A friend recently took a long weekend in Paris in an attempt to accumulate
as many stars as possible. He did an excellent job. More
importantly, he took the time to catalog everything. Here is his report:
As many of you know, birthday celebrations in our family are often celebrated
as surprises--my 16th, 25th, 33rd, and 34th birthdays (I know, how could I be
surprised two years in a row?) were all successful surprise parties. But as
this year I turned 35 and for someone who studied Dante as much as I did the35th
year has significance (according to Dante (and the Bible), a man's life should
span 70 years, hence the midpoint is 35), I wanted to celebrate by doing
something significant without the fear of the shock of something unexpected (and
totally new). After much discussion, Bridget and I decided that we would
celebrate our birthdays (Bridget's birthday is three weeks after mine) in Paris,
a city we grew to love on account of the two years that we lived there in the
early 1990's. It also allowed us to indulge in one of our favorite pastimes
(Bridget would call it a sport)--dining at the top restaurants in the world.
Getting away from our responsibilities at work was not that difficult. With
email and voicemail, we can almost be wizards of Oz, sending messages in the
middle of the night that make it seem like we are still at work. But slipping
away from Aurora was a bit more complicated. First, we felt guilty about
leaving our very sophisticated daughter at home when she too could be going to
Paris for a food fest. Second, we couldn't conceive how she could get on
without us? Who would indulge her every whim and desire? What would happen when
she woke up at 6am? Could she live without our> company as she watched Barney or
Sesame Street? The reality as we soon found out is that she gets on fine
without us. She stayed with my mother and does not appear to have outstayed her
welcome. Third, and most importantly, we had not really been ready for a "get
away" until now. But after two years of early morning wake ups, we were indeed
ready for a short vacation.
So off we went to Paris and thanks to the "connaissance" of a couple of my
relatives, we were able to get reservations at three incredible, three-star
restaurants in Paris--Jamin, Lucas-Carton, and Pierre Gagnaire. I include the
menus and brief descriptions for those of you who, like us, like to gorge
yourselves. And for the rest of you, this is fodder for much abuse (I'm sure I
will receive when I next see you).
Restaurant Jamin--made famous by Joel Robuchon and his mashed potatoes is now in
the hands of one of his "disciples" (not my description but the standard
description in France where Monsieur Robuchon is treated like a God). Jamin is
a very conservative restaurant, both in terms of decor and cusine. The service
is formal but lacks the militaristic attention to detail that seems to permeate
the three star operations in Paris (where the waiters stand at attention all the
time, surveying the dinner landscape for situations that require a new napkin or
a second fork (to enable one person to taste another's dish)). At Jamin, we
begain with a tiny pizza, no bigger than a silver dollar made of leeks and
cheese, which went very well with the champagne (a small producer I had not
heard of before) we started with. Then the chef sent out a demitasse cup in
which we found a crabmeat supspended in aspic with an avocado coulis on top of
it. Although it may sound strange, it was excellent. To start, I had a chicken
sausage (these things sound better in French I find) which was truly
outstanding. It was incredibly light, almost like a quennelle, and lacked a
casing. The sausage was surrounded by morrel mushrooms in a delicious cream and
a carmelized sugar and meat sauce that complemented the woodsy mushrooms.
Bridget had shrimp in a vegetable broth with spring vegetables which was
straightforward and excellent. We both had fish for dinner (and a Meurseult as
a wine)--I had a turbot on a bed of pureed peas surrounded by snow peas and
Bridget had Saint Pierre with more spring time vegetables (peas, favas, tiny
fennel bulbs, etc). For dessert, we had ananas victoria which is essentially
pineapple sauteed in vanilla butter with a bit of genoise cake and some whipped
cream--again straightforward but well executed and a couple of selections from
the dessert cart--a rubarb tart and a pineapple, pistachio, and merigue cake. I
must note that Bridget does not approve of dessert carts. She feels they
demonstrate a laziness in terms of presentation. I would tend to agree that they
don't leave one impressed, but they do show how a kitchen thinks about dessert.
And again, Jamin is extremely conservative--its desserts were very traditional.
Overall, Jamin is an excellent restaurant for those of you who like tradition,
but it lacks the drama you would find at other places in this letter.
