Matthew Grant

Steve, I'm interested to read your comments re:Bras. We just returned from his restaurant and I thought it was one of the best meals I've eaten. I'm not normally one to go for a lighter style of ccooking but this meal was incredible. I believe that the food was outstanding and then had the added benefit of looking incredible as well (certainly some of the prettiest dishes I've seen in a long time). The slow cooked lamb, was I thought superb, nicely contrasted with the strong meat jus meaning that the lack of Maillard reactions was not too noticeable. I'll post a full report when I've a little more time.

When I was at Ledoyen the day before, I asked our waiter about Atelier. He seemed a little flustered (I'm not sure why, it isn't trying to compete with the 3 stars) and was quick to point out that JR was, as he put it, 'a consultant' and was not cooking there.

The night I was at Atelier in France, JR was in Tokyo, apparently he is visiting once a month.

Just to comment on a few things in this thread: Spencer : I don't believe I have too many aristocratic tendancies, I'm 32 live in South London, sport skinhead hairstyle, drive a Ford Fiesta 1.4 on an 'M' plate. I live in a terraced house and work shifts, drink Budweiser or MGD straight form the bottle and spend all my spare time cooking, thinking about food, reading eGullet or saving up for meals out. Nearly penny I earn goes towards food and the occasional holiday. Last year I spent 7 months unemployed and now I'm working again, I'm making up for it big time. That is not me in my Avatar Otherwise thanks for your support on this matter! That was almost my point. The food looked OK but I don't want to eat concepts or art, I want taste and flavour. I didn't want Lamb with beansprouts and a soy sauce dressing because of some 'concept' that Adria had come up with. I think food can be art but only if it tastes good first. Just to clarify something, I don't think the food tasted bad, it just wasn't amazing. I ate everything put in front of me, nothing tasted offensive. I don't know why we are trying to make this so intellectual, at the end of the day, I went to this restaurant to have an outstanding meal and left desperately disappointed. I went along full of expectation and I certainly didn't expect to leave feeling the way I did. Before we left on this trip my girlfriend read Robert and Jonathans review and knowing that we had several other restaurants booked for later in the trip she said "the holidays going to peak on the first night isn't it?" and I remember agreeing with her, how wrong we were. Can't we all agree that it is possible that Adria has had an off year, maybe development of the dishes didn't go well over the winter. How difficult must it be to create so many new dishes every year? Maybe this year he failed? Maybe next year will be amazing? Maybe this year was amazing and I didn't get it (along with the rest of the dining room judging by their faces). Maybe, Maybe Maybe (with apologies to Rhona Cameron) Me and my girlfriend had drawn our conclusions regarding the meal long before we spoke to Steve, I only met him briefly towards the end of our meal and he gave me the impression he was a little disappointed as well, I have yet to read his conclusions.

I think I cqn answer this. If you wanted to eat at 20:30 you would have to be there around 19:00. As Joe said the restaurant is filling up immediately and the only way to get in is to join the queue. Even the people arriving at 23:00 were mainly American when I was there. The queuing situation is ridiculous and once the initial fuss dies down I am sure they will change the 'no reservation' policy. The weather has been kind to them so far, it was a warm week in paris while I wa there. What happens when it is cold and rainnig. Its not like you can even get put on a list, have a drink and come back later.

It wasn't that Adria's food wasn't to my taste, I am happy to admit that there was lots of clever technique. My problem lay with the fact that it all tasted so ordinary. The lack of enthusiasm in my half of the dining room seemed quite obvious. Can somebody please tell me what is clever or soul bearing about calling a beansprout a false chip? I believe that I missed the best of El Bulli, maybe he's just having an off year and the new dishes aren't that mind blowing?

