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2014-05-01
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Environment & Service (6/10)The restaurant is a U-shaped bar tables, where the chefs prepare the food in the middle. The seats therefore are not very comfortable, but it creates an interesting environment where you can watch the chefs prepare your food.Dishes are prepared on a batch basis (a batch for each round of customers, 2-3 rounds a night), so if you arrive at different times from other customers you might have to wait longer or shorter for your dishes as you get grouped into a “round” of
The restaurant is a U-shaped bar tables, where the chefs prepare the food in the middle. The seats therefore are not very comfortable, but it creates an interesting environment where you can watch the chefs prepare your food.Dishes are prepared on a batch basis (a batch for each round of customers, 2-3 rounds a night), so if you arrive at different times from other customers you might have to wait longer or shorter for your dishes as you get grouped into a “round” of customers. This is unavoidable due to the small size of the kitchen. This also means a lot of the dish components are prepared long beforehand and retrieved from the fridge. Sometimes a dish can be half-plated and put in a corner up to 20-30 minutes in advance (not necessarily a good thing to see happening in front of you…)
The service is of very high quality. You can see the care the chefs take in preparing your dishes. The executive chef examines the dishes before serving and he sets a very high standard, especially for hygiene. Each dish is served and explained by the chefs. While they did take the effort to explain the dish components, sometimes there were many components to a dish and it wasn’t clear how you were supposed to eat that dish.
Oyster, Snap Pea, Yuzu, Yogurt (9/10)
This was well done, the small frozen yogurt pieces, complemented the oyster very well. Great way to have oysters.Tuna, Sea Urchin, Espelette, Rice (4/10)
This dish didn’t come together as well as I expected. The uni was fresh, but there was some caviar which was very bitter inside. The crispy rice on the side was also unseasoned and didn’t mix very well with the overall dish.Shellfish, White asparagus, Rosemary, Vanilla (2/10)
Every component of this dish was very small. There were 3-4 different types of shellfish, 3 different sauces, and 3 very small pieces of white asparagus. It wasn’t explained which shellfish went with which sauce. It looked nice but the flavours weren’t put together/thought through very well in my opinion.Monkfish cheeks, Wild garlic leave, Morel, Coffee (7/10)
The monkfish (right) was cooked nicely, went very well with the coffee sauce. The liver (left) was also good.Egg, Truffle, Parmesan, Caviar (3/10)
This was their signature dish. It was a cheese ravioli with caviar, truffle and egg yolk on top. I felt the ravioli could be lighter because this dish was way too heavy.Pigeon, smoked foie gras, black berry, waffle (6/10)
The pigeon and foie gras tasted great, but the portion was too small. The waffle was cold when it arrived and had berries on top, which didn’t really fit the rest of the dish in my opinion.Baby Lamb, Black Garlic, Tomato, Burnt Grape (5/10)
There was a piece of lamb and a lamb meatball. It was alright, nothing really stood out with this dish.Desserts
Strawberry, Coconut, Champagne, Pink peppercorn (7/10)This was created in front of you as if the chefs were painting a picture. The strawberry ice cream and strawberry with champagne jelly were quite nice and innovative
Earl Grey, Quinoa, Sakura Shrimp (3/10)
The Earl Grey ice cream was bland so the overall dish didn’t taste like much
Warm Madeleine (1/10)
This tasted burnt…
Marshmellow, Watermelon juice (6/10)
This was the same tray which the expandable napkin was first offered at the beginning of the meal. The napkin was replaced with a house made marshmallow and the water was replaced with watermelon juice. Quite a cool idea!Overall (5/10)
It wasn’t a particularly pricy meal considering that there were 10 courses.
Every dish was presented very nicely, and service was excellent. However, I think the chefs tried to put too many components on every plate and this often decreased the average quality of the dishes. Given the small team that they have, most components were had to be prepared beforehand and were cold. They might benefit from focusing on fewer components and making those really stand out.
Given the great things I heard about this place and the long wait (~1 month booking in advance), I was quite dissapointed that it didn't live up to the hype.
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