Paris Trip Report - mostly dining, some pictures

[StevieG]

Last week I was in Paris for work. There was very little time for tourism, but plenty of opportunities for good food. I got some good advice in this thread, Paris Dining questions, some of which I acted on, sorry I could not eat at every place mentioned.

Gérard Besson

While there I definitely wanted to try a Michelin star restaurant, and I chose Gérard Besson since it was within easy striking distance of where I was staying, and I could get a reservation by email. I ate there the first night.

Here are pictures of the dining room (sorry, camera on the phone does not take the best quality pictures):





I took the menu degustation, and asked for wines to be paired with the courses.
The wait staff did not all speak English, so they had the two who were most proficient take care of me. Very helpful.

Began with an amuse bouche of a salmon mousse with a topping of creme and small bacon bits, served in a chilled shot glass. Starting off with bacon is always a plus, and this was a fine way to start. The chilled temperature and cream topping also made it refreshing, despite the strong salmon and bacon flavors.

The first course was seared foie gras with poached peaches served with a 2000 Muscat from north Corsica.



The sweet wine went very well with this dish, and the peaches brought out a real fruitiness in the wine. The foie gras was cooked perfectly. I found myself dipping bread in the plate at the end, to hell with my manners.

Second course - grilled sea bass and salmon with sauteed mushrooms and a sauce that was more velvet than anything else. Wine a 2004 sauvingnon blanc from Bordeaux.



Main course - wild duck with a fig confit.



Before serving it, the waiter warned me that they served it pink. At the time, I was thinking, "OK, I know I am an American, but give me some credit for having had duck served medium rare." Well, when I cut into it, I know why he warned me. Pink my ass! It bled when I cut it. Definitely on the rare side. I enjoyed it, but the warning was certainly warranted, and understated.

The flavor was definitely different from duck you normally have in restaurants. Not exactly gamey, but I bet it was flying somewhere the day before.

Still, delicious.

But what intrigued me we're the sides. First, the fig confit was basically fig jam in the form of a whole fig. Fantastic.

The other, a starch puree that I naively took for potato, but tasted like a chestnut or squash, and turned out to be...celery root! It was mixed with potato, but the flavor was nothing like the stalk (or the seed for that matter). Great surprise.

Red wine served with the dish. I confess I did not understand the French name, but it had Côtes in it somewhere. 1997. Big red and tasty.

Cheese course. Sorry, no pictures. Delicious 10 year old port to go with it.

Two cheeses stood out. One, a semi-hard cheese, a comté from Jura. It had that granular salty character of an aged cheese yet somehow was smooth and almost creamy at the same time.

Also a highlight was the corsican sheep's milk cheese (do not know the name) which had the sharp silky bleu cheese character without a vein of blue in it.

Dessert was a chocolate ganache with fresh strawberries and rasberries and ice cream on top. Honey ice cream, to be precise, sprinkled with diced pistacio.



Yes, it was as good as it sounds.

Then coffee and petits four. I managed to eat two without exploding.



All told, great meal.

[StevieG]

Le Bar à Huîtres

Coming back to my hotel room that first night, I saw a restaurant across the street with guys shucking oysters out on the sidewalk, and waiters bringing plates of them on ice into the dining room.

That really put me in the mood for oysters, and so I told business partners the next day I would like to eat seafood that night. They talked to one of their boys that knows Paris restaurants, and he gave them a recommendation.

After looking up the address they told me, "It looks like it is near your hotel."

I asked them the name, and sure enough, it was the same exact spot I had seen the night before!

Here is a picture of the shellfish shuckers while there was still some daylight:



Here's a link to the menu, Le Bar à Huîtres (warning, very annoying foghorn sound from that Web site periodically).

We got a bottle of pouilly fuse, they ordered fish, and I got the "Bar à Huîtres" platter for €33.50.

Quite a good deal. It came as a huge platter, with the seafood nestled among crushed ice. There were half a dozen oysters or so, two belon oysters (which I found to be very tasty, more sweet than metallic), a crab, shrimp, clams, and mussels.

What I really liked, however, were the shellfish I had not had before.

