Our last evening in Paris, so we decided to indulge ourselves (ha, as though we weren’t doing that the last 2+ weeks already…). The restaurant is basically located in a space with a museum and is across the Seine from the Louvre. We took the earliest seating at 7pm which is early by European standards (we normally prefer to dine early anyway) and esp. because we are flying out tomorrow, but the meal still took almost 4 hours when all said and done. We ordered the tasting menu, of course. The techniques to make and present the dishes were often amazingly complex. No dish had a hit-you-over-the-head wow factor taste to them; the appeal was that the flavors were subtle at times, but typically layered.

The most successful dishes to us were the ones that melded all of the elements in the dish together (and a bunch of umami flavor too). The two dishes with mushrooms (one with chanterelles, foie, and cured meat another with mushroom soup, black truffle, and brioche) were our favorites. Wines were primarily by the bottle (the champagne for apertif bring an exception, but it did sound like there were some wines available by the glass (not mentioned anywhere, and we wish we knew that in advance)), and we had a nice Gevrey-Chambertin, perhaps not the perfect pairing for done of the earlier dishes, but a wine that opened up very nicely and paired with the later dishes nicely. Consequently, the wine was surprisingly much less expensive than we are used to when compared to doing full wine pairings where we typically spend as much if not more on wine than the food.

Dishes were appropriately sized for the number of courses, but you know you’re in trouble when you’re only 8 or 9 courses into your tasting menu and you start getting the “Michelin sweats” from being full already, but we sucked it up and persevered through the rest of the menu. It was an enjoyable and hedonistic end to our vacation. Even though I ran a marathon during this vacation, I have no doubts that I’ve gained weight (unless my pants otherwise shrank…). After all of this, we’re looking forward to coming back home and eating simple meals (until we’re not… ).