Michel Rostang query

[fairfranco]

I'm going to Paris tomorrow for a week running the Paris marathon before gorging on fine food and wine.

Having left it too late to book L'Astrance which looked to me like one of the most exciting places to go form the reviews I have read I'm thinking of booking for lunch and Michel Rostang with his 79 euro lunch menu.

Has anyone been recently and have any thuoghts on the current lunch menu or opinions in general about the place?!

Another question, do you know what the dress code is here? Is a jacket required? I probably wouldn't take one otherwise so it's something I'll definately need to know!

Does anyone have any other recommendations, costing not more than the Michel Rostang lunch and not requiring weeks of booking!

And can anyone recommend anything that's maybe going on specifically next week at all (until Thursday!)?

thanks!

[42390]

I ate there for the first time in December 2009, it is really, really good. In addition to the 79e menu you are talking about they have another lunch option called the menu club, 94.5e, which is same as the 79e menu but includes aperitif, wines matched per course, water and coffee. You will be blown away by the combination of value, hospitality, and excellence of cooking.

Unlike some of the other multi stars in Paris which are palace like in decor, Rostang is like eating at a good friend's tastefully appointed, luxurious yet very unpretentious town home. As for dress, I wore wool dress pants, dress shirt, tie, blazer. They seem to do a very brisk business lunch business and this style mixed in perfectly, but I have no aversion to ties and such and always dress so for good restaurants. Having said that, there were a few present that were kind of slouchy looking and everyone received the same level of service regardless of dress. In fact, as we were starting desert one particularly frumpy looking guy came in, took the table next to ours and ordered nothing but Rostang's famous truffle sandwich (85e) and a glass of wine. Rostang came out and sat with this guy for a really long time.

Some of the cooking is old style, especially the quenelle, still showing on the online menu last I looked, which is straight out of Escoffier, and a true delight. In fact, I will give you a run down of the whole thing:

1. Champagne to start

2. 3 amuse bouche, small slice of dried sausage with pistachio, a small fried fish ball of some sort, and a little foie gras thing

3. Another soup amuse which was terrific, a play on both words and presentation, called a creme de celeri comme un noisette, looked like one of the coffees they call a noisette in France, espresso with a small dollop of creme floating on top, only this one was celery root puree with a foamy top, looked just like the coffee noisette.

4. A thing called presse d'foie gras et artichaut which was sooooooooo good, a good size rectangle of alternating layers of foie gras and artichoke puree, the top layer was artichoke jelly, served with one whole nicely trimmed and cooked artichoke stuffed with a fine dice of carrot, turnip, etc, all sauced with some meat juice.

5. La Quenelle de Brochet soufflée à la Crème de Homard - Straight out of Escoffier. Fabulous, huge quenelle sauced with lobster creme containing generous chucks of lobster, served with a side of basmati rice and vermicelli (world's best Rice a Roni).

6. Souffle caramel buerre salé, sorbet de poire - best ever souffle, whole roasted noisettes (the real nuts this time) in the bottom of the dish, sauced with wonderful salted caramel, small quenelle of pear sorbet lightly flavored with what they called poivron de Mexique.

7. Nice assortment of mignardises.

8. Coffee

Drank badoit with this and whole bottle of some Rully 1er cru but did not write down the name of the producer. My wife had some different things but i did not take good notes on her stuff, had plenty of my own to worry about. Turned out that wine worked exactly with what we both had, but the club menu comes with paired wines.

Their selection of cheeses looked perfect, that would have been a supplement to the menu club, would like to have sampled but could not pack more in.

Yes you should go, we left very happy, amazed that such a high quality feast could be had for 189e total, all in. Picture of the souffle is attached.

[fairfranco]

thanks for that fantastic write up!

Looks and sounds fantastic and I look forward to going. I'm booked to go on Thursday lunch.

I feel I deserve such a treat the pain my legs have been in today after the marathon and also after the over celebration all evening!

I shall post my thoughts when I get back.

