I’m over both, but at least one makes sense for some people or occasions.
the “small plates designed to be shared” is a dumb concept from the get go. Big portions are meant to be shared, not small ones.
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The forced conviviality of it all is grating, as if I need help enjoying the company of the people I explicitly choose to dine with! Making me sit at a communal table and/or obscuring the size of every dish by eliminating menu sections for the sake of sharing doesn’t make me feel a “sense of community” it just adds inconvenience and frustration.
It often seems at least one diner per party at a share-plates joint leaves not having gotten what they truly wanted to eat, which is a dining experience I figured a restaurant would want to avoid with urgency.
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Well said!
I find myself going to many more old school places for the nostalgia of being allowed to order my own appetizer and entrée.
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Same. I wouldn’t say I’m tired of tasting menus, places like Plenitude and Septime do it right for my tastes, but I do think it’s time for some of the Michelin-chasers to give à la carte a real shot. I went to Le Cinq this past October and chose à la carte and it was absolutely sublime in the same way Ambroisie is to me (haven’t been since Chef Pacaud retired). The generosity of those plates meant I could actually get to know the dishes in greater detail. The head waiter’s eyes lit up when I said we wanted to get the classics of the restaurant à la carte. You could tell he’s very proud of that kitchen!
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I am generally pretty bored with tasting menus. I do think as said above the restaurants in Paris are tolerable. Orson has already changed from a tasting menu format to a la carte. Cypsele was the right amount of time and food for lunch, although we let them know a few things we did not want beforehand so they adjusted the menu. I love everything EME does and the portion sizes are perfect, plus the space is beautiful and they have a great Jazz oriented playlist so I like theirs.
Our flight was cancelled so we got in one more day! A long leisurely lunch at Les Enfants du Marche! It was cold but it was delightful to hold court while various friends from both the culinary and fashion worIds (It was the tail-end of Mens) were in town.
We then hit Cave Septime while waiting for dinner…
And FINALLY we made it to Lao Siam. This is a Laotian, Vietnamese, Thai family restaurant that has been in business for 40 years. It is a favorite of Parisian based Chefs. Especially on Sunday night! The sons have taken over from their parents and they now have a wine list. But you can also do corkage. I brought several bottles. We went we a bunch of Chefs and ti could not have been more fun and exactly what we wanted to do on an impromptu Sunday night in Paris. The place was packed with restaurant people and some fashion people who I had told about the restaurant. All in all a really fun night.
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I wonder if my tolerance for tasting menus has something to do with spending so much time in Japan, where ‘course’ menus are very much the accepted norm at many restaurants of various levels and varieties. Obviously not everywhere, but so many places where that’s just the way things work, that I’ve sublimated the expectation.
That could be why I enjoy them to some extent. Living in a city where there are virtually no restaurants that do tasting menus; I like the change up they offer.
Sorry - I think what I wrote wasn’t clear. “Course” menus in Japan are essentially tasting menus - you pay a single price and get whatever set of dishes they are serving today. Can be everything from one set of dishes on a tray at a roadside local palce, to sushi omakase, to kaiseki. So my point was that they are everywhere, not that they are nowhere.
I understood, I’m validating your thought in saying that I’m the opposite. Because they’re not readily available to me, I enjoy them. Whereas, they were too available to you so you got burnt out.
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Ah got it. Except that I said I didn’t get burned out. I am very tolerant of tasting menus, they don’t bother me at all because they are what I’m used to as the normal way restaurants operate, without fanfare or question, rather than a “thing.”
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The trick with a tasting menu is to nail the amount of food. Septime does a great job. Atomix is another. However I don’t know how you do this when everyone has a different appetite.
Interestingly Chefs have told me cooks hate tasting menus because they create a tension between the guests, FOH and the kitchen because they are so inflexible.
In NYC outside of the 2-3 stars restaurants they are struggling or gone completely.
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I really feel bad for the supremely talented pastry chefs at these restaurants because by the time I get through the last savory course in a big tasting menu I am frequently desperate for a single square of chocolate or small scoop of vanilla ice cream and nothing more.
Tasting menus could be a chore for me when I was younger and lacked the courage to declare that I am getting full and can’t clean my plate on subsequent courses. I’ve found service staff to be very understanding about this. Despite my complaints about tasting menus, I think they’re a bit better on average, logistically anyway, than 8-10 years ago. A lot of kitchens seem to have realized few people want to be forced to dine for 4.5 hours even if everyone is cooking and eating as fast as they can (like my dinner at Per Se in 2012!). For the relevance of the thread, I went to 7 of Paris’s 3 star restaurants in the last year and a half and I don’t think any of those visits exceeded 3 hours. And I didn’t feel rushed at any of them, the rhythms are just better than they once were for my tastes.
I do enjoy the occasional “we got here for lunch and now we’re ready to order dinner” situations that one can have at jovial places like Galatoire’s in New Orleans, but this is a completely different dining situation altogether.
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Better you than me! Just kidding 
I occasionally do a 3 star tasting menu. Most are too long and emphasize luxurious ingredients simply for the sake of well luxury!
Curious which one was your favorite(s)? @BrandonD
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It’s not a thing I do regularly. I saved up to do a big survey of most 3 star places in Paris in a short period of time so I could get a decent snapshot. Plenitude is my favorite by miles. I’ve been twice and both times were as close to perfection as I’ve ever experienced in a restaurant. My next favorites would be L’Ambroisie (haven’t been since Pacaud retired) and Le Cinq (a la carte as mentioned in a previous comment). Middle of the road would be Alleno and Epicure. At the bottom is Le Gabriel and Pierre Gagnaire. Which is not to say they were bad restaurants! I think all deserve their stars, my ranking is about my personal tastes. I’m no food critic so I didn’t go there with the intention of thinking about them “objectively”.
Not in Paris, but the other 3 star I went to this past October was Assiette Champenoise and I’d put them right up there tied in second place. Exceptional restaurant, intense attention to detail, delicious plates, and wonderful staff. I’d return in a heartbeat.
My personal benchmark of a truly great fine dining establishment is if I think about eating one of their dishes long after the meal has concluded. I am still thinking of Plenitude’s roast chicken with sauternes sauce, white truffle, and dumplings as well as their lievre a la royale. I think of L’Ambroisie’s feuillantine de langoustines, Le Cinq’s Dublin Bay prawns, and Assiette’s caviar and potato. But I don’t daydream about the dishes I had at Le Gabriel and Pierre Gagnaire. Can’t win ‘em all, them’s the breaks!
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Thanks. Super helpful. Plenitude is probably the three star I would go to in Paris that I have not been to.
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A number of Paris starred restaurants offer a la carte in addition to the survey tasting menus. The survey menus can be a nice introduction to a restaurant, but we generally (not always) prefer to pick a handful of dishes that are split in the kitchen and create our own tasting menu.
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Question,
How much will be closed on Easter Monday? I get into CDG around 10:30am that day with a friend that hasn’t been to Paris in 20+ years. I have us taken care of for Tuesday, but I have a feeling plenty will be closed
I think your bigger issue will be Monday, in general, rather than Easter Monday… at least at the more mainstream spots.
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Understood and I was trying to emphasize that to my friend. But to no avail.
I think sitting at a counter, interacting with the chef, helps make the tasting menu experience more engaging and dynamic. I also enjoy having the random conversation with other people you’re sitting next to at a counter (Japanese people seem to open up in these situations in ways they don’t outside of this environment, and I have a sense many like to practice their English).
The “tasting menu” in Japan doesn’t have the impersonal feel that being served a tasting menu at a table has.
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