Épicure - Paris
Chicken poached in (not its own) bladder - delicious, but don’t try this at home
Rating: 17/20
Where: Paris, France
When: Dinner for 2 on 6 December 2021
Cost: Tasting menu 380 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, #83 on Top 50 Restaurants list (2021)
Why: Classical French high-end cuisine in a classical fancy dining room
Épicure is located in the posh Hotel Bristol in Paris. The decor of the restaurant matches the hotel's, that is very old-fashioned - think floral drapery. This was also the only restaurant we visited on this particular trip that had a dress code: jackets were required for men. The service was friendly and uncomplicated, however, easily making up a wine pairing on the fly, according our preferences and serving half or full glasses as desired. Some small service snafus: being offered wine from "California Valley", and pulling out a chair at the wrong table when my wife returned from the bathroom. Thankfully she preferred my company :)
We opted for the chef's seven course tasting menu, and given the extensive a la carte menu, making the menu pescatarian by substituting two dishes was no problem.
Some amuse bouches showed up even before we ordered. They were: a (cold) egg custard with truffles, a sunchoke crisp and a (warm) crispy ball filled with foie gras, accompanied by a kugelhupf with bacon. All nice, but not mind blowing, an average of 16.
The bread was milled and baked in-house, but served at room temperature. Pretty good, but not as compelling as the freshly baked (or at least heated) breads we had on the preceding nights. As a nice touch, we got to take a loaf home at the end of the night, and I can attest that is markedly better after reheating, but still not quite at the level of some other restaurants.
A last appetizer was herring mousse over a jelly of (I think) red beets. I thought this was pretty tasty, but my wife didn't care much for it 16.
The first "real" course was caviar over a potato mousse, the latter served warm. You can't really go wrong with this combination and there was a good amount of caviar. Alas, this wasn't too different from many similar caviar presentations we've had in the past, and didn't stand out much 17.
Next was probably the standout dish of the evening, a langoustine with a lemony sauce. This was refreshingly light, and the langoustine was perfectly cooked - just slightly blanched -, so that it was almost but not entirely raw, keeping the fresh bite of the raw langoustine without any chewiness or too much sweetness 19.
One of the chef's signature dishes was next, a cannelloni filled with truffles, artichoke and foie gras, topped with melted parmesan cheese. The dish turned out to be far lighter than the words "foie gras filling" would make one believe. On the other hand, it was also somewhat underwhelming given all the high-end ingredients. None of them really stood out, and if I hadn't had the menu at hand, guessing the individual ingredients would have been a challenge. In all, this was a perfectly pleasant pasta, but I've had much better even at non-starred Italian restaurants 15.
The pescatarian replacement for the pasta was a single thick stem of leek, cooked over fire to be totally charred on the outside, and then cut open to reveal the soft, cooked inside. This was topped with a ragout of oysters. I liked that this dish was unusual for such a high-end restaurant: way more rustic than one would expect. However, the taste didn't blow me away 15.
Scallops with potato gnocchi, a watercress sauce and shaved white truffles from Alba were next. I'm sad to report that while the white truffles added the expected wonderful smell, they contributed little to the taste of the dish. The main culprit was the lack of fat in the dish that might have allowed the truffle flavors to be integrated with the rest of the food. We also wished that there had been more of the watercress sauce. The different ingredients of the dish were nicely prepared, but the sum was somehow less than the parts 16.
The final savory course was hen poached in a (pig's) bladder. An ancient way to perform sous-vide cooking, this dish is rarely enough served, presumably since cooking chicken sous-vide is so much simpler. A bladder is duly shown to all diners before being served the dish. I assume that this was an empty floor sample, since one would probably handle a bladder filled with hot chicken and sauce more carefully that the staff did. The chicken was wonderfully tender, with some crayfish and mushrooms. Among the best chicken breasts I've eaten, although there is probably a limit to how much I'd rhapsodize about chicken even if done perfectly - in the end, it's still only chicken 18.
The pescatarian option was sole, which I thought was delicious - I couldn't get enough of the sauce, of which we were thankfully given an extra pot (just like I had for the chicken, unfortunately this was a only course where we received extra sauce) 18.
Cheese was next, and it was somewhat disappointing both in terms of breadth of selection and in quality/taste of the cheese. Comparing this directly to the cheese course we had the preceding night at Assiette Champenoise, that latter one was far superior.
The first dessert "Lemon from Menton" more than made up for the cheese course. With a flavor similar to a Meyer Lemon, this dish had frozen lemon around a center of lemon in a sweet sauce. This dish tasted fresh, not heavy at all, and had nice contrasts between cold and warm, crunchy and soft. Amazing 20.
More predictable was the second dessert "Chocolate from Cuba", chocolate sorbet with crunchy wafers and pieces of chocolate. Not bad, but also nothing special 15.
Overall: An enjoyable dinner, but there were few memorable dishes. At the end this was a good traditional dinner at a high-end French restaurant, but I wouldn't be able to pin-point what makes this chef's cuisine different from any other traditional high-end French cooking. Had that been more apparent, there would be more reasons to come here versus lots of other good restaurants in Paris 17.
PS: Always fun to run along the Seine, but maybe not in the rain with 46F/8C weather.