Andy, this is something we keep going back to, If the service had been a lot shorter with a few more substantial dishes thrown in it would have been more enjoyable but would not have actually made the food any better. The problems lay with the flavours, there was nothing that great about them.Long dinners have never bothered me as long as I feel I am being entertained by the food. I had a lunch at Ledoyen and a dinner at Michel Bras which both lasted around 3.5 hours but I enojoyed the food so much that I didn't even notice the time. I had always been adverse to the idea of 'molecular' type gastronomy because I was worried that it was going to be novelty food but was won over by my meal at the Fat duck which used it in a good way, creating amusement in between courses with small innovative and tasty dishes which we would not normally think off (i.e. the mustard ice creamand Gazpacho). After the meal at the Fat Duck I felt compelled to go to El Bulli and was anticipating the meal for an awful long time, the first thing I did when I got there was ask to be show around the kitchen where I met Ferran but due to my non-existant Spanish and Catalan was unable to talk to him. I was glad that he didn't come out of the Kitchen at the end of the meal, I wouldn't have been able to look him in the eye! I can honestly say that this was not what I would consider a 3 star meal, maybe 2 , probably 1, large numbers of courses should not win stars, good food should. Luckily other meals on out trip were more successful and more than made up for the disappointment.

Rafa is the star restaurant in Roses, forget what you read elsewhere, 4 small tables in front of a glass display fridge with todays catch contained within. Strnagely enough, when it is closed, you cannot see inside and it has an air of magnificence about it with its carved wooden sign. Quite simply, you choose your fish, it gets put on the grill and then put on you plate unadorned apart form perhaps some olive oil and salt. No ships, no salad. Amazing langoustines, plucked still snapping from the fridge and placed straight on a hot grill were superb, salty from the rock salt thrown on them and wonderfully sweet. Mr. Rafa (I don't know his name) came rushing from behind the grill to try and entice us to eat the heads. Sole and small Monkfish were equally wonderful. Nothing more to say except that they were perfectly cooked, the monkfish taken off the bone except for the bottom half of the jaw which was left intact with the fish cheeks. Mr Rafa is keen to point out the dangers of over fishing and fish farming (he doesn't use farmed fish and thinks that they should stop fishing for several months of the year), and clearly enjoys a cigarette. Mrs Rafa makes a mean pumpkin pie for dessert. Apparently the fish is bought daily and anything remaining thrown away (my guess is that it is sold to some other restaurant). Wonderful!