Lucas-Carton--just off the Place Madleine. Art nouveau decor, super formal
service, with a surprisingly modern take on a classic french menu. Lucas-Carton
is the home of Alain Senderens who, like Robuchon, is one of the top French
chefs and who has modernized the classic recipies, introducing new ingredients
into traditional dishes. I happen to really like his cookbooks and have used
them often (or at least the few times a year when I do cook). We started again
with champagne, this time produced for Lucas-Carton--I found this a bit too dry
for my tastes but if you like dry champagne you can get it at Sherry Lehman in
New York. We received from the Chef razor clams with baby leeks, ginger, and
cream. The addition of the ginger was an interesting touch. Then there was a
martini glass filled with a ivory colored soup with apple matchsticks on its
surface. This was very good, salty, sweet,and creamy. It turned out to be a
cream of sole. I liked the taste but thought we were eating some leftover sauce
that had missed its plates. We ordered a Pouilly fume as we were both having
lighter meats that evening. I had lobster served with a polenta prepared with
the lobster eggs. It was excellent and very pretty with the yellow/orange
polenta offset against the red and white lobster. Bridget had "asperagus cooked
and raw" which were two very large asperigi (if my latin serves me here), split
open and filled with veal reduction. Accompanying the two spears were shredded
raw apagus that was arranged like a bird's nest. We thought the asparagus dish
was good but not awesome. Bridget had lobster in a bourbon vanilla butter sauce
as her main course and it was awesome. I think this is one of the trademark
dishes at Lucas-Carton and the combination of the sweet lobster and the vanilla
permeated our table. I had roast chicken with perserved lemon and fennel which
was also very good. For me roasting a chicken is a real test of one's cooking
ability, and this was very juicy yet crisp--just as I like it. I had the cheese
course (livarot, roquefort, a chevre, and epoisse) and then we had dessert.
Bridget had a pistachio ice cream with chocolate crisps and a raspberry sauce
and I had candied orange peel with bitter chocolate sorbet. I think the french
make the best ice cream in the world. I know some may disagree--italian
gelato is so (too) dense and rich; american ice cream is so imaginative--but the
french do classic flavors better than any other place I have been, and they seem
to always deliver their ice cream at the absolutely correct consistency. It
seems like the ice cream is only a minute away from melting but is always still
intact. Lucas carton is right up there with Taillevent. The service is
imppecable. Perhaps a bit formal but that is how I like it. The waiters stand
at the center of each dining room, watching diners carefully and always refill
our glasses without our having to ask them. The rooms are small and the tables
are beautifully set in a very classy sort of way (white tablecloths, custom
designed plates and silverware, reste-couteaux for the knives. If you like food
more or less traditional but with a twist here and there, then Lucas-Carton is
for you.
Our last stop was Pierre Gagnaire, a restaurant that opened after we had
returned to the States. Unlike Jamin at which both Bridget and I had eaten and
Lucas Carton where Bridget had been before, Gagnaire was new to both of us. All
we knew was that Chef Gagnaire had had three stars in his restaurant in Burgundy
or the Loire but that his restaurant had gone bankrupt. People said it was on
account of the avant-guard nature of his cooking and the fact that the town in
which he located his restaurant was not a natural tourist destination so it
relied on locals who were not interested in his cooking. He had moved to Paris
and was now located in a hotel off the champs elysees. Sometimes the best
experiences are those you are unprepared for. I could not have imagined that our
final dinner was going to be a gastronomic cirque du soleil. As some of you
know, Bridget and I do not have exactly the same taste in aesthetics. She
favors more traditional furniture and designs So her eyes were happy at Jamin
where the decor was early 19th century. We were both happy at Lucas Carton
where the art nouveau decor appealed to both of us. But I was happy at Gagnaire.
It is an extremely modern looking restaurant without being unharmonious. It is
done all in blondish woods and green grey walls. It had a cool feel to it, not
withstanding the velocity with which the waitstaff whisked in and out of the
room. As is the case in most all the top restaurants in France, the chef's wife
handles the front of the house. Mme. Gagnaire escorted us to our table. The
tables are white (but each table is laid with three white tablecloths, each of
which has a different texture--the top was plain white linen, the second which
was only ever so much bigger than the first was a white on while stripe, and the
third was white on white tiny polkadots. The place setting was very simple
white plates and very traditional french silverware. I should have recognized
that when you start with plain white plates, you are making a statement--that
the food will blow you away. I will let the complexity and abundance of the menu
do the talking.
The first thing to arrive was a rectangular silver pan filled with bread crumbs
and six potato chips. Upon further inspection and nibbling, we discovered that
they were not all potato chips--only two were potato, the others were beet chips
and carrot chips. In a demitasse cup there were also two nearly transparent
cheese crisps with flecks of pepper visible throughout. We were served four
different kinds of bread--pain au lait, buckwheat, chestnut, and traditional.
Then we received various dishes from the chef--a cucumber and mango foam in a
martini glass, oyster and clam tempura, spanish mussels on a timbale of finely
chopped zucchini, and an anchovy cream with tiny gnocchi. We had a delicious
Champagne (Salmon-Billancourt or something like that). We had not ordered a
thing yet. I cannot do justice to the menu. Each dish had a name that referred
to the theme of the dish, but each dish was composed of numerous sub-dishes (if
you will) so it was hard to keep everything straight even as one ordered. The
menu was sufficiently elaborate that Bridget said to me, "let's not order the
degustation menu as I am not sure I am that hungry this evening". Read on.
