Eating and Drinking in Paris

Agreed, but I make exceptions for lievre a la royale and also for giant lobes of sweetbreads.

You literally just made my night. So happy to see this.

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Am glad to see 2/3 posters were non praisers. I was shocked by a terrible demonstration of cuisine and service but saw that almost all recent and past reviews consider this places extraordinary. Maybe its the emperor’s new clothes phenomena.

First of all, in a side room was an extremely loud dinner party of about 10 businessmen. They were laughing and carrying on at level you would expect to see at a bachelor’s party . Loud noise carried throughout the whole dining room. I worked in two 3 Star restaurants many years ago and I am certain staff would have said something. I suspect that money comes first here and they do not want to discourage these high profit business dinners. They could have partitioned off this separate room with noise reducing walls since I suspect this happens repeatedly.

Two problems with the food-organization and quality. It seems Gagnaire’s philosophy is to put down 4 or 5 small "satellite plates " around the main course. Most of these satellite dishes had no relation to the main course or to each other. They had to be placed so far away from the main course that we had to reach out to access them and then bring the spoon or fork back to our mouth over a pretty long distance requiring us to bend forward over the main plate… These dishes had extremely different tastes and we were given only one fork and spoon so we had to clean the utensil with our mouths before trying the next satellite dish. The fish main course was an average piece of fish I can’t even remember as I was so unimpressed. It was served in a sort of chive beurre blanc sauce that I could have made myself. I ordered pork and got an extremely large piece but 80% of it was pure fat. The waiter looked over and noticed that and became concerned. I do not see how the chef could have missed that before cooking it. He said he would bring me an alternative which was supposed to be a small piece of cooked foie gras but when he returned instead was just a small piece of pork, at least this time without the fat. On one course they started to place my wife’s choice in front of me and when I corrected them and they seem somewhat annoyed. They make the fancy presentation and lift the domes off the plates but this was done by 1 server who did them one at a time. At one point due to these satellites, we probably had 10 finished dishes on the table. Nobody did anything about this until roughly 10 minutes later after I had to tell someone.
The sign of a great restaurant is that you leave with memories, maybe only 1 or 2, but last you forever. I can still recall certain dishes I had a great restaurants 40 years ago. I left here with nothing.

The chef was not there that night. He was at his other restaurant in Paris. In addition he has 5 or 6 restaurants around the world. The two 3 Star chefs I worked for had only one restaurant. If Gagnaire was competent, that should not have effected the food and certainly should not have effected the confused service.

I know enough to not discuss this with my French chef friends because bashing Gagnaire would be blasphemy. It was the same with Bocuse while he was alive but as soon as he passed away they started removing stars.

I cannot understand why a restaurant that is rated so highly on Internet was so terrible for us. Consistency is imperative. Jean Troisgros once looked out at the room and told me that any one of the tables may have saved up all year to be there

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Chartreuse Paris (St Germain) is having a special vertical tasting of Chartreuse Verte ou Jeune 1995, 2005, 2015 & 2025 this Feb 15. PM me if you want the invite/info (I cannot go). (They also are having some exceptional openings of their, bar, etc., w/ their regular offerings.)

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yeah i recall what made my a la carte experience much better was the lack of all the little divergent “satellite” dishes you mention. like many of these legacy institutions i am sure it was at its peak several decades ago. at this point there is nothing left to prove for a chef of this stature and reputation. that being said, gagnaire also seems to favor rather rather odd flavor combinations so i can see people either loving it or hating it just on the shock factor. also i always thought one of his protege’s restaurants was a vastly better example of this style of cooking; akrame. i guess it dropped from two stars to one in recent time tho and you do not hear too much about it in the food press.

Agree.

And Akrame was great in its original location. We only went once after they moved to the Madeleine and I haven’t heard much about it since.

i had no idea they moved. it is not unusual for these types of restaurants to become pretty much irrelevant in short order. look at astrance! down to one star. i remember when it was nearly impossible to book. that was another restaurant with an absurdly well priced wine list filled with aged burgs.