El Bulli May 2003 The troublesome booking, the excitement of receiving a confirmed table, the long journey time, the winding road dramatically dropping down to the sea, the tantalising report from Robert and Jonathan and then NOTHING. Nothing but one BIG disappointment, glancing back at my notes I notice a line that says 'A culinary con'. I can picture now the lack of complete dissatisfaction on my girlfriends face, she tried to hide it but it was no good as I knew that mine was the same. I'm going out on a limb and saying that the food that we were served was not 3 star cooking. It was just ordinary, maybe Adria has lost it and I was unlucky enough not to have eaten there at his prime. This was a meal lacking in substance, real innovation, flavour, in fact, it sucked. We ate here 14 nights ago and we have picked the meal(and service) apart every night since. Every evening since that meal, just when I think we are going to avoid the subject, one of us had to analyse it just a little more. In the end what we concluded was that it had nothing that was really that exciting, a couple of good dishes, nothing Incredible, some clever little tricks but nothing else. Margheritas served in pump pots - oh how we laughed, because you know what? It was a Margherita in a pump dispenser, it put so little in your mouth it made you mad. My girlfriend was pumping the dispenser so hard she looked she was obsessive about halitosis! Tempura Orange - my God it was pieces of orange peel fried in batter Raspberry Communion discs type thingies - wow they were purple like raspberries and tasted like raspberries - if only the church had thought of that. Peanut bitter in a tube was served alongside a crisp slice of thin cut bread with peanuts and salt. You squeezed the tube of peanut butter like toothpaste, sprinkled peanuts on it with a little salt and voila, you had a long winded way of making crunchy peanut butter on toast. The Apple caviar was as previously described, very clever, gelatine balls (presumably) filled with apple flavoured liquid and served in the tin described by Robert and Jonathan. Mind you these were only some of the appetizers served with the Cava (nice and cheap at 6 Euros a glass), in a minute things would get going. Next up was the chicken skin, wrapped in a thin bread with Coriander, Orange Flour and lemon. it was very nice but hardly mind blowing. It was arranged in the bread like a samosa. Trout Roe, hardly a favourite at the best of times but this was cleverly caramelised on the outside to add some crunchy texture. Then came a dish I was looking forward to, the pea salad with pea ravioli. A small spoon of pea salad with mint followed by a spoon of gelatine filled with a bright green smooth liquid with just a hint of mint. Again very clever but although nice, it wasn't going to change my life, after all it could have been a chilled pea soup with a hint of mint. the gelatine didn't add anything to it except to hold it in a ball. Chick pea foam with chick pea jelly, again a hint of mint in the yoghurt, something to do with Ying and Yang or Dipsy and La La or something. Note the use of the foam. Then there was a little Ferran "joke". The "Crepe" filled with milk - actually a bitter leaf surrounding a slightly sweet yoghurt - it was more like a stuffed vine leaf than a crepe. Why did he call it a crepe? It bore no resemblance to crepes whatsoever. Oh how we didn't laugh! Can you see what's going on here, he has cleverly created a theme through the dishes - mint in the pea, links to mint in the yoghurt, yoghurt links to yoghurt in the crepe etc. etc. carrot "air" - a bowl of enormous carrot foam with coconut liquid at the bottom (excuse my translations, copies of the menu available if anybody wants) Very nice but I was sick of purees, liquids, foams where was something I could chew? Pasta Brioche - finally, now we were rocking, this was where things were going to get interesting. Pasta made with the ingredients of Brioche. The sauce was buttery, rich, there was a hint of cinnamon in there somewhere with some citrus and some salt and some sweet and a hint of toffee - this was fantastic. Chicory with Lemon Puree and Chicory 'air' - Bitter leaves balanced with a citrus puree which I think might have been potato based, served with chicory foam (note the use of foams again and more citrus and more bitter flavours). I'm writing this reading my notes and I honestly can't remember most of the dishes they were so unmemorable. Any way, I digress, If I can be bored by the meal, so can you: Vinegar air, artichokes, tangerine - I think this was the whole cooked to a puree artichoke. But to hat end the artichoke heart went to mush while keeping its shape - WOW, incredible, he overcooked an artichoke heart, housewives all over the country do this week in week out. More citrus, more foam, this time vinegar. The trouble was, what was the point, it didn't improve the artichoke heart, turning it into mush. White Asparagus with toffee sauce, fat White Asparagus spears, half covered in a toffee sauce which balanced out the bitterness, this was served with a...wait for it..........drum roll please.............you guessed it a Ferran Adria foam. This was getting boring. I was concerned before I went that the famous foams would be no more. No fear there, I was so full of air I could have floated away and there was no food of any substance to weight me to the floor. Salmon with soy foam, white and black sesame seeds. All I've written here was ' excellent ' ,but it couldn't have been that great, I can't remember this at all, maybe I was just having a bout of wishful thinking at the time , or maybe it was just because the rest of the meal was so poor . On we plodded, Morels with a soy milk cheese and a wafer thin soy crepe joining the morel and the cheese. Very clever that but again to what purpose, a crepe so painfully thin, beefy morels and cheese made from soy milk. At this point we were so bored that we were happy to be distracted in our meal by Steve Plotnicki who made his way over to say goodnight. A meal of this magnitude should never be interrupted, I wouldn't normally want the rhythm interrupted in anyway but I felt like pleading with him not to leave, I didn't want another ill conceived dish, another foam, another citrus flavour, another vinegar, another milk. I thought about diving at his feet, clinging to his leg and seeing if he could drag me out of there but he left before I had manoeuvred my chair into a position from which to make my lunge. Sitting at the table during this time was a dish , crab with Iberico ham fat but some full on Asian flavours you must be able to see the clever linking of dishes now. Another Ferran "joke" lamb with 'false' chips, peanut sauce, soy sauce. Oh boy, you will be killing yourselves when you hear what the 'false' chips were. You could almost tell the difference. He had cleverly created chips by using bean sprouts. Unadorned, uncooked bean sprouts. They tasted unlike chips, they didn't even sound like chips, I guess the joke was the crunch. Once again, uninspired cooking, oriental flavours, soy, peanut blah blah blah. You could open a whole restaurant chain based on 'jokes' like this. "And here sir is you dog poop" except it is actually mash potato. But look at the clever way he has constructed the meal, we've almost rotated full circle and we're back to the peanuts used at the beginning. Once again we stopped the service (we had just been informed that this was the end of the main dishes and we were moving into the sweet courses now). But I wanted another drink. During the previous 3 hours we had only managed to drink one bottle of wine due to the baffling wine service. It is no exaggeration to say that our wine was poured, quite literally, a sip at a time. It was painful to watch, occasionally, I would finish my sip while he was still pouring Rachel's and he would have to come straight back to me again. At the beginning of the meal we had expressed an interest in drinking a couple of bottles and had been advised that the last few courses may suit a red or a stronger white. There was no way we we're going to finish that wine in time for another bottle at the speed he poured it so after the lamb I asked them to stop bringing dishes for a while and we ordered another bottle of wine over which we drank away our sorrow. Once again he proceeded to pour a sip at a time until finally I plucked up the courage to ask if we could have our glasses filled a little more, he smiled and poured me a double sip. I asked if the wine could be left on the table and was told, very nicely, that this was not allowed. Agggggghhhhhhhhh! Finally the wine finished we commenced with the sweet part of the meal. First dish - Parmesan Spaghetti which we were advised to suck up in one long piece, after it broke 4 or 5 times I gave up. It tasted of spaghetti , with parmesan. I really don't see the point of making a dish more complicated than it need be. The technique used, whatever it was, did not enhance the dish in any way. and guess what, it was served with more lemon, too much lemon in fact. A bit like the whole meal - a lemon. And why was this served at the sweet stage, the Brioche pasta would have been far more appropriate Mangostein with wasabi (undetectable) and air of roses. You sure did have to hunt for that hint of rose. Chocolate flavoured strawberries (my notes aren't very clear here and once again I can't recall the dish) with apple sorbet Then I got an unexpected surprise, a birthday cake (they must have taken note in my reservation request when I advised that we were celebrating an anniversary ) Beautifully tempered chocolate filled with a sickly peanut type sticky filling. Yuck. Then one of the stars of the meal. English bread. A light as air frozen Crème Anglais served in a bread tine with a cinnamon and chocolate dusting. the crème Anglais must have been foamed before freezing and the 'bread' melted almost instantly on the tongue. This was fantastic, innovative, tasty and fun. White chocolate with yoghurt.....and finally a hollow 'baguette' complete with a paper bag to keep it in. A crisp hollow bread flavoured with liquorice that left you feeling like you had been eating cream crackers like drunken teenagers on a bet. Overall, a tremendous disappointment, The flavours weren't particularly interesting, it all seemed to me to be about technique and that left the meal lacking tremendously. I had read criticisms of 'descending into a world of foams and purees' and previously thought it was jealousy, now I completely agree. Molecular gastronomy and new techniques can be used to good effect but you have to back this up with innovative flavours and taste combinations, this did neither of those, tired old combinations cooked up with new techniques that did nothing to enhance the dishes. Edit: I fogot to mention the shoddy menus, the failed napkin test and the complete lack of enthusiasm of all the other diners, everybody looked bored, just like I was.