Bridget seemed to have a thing for dishes that had the word "Spring" in their
description on this trip. She ordered the Selection Printemps which had four
different plates including sauteed frog with mushrooms, terrnine of rabbit,
marinated abelone, and a very sweet soup of spring peas. I began with a dish
entitled "Memories of Catalan" which translated into a plate of the smallest
squid I have ever seen. A whole squid would have been no longer than 2-3 cm.
They were served in a light saffron sauce with raddichio. The bodies of the
squid were stuffed with I think must have been a mixture of bitter greens and
finely chopped orange rinds. This was a delicious combination. Accompanying
this dish was catalan spaghetti (greenish twigs that tasted like fennel seed)
with a deep fried, breaded duck liver ball, chic peas, and a tiny piece of skate
fish. I do not know Spanish cuisine well enough but I can say two things--each
ingredient was probably deeply symbolic of the cuisine of Spain and you probably
couldn't find anything like this in Spain, except at that restaurant El Bulli
where the chef may be more of a crazy-genius than Pierre Gagnaire. We had a
cote rotie this evening to span the various dishes we ordered. My main dish was
venison cooked "a l'enfer" (how could I miss out on something described as
infernal) which meant it was cooked quickly in a very hot oven--we call that
broiling...The venison came with what appeared to be mache lettuce (also known
as lambs ears lettuce) and some pretty yellow and pink flowers. It was served
with a sauce diable, a moderately spicy pan juices and tomato gravy. On another
plate was a tiny caillette (a baby quail) stuffed with a variety of organ meats
(I know not which) , on another was what appeared to be pieces of venison liver
in an orange marmelade sauce, and on a third I had a "cake" made from roasting
juices and cinammon with a mousse of chevre cheese and a blueberry/mirtilles
sauce. Bridget turned the tables on me this evening. She had a roasted chicken
with modern version of pommes anna--except there was only the crust. Call it
six two inch in diameter potato rounds layered against each other and fried to a
crackling crisp and served with a single cooked prune on top. On another plate
was shredded chicken thighs cooked with some brown sugar sitting on a bed of
what appeared to be bitter greens and a few carefully placed sweet peas. On top
of the shredded chicken lay a very thin disk of carmelized sugar infused with
cumin. I liked this quite a bit.
At this point, I was stuffed, in fact the last time I was so stuffed was
10 years ago when we went to Troisgros with our good friend and gastronomic
mentor Vincent Giroud. Although I thought I was going to explode halfway
through the meal and was duped into believing that the fruit cart that came
after the meal was the dessert cart (there was another dessert cart that
followed with actual sweets), I had seen Vincent--all 145 pounds of him-- polish
off a gigantic meal without even breaking a sweat. So I had inspiration to last
a few more dishes. Bridget reminded me that I knew of techniques to increase my
capacity to eat. When I was very little, I had a Hungarian aunt whose husband
was in the food (unfortunately instituional) business and for whom food
equalled love. When my sister and I used to visit her, my aunt would treat us
like french geese being prepared to make foie gras. If we couldn't finish
whatever she placed before us, she would suggest that we walk around the table
until our hunger came back. Then more food would be piled on. 30 years later,
I was not going to march around the restaurant waiting for my appetite to
return. I used my will power (and greed) to steady myself for what was to
come.
Bridget and I agreed to order only one dessert--Gagnaire's fantasie des
desserts. Just the name alone indicated that this like everything else at this
restaurant came with multiple dishes. We girded ourselves for the seven
desserts that were to arrive. Only now do I see the dantesque nature of this
meal--these were nothing more than the seven deadly sins making their way into
the dining room. But I digress. There was a "margarita" which was essentially
a frozen margarita with a very foamy head--an alcoholic intermezzo if you will.
A kirch flavored gelatin with wild strawberries and a strawberry coulis which
was very good. A passion fruit mousse served with a vanilla sugar crisp in a
chocolate cup. A mille feuille/chocolate tower composed of chocolate wafers and
bitter and milk chocolate ganache layers . Cooked fruit (apples, pears, and
peaches) on a cake. A very strange frozen yogurt-flavored yogurt served with a
sauce of extra-virgin olive oil. ( I have always thought "extra-virgin" is one
of the best marketing concepts ever created. Could someone please explain what
could be more virgin than virgin?) A coffee semi-freddo made with taboule and
what appeared to be a licorice-flavored coffee sauce. And finally marshmallows.
Two white cubes dusted in powered sugar. They had a very floral bouquet to
them--frankly,the smelled like a fancy talcum power to me. Can't say either of
us liked them, but having eaten everything else placed before us, Bridget and I
looked at each other and
said "pourquoi pas" and down they went.
