Le Chateaubriand, Paris

Posted by Degan on November 1st, 2011

Every foodie has tales of trying to get into restaurants and I have my share but the entire Le Chateaubriand experience was comical and delightful and almost an adventure in its own right.

I had tried to make a reservation several months in advance of our honeymoon in Paris, to no avail. First we tried to contact a different Le Chateaubriand (do not click that link, the website is hideous) which thankfully didn’t materialize or we would have been very confused, then we tried to call many times but no one answered. When we got to Paris, our friends we met at Nomiya tried to call for us and then my Parisian friend tried to call multiple times for us and still no one could get an answer. Finally, she got her old roommate to walk by to see what the deal was. It was communicated back to us that someone there had answered the door with a shrug. They had been closed for a while, they were not taking reservations, they didn’t really care that we were trying to make one. But we had heard there was a second seating at 10 PM for which they don’t take reservations, so we just showed up.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants (of which it is #9) describes Le Chateaubriand as:

“effortlessly cool, understated yet accomplished, democratic, affordable and, perhaps most importantly, fun. Its lack of airs and graces – hard chairs and bare tables, the take-it-or-leave-it five-course fixed-price menu and the championing of natural wines – is not to everyone’s tastes, but Le Chateaubriand doesn’t really care.”

After Les Ambassadeurs we didn’t know what to expect of France’s best restaurant (at least on the San Pelligrino list), but the above description is pretty apt. Our first view of it coming out of the subway was a well lit and very full bistro. I was surprised and delighted by the casualness of it and also by the lack of line up. I had some hope. The guy at the door told us to come back in an hour. I had more hope. We went for an espresso and a walk and came back to find a very long line up. I wished he had told us to come back in half an hour – or that we had just waited – but we got in line and started counting people ahead of us versus number of chairs we could see inside. I hate waiting in line for restaurants, but waiting in line at 9 PM when you haven’t had dinner yet and aren’t even sure you’re going to get in is a special kind of painful.

But we met some lovely people in the line, also on their honeymoon, and we passed the time chatting about French wine regions. At some point the guy at the door indicated the cutoff point – mercifully behind us – and then it wasn’t all that long before we were inside and there was Champagne and we could watch the utter chaos of the Le Chateaubriand.

When the quote above describes it as “effortlessly cool” they certainly are not talking about the effort of turning over an 80 (ish) seat restaurant twice in one night. Sure there is only one prix fixe tasting menu but there are amuses and mignardises, there are wine pairings and there aren’t that many staff. Dishes came out of the kitchen in order but without any kind of timing. Carafes were plunked on tables so hard and fast that water sloshed. We saw the sommelier pour the pairings for a table of four in one shot, upending the wine bottle and pouring between glasses without stopping. And everyone was having a great time.

We started with several amuse bouches; two malleable sticky balls of something nutty coated with sesame seeds, four poppy seed and pepper gougeres plated on a bent tin dish like you would find in a tavern, then cucumber ceviche which was a cloudy, limey soup with a chunk of cuke floating in it. The next dish was also liquid – herring bouillon with celery and blossoms floating in it. It was served in matte black bowls and the clear broth with pale green and purple had a Japanese-like affect. It was reminiscent of green tea in a Japanese garden. Then there was a fennel salad with olives and mint coated all over in red beet powder. These were characterized by simple, strong flavours, with hints of complexity and sophistication. Clearly the chef was playing on a theme and it didn’t always work out but the effort was laudable.

Sexy, Basque chef Inaki Aizpitarte allegedly wanted to open a place where his friends could afford to eat and he has succeeded in making his culinary genius accessible (if you can get a table) but one wonders if his friends are French or if they’ve moved on because the place was full of tourists. Like Les Papilles, we were charmed by everything but there were very few French people aside from the staff.

The first dish (the vegetable course) that was actually listed on our tasting menu was two white asparagus – one from France and one from Spain – with smoked Parmesan cheese, mint and olive oil. It had the feel of an aglio y olio pasta without the carbs. The asparagus was fibrous and slightly sweet and soaked up the flavours brilliantly, creating a smoky creamy mouth feel punctuated only by the mint.

The fish course was pollack, dill, peas cooked in a reduction of pea pods and poached spring onions. You would think the dominant flavour here would be fish but the pollack has such a subtle flavour and pea pods cooked down for hours taste so entirely of spring peas that there could be no room for anything else except for the faint hint of dill. Delicious.

Then meat. Tender pieces of lamb with braised eggplant, basil, shaved red onion, medallions of pickled daikon, thinly sliced carrots and radish and odd green pickled cubes of something juicy and refreshing like cucumber or winter melon. By this time, our friend from the line had come over to share his bottle of wine with us (because his new wife didn’t drink) and we had befriended the family at the table next to us (with whom we were sharing their wine-soaked menu for notes) and we were all quite drunk. We were having such a great time that it would have been a fantastic night in spite of the food

But the food was delightful, as was the service and the atmosphere and the people. It was completely uncaring and unpretentious and such a change from Les Ambassadeurs where everything was prefect and polished (but which we also loved).

Dessert was interesting. First we had an endive, orange sorbet, and olive dish that played off of bitter and sweet. The creamy orange sorbet provided a bridge of flavour and texture between the poached endives and fresh slices of mandarin orange and the dark rough cut chocolate “dirt” on top. Then we had crème fraîche and celery of all things more chocolate dirt and ribbons of crispy brûléed sugar. Very brave cooking.

We finished with candied rhubarb with candied fennel stuck to it, vanilla madelines and espresso and the dregs of our wine then walked out into the night. So late that the metros were closed and so drunk that we didn’t care how far away we were from our home arrondissment. The walk home was another adventure, past canals and parks and we took it all in hungrily, knowing it was one of our last nights in Paris. Can’t wait to go back.