There was a valet on Thursday! I agree with you Joe, the restaurant was full of Americans and there was very little evidence of Parisians. Our waiter was happy to speak French and the food was good, especially the milk fed lamb (it must of been taken from its mother moments after birth) and the 'Canneloni' of poulet Bresse and Foie Gras. The Chartreuse Souffle was superb. Highlight of the evening was two couples who had obviously made friends in Paris. My French is poor but one of the girls seemed determined to speak french to the waiters despite not appearing to speak any French. She questioned every dish and just nodded, ahh'd and ummed at the waiters before announcincg that the "Boeuf Entrecote" was "a take on Entrecote steak" and thinking that Vin Blanc was red wine (this made her blush heavily). The husband of the other couple then announced that the cup of Lobster boullion was "obviously prepared by a master chef" and then looked longingly at his wife's parmesan, asparagus and morel salad and saying "Look at all those whole truffles, fantastic" at which point the other 3 didn't correct him but nodded in agreement" Hilarious, I could have sat there all night listening to them but had to leave as we were having to stifle our laughs and it was quite clear we weren't laughing at our own witty repartee. 50 Euros a head is unlikely unless you stick to the 'tapas' style tasters ranging between 6 and approximately 20 Euros. 'Plates' were more expensive ranging anything up to 45 Euros. Our bill was a whopping 260 Euros including 5 of the smaller dishes, 2 plates, 3 desserts, 2 glasses of champagne and a 55 Euro bottle of wine. A pleasurable experience although the queuing/reservation sysytem is ridiculous. e.g. the queue is very long, the people at the front were a group of 3. A single diner left and the lady on the door chose to take the single diner at the back of the queue rather than wait for the seats either side to become available. In theory this could go on all night long. Towards the end of the night we were asked to shift along a seat to allow a group of four to squeeze in and when we arrived people were dwelling over thei wine for over an hour, as is their right, however, in this setting they will have to introduce time limits and a reservation system. The girl trying to allocate seating looked increasingly distressed as the night wore on. He may not be looking for stars and the venue may be too casual for them but my food was definitely at the one star level already. Incidentally, the open kitchen seemed only to preparing the meat and fish grills, a lot of dishes were actually being passed into the kitchen from chefs in traditional whites hidden somewhere out back.

