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Five to try: Eurostar to Paris trail
Evening Standard 17.04.08
Just two hours 20 minutes on Eurostar from St Pancras — you don't lose baggage when you carry it with you — and you are in Paris, where chestnuts are currently in blossom. Where to eat? Here are some ideas from the sublime to the meticulous.
L'ARPEGE, 84 rue de Varenne 75007 (00 33 1 45 51 47 33) £200.
Even if it is only once in a lifetime — as, so far, it has been for me — anyone interested in food and cooking should invest in a meal chez Alain Passard. Respect for the essence of ingredients is at the heart of his approach. Personal evolution steered Passard away from idealising protein and towards the heroics in vegetables and fruits. These are supplied from his own potager where no machine — just a horse — works the soil. Then he paints, like an impressionist, pictures that are utterly sublime to eat. And there is fish and meat. Dinner last Friday choosing the 10-course Cuisine Choisie was a strong contender for the best meal of my life.
LE RESTAURANT, L'Hotel 13 rue des Beaux-Arts 75006 (00 33 1 44 41 99 00) £70.
This seductive, stone and velvet hotel famous for Oscar Wilde's stay this year gained a Michelin star. English owners contribute Marmite at breakfast but Burgundian chef Philippe Belissent is true to his roots and also his experience cooking at the Michelin three-star Ledoyen. Last Saturday the set lunch menu at 842, which included white crabmeat with green apple and wonderfully crunchy gambas, was being enthusiastically devoured by customers who — from rock musician to rive-gauche intellectual — could have come from central casting.
HIER ET AUJOURD'HUI, 145 rue de Saussure 75017 (00 33 1 42 27 35 55) £32.
Named Best Value for Money in the 2007-2008 Pudlo Paris Guide, this quintessentially French bistro is fairly close to Gare du Nord. Chef-proprietor Franck Dervin, who has worked for über-chefs Guy Savoy and Alain Dutournier, works in an open kitchen seemingly alone but for a plongeur. The small sympathetic dining room is charmingly, strictly managed. Dishes that live on in memory include a joyous terrine de campagne; soft-as-a-baby joue de boeuf; baba au rhum with crème Chantilly.
LE SALON D'HELENE, 4 rue d'Assas 75006 (00 33 1 42 22 00 11) £55.
Hélène Darroze, who likes to say she “was born in a saucepan”, has recently been appointed executive chef at London's revivified Connaught hotel. Le Salon on the ground floor of the Michelin two-star main restaurant offers the opportunity to loll around on cushions and try tapas-size portions of her native south-west cooking. Marinated tuna with Basque red pepper sauce, braised red mullet with saffron fondant potatoes, baby
LA FONTAINE DE MARS, 129 rue St Dominique 75007 (00 33 1 47 05 46 44) £40.
Wear red gingham in this long-established family-run restaurant near the Eiffel Tower and you will disappear from view. The morilles season which, happily, is upon us makes me think about the casserole of morilles with poached egg which I ate here a while ago. Chef and food writer Simon Hopkinson, who is a regular, always orders the oeuf en meurette. Its red wine-based sauce is incredibly powerful. Another sine qua non of a meal at La Fontaine is île flottante.
Prices above estimate a meal with wine for one.
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