[ann]

I also appreciate the detailed report since we have res. in May and plan to have the club menu. Hope your legs recover soon, Fairfranco, and thank you too for starting this topic.

[LindaK]

42390, great write-up, it sounds fabulous. I like your description of the restaurant, too. Fairfranco, you definitely deserve this after a marathon, congratulations.

Question about the wine--from your description it sounds like you did not order the club menu, which included wine pairings. what did you think of the carte de vins--did you find some reasonably affordable options, given the level of the restarant? 189e for two menus plus wine sounds too good to be true.

[42390]

yes I did have the club menu. I just made the champagne last through the foie gras. My wife had an entree of artichoke soup and her plat was a fish called lotte du lac, never heard of such a thing before, monkfish from a lake. Anyway, with the club menu you do get paired wines. The wine guy speaks perfect English. He just said all we ordered would be well matched with that Rully so that is the only wine we had other than the champagne. I wish I had written down all the wine options from the club menu but did not, I can tell you they are offering very decent selections.

So yes the total price was 94.5 x 2 =189e for two 3 course menus, two champagnes, one bottle of Rully 1er cru, 2 or 3 bottles of Badoit, two coffees, I think the best deal ever in Paris high end dining and I have been to a bunch of the starred places.

Here is a picture of the quenelle and the mignardises and some other things from that day.

[ann]

Thank you again, 42390, for the added info and the photos. With res. here and at Frenchie and Ribouldingue, I think our May trip is off to a good start already. Some of our favorite meals in Paris, though, have come from the market at Maubert Mutualité, a block or so from the apartment we rent, where the fishmonger will shuck our oysters while we finish shopping, and the cheese from Laurent Dubois is superb.

Edited April 13, 2010 by ann (log)

[fairfranco]

glad to see a photo of the main course souffle as I'd forgotten to take photo' until after the main course and that was what I had!

Just got back from Paris having managed to get the boat back home with the current air issues because of the volcano.

I had a great experience at Michel Rostang's and had the 65 euro meal having not seen any mention on the wine but had wine matched with the courses as a regular addition.

I went on my own and being my first experience Michelin Star restaurant experience and being the youngest person in there I was impressed at how the waiters, especially the head waiter did their best to put me at ease. The head waiter spent a lot of time chatting with me as well as doing a good job explaining dishes.

As was said in the review above the place is very homely in a sense, "like an old friends" as was said and while beautifully laid out it had a relaxed at atmosphere, there were 2 other lone men who had ended up spending most of the meal talking and sharing their experiences across the restaurant with one of them having a well behaved dog kept under his table! (The dog had been fed in a Michel Rostang dog bowls though i'm not sure what luxurious dog food he got!)

My meal started with 3 amuse bouche - a mini "Sardine Club Sandwich", a sausage slice with pistachio and a mini moulle tart. The tart was my favourite of the 3 with a very refreshing flavour.

I then got an asparagus soup which also proved a refreshing precourse though had a pleasing deep flavor of the asparagus.

My first chosen course, another light refreshing one, which proved a wise move with the rich and filling nature of my main was poached Oysters with jellied lime, stewed leeks and smoked herring eggs. Accompanied by a bruschetta. This smooth and refreshing combination went down beautifully on the bruschetta and could well have been my favourite course.

Next I had the La Quenelle de Brochet soufflée à la Crème de Homard as reviewed above. While I loved this dish and rich lobster sauce the souffle was massive and proved very filling and hard work at the end for me! My palate's not all that acustomed to the rich flavours but I was amazed at how big the souffle was. All the same I did eat all of it and mopped up most of the sauce (which was topped up half way through eating) with my bread roll.

For the desert I had told them that I love chocolate and they certainly delivered chocolate. The biggest most perfect melt in the middle chocolate pudding you ever did see. (photo's to follow)

Though it looked like it had been slightly overcooked from the outside with a little blackness around the edge but when I broke it open I wasn't dissapointed as the rich and smooth dark chocolate ozzed from the light fluffy cake exterior. The pudding was surrounded by a lightly flavoured coffee sauce.

