1. El Bulli - Spain
2. The Fat Duck - UK
3. Pierre Gagnaire - France
4. Mugaritz - Spain
5. The French Laundry - USA
6. Per Se - USA
7. Bras - France
8. Arzak - Spain
9. Tetsuya's - Australia
10. Noma - Denmark
These are the titans of fine dining in the world. I looked at several lists, and there all contained essentially the same names. I came across one of the lists during my browsing of internet news, and that's where I got the idea to come to Pierre Gagnaire while I was in Paris. Normally you need reservations months in advance - I lucked out, and there was a cancellation for lunch. Aside from that, they were booked through August. I won't even get into the price, but it was more than I had ever paid for a meal, and we'll leave it at that.
The array of flavors was hard to describe, but I'll try to recall some of the courses. There were 12 courses, but each course had several items. The first appetizer had four parts: eel soaked in soy sauce, cream of sardines on a spear-shaped cracker, and two other forgotten items - all salty. Eel is delicious. One course had frog legs, a French tradition - they're very chewy. Lobster came out in a tangy orange sauce. One plate was a salad of red snapper cubes in a mustard sauce, with a red wine sauce poured over it when served. Dessert was five plates, each with several different desserts on them.
I had three surprises. One was that all the flavors were very subtle, and very light. French cuisine is apparently all about subtlety, and that was clearly true in this meal - meats were tender, and had only a light flavor, so that the lightly flavored sauce wasn't overwhelmed. The other big surprise was that there was no paired wine. I have become so used to this concept in the US that I am stunned to find it does not exist in France, the birthplace of wine and of haute cuisine. sommelier was relatively puzzled when I suggested he help me with this; to his point, there were too many flavors for there to be any hope of pairing the wine with even single course. The final surprise was the lack of decoration; I have been trained in the US to expect fancy food to come with a very stylized environment, but I guess that here they let the food do the talking.
One course was a disaster, and I remember it distinctly. Remember that all the other courses had subtle flavors. Out came an asparagus ice cream in a cucumber sauce, surrounded by a melon sauce. The second plate (same course) was tuna and foie gras wrapped together in a fig leaf - think of a domino shape, but the top half is foie gras, and the bottom half is tuna. It was all terrible! None of the flavors went together, and they were all overpoweringly strong. I have to think that this was an experiment by a sous chef. I took a couple bites of each and sent it back.
The waiter asked me if I would like them to make something else, and I took them up on it. They obviously wanted to make me happy; I obviously thought the last course was disgusting. The waiter promised a very special dish. And it needed to be, to make up for asparagus ice cream.
In the end, it was my favorite course. Black truffles sat on top of sea bass, which sat on a bed of tons of white truffles. A white truffle sauce was poured over the top. If you are unacquainted with truffles, these are a fungus that grows only on oak tree roots, and only rarely, and only in France/Italy. It cannot be grown artificially, and as a result of its rarity, a white truffle costs $2,000+ per pound. I was stunned to be having it for a meal. It was one heck of an apology for asparagus.
I have had truffle oil food in the US and disliked it, so I was negatively biased going into the meal. After going back and reasearching it since, I have found out that truffle oil in the US is a marketing scam. It is in fact olive oil with a chemical flavoring, and contains absolutely no truffles. And I might add, on a personal note, it has no taste in common with real truffles. Which are truly amazing. That dish will be my most lasting memory of lunch at Pierre Gagnaire.
Above: black truffles in a shop window near eglise (church) Madelline
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