Géosmine - On Friday, we had another great meal at Géosmine and a delightful time chatting once again with Vincent Glaymann, the sommelier. Usually at Géosmine we simply order off the carte which has only a few courses in each category. This time we decided to take the small tasting menu which gave us the dishes we would have ordered anyway, plus two more, for the same price as our intended e/p/d choices. For the 80€ “Initiation Menu” you get two entrées, one main and two desserts. We started with a simple bowl of coco de Paimpol beans in brown butter and a light broth with salicorne. The other entrée was a piece of tuna belly with condiments of blackberry, kosho yuzu (a Japanese citrus chili paste) and a spicy plum purée. Our main was a tender piece of rascasse with a girolle ratatouille sauce that had a light smokiness. The first of the two desserts was a green gage plum clafouti with vanilla cream. And the last dessert, which by itself is reason enough to go to Géosmine, IMHO, was the chocolate mousse with praline and salt.
Café Les Deux Gares - On Saturday, we walked north for about 40 minutes toward the Gare de l’Est, headed toward the left side, went up some stairs and arrived at the Café Les Deux Gares. This is a lively café/restaurant with lovely somewhat quirky décor which reminded me of Café du Coin, one of our favorites in the 11th. One difference is that that prices are about half at the latter, but the portions are a lot smaller as well. There is no lunch menu at Les Deux Gares so you order off the carte. R started with rillettes de cochon with pickles, while I went with the haricots cocos with celery and a creamy sauce vin blanc. How brilliant to combine a humble white bean with a delicious vin blanc sauce. Our mains were a merlu for R and a vegetarian dish for me composed of a roasted cabbage wedge, roasted yellow beetroot, perfectly roasted small potatoes and green beans - all still hot or warm - and all swizzled with a garlic cream sauce and nuts. Really a sensational vegetarian dish for lunch. We finished by sharing a crème brûlée “sous voile”, which means a vin jaune had been added to the custard.
Dilia - The last few years we have enjoyed at least one Sunday lunch at Dilia, and although we will be in Paris only two weeks this year, we didn’t want to miss that lunch. It’s hard to believe we’ve been coming here since 2015. When we entered the charming rustic restaurant in the 20th, we were surprised to be greeted by the chef, Michele Farnesi, and not the high-spirited Frédérico. We later found out that he had returned temporarily to Italy on a family matter. And, oh joy, the menu, while structured similarly to last year’s, was comprised of completely different dishes. We started our meal with breadsticks wrapped in lardo, pork craquelins with café crème and large pieces of cod tempura. This year the tortellini in brodo was filled with a mixture of zucchini and herbs. The light marinière sauce was enriched with mussel liquor, as well as lemon and bottarga. Divine! Next up was a fantastic fish stew made with large chunks of grondin, a type of rouget. Kale was added to the dish and we were told to smash up the fish chunks to make it more like a soup. The broth was a flavorful shellfish base with various additions including sage. The meat course was grilled pigeon - part of the breast and a leg, all perfectly cooked, garnished with autumn greens, wild spinach (arroche) and a purée of Jerusalem artichoke. Oh, and I forgot to mention the homemade bread still warm from the oven. Next, a pre-dessert was a bergamot sorbet covered with thinly sliced pears. The main dessert was delicious: a square of brioche perdu covered in nuts, along with some buttermilk/vervaine ice cream, garnished with a few grapes. And as usual Farnesi ended the meal with cannelés as a post-dinner treat. This was really one of the best bistrot meals we have enjoyed in Paris - ever. And for 59€? Unbelievable.
Alliance - Any day you’re having lunch at Alliance feels like a holiday. We were welcomed warmly by Shawn, Antoine and Inês from Portugal (new this year), and a wave from the chef. After we were settled in with mineral water and a glass of wine for me (a French Chardonnay is all I remember), the amuses started arriving. I counted just short of ten amuses, but of course if you included the bread… Among our favorites were the spring rolls (one with radish and tarragon and one with carrot and concentrated watermelon); the “akra” of monkfish, lobster, lime and ginger; a cracker with beef tartare; and a beautiful rendition of chawanmushi with mushrooms. We opted for the three-course menu, and our entrée arrived without much delay after the amuses: flavorful poached artichoke quarters in an artichoke purée/emulsion, broiled slightly on top. Lovely. Next came the main course: a grilled pigeon breast with a wedge of a pigeon thigh tartlette and a small cabbage-wrapped farci of the leg meat, all accompanied by a silky pigeon and veal stock. Our pre-dessert was a small bowl of a light corn soup garnished with corn in many forms, including popcorn. Dessert was a slice of Breton cake made with mirabelles and another fruit. It was similar in texture to a clafoutis and was beautifully garnished with fresh fruit. We lingered over coffee and vervain tea, and a few mignardises. Before we left we had a nice chat with Toshitaka Omiya, the chef, Shawn and Antoine.
L’Orangerie - For weeks I had marked “surprise dinner” on our October calendar and told R that I was going to come up with a special dinner for him - my treat. In July this year I had read @martynartinez’s post about L’Orangerie and I couldn’t get some of his descriptions of the courses out of my mind, so that’s where I booked a table. It’s a small restaurant (20 seats) with only seven or eight tables in the George V, and the chef, Alan Taudon, was recently awarded a second Michelin star, which didn’t really mean anything to me since I generally prefer no-star or one-star places, finding the atmosphere in more highly anointed places stiff and overly formal. But the chef has a light touch and doesn’t include any meat in his menus, serving exclusively vegetables and fish, which appealed. This lightness became apparent at the end of the 7 or 8-course meal when we walked away happy and sated, but not uncomfortably so. And nothing was sacrificed in the way of richness and flavor in any of the dishes. Every plate was beautiful not because of some chef-imposed artful composition of smears and dots, but because of the bright flavors of exceptional ingredients creatively combined. Most of our courses we had are described by Marty, so I won’t repeat them here, but you can read them on his post. One of our favorites was the daurade in an au jus sauce, spiced up with jalapeño, accompanied by cucumber “tagliatelle”.
