Restaurant Quinsou sits just across the street from École Ferrandi, one of the top culinary schools in the world
https://www.ferrandi-paris.com/en, so you can be pretty confident that the food will be good. And it is!
Today they had a regular lunch prix fixe menu and also a “market” menu. I went for the market menu!
My lunch started with a lovely delicate Champagne Colin Alliance Brut blanc (65% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot meunier). Fresh, a sense of pear and white peach, floral, very fine bubbles.
Two bites to welcome me: a warm puréed green bean soup (very vegetal, with just a hint of shallot and a slightly grainy texture) with a dab of cool miso cream, and two small very crispy caramelly slightly salty buckwheat tartellets filled with celeriac cream and topped with a dab of verjus gel. With the Champagne they got all of my textural and flavor and olfactory senses up and running!
Next, a generous slice of foie gras terrine with an Armagnac jelly, some prune, and a dab of apricot purée. Well made, and the texture was spot on, but the flavor of the foie left a bit to be desired – in retrospect, I should have asked for some fleur de sel.
To accompany my next course, Château Prince Les Ardoisieres Chenin blanc from the Loire. Fresh, white fruit, a sense of cilantro and granite.
And for this course, spectacular tender and pure tuna carpaccio with a drizzle of concentrated cucumber water, dabs of onion gel, tarragon leaves, fennel seed, and a slice of cucumber at the bottom to clear the palate! Wow. Simple preparation with pristine ingredients combined in a creative and entertaining manner to partner beautifully with the flavors of the wine. I would love to be this clever!
The next wine was also a white but heavier and smokier, with senses of yellow fruits, brioche, leek, almond, and a hint of licorice. Dormy Pouilly Vinzelles from Burgundy – 100% Chardonnay
The dish: broiled sweet firm red mullet with delicious rich bouillabaisse sauce, celeriac crème, a wedge of braised fennel, a slice of radish (nice and spicy!), and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. Warm and satisfying with just enough bite to surprise the palate and sharpen the focus. And I soaked up every last drop of that bouillabaisse sauce with my bread!
Then to accompany my meat course, a wonderful very dry Côtes du Rhône, Petit Ours by Matthieu Barret. My server told me that it was a modern style Syrah – not sure what that means, but it might be worth researching! Lovely ripe black fruits, a bit peppery, fresh.
The course: five slices of medium rare roasted veal (always a treat – can’t really get it in the U.S.), a couple of the best sweet tender roasted cèpes mushrooms I’ve ever had (wanted more!), celeriac purée, and textbook complex veal stock. Treeeemendous! The wine went even drier with this sweet course.
With my cheese course and dessert they offered a lambic ale, 3 Fonteinen – light, vinegary, citrusy, a bit of malt. An interesting choice, but it didn’t really work for me.
For the cheese course, generous portions of two goat cheeses (one fresh with a slight lavender scent, one aged) and two cow’s milk (one creamy style and one an aged firm Comté) with black olive and beetroot condiments and a cherry soaked in vinegar. Nice!
Dessert was a delicate pastry ring filled with spice cookie crumbles, then figs, then fig ice cream and topped with whipped coconut cream. Sweet and light and cheer-inducing! Then the mignardises: a chocolate truffle, a strawberry-raspberry gel, and a crispy lacy brown sugar disk.
So, textbook French cuisine with whimsy, appropriately found just across the street from the Ivy League of culinary schools! I wonder if the chef instructors stop by occasionally!
Restaurant Quinsou, 33 Rue de l'Abbé Grégoire, 75006. One Michelin Star. https://www.quinsourestaurant.fr/
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