Au Contraire, you just need patience. This restaurant is the great leveller when it comes to geting a table, have your car parked by the valet for a mere 8 euros and then join the back of the queue If you are prepared to join that queue you will get in, however thye arrangements are quite bizarre and they wil have to start taking reservations very soon in my opinion. Now, what do you want first Robuchon or El Bulli?

Michel Bras

Can anybody recommend Bistro or Brasseries in Montpellier or Cermont Ferrand?

Matthew, I suppose you're the spokesman for the Brits that don't like to talk about money then huh? No

I got Ledoyen for lunch no problem and I'm happy with that now, however, dinner was another matter. I'm hoping that the sun shines and I get a table next to the window

I'm surprised the way this thread has gone. There are plenty of people here who ,and this is not meant to be critical in any way, have spent relatively little on food out yet have an extroadinary love of food. I thought that a lot more poeple would have spent more than $150 a head. In the UK it is difficult to get over £90 a head excluding wine, unless you start ordering Caviar and Foie Gras. Interesting also to note the lack of regular British posters responding, must be something to do with us being polite and not talking about money

Following on from this, anybody know where I can get a Tandoor for domestic (preferably outdoor) use in the UK? HOw much should I expect to pay?

I know this has been asked and answered before but it was quite a while ago. Any recommendations for good eating and cool drinking establishments for a Sunday night in Paris?

Jaz, that is true but there is also some foods that smell somewhat unpleasant by themselves but once combined with the taste are perfectly acceptable. There are numerous cheeses that smell like rotting feet but taste delicious. If you can get beyond the smell of some foods, you will be pleasantly surpised at what you discover.

All I can add to this is be quick if you want L'Ambroisie or Ledoyen, I tried booking a midweek table for dinner with 4 weeks notice and failed miserably at both although L'Ambroisie did put me on a waiting list Ledoyen did have lunchtime tables available. Any assistance anybody can give me in securing either of these reservations much appreciated

Dexter Steer rib hung for 6 weeks Longhorn rib hung for 8 weeks Welsh Black Sirloin hung for 4 weeks

Hurry up Tarka, i want a second opinion of El Bulli!

That was the funniest post I had read in a long time!

Thats nothing, you should have seen me when I spotted Helena Hell. Frothing at the mouth was the least of it. I was wondering why you stood facing the wall

Spencer, I never knew you held myself, Andy and Jay in such high regard