Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen - Paris
View from our table
Rating: 18/20
Where: Paris, France
When: Dinner for 2 on 20 May 2022
Cost: Tasting menu 395 Euro, Wine Pairing 230-490 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, #58 on Top 50 Restaurants list (2022)
Why: Beautiful setting, great modern French food
Alléno Paris is located in the historic Pavillon Ledoyen in a park bordering the Champs-Elysees boulevard in downtown Paris. The Pavillon houses several restaurants by Yannick Alléno: at the time of our visit, one each with one, two and three Michelin stars, respectively. So no wonder that the first question you'll hear when arriving is what restaurant you've made a reservation at. The flagship Alléno restaurant is located on the top floor, with a view of the Petit Palais museum next to the park. Tables are facing the windows and are separated by semi-translucent cloth panes hanging from the ceiling.
Unusually, all decisions about the menu are made a few days before the visit. A staff member contacted us, and asked about dietary preferences, whether we'd like to choose a shorter or a longer tasting menu, and for a choice of main course (fish, sweetbreads, duck and beef in our case). We went for the longer tasting menu. Besides an extensive wine list, two wine pairings were on offer. No problem with ordering two different pairings for the table, a nice respite after the trouble we had at other restaurants over the past week. The paired wines were good to great, but at 230 and 490 Euros respectively, the pairings cannot really be considered a "good deal". Ordering a bottle or two of wine is probably a more sensible choice.
The first amuse bouche arrived after we chose our aperitifs. For me, it was iberico ham and its gelee, with sour cream, gratinated snail and an herbal sauce. The snail felt a bit heavy, possibly having been cooked in butter, but this was otherwise a nice dish 18. The pescatarian alternative was a gelee of butternut squash. Oddly, the gelee did not taste of butternut squash at all, but whatever it tasted of was intense and maybe a tad too salty. I preferred this over the ham and snail dish 18.
A "palette" of spring vegetables (and the occasional fruit) was next. This was an arrangement of 21 kinds of vegetables, such as peas, white and green asparagus, beets, strawberries, ..., with a light olive oil based dressing and a gelee of celery and yellow wine at its center. A very nice dish, all vegetables crunchy and flavorful, with a plethora of textures, and an excellent olive oil. Lacking a bit of the intensity seen in a similar dish we had at Martin Berasategui, but still very good indeed 18.
Next, a tartlet of foie gras and shaved mushrooms, served with a cup of duck broth. The tartlet was good, if a bit light in flavors, and with a bottom that was oddly thick. The duck broth was very heavy on cognac, so much that it overpowered whatever duck flavors there might have been. This was more like drinking a hot cocktail 17. The pescatarian version had a thick mushroom broth that was intensely flavorful, making it the better of the two dishes 18.
Bread was served piping hot: small rolls with an excellent salted butter. They were refreshed several times during dinner whenever they got cold. Wonderful, especially while hot, we had to stop ourselves from eating them lest there’d be no room for the actual dinner 17.
Speaking of which, the dinner continued with a crab salad on top of a curried piece of cauliflower. The whole was topped with grated cauliflower and surrounded by a curry-flavored sauce. Apart from the sauce, this dish was very light in flavor - in hindsight I wished that I had added salt (which was available on the table). With the sauce, it was a decent dish, but would have been better if the crab and cauliflower had been more noticeable 15.
A gratinated Brittany oyster with a green garlic and cream sauce was served alongside huge morels that were cooked in (lots of) cream and wine. The oyster was small and had good flavor. The morels, making up the majority of the dish, were pretty heavy due to the cream. A tasty dish, but one is better off ignoring the calorie tally 17.
Line-caught sea bass was covered with a squid blanquette, and served with sauces of asparagus, sorrel and watercress. This was a magnificent dish, the sauces beautiful, the fish cooked perfectly - although it could have been served warmer. The squid was too soft to really notice. The best dish of the evening 19.
Next up the main course. Mine was wagyu millefeuille. Japanese beef and portobello mushrooms had been sliced very thin while still raw, and then stacked in alternating layers, and cooked together. The slices were so thin that I initially mistook the mushrooms for fat layers. The meat was served with a beef sauce, two capers on top, and a bit of radicchio on the side. A very nice dish indeed, the wagyu and mushrooms blending together into one. While a steak with a mushroom sauce would have had the same flavor overall, it wouldn't have been as tightly integrated. There were some nitpicks, however. My main criticism was that although supposedly "medium rare", the dish seemed almost well done. I suppose cooking paper-thin beef slices medium rare might be close to an impossibility... Also, the usual melt-in-your-mouth texture of really good Japanese beef was destroyed by the slicing and layering, a "lesser" beef might have been totally adequate here. The dish overall was on the heavier side, only the radicchio providing a bit of a break 18.
The pescatarian alternative to the beef was a delightful sole meuniere with a watercress sauce and garlic foam. The sole was nicely firm and had great breading on the outside - it was the best sole meuniere I've ever had by a significant margin. The sauces were very good as well. Our only "complaint" was that the sole was HUGE (for being part of a tasting menu), but being so delicious we still made it disappear in short order 18 (possibly 19).
Unfortunately, the optional cheese course was just too much for us at this point, so we declared defeat and went straight to dessert.
A strawberry tarte topped with mozzarella ice cream and a pesto of basil and strawberry juice was next. Maybe a play on Italian food, using the three colors of the Italian flag? The tarte itself had a great texture, the strawberries on top were very light though, and while the ice cream was good, you could not really tell that it contained mozzarella. The basil gave the whole dish a contrasting, savory flavor. Overall good, but lighter on flavor than you'd want in a dessert 17.
The second dessert was a meringue served with red beets and a sauce of rhubarb and vanilla. The classic combination of rhubarb and vanilla was delightful, and the heavier beet side of the dish balanced the lightness of the meringue. Very good 18.
Coffee ice cream with cognac, buckwheat and raisins was next, again a really pleasant dessert. The coffee dominated in flavor, and an included cracker added some nice crunch. A great combination with the cognac that concluded the wine pairing 17.
The final bite was a piece of dark chocolate filled with pistachio paste 17.
This was a wonderful dinner, with great service, a nice view, and good wine. We liked pretty much all of the dishes, with some of them - the fish courses - being especially good. I'm not sure whether there is a "theme" per se behind this meal. The food was definitely French, sometimes a tad heavy for modern French food. Missing were the high-end staples of truffles, caviar, and the like, which was fine by us, but a bit surprising at the 395 Euro price point. Well, this is Paris, not known for fine-dining bargains.
When the chef made the rounds, we were happy to recognize Gerard Barbin from Le 1947 in Courchevel, which we had visited two months before. He works four months a year in the Alps, and the remainder of the year at the "headquarters" in Paris.
Overall: A thoroughly enjoyable, if somewhat expensive, dinner in a glorious location. Modern, but a bit heavy, French food. Two stars for sure, but three might be a stretch for the dinner we had that night 18.
Tasting menu
Pescatarian tasting menu
PS: A classic that never gets old: running along the Seine to the Eiffel tower. A perfect pre-dinner run after the train ride from La Rochelle.