This was also accompanied by a spoon of chocolate ice cream which went down very nicely.

Finally as above I had the selection of treats which I struggled through determined to try as many as possible as I finished my sweet wine and coffee full from the previous courses!

---

All in all an excellent experience, surprisingly large portions, a friendly atmosphere, some lovely classic rich flavors followed by a much needed afternoon nap!

[ann]

Fairfranco, thanks so much for your mouth-watering review. For those who might be reading this in the future, I read in another forum that the club menu with accompanying drinks, while mentioned on the Rostang web site, is not on the menu at the restaurant but is graciously offered if requested. I don't know if this is true or not. Glad you were able to make it home despite the aftermath of the volcano.

[Bu Pun Su]

I always make a habit that whenever I visit Paris, in addition to 3-star restaurants, I will visit one 2-star place. In the winter of last year, we visited Michel Rostang – a restaurant which is full of tradition and history. It’s hardly on my radar except some people said I should give it a chance during the black truffle season

Food (and wine) - 90/100

The truffle menu was indeed quite extensive – there are almost as many dishes as the regular ones. I opened my meal by sharing the restaurant’s famous toasted sandwich with truffle and butter. What we had thought to be the highlight, it’s rather short of our expectation. While the bread is crusty, we thought the buttery flavor was weak. Even worse, the black truffle only filled in 50% of the bread surface area – no wonder it didn’t give much impact (I saw in other’s blog that the truffle was almost covered the whole sandwich)

My next dish turned out to be better: tasty purple artichoke soup with some truffles and foie gras. The flavor also came from the duck liver that went along with the rich and smooth soup – almost comparable to Savoy’s famous artichoke soup. My main dish did not disappoint, but nothing memorable. I consumed rather-crispy sweet bread with mushroom and spinach; the taste was quite heavy – a typical of classic French dish. The desserts were quite interesting; we shared a delicate “cigar” filled with cream-contained alcohol and marsala ice cream. The other dessert was a bitter chocolate tart (the portion was quite big) with some coffee sauce and chocolate ice cream – rather intense, probably great for chocolate lover.

Once Michel Rostang shared that he came from a few generations of chefs and thus he never thought of becoming anybody else but a chef also. His father, Jo Rostang held Michelin’s top accolade – Michel himself was possibly expected to achieve that as well. Within a few years of opening his own resto in Paris, Michel managed to earn the 2nd star. After tasting what he offered in this occasion, we kinda understood why the third star never came. It was not that delicious and the execution was good, but not like the other place that came into near perfection. My parents shared the lobster salad for appetizers; they said the blue lobster rather lacked in sweetness, the texture and the sauce were decent but they expected more delicious stuffs. The roasted sea bass looked better on the plate than on the palate. It’s rather bland and boring, fell short of the fish they ate at L’Arpege/Le Bristol.

I suppose if you come here expecting to eat some traditional and familiar classical French cuisine (rich sauce with some slow cooking), you will be happy. Even in the truffle season, I don’t find the dishes to be that great – I’m not sure if I will be bothered to dine here during the non-truffle season. We agreed that Rostang’s food was worth 90/100 (2* - Michelin got it right with virtually no chance to get the 3rd one in the future).

Service (and ambiance) - 92/100

The service was led by two very senior managers with the help of madame Rostang and her daughter. It’s professional without being obtrusive; also frank and tried their best to accommodate diners’ needs. The restaurant was quite full as it was the eve of Valentine’s day. The dining room has 2 part: the smaller one gives you access to the kitchen while the bigger one is more comfortable and decorated with several contemporary art items (paintings and statues). Rostang is a nice place to see a piece of Paris or even the French classic fine dining place. Unfortunately, they have to compete with Passard, Gagnaire, Alleno etc. Had they been located in NY or other part of US, this place might have gotten its 3rd star. Overall experience, I gave 91 pts (two-star standard)

For the dishes’ pictures: Rostang '10