Whenever we talk to friends about our recent trip to Paris, we get the same reaction. They stare, open-mouthed, and ask, ”Did you really spend $400 on one dinner?”
Actually, no. At the time, we thought we had. But we paid by credit card, and by the time the bill showed up, the dollar had posted a modest gain against the franc, and our little meal ended up costing us a mere $372.07. A second meal, only slightly less decadent, ran $325; a third meal just barely cleared the $300 mark. So we spent $1,000 on three meals.
Of course, these were not ordinary restaurants. The first was Jamin, chef Joel Robuchon`s culinary masterpiece, holder of the maximum three stars by the Guide Michelin and considered one of the finest restaurants in Paris, and, by extension, the world. The second, l`Arpege, is a two-star restaurant on the cusp of a third; many in the know predicted that chef Alain Passard would receive his third star when the latest edition of the Guide Michelin came out. He didn`t get it, but l`Arpege is still marvelous.
The third, Les Trois Marches, is part of the Trianon Palace, a splendiferous luxury hotel in Versailles. Service at Les Trois Marches is at such a high level that the restaurant provides embroidered-fabric footstools- to spare ladies` purses from the indignity of contact with the meticulously polished marble floor.
Those three restaurants were the highlights of a five-day eating vacation in February that did nothing to dispute the notion that you can`t get a bad meal in Paris. Oh, there was that one couscous restaurant that was nothing to write home about-but dinner there, with a glass of wine, was just $38.
(Editor`s note: See the review of ”Western Europe`s cheapest restaurant”-
also in Paris-also on this page.
Our attack plan was simple: Working off the Guide Michelin, we arranged to visit one three-star, two two-stars and a one-star restaurant. We figured that would give our dining experience plenty of depth and range, while leaving at least a few centimes jangling in our pockets afterwards.
Sea green and sea urchins
In a city that worships food, Jamin is a high temple. The dining room is pretty and comfortable, the floral carpet in shades of burgundy and sea green that are echoed in the curtains and woodwork. The menu lists two fixed-price, seven-course meals, plus an a la carte selection. Virtually everything on the set menus is available a la carte, so you have lots of flexibility.
Highlights include a marvelous sea urchin and cream of fennel soup. The pureed urchin is molded to the bottom of a tea cup; when the hot fennel cream is ladled on top, the urchin puree breaks up irregularly into lightly sweet, nearly liquid segments.
Roasted pigeon, juicy and tender, is possibly the finest dish I`ve ever had. The meat is encased in a roll of buttery, delicious cabbage, overwrapped with two strips of bacon and topped with chopped shallots, tiny slivers of black pepper and coarse salt. The flavors unite in the mouth, and the effect is stunning.
Dinners include what the menu coyly refers to as ”choice of desserts.”
At Jamin, this means you choose when you simply cannot manage another bite. Silky chocolate fondant, intense caramel ice cream, luscious pastries-one follows another in a daunting procession. When the pastry cart arrived
(following two other desserts) and we indicated that we`d try two of the cart selections, our waiter seemed puzzled. ”C`est tout?” he asked. ”That`s all?”
Where Jamin is country-soothing, l`Arpege is sleek and contemporary. Curvy interior walls of natural wood, peach-colored outer walls and brushed-suede chairs give the room a neutral background that`s still warm; bright poppies at each table add a dash of color.
The menu lists three fixed-price menus (and a fourth at lunch) and a substantial a la carte selection. One set menu offered a wide range of contemporary and traditional styles: Chunks of lobster over wafers of turnip with sweet and sour vinaigrette, subtly seasoned breaded monkfish, salt-crusted venison with peppered oil and, finally, an odd-sounding but delicious dessert of stuffed tomato (filled with chopped nuts and dates)
cooked in a lemony sugar syrup.
Sitting in the dining room at Les Trois Marches, it`s hard to remember you`re just 20 minutes away from Paris. The two-story windows overlook a meadow of grazing sheep and, beyond that, rolling countryside. Silky-smooth service bridges the gap between the pastoral view and the elegant cuisine.
The menu at Les Trois Marches is divided in two. The classic menu lists familiar dishes, among them smoked salmon with chive cream, roasted lobster with potato galettes and cassoulet. The nouvelle menu is by far the most interesting. There we found an airy but surprisingly assertive flan of turbot, paired with a single sweet oyster; luscious sweetbreads above an exceptional veal sauce; and a lobster medallion, topped in turn by crisscrossed asparagus spears and two round slices of earthy black truffle, sitting above a ginger-laced vinaigrette.
The most memorable part of Les Trois Marches is the cheese course. It takes three enormous carts, each crammed with cheeses, to present the various options-we counted 60 varieties. It`s easy, with a little help from your server, to put together a fine selection. Dessert options are not quite so numerous as the cheese choices, but the restaurant presents more sweets than you can prudently consume, although we consumed them anyway.
For the rest of our meals, we went simply on impulse. One night we walked around until something or someplace grabbed our attention; another time we played a version of musical chairs, nosing about from one shop to another for a couple of hours; the cafe closest to us at the moment our blood sugar gave out was where we landed.
We stuck around a little longer in Versailles, for instance, to grab dinner at Brasserie La Fontaine, which is the Trianon Palace`s ”other”
restaurant. It`s a true brasserie, bright and noisy, awash in art nouveau accents. There we had a spectacular, earthy fish soup, accompanied by a rouille (an emulsion of breadcrumbs, oil and spices) and lots of grated Gruyere cheese-both served on the side, for custom seasoning. At Dodin Bouffant, a one-star seafood specialist back in Paris, we had splendid red mullet, but the highlight was the dessert course-a banana-flavored souffle that stood 4 inches above its dish and tasted as light as it looked.
Of course, we tried a croque monsieur at Aux Deux Magots, the famed cafe, and sampled a couple of crepes from a street vendor (even here, the devotion to food is apparent; each crepe is made to order while you watch).
A few other observations:
– Reservations are a must, of course, and for the better restaurants you should plan on making reservations weeks in advance. A foolproof way of doing just that is by contacting Robert Noah of Paris en Cuisine, via fax machine, at 011-331-42-60-39-96. For $18 per reservation, Noah will arrange
reservations and reconfirmations.
– Parisians are smokers, and restaurants and cafes are where most of the smoking is done. Care for an after-dinner cigar in the fanciest restaurants in town? No problem-the restaurant, in fact, will fetch you a cigar if you ask.
– By all means pay your bills via credit card when possible. When our bills arrived from Visa and American Express, our purchases had been converted at rates that bettered those of any bank or currency exchange we found in Paris.
– A good understanding of French isn`t at all necessary to get by in most French restaurants; most waiters we encountered spoke English. You expect that at the top restaurants, but even waiters in the cafes could manage at least a smidgen of English. Some menus come with English translations as well, though these can`t always be trusted completely; at Dodin Bouffant, an appetizer described as ”ray fish” was, in fact, a composition of raw fish. A pocket glossary of menu terms is a handy tool.
– One final theory regarding why Parisian food seems so marvelous. Two weeks prior to arriving, travelers starve themselves at home, in anticipation of their inevitable weight gain while overseas. For two weeks after they return, travelers subsist on little more than canned tuna and Ultra Slim-Fast- partly because of weight gain, mostly because they`re broke.
As time goes by, they`ll recall that the only decent food they ate in that five- to six-week stretch came from Paris. That`s how legends are born. –