Mark - Can you book via email or best to call? I will hit it on my March trip, I think.

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We ate there in January. Highly recommended. I booked by phone.

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Thanks. I will give them a call. My French is at its best for restaurant vocabulary.

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I email them from the US

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This made me laugh audibly. It was all fun and games until I found myself trying to buy appliances at Darty. “Derp, uhhh donc le warranty je voudre fridge avec glace chop chop. Cote de bouef.”

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Like all higher end Paris restaurants, the employees of Le Duc speak better English than I do.

Le Duc is great for people watching in addition to the great food.

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I was in a storage facility in Issy-les-Moulineaux a few years back and Astrance had a stack of some really nice wines sitting on a pallet.

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I enjoy practicing my French, which used to be quite good, but now is perfectly adequate, when I can, especially knowing there’s an English safety net to fall back on. :slight_smile:

Anyone ever eaten at Bistro Du Maquis, in the 18th, Rue de Caulaincourt - Montmartre, to have the pressed duck in 2 services (reservation required, 4 days in advance, via phone only)?

Thanks

This is the best explanation so far.
This is disappointing because truly greats in any profession should drive themselves continuously to maintain their standards.
Still have questions:
Unlike my experience at Paul Bocuse,3 years ago ( I went numerous times 40 years ago and it was very good) where I knew it would be terrible (but still the chefs I knew would never say that.) The only reason I went to Bocuse 3 years ago was because we were passing by and I wanted to show my wife the Loup en Croute Farci de Mousse Hommard, Sauce Choron. I tried to make it for her several times here in the USA but it was always so bad that she finally told me me to stop trying, But the dish that day was even worse than mine. The fresh lobster mousse was replaced by a cheap fish pate and the sauce choron was a mess of cheap mayonase. it made no difference because all the diners at Bocuse that day were tourists who had no idea that the service and food were crap.
This was different because the diners at Gagnaire were, with the exception of us and one other table, French.No one semed unhappy. I spoke to one on the way out and he said this was his second time there and he was happy with his experience. I do not think we were treated differently being foreigners because accent is almost non existant. So- maybe we just had very bad luck that night, but that does not explain groveling through all these sensless satellite dishes as I described in my original post.
Would appreciate any further insight

Sorry for the drift, but 41+ years ago we went to Bocuse for the first time. My wife was seven months pregnant with our first. A large table near us was served the Loup, which was also very large. My wife didn’t want the menu, but she wanted the Loup after seeing it served. We expected that she would be served a decorated slice of Loup. Nope. They served her a small fish, as beautifully prepared and decorated as a large one. Chef Bocuse could not have been more charming (or flirtatious).

i think with chefs it is quite different from other top performing professionals. restaurants are difficult enough to operate, manage and scale let alone with any consideration for retaining the high level of precision and execution fine dining requires. gagnaire has two *** flagships at the moment not to mention many peripheral concepts. once someone has multiple locations how is it even possible to keep track what really goes on (keller did the video feed between per se and tfl)…not to mention cooking is a physical endeavor and once a chef reaches a certain age (gagnaire is 74) how much time do they really spend in the kitchen? the only star chef i have ever seen ‘living’ or even eating at their own restaurant is passard. as to why some diners were satisfied while you were not…perhaps they ordered differently? or simply a lack of dining experience? as someone who has eaten at most of these benchmark institutions, diminishing returns do set in after you have been on the circuit for a while. you seem to have more than adequate experience to not be fooled by reputation alone. maybe it was an off night but the only way to be sure is possibly try a la carte next time? my guess tho is that your initial impressions and instinct are likely quite accurate.

Yes, back then it was a wonderful restaurant. The loup en croute was always like that.
He was a remarkable chef . In the kitchen, I had the impression that he had 360 degree vision. Never saw a chef with such command of his kitchen.
None of his legal or illegitimate children wanted to take over and based on the sort of people who eventually populated it, the level of cuisine made no difference anyway,
Too bad I cannot find my original post of 3 years ago, laying out all the bad things.