The Magic (and Truffles!) of Pierre Gagnaire - Wednesday, 5 March

Today was my first “fancy meal” of this trip, i.e. one accompanied by Michelin stars!  The rest of the fancy ones will be at one-star restos, but today was lunch at the three-star Pierre Gagnaire.  He is one of writer-teacher-chef Patricia Wells’ (with whom I studied in 2001) top heroes.  I’ve been wanting to eat his food for years, but the evening offerings are just too dear.  They recently (I think) started a lunch service, so I took the plunge!

The room is elegant and understated.  Mostly grey and taupe with touches of color, clean lines, simple vases of fresh flowers, white porcelain, fine but unadorned crystal, substantial but not overly heavy flatware, bold and graphic prints on the walls.  Very “zen” I guess!  I did have to manage some steps down into the dining room and then up to my section, but the staff was right at my elbow to make sure it went well!  And they were well-staffed - it seemed like there was one greeter or waiter or sommelier or bus-person for every-other guest!  [Note: you can click on any image in this blog to see a larger version.]

My amuse bouche consisted of eight elements (left to right):  an extremely thin pastry ball with black garlic puree; a thin slice of cooked beet formed into a cylinder and filled with sweet potato; spicy lentil cream topped with lardo di Colonnata and a slice of tuber Melanosporum (Périgord black truffle); a leaf of spun sugar with garlic and pepper (partially hidden); soupy orange gel with bonito purée (spectacular!); homemade tofu with sesame cream and sesame seeds; a parmesan sablé-style cracker; a beet and tomato feuilleté breadstick.  Spectacular tastes, perfect execution of each element; distinct and harmonious full flavors (without being salty) that enhanced each other and that moved from buttery to spicy to vegetal to earthy to oceanic to acidic without clashing along the way.  My mouth was absolutely amused!

A server brought over their box of huge tuber Melanosporum to show off (or maybe to tempt me to add one to my lunch order, which apparently one can do…not sure how they prepare it!).  They typically cost $1,000/lb retail.  These truffles are credited with producing euphoria, and not just because of the price!

For my first course:

Stunning sea bream carpaccio with sweet sweet smoky scallops, baby spinach, tiny cauliflower buds, spinach/watercress purée, cranberry jam, black garlic, and a slightly acidic (lemon zest?) creamy sauce made with Jerusalem artichokes.  Oh, the harmony!  Every bite was just a bit different than the last.

A chunk of rare Kobe beef in a warm gentle beef broth with couscous, lots of shredded baby leek and coarsely ground black pepper.  Absolutely melt-in-the mouth meat – if I’ve had Kobe beef before, it certainly wasn’t like this.  Wow!

With this first course, Piante Faro’s Etna Bianco “Pietradolce” 2023, grown (you guessed it!) on the slopes of Mt. Etna.  100% Carricante grapes.  Fresh, a bit minerally, dry, with a hint of almond.

Up next:

Deeply roasted sole - sweet and smoky - with corne d’abondance mushrooms (“horn of plenty,” but also called trompette des morts or “trumpet of death” although they’re not poisonous – go figure!), slightly gelatinous cockles (they’re the tiny shellfish with a little yellow claw in this photo), and smoky figatellu (pork liver sausage), with a shellfish lemon thyme sauce.   

With this, Cyril Fhal’s “La Femme Soleil“ 2023.  100% Macabeu grapes – a little heavier, white fruits, more herbal, slightly minerally.

Then: 

Squid stuffed with tiny mirepoix and a zesty lemon purée (the squid is hard to see in this photo), with Paris mushrooms and sea snails, in a sea urchin bisque.  

On the side, sunchoke gel, blanched seaweed and slightly salty and herby plankton ice cream.  A-a-a-mazing!   

With this, a Domaine Courbis Saint-Péray “Le Tram” 50% Roussanne and 50% Marsanne.  White fruits, a bit citrusy, a touch of floral. 

Then my final main course:

Roasted breast of Culoiseau chicken, dramatically served under a smoke-filled glass dome!  Very tasty and juicy.  It was served on parsnip paste and topped with a clementine gel veil (loved this!) and shreds of radicchio and leek, and then topped with a foie gras sauce.

On the side, cabbage stuffed with confit chicken leg and foie, and served on a bed of beet-syrup-poached leeks and mustard.

With the chicken, Domaine André Perret’s Saint-Joseph “Les Grisières” 2020.  Syrah grapes.  Black cherry, prune, lovely tannins.

Then, on to my five pre desserts!  From the left: a lovely shatteringly crisp pastry (maybe graham flour); a thin chocolate cylinder with lavender cream; a tiny spun sugar “bowl” with a licorice-y gel and black olive; almondy cream in a tiny crêpe; a chocolate cylinder with pistachio cream and nuts.

And finally, my nine desserts, served in three sets of three!  

Lemon crème with pears and pomegranate seeds topped with a crispy meringue disc; fabulously sweet chunks of mango in a slightly citrusy sauce with a gently flavored rose gel candy cube and vanilla-rose Chantilly; hazelnuts and baby figs with a salsify jelly.

Apple poached in beet juice on a pastry nest with a chocolate “stem” and meringue “leaf” (clever!); roasted pineapple with black garlic and a sable cookie; poached pear with fig cream and Chantilly, and two meringue discs joined with fig compote and hanging on the rim of the bowl.

Citrus sorbet with coconut ice and crisps, tiny meringue kisses, and Cognac; chocolate ice cream and sauce with toasted almonds, covered with a transparent disk of spun sugar and black sesame (clever!); hazelnut cake with currant conserves and Chantilly, topped with a crispy spun sugar bow.

With the desserts, a Prosecco DOCG Valdobbiadene “Superior di Cartizze” Le Colture.  100% Glera grapes.  Stone fruits, a bit of honey.  Nice balance for the wide range of flavors in the nine desserts!

