You'll Eat Whatever is Set Before You! - Tuesday, 10 November

When you were a kid, did your mom ever respond to your whining about what she had made for supper by saying “you’ll eat whatever is set before you”? Well, then, you’d feel right at home in one of the newer trends in French restaurants, the “chef’s surprise” menu, wherein you eat whatever the chef decides to cook that day based on what is available and perfect in the market. Here is a photo of the full menu that was set before my dining companions and me tonight at “Passage 53,” one of these trendy new restaurants. I’m not kidding. This is the whole menu. Our options were menu “découverte” or menu “subtile,” which had the same thing as menu “découverte” plus three more courses.

I was dining with St. Stephen’s choir’s former bass section leader, Henry Dougherty, and Doug Mell. I had read reviews of this place that implied that you could choose from a variety of menu options, but maybe that’s only at lunchtime. Anyhoo, with a few hints from our charming waiter (in his 20’s, cute, his face lit up when we said we were from Minnesota as he responded “ah, Timberwolves” then talked basketball with us for a few minutes), we decide to go for the 60€ menu. We did have a wine list to pick from, so again with some help from our waiter we selected a 2006 Burgundy called Domain Trapet Gevrey-Chambertin – it did go well with most everything.

Our first course was a “pumpkin crème” (a thick sweet warm pureed soup) with a café au lait foam on top. We had eight more courses after this one, so each course was small. We were served just a few spoonfuls of this soup – maybe about 1/4 cup. It was very delicious – warming, sweet, earthy, smooth. Just the thing to get the palate warmed-up!

Next, one perfect raw oyster (when I described the oyster to my oyster-loving friend Dale Halladay, he told me that it must have been a Gerrard Gillardeau from the Marennes-Oleron region of France - "pure joy on a plate" in his words - thanks, Dale!). It was sprinkled with slivers of foie gras – I believe that it was from a chilled terrine (very gently cooked) but our server called it “fresh.” A tiny dice of some crunchy white vegetable (radish? turnip? celeriac?) accompanied this dish – wonderful contrasts of briny, sweet, earthy and crunchy in this course.

And then came the “white course,” and it wasn’t lutefisk and potatoes! Instead two lightly grilled slices of calamari (scored into a small checkerboard pattern so that it curled into a tube when it was grilled – very cute!) sat on a spoon of warm cooked incredibly sweet almond-perfumed cauliflower puree, and flakes of shaved raw cauliflower were tossed on top.

Next a piece of fabulously tender very-slowly-cooked salmon (probably prepared in a sous vide machine) was served with black, green, and white radishes (each prepared in a different style) and enhanced with grapefruit essence. The star of this course, though, was a stripe of Clementine crème that was painted on the plate – the combination of the sweet almost-orange-tasting crème with the salmon was amazing – I must try to figure out how to make this at home!

Next we were brought small bowls containing a spoon of very finely diced vegetables from Joël Thiébault’s farm (a legendary supplier to all of the greatest restaurants in town). Our waiter brought a pitcher a masterfully prepared golden vegetable consommé and poured it over the vegetables – a perfect intermission before the meat course!

And quite a yummy meat course it was! Roast filet mignon that had been rolled in black Madagascar sugar and fleur de sel, accompanied with some more intensely flavored Thiébault vegetables, the star of which was a slice of deep, earthy, sweet, slightly toothsome yellow beet.

Our first dessert was a quenelle of vanilla ice cream on a bed of clear apple and parsley “jello” accompanied with a few dice of raw apple (they tasted like Granny Smiths) and dark tan roasted apple.

The second dessert is called “Mont Blanc” – a thin piping of chestnut cream over some banana mousse that had been scooped onto a meringue finger, accompanied by a quenelle of banana and mace ice cream. The chestnut cream looked like brown vermicelli or like shredded wheat, but of course it was very smooth and sweet and yummy!

Coffee and mini Madeleine cakes finished the meal. We had a hard time identifying the unique aroma and flavor of the Madeleines – I thought they might have used a nut flour (almond or hazelnut) in place of some of the regular flour, or we thought it might be just the perfectly caramelized exterior of the cakes, but our waiter provide the answer – it was chestnut honey! Our American palates weren’t quite well-enough educated to detect such a thing!

53, Passage des Panoramas  https://www.passage53.com/

After our three-and-a-half hour dinner (here’s a photo of our satisfied selves after the coffee and Madeleines), we plunged back out onto the very busy streets of Paris at almost midnight – do people ever sleep here? Even the Metro was quite lively. What a life!