A brief word about the wine. As you would expect at any restaurant in the George V, it was an impressive wine list. But since R doesn’t drink I generally choose a glass or two, or sometimes ask for a half portion of the wine pairing (since I can’t drink 5, 4 or even 3 glasses of wine). At the Orangerie the wines by the glass were very steep so I started with a lovely glass of Vouvray for 25€ (the least expensive!). Then I began madly emailing onz with a copy of the list, asking for his advice. He selected a superb Château Simone, which I loved and it paired beautifully with the rest of the meal. Overall, really a spectacular meal.
Vaisseau - We were cycling in the Netherlands when the date arrived when tables would be released at Vaisseau at noon on a date in October. Thus I didn’t have to contemplate staying up ‘til 3am (not), but simply had to pull over to the side of the road at noon and pull out my phone. (Maybe AI can help us out with this in the future). I preferred a lunch slot, but also wanted the long menu which required a booking at 12 or 12:30 and it all worked out smoothly.
After our years of going to Détour I was hoping that Emie (the chef’s partner) would be on site that day, but I didn’t know if the chef himself would remember us. As it turned out when we walked in somewhat bedraggled from the wind and rain, Adrien Cachot came out of the kitchen to give us a big hug. After the extended hiatus since Détour closed this was both a surprise and touching. It also showed us that even when cloistered away in the kitchen, chefs know who their repeat customers are.
The meal was sensational. And it was not all experimental hocus-pocus. After 8 or 10 amuses, we moved on to a fresh oyster drizzled with what tasted a bit like a smokey soy sauce, but more intriguing. Turned out it was oil heated up in an ancient tool called a “flambedou” (you have to look it up!) until it was blazing hot and then dripped onto the oyster. Next there was house gravelax on what looked like brioche, but was a custard wrapped in thin slices of brioche served alongside a custard royale with salmon roe. Then, monkfish in a jus de veau on mushrooms with a quail egg; gnocchi made with mochi (Japanese rice cake) and Parmesan; ravioli with a pied de veau filling in a veal stock (right from Dilia! Cachot has a lot of admiration for Farnesi); a large thin slice of Wagyu beef with beef tartare on the side; melted Chaource cheese with a small scoop of oyster liquor ice cream melting within; and finishing up with chocolate mousse with parsley ice cream and a sugar “paper cup” pictured below - plus some other dishes I’ve left out and multiple mignardises. This was without a doubt one of the best meals of the trip. The space itself, which holds about 40 seats is painted a charcoal gray, which I’m not crazy about, but the lighting is good, so it didn’t really matter much in the end. The shorter lunch menu is 60€, the larger menu 120€.
NHOMe - Matan Zaken opened NHOMe in September 2022 on rue de Montpensier near the Palais Royale. After you enter a small entry area opening onto the kitchen, you step down to a stone cave with a large table with varying levels that seats about 16 people. Near the entry there is also a table that can seat four. The idea sounds strange, but really no more than sitting at a bar or tables pushed close together. We ended up talking to our neighbors on both sides, but didn’t really feel obligated to. Dinner was a 9-course affair (130€) described on a typically vague menu: i .e., Iodé (“sea air”), Surf & Turf, Vegetal, Sea, Land, etc. I recall a wonderful combination of oyster, smoked eel and foie gras; celtuce lettuce with watercress sauce, caviar and yuzu; blue lobster with lobster bisque, corn and vanilla; venison with a veal jus and a dark fruit sauce; melted Camembert with a poached apple sinking in the middle; blackberries with nettle juice; bergamot sorbet with assorted citrus in various forms topped with candied citrus. Finally, a dessert of chocolate/prune ice cream, a creamy vanilla mousse with a caramelized prune and miso sauce, buttery wafers and some kind of crumble underneath it all. A superb ending! The courses at NHOMe were certainly not about taking humble ingredients and making the most of them, but instead taking what the French refer to as noble ingredients and doing the least damage to them, treating them lightly and with creativity.
Amâlia - Aside from L’Orangerie which is in a class by itself, Amâlia was without a doubt the best restaurant we visited in Paris on this trip. And on our last day in Paris this was very unexpected. It opened in March 2024 and we chose it in part because it wasn’t too far away and we had lots to do, not to mention packing up. We walked into the restaurant out of the drizzling rain at lunch time and as my eyes were trying to focus on the FOH guy, I realized it was Fréderico from Dilia!!! We instantly felt right at home, so instead of ordering the 3-course lunch as planned we went for the 7-course menu (120€) hoping it wouldn’t be too long or just too much.
We first met the chef Eugénio Anfuso and his wife Cécilia (she was the pâtissière) at Korus in 2022 where he headed up the kitchen for a short time. At that time I wrote that the chef “is keen on trying new things, not all of which work, but some do and the results are excellent”. I especially remember scallops in an onion-miso sauce from that meal. Well, every course in the seven-course lunch this year was spectacular and I can still remember each one vividly and it’s been almost a month since we were there. The gnocchi and Saint-Jacques with a mushroom jus, miso and potato were a dream, as was the “risotto” comprised of crabmeat, shredded celeriac and shredded coconut. And, oh my, the pasta whipped together with foie gras, butter and Comte cheese, or the rouget Bourguignonne, or the braised cheeks of Jersey beef with smoked sea urchin. The courses were served in an efficient and friendly manner by Cécilia and Fréderico and there were no long waits between courses. There is no question we will return to Amâlia next year, if we can get a table.
