I ate at Ellsworth shortly after it opened – maybe 7-8 years ago. Nothing wrong, nothing exceptional about the food. But it was like eating in San Francisco. Kind of a shame to travel all the way to Paris for that experience when there’s so much else out there.
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Actually I just realized Balagan is closed on Sundays (weirdly it let me choose an online reservation which got me confused) so back to Oberkampf it is!
Pierre Sang Oberkampf will likely not be the best food you sample in Paris, but a) it’s very good, b) it’s fantastic qualité/prix, and c) it’s fun!
Parn preaches vibe/fun often. Personally, unless a place is particularly soulless/dead I usually value the food the most highly, but at Pierre Sang Oberkampf and Gambey (and not Signature, even though the food was the best of the three) the certain je ne sais quoi experience factor is just fabulous.
We will be going back there when we return to Paris in September for our first post-COVID visit.
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I second onzieme’s point on Ellsworth. And I love the fried chicken there. And our daughters who were with us liked the place very much
For me, it would really be the other way around: if you’re going to go there, I would do it towards the middle of your trip, as a partial variation from “French-French” food, rather than at the beginning.
We were able to get a lunch reservation for Kei on Saturday so now rethinking a bit as dinner at Montee followed by lunch at Kei seems a bit overkill. Has anyone been to both? Obviously Kei has 3* but I’ve never been one to overweight stars in my food choices.
I’ve been to both at lunch, although Kei was many years ago now, and I believe held one Michelin star at the time.
I preferred the food at Montée no question. I did quite appreciate the service at Kei.
We are returning to Paris next month for the first time in 3 years, and planning to go to Montée
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I wanted to share a quick trip report and thank everyone again for all their help and advice. We didn’t have a bad meal though certainly some were better than others and hopefully this write-up is useful for others’ future travel. Given the season, there was a lot of overlapping ingredients (corn, stone fruit, tomatoes) which actually made it easier and more interesting to directly compare experiences.
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David Toutain (lunch) - we did the 8 course and a few glasses of wine (there are 4, 6, 8, and 10 course options). This was my favorite meal of the trip. They serve a number of amuse before you select which menu you want and candidly the amuse were a little underwhelming - all was good, but nothing was a truly stand out bite. But the actual menu was much better and I enjoyed every dish, so much that partway through we were debating if we should try to move to the 10 course. The staff emphasized that the chef’s philosophy is ‘everything is in nature’ (that’s probably not the right translation) and the dishes really highlighted incredible ingredients and technique that was deployed in service of that mission rather than for its own sake (as an aside, that is one of my pet peeves with some ‘modern’ cuisine). In contrast with Kei’s garden salad, here we had a “simple” salad of courgette, but it was the best courgette I’ve ever had with the sauce and accompaniments having really clear individual flavors that worked together beautifully. I thoroughly enjoyed it despite not loving courgette normally, and found a similar experience through the rest of the tasting. Also really enjoyed the unstuffy nature of the service and the restaurant decor - no white tablecloths and plenty of joking with the staff which overall contributed to a great experience.
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Kei (lunch) - we did the degustation but passed on the larger menus as the primary change was the addition of wagyu which we love but didn’t feel the need to pay an extra 50% for. I enjoyed most of the food here quite a lot - the experience of the garden salad was novel and very tasty, loved the gorgonzola foam cheese course, but was underwhelmed by the lobster (it was fresh lobster with a nice sauce but not materially better than anything I’ve had at much less expensive restaurants). However, we had shockingly uneven service for a 3* with what I believe was the sommelier in particular - not sure if he thought we were too cheap to care about because we didn’t do the big menu or because he didn’t want to speak English but we were served our first course before we ever got a wine list (which we had asked for) and eventually I had to flag down a waiter to get it after watching other guests who came in after us get the list and a walkthrough. When we finished our bottle of water, they stopped serving water without saying anything and when we asked for another bottle they just never brought it.
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Montee (dinner) - this was a great meal and an excellent experience at relatively great value with some great gems on their wine list that are affordable and not egregiously marked up at all. Would never have found Montee if not for this forum so, many thanks! Was uniformly strong throughout the 10 courses with some highlights being the bananas + foie and a progressively more delightful set of dessert courses. We found ourselves at subsequent meals of the trip thinking it was a tragedy that they had their star taken as the level of food is certainly up there though the service and ambience is more Japanese than French based on my experience and they don’t have as much ‘flair’ in the overall experience beyond the food which may not be to everyone’s style.