First, crevettes grises (translated literally as grey shrimp). These were very small shrimp (you can get the idea in this image) maybe half an inch long. You can remove the head, but I was just popping them like sunflower seeds, eating shells and all.

Next novel item, bulots. These look like sea snails, gastropods in a spiral shell that you pull out with a fork. They were great dipped in aioli, but I enjoyed them on their own, also. The English word, I found out by looking at the menu, is a "whelk".

But the best new find were bigorneaux, called whinkles in English. Similar to the whelks, but a lot smaller, and the shells were black in color. You used a small metal needle to pull them out, and the meaty part was maybe a quarter inch long and an eighth of an inch in diameter. Once I got the hang of it, picking them out of the shell was as easy as eating them, and I ran through them quickly. They had a salty fresh seafood taste to them that was quickly addictive.

I very much enjoyed the meal the night before, but the element of discovery really made this meal special. I would love to go back and have it again if I have the chance.

[StevieG]

Poker and a Late Meal

My last night in town, I took a shot at playing some at the Aviation Club de France. The poker part worked out great, I posted about that in the B&M forum: Trip Report - Aviation Club de France (Paris).

Chillee recommended a place close by to the Aviation Club, and when I stopped playing cards I headed over to La Maison de L'Aubrac at about half past 11 PM.

I ate at the bar, which was fine. Drunk guy next to me was a little too chatty, but he was gone halfway through anyway. There were some good looking women coming in and out of the place, though, and I had a good spot for ogling.

Dinner started out with an appetizer of bacon and goat cheese on toasted brown bread, with a small salad. This was very tasty. Again, great to start off with bacon, and I also really like goat cheese.

L'Aubrac is apparently known for their beef, so I had the entrecote. The beef ws very good, and equally impressive were the potatoes. They were crisp on the outside, and light and fluffy on the inside. Quite a feat.

I finished off with a cheese course and a glass of port. The Roquefort was most memorable.

On a side note, the bill was missing the two glasses of wine I drank. I brought it to the bartender's attention. He thanked me greatly. I was somewhat surprised that he put both glasses of wine on the bill, but hey, as long as I'm being honest, I can do it all the way.

Paid the bill and went on my way to le metro (runs until 1:00 AM) and back to the hotel.

I love this city.

[StevieG]

Jardin du Luxembourg

My hotel was very close to the Jardin du Luxembourg. So I decided to stroll through it and use the time to sit and write some postcards before getting on the RER train to Charles de Gaulle airport.

So glad I did. The park is scenic and relaxing.

Here are some pictures.

First, there are sculptures and statues everywhere:



There is also an apiary there, although I dsaw only a few bees, and no bee-keepers.



The centerpiece of the park is the pool, in front of the Luxembourg Palace. And, of course, all the flowers surrounding the grounds.





Really great way to relax before the stress of flying back home.

[Shilly]

Sounds great. Makes me wish I wasn't cooking chicken and pasta every night in my dorm kitchenette. I'll have to splurge sometime and try out one of these places.

[OnYourBike]

Awful camera you got there.

[StevieG]

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Awful camera you got there.

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On the phone. Definitely suffers in low light and any high contrast situation. Better than nothing.

[cbloom]

That's actually pretty great for a phone camera, but yeah take a real camera next time !!

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Also a highlight was the corsican sheep's milk cheese (do not know the name) which had the sharp silky bleu cheese character without a vein of blue in it.


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I was once buying cheese from a Corsican peasant in Marseille. I asked him which ones were cow or sheep or whatever, and he said "il n'ya pas de vache en Corse" so defiantly, for some reason I always remember that (all corsican cheese is sheep's milk and I guess they're renowned for it).

[Mermade]

Excellent trip report all around StevieG! I'm green with envy: the perfection that is unpasteurized French cheese, the always refreshing experience of being introduced to something new and surprising...It all sounds heavenly.

Oh and at Gerard Besson you said you had coffee with the petis four. Does that mean you've given up trying to train the French to serve coffee with dessert and not after?

[StevieG]

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Does that mean you've given up trying to train the French to serve coffee with dessert and not after?

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It means I still had a little port left after the cheese course [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]