Gastroville

It is easy to be impressed by Jean Francois Piege’s cuisine. I am not sure there is a current chef in haute cuisine anywhere that cooks with such precision like the kitchen of les Ambassadeurs under Piege. I don’t think so. The technique is virtually flawless and from my point of view clearly today’s benchmark. The used techniques manage to cleverly balance modern techniques and traditional techniques. The ingredients are throughout a meal as good as it gets or close to and especially impressive is the now in most dishes superb calibration of tastes and taste marriages, which Vedat and I somewhat missed on our fist meal. I sense more creativity on the two meals I had now than on the first occasions as if Piege is more liberated from the influence of having been under the Ducasse umbrella for many years and he is now finding his own style. The said praise does not mean that I do not have some issues with Piege’s cuisine. I do find some sauces a notch too reduced or with slightly too much fat traces but this all fall under the category of a matter of taste.

Many dishes bear a hallmark of Piege’s playfulness and creativity without forgetting the roots of French cusine and without compromising the in so many places missing rigor necessary to obtain a truly extraordinary result.

I had two meals there recently. Both meals started with the amuse “Sur l’idée d’un plateau de télé…..”. It is perhaps as far as one can get from most people’s normal television snacks, but it is a very good start of a meal. It consisted of Gateau de foie blond selon Lucien Tendret version 2006 (A small glass of cray fish and chicken liver mousse), Variation croustillante d’une tranche de jambon (a deep fried crocquet), Comme un jambon/buerre à la parisienne (a cigarette-like crisp filled with airlight mousse), Bonbon, buerre de truffe noire a tartiner (truffles butter to spread on a toast) and last and perhaps most impressive of all, salade de betterave en lemonade (a beet soda with a clear and crisp taste of beets).

The dish of the two meals I had at les Ambassadeurs was the sweetbreads done two ways with a salad of endives and ham. One large chunk of pink cooked with a superb outside crust was paired with smaller soft cooked pieces and a superb endive and ham salad prepared with endive leaves that had been trimmed from their most bitter parts. It is rare to find sweetbreads on this level. Indeed I find it not really worth eating sweetbreads if they are not of top notch quality. Also somewhat disturbing is the fashion to cook them in smaller pieces in order to caramelise them with the result of rather dry interior albeit some crispiness or rather a not so desirable crunchiness is obtained. I take my hat of for Piege´s preparation. Bravo.

Another dish on the first meal that was simply a superb dish flirting with perfection in my book was a very large scallop from Erquy served with a leeks compression with truffles, a fantastic vinaigrette and a truffle foam. The scallop was superbly cooked showing both texture and taste of the pan frying and the textural sensation of a medium rare scallop meat. The vinaigrette was superbly balanced and perfumed.

The dish that I was least impressed with, although it still was a very nice dish, was the “Casse-Croûte” de homard bleu a la Florentine. The truffled sauce was slightly too powerful with too much fat traces for the delicate lobster. But even so it is an admirable dish from a conceptual point of view.

Most dishes had truffles incorporated into them. Unfortunately the truffles somewhat lacked in perfume, but they have most of this year and this year goes to the history as a pretty bad truffle year. There were astonishing truffles in mid-December up until early January and then they faded quickly. Only once in early January did I sense that smoky almost like toasted coffee and extremely pungent flavours that is to die for.

The cheese service at les Ambassadeurs is heavily focused on cheeses from Bernard Antony who is one of France’s premier cheese affineurs. Some of the musts from him include his vieux comté, currently the 2002, his superb fourme d’Ambert and l’Abbaye de Citeaux.

The desserts at les Ambassadeurs are perhaps the most complicated and complex preparations from an architectural point of view. From a taste point of view they were still very good even if they are somewhat overworked for my taste. Desserts included a Choco/pamplemousse en chaud/froid, which can be seen on the first picture below and on the second picture below is the Comme un vacherin, noix de cocos/ananas.

Jean-Francois Piege suggested I should come back and try his Galician beef. It was hard to resist trying a Galician beef killed at 7-9 years of age and then matured for one month. The second meal shortly after the first proved to be another superb meal. First the splendid television platter one more time, then a very good big piece of low heat cooked sea bass that was slightly overwhelmed by a buttery truffle sauce. With the bass were also superb buckwheat pancakes and crepes. The sea bass was followed by another fantastic dish. A tarte of Cevennes onion and a clear soup of Cevennes onions and small onion croquets. I adore Cevennes onions if they are prepared carefully so that their fantastic mild onion taste comes through clearly. Piege’s preparation was a creative version of onion tarte and onion soup. Had I not known it was Piege I may have guessed I was being served it by Gagnaire on one of his better days. I think that this dish is the dish I will remember most from these two meals in the future.

So after quite a lot of food, only a few hours after the first meal it was time for the Galician beef. I was a little anxious since they had shown me the piece in advance and it was a large cut, easily enough to serve two people. It was the second cote from the basse cotes, which is one of my preferred parts of the back of the beef. What made me most curious in advance was that Jean-Francois told me it was not very far in style from a very good Simmental, only slaughtered when it is older and thereby had more flavour than a Simmental. It was quite marbled even if I have had Simmental with more marbling but it was a very very good beef. The taste was quite gamey but not too gamey to loose its taste of beef.

On our first visit, Vedat and I experienced some service glitches. This is all history and very professional and friendly service is now provided by a well trained and enthusiastic team. Wine service is particularly good. The wine list is huge with some very interesting wines at reasonable prices. A 91 Pommard Rugiens from Hubert de Montille proved to be a lovely wine.

The dining room at les Ambassadeurs is in my opinon one of the more informal and relaxed of the palace dining rooms of Paris and indeed Europe. One does not feel the opulence of places like le Meurice or Le Louis XV e t c.

I highly recommend les Ambassadeurs and based on the two meals I had there, les Ambassadeurs would get my vote as one of the top five restaurants in Paris.

Gastroville rating: 19/20 - (MJ)