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Pouliche (lunch) - great first meal of the trip. Delicious, elevated food without anything fussy. Would happily return and enjoy more of their cooking.
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Pantagruel (lunch) - good but not amazing. Each course is served as a trio which can be risky and didn’t always work. I found typically 1 of the trio was great, 1 was pretty good, and 1 where I would have enjoyed the meal better without it. This is probably the one planned meal that if I had a do over, I would have pulled from the set not because it was bad at all but only because it was less good than our many other meals which were directly competing.
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Jeanne-Aimee (dinner) - enjoyed the meal and experience quite a bit though much preferred the earlier courses and stumbled a bit in taking our server’s recommendation on the primary protein course which was a cooked tuna dish. It was good but I was reminded again of how much more I like raw tuna vs cooked. The cochicon was a very good rendition if a bit heavy. The biggest fault (I am nitpicking) was that the first few dishes were so good, I was almost disappointed at our ‘ordinary’ pork and tuna, but I would definitely come back and try more of their menu.
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Granite (dinner) - we did the longer Granite menu. Great food and experience being able to watch the chef’s prepare dinner at the counter as we were one of the first to arrive and had our choice of seats. Sardines and lobster were my 2 favorite courses here. We opted for the additional comte cheese course but if we had known what it was would have passed as it turned out to be much more dessert (cheese foam atop a berry jam which was good but much sweeter than I was expecting for a cheese course) than cheese which was a bit much ahead of the actual dessert courses.
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HEBE (lunch) - I would put this in a similar camp as Pouliche with simply good, elevated and unfussy cuisine.
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Kodawari ramen (Tsukiji) - given the rest of our itinerary, we wanted to get something a bit different. The restaurant itself is rather kitschy but the food was excellent albeit quite heavy. Really delicious ramen with a strong fish and umami flavor that really hits the spot when you need just a bit of variation
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Appreciate the report back! So glad that Montee is still doing great - going there next week!
Agree. And will wait for your Montee review as we’re reserved there for dinner on the 24th.
At 3* prices there’s no excuse for letdowns such as you experienced at Kei.
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Wow. You guys are impressive. I hadn’t realized that it was humanly possible to fit in so many tasting menus in so short a time. I would have been semi-comatose by day 3. I know the tourist dynamic is very different than mine as a Parisian but I have to ask did you actually enjoy the experience ? And I’m not just talking about the food on the plate or the service but a sudden sense of total pleasure and good living that, for me, is an essential part of the parisian lifestyle.
Some remarks aimed at others rather than @aweekinparis. Because menus change so frequently, others could have better or worse meals than the ones the OP had. I have had some less-than-perfect meals in my 5 or 6 visits to David Toutain over the years (but none since 2021). Similarly a few months ago the menu dégustation at Jeanne-Aimée was stellar from start to finish.
All tasting menus carry the risk of a few dishes just not working from time to time or appealing to one’s particular tastes at the moment.
Add me to those disappointed by Kei. Not even sure it was 1* quality when I was there this spring.
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One of the nice things we hoped for and found was that our meals were generally not overly large (relative to our American consumption meters…) so we actually felt like we were able to enjoy each of the meals. It was technically ‘only’ 4 true tasting menus (5 if you include Pantagruel where we did the 3-course not the tasting) so I still quite enjoyed them.
If I had a do-over, I would have dropped Pantagruel as it didn’t bring me that sudden sense of pleasure and good living you referenced. We happened to get the Kei booking off the waitlist at the last minute and I was loathe/lazy to change the existing itinerary so ended up with 1 more than planned. There is definitely diminishing marginal enjoyment with so much good food or if not diminished enjoyment, higher criticality of each meal especially as they become more directly comparable. E.g., if Granite hadn’t come after Montee, Kei, and Pantagruel, I’m sure it would have made more of an impression. But at the same time, David Toutain was the last in our line of tasting menus and brought us a lot of delight with the whole experience and markedly so.
Unfortunately one cost of being able to eat so much great food is a re-rating of expectations and therefore the relative enjoyment - I am admittedly probably a more jaded eater than most but also dare I say more deeply dedicated than most to the hedonistic enjoyment of my food
Btw - Jeanne-Aimee wasn’t doing a menu degustation at dinner or we missed it if they were so that was just us picking dishes off the menu tapas style. I would 100% return and try more of their dishes.
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We had a fabulous dinner at Granite
Hope to post review and photos soon
Definitely one of our new favorites in Paris
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