It Was Kind of an Accident, but a Happy One! - Friday, 21 July

Normally I don’t book dinner at a fancy resto for the day I arrive - not only am I very tired in the evening (and these types of dinners tend to go on for two or three hours), but my digestive system is ready for bed and not quite ready to handle the volume and variety of food and drink!  But I had snagged a reservation at a hot new Israeli (and neighboring countries) resto in the Montorgueil district called Shabour, only to find when I re-read the confirmation that I had booked it for the wrong night.  Oopsie!  My calendar was getting pretty full, so I figured, oh, well, let’s see if I can stay awake and functioning digestively!  

There are no tables in Shabour - instead, Chef Assaf Granit has designed a central cooking/plating station surrounded by a granite counter, at which patrons perch on stools on all four sides.  It becomes quite the circus when the all the stools are full and there are half a dozen or more cooks and platers and servers working at the same time, sometimes bumping into each other!  One of their distinctives (or gimmicks, depending on how you look at it) is that they don’t present you a menu ahead of time, they just ask if you have any food allergies or requirements.  It’s a prix fixe arrangement, so you eat what’s set before you!  But in an interesting twist, the cook who prepares each course either serves it to you (along with a sometimes-long story about what its components are, how it’s prepared, where it comes from or what its historical derivation is, etc.) &/or checks in with you after you’ve eaten it to see what you thought and to answer any questions.  The level of English proficiency varies among the cooks, but I was able to understand most of what they were telling me!  Happily, they send you home with a little doggie bag that contains a copy of the night’s menu and a little bag of deeeelicious shortbread cookies.

Oh, ya, Chef Granit also stops by frequently to see how things are going (when he’s not giving orders to the cooks, of course, to which they answer in impressive unison, “oui, Chef!”).  Apparently he has several restos in Jerusalem and London, and is quite the celebrity.  Seemed like a nice guy, though.  I said to him, “so, you’re the boss around here, hey?” and he responded that he was actually the dishwasher (a practiced response, I’m sure).  But I also talked with him about the resto’s design, why he chose it, etc.  He claimed that he wanted his guests to understand that restos are not about one “creative genius celebrity chef” but rather about the hard work and collaboration of the staff (which you can see right in front of you), and that sometimes things go wrong and need to be quickly corrected.    

So, then, it was:

Three amuse bouche:

• A lemon calisson (a traditional canoe-shaped almond pastry or candy) with Zaatar spice
• Smoked eel in a sumac mayonnaise (wow!)
• Finely diced swordfish and cabbage in a wrapper that tasted like Jerusalem artichoke?  Daikon? 

Then a summery take on chakchouka crossed with ile flottante - a green puree (I believe spinach and garlic) on which floated a burnt meringue, feta sorbet, calamari cooked in vanilla, and caviar.  Yummers!

Then a wonderfully peppery langoustine on a pool of yogurt with spectacularly sweet onion puree, pine nuts, Wakame kelp, drops of fantastic nigella oil, and a brilliant fennel “cracker” (very thinly sliced and dehydrated - perhaps my favorite single element of the whole evening!).

Next, an egg that had been soft-boiled in tea, served on some bottarga, covered with a mound of tahini foam, and topped with trout eggs and dried herbs.  It was served with a Challah bread roll baked in a brioche mold. 

Up to this point I had been drinking just sparkling water to keep myself alert, but I decided to add a glass of a very nice 2019 Domaine Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris Roche Calcaire - it had a bit of sweetness to it, but because the grapes are grown on limestone-y ground, there’s a terrific cleanness and minerality to it as well (or so the sommelier told me!).  All I can say is that I loved it!

Then, monkfish with its smoked liver (presented on smoking herbs & sticks in a closed canister which was dramatically opened for aroma and effect!), parsnips two ways (cooked chunks and puréed), a tuille, black garlic, and some preserved lemon.  Sorry that I only have photos of the cook with his tray of elements to plate, and my plate showing the after-effects - I dug right in before taking a shot of the plated dish!

Finally, some absolutely wonderful pigeon.  The cook told me that the breast meat was marinated and half-roasted, then aged for two days, then finished on the grill just before serving.  It was beautifully intense and not at all grainy (which it can be if roasted/cooked just a tish too long).  The leg meat was confit.  It was served with a block of preserved tomato, fresh cherries, cherry gastrique, and an amazing green coffee bean and cardamom purée.  Those gorgeous herbs are peppery dill flowers.  Masterful!

Dessert was a riff on bouquet garni - a tube of semolina cake sitting on a thin rosemary praline base, soaked with bay leaf simple syrup, garnished with thyme cream and lemon gel and draped with a dried leek leaf.  Very clever!

After dessert, fresh cherries and apricots, and some pistachios.  I would have loved to eat more than one of each, but I was too stuffed.  

I wish I had gone later in the week so that I could have appreciated each course even more (and could have partaken in the wine pairings!).  But I’m glad that I fit it in.  

Shabour.  19 rue Saint-Saveur in the 2nd arrondissement.  https://www.restaurantshabour.com/home-en 

One Michelin star; here’s their writeup:   https://guide.michelin.com/en/ile-de-france/paris/restaurant/shabour