astier, according to Gastromondiale. Before Table, his seven years running the Chateau Yvonne wine estate near Saumur was itself a standalone business venture, per Gault&Millau.

No outlet reviewed for this profile has published details of a personal home or property portfolio belonging to Verjus. His clearest identifiable asset from before Table was the Chateau Yvonne wine estate near Saumur, which he ran for seven years in the 2000s before turning to the restaurant business, according to Gault&Millau. His major asset today is effectively the Table business itself, the 24-seat site at 3 rue de Prague that he built out and has operated continuously since 2013, financed originally from the proceeds of selling his China-based medical device and packaging company in 2005, per Jancis Robinson. Any equity or compensation tied to his advisory role at Astanor is not publicly disclosed.