All of this took only three hours (all those servers were very efficient!)!  Quite the memorable experience.  Not something I’ll do every trip, but I can see why Patricia Wells is enchanted with Gagnier’s ethos and talent and ability to create magic from common (and some quite uncommon) ingredients.  

Restaurant Pierre Gagnaire – 6 rue Balzac in the 8th arrondissement.  Three Michelin stars.  https://pierregagnaire.com/en

The Not-So-Beautiful View from My Window - Wednesday, 5 March

 

So, half of my street (rue François Miron) is torn up for some kind of public works project.  Not sure what it is, but deep holes have been dug, big pipes are sticking up, temporary housings cover some kind of monitoring equipment, etc. Sewer or gas?  It's certainly not an archeological dig (which could happen in this part of town!)!

Update:  a friend who knows about this kind of stuff tells me "the work is being done by Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain.  That’s the Paris Central heating network - similar to what Saint Paul, New York and other large cities have."  It's so great to have friends in the know!!!   

A sign on the fence tells me to be patient because the concrete takes time to dry, the work is complex, etc.  Hmmm.  I'm guessing that they won't wrap it up during this stay.  Perhaps by my return in August?

Now, This is What I Call Meat & Potatoes! - Tuesday, 4 March

Lunch today at Au Bourguignon, just down the block, started with a big gamba (prawn) with a lovely rouille sauce, carrots, a puff pastry boat containing a prawn croquette, celery chiffonade, and some herb crème fraîche.  Tasty!

Then a quintessential meat and potatoes! This was a slightly smaller variation of their signature Boeuf Bourguignon (but still almost more than I could eat), with boiled potatoes, dried parsnip "chips" and an unctuous just-fatty-enough beef demi-glace. The beef was impossibly tender - I could barely spear it with my fork (they should have given me a big spoon instead!), and the steak knife was an almost silly implement (just needed it for shoving food onto my fork and cutting the potatoes). Warming and rib-sticking!

With a small "La Parisienne" tap beer and an espresso, it came to just 33 euros.  Such a deal!

A Lovely Day in the Neighborhood - Monday, 3 March

Hung around the 'hood today.  This was the view walking down my street (rue rue François Miron) after running some errands.  A lovely thing to feast my eyes on every day....

It almost looks like this drawing from Jean-Jacques Sempé!

When Assistance Takes a While and it's Chilly - Sunday, 2 March

You've been waiting for mobility assistance news from the sprawling Charles de Gaulle airport, haven't you?!?  (The last few trips have provided unique experiences, challenges and delights in almost equal measure - check out those stories elsewhere in this blog)

Well, today the wheelchair assistance service presented a new twist.  I was excited that the plane pulled up to a jetway (rather than parking out on the tarmac somewhere), and that they had ordered a wheelchair to meet me at the airplane door.  I hoped that the assistant would roll me all the way through the hallways, monorail shuttle, passport check, baggage pickup, etc.  But alas!  There was another group of six passengers who apparently had trouble walking long distances (although they didn’t request wheelchairs) and there were only two attendants.  So the attendants called for a small van (rats – these things are hard to get in and out of) to take us to the transfer point.  But the worst part was that we waited in a cold drafty jetway for 45 minutes (it was about 34 degrees F. and windy this morning).  I should have asked to shift from the wheelchair to a regular chair so that I could at least move around a bit while waiting for the van, but who wouldda thunk that it would take 45 minutes?  A couple times I was sorely tempted to get up and walk the distance, but realized that I might be the only person in the hallways (since the rest of the passengers had long ago made their way out), which could be risky if I were to trip and fall.  So I waited.  

Eventually the van came and drove us through the underbelly of CDG to another mobility assistance area where a very nice agent took me the rest of the way, handled my bags for me, jumped the G7 taxi queue for me, and and took me right to the car.

Now, at the apartment after a bit of a nap, I’m congested and sneezing.  Not that I'm complaining, but, well, I sort of am!  Hopefully one day of rest will take care of it.  It looks like 50s and 60s with sunshine for the upcoming week.  Wow!

The Drill Seems to Leave More Holes Each Time! - Saturday, 1 March

The get-ready drill has been repeated many times.  Nevertheless, despite giving myself more time than ever, I still am reliably over-rushed in the last 15 minutes before I have to depart for the airport, and ultimately forget a thing or two.  It seems to be a different issue each time, so perhaps I'm just overly creative when it comes to forgetting!  🤣 It certainly can't be old age, can it?!?

Today, about 15 minutes before my Lyft arrived, I remembered that I had forgotten to do a final update to the program layout for a March 16 concert and send it to the printer.  I had written myself a reminder and everything.  A bit of frantic editing, PDF-ing, instruction-writing, and emailing ensued.  Sheesh.

Then just before the plane's departure I discovered that I forgot to throw my earbuds and a pouch of equipment charging cables in my carryon.  EEK!  I can manage without the earbuds, and most-common USB combo cables for mobiles, tablets, portable power supplies, etc. must surely be available everywhere, right?!?  We'll see!  [Update: they had them at the terrific HEMA homewares store a couple blocks away.  Whew!]

Cruisin' at MSP for the Win-Win! - Saturday, 1 March

For the first time, I took advantage of wheelchair assistance at MSP, obliterating that last shred of independence but gaining an easy & smooth experience - someone else hoisted my bags, I got to jump queues, and I experienced almost zero wear-and-tear on the ancient limbs!  And I gave a lovely immigrant woman a job to do!  Win-win!

And of course there was time for the traditional StoneArch burger and fries, with a MetroNOME Brewery Belgian Golden Strong Ale this time. Yummers!  The perfect “bon voyage” for a flight to Paris.