Sojourn: 34. Paris - Le Chateaubriand

The San Pellegrino World Top 100 Restaurants list for 2015 was released last week, just days before our scheduled dinner at Le Chateaubriand, which came in at No. 21.

The World's 100 Best Restaurants
In Australia, Attica rated highest at 32, way ahead of Quay at 58, with Sepia at 84 and Brae at 87.
Our other favourite Paris restaurant, Septime rated 57 so we hurried off to book there too, but alas, there was nothing available during the 5 weeks we have remaining in Paris.
However, the ever-resourceful Paul has managed to get a booking at Mirazur in Menton on the French Riviera, which rated 11. We were able to book for dinner two nights before we are due to begin our week in Nice, just down the road. Perfect!
As expected the Spanish restaurants did incredibly well in the rankings. Luckily for us, we will be in San Sebastian later in the summer, so Paul is trying to obtain bookings at Mugaritz 6, Asador Etxebarri 13 and Arzak 17. We tried to do this back in 2013 and it was extremely difficult, many unanswered phone calls, many unanswered emails - although we were successful in getting into Mugaritz for lunch, which was unforgettable. People fly in from all around the world just to eat at these places - fly in, fly out gastronomy. So it will be interesting to see how we get on this time.
But back to Le Chateaubriand. This was our fourth visit and although the food was incredibly creative and highly inventive, it didn't seem to have the "knock your socks off" impact of previous visits. But that might just have been me.

Looks pretty ordinary from the street, like any other neighbourhood restaurant on a busy street.

Inside it feels a little art deco and seats 50 people. You can only book for the first nightly sitting at 7.30-8.00pm. For the second sitting, from around 9.30 or 10.00, you need to queue up and wait - either at the bar, in the street or at the tapas bar next door.

Chef Inaki Aizpitarte, in the centre, originates from the Basque area of northern Spain. On his left, in red is one of his two business partners, a charming man named Laurent Cabut who manages the front of house.

Le Chateaubriand opened in 2006 and has been a hit since day one. They made the top 100 list in 2010 at an amazing No. 11. This was followed by 9 in 2011, 15 in 2012, 18 in 2013, 27 in 2014 and 21 this year. That is incredible consistency. They are about to open another restaurant in London. Apparently it opened for one day last week-end but closed the next day - "Not ready", he said.

So .... what did we eat? We chose to have the dégustation or "tasting menu", eleven small serves to which we added cheese and coffee.

In total they presented five plates of amuse bouches - palette pleasers - to share. The first was perfect little bliss-bombs of cheese puff with poppyseed.

Ceviche of fish in a seafood, citrus and coriander stock was next. At the bottom of the bowl was a perfect little cube of raw fish - something like tuna or kingfish.

Next came a roulade of sardine. Paul called it an anchovy chicko roll. The pastry was like wan-ton pastry, deep fried and crunchy and the filling was either sardine or anchovy mixed with finely chopped mint. It was dusted with a delicious smoked paprika.

This was the winning dish for me. They called it a risotto of sea asparagus, dressed with two wafer-thin, translucent slices of ham.

We call sea asparagus samphire. The taste was only of incredibly creamy samphire, with salty prosciutto or serano ham. There was no trace of any grain like rice or spelt. So either they somehow managed to 'risotto' the samphire itself or they removed the grain from a risotto and used only the starchy, creamy 'juice' to coat the vegetable. It was stunning and I could have eaten bowls of it.

The final amuse bouche was a broth of fennel and passionfruit, built on a beef stock. Very nice but not hot enough for me. I like my soup steaming.

The first of the main courses was a ceviche of cuttlefish with wild herbs, dressed with a touch of creme fraiche and topped with several, crunchy fried nettle leaves. The next day, when Paul translated the menu, we discovered the dish was called cuttlefish, cucumber and sorrel. So take your pick. Either way, it was a generous serving of leaves - great for Paul and I, but I noticed lots of plates went back to the kitchen with leaves untouched. I just wanted to gather them all up and gobble them down.

This was the fish plate. We thought the Swedish waitress, with good but heavily accented English, said black fish with asparagus. When we translated the menu we discovered that it was line-caught brill (a flat fish of the turbot family) with mussel jus, green asparagus and radish. It was clean, crisp, perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked sous vide. Lovely.

We didn't have matched wines with our menu but took a recommendation from the sommelier for a Côtes du Rhône shiraz and it was very good.

The main meat dish was Challans duck, red spinach and rhubarb. Under those red leaves was a slice of duck breast, perfectly cooked sous vide but very rare, plus a piece of well cooked leg meat. The rhubarb wasn't noticeable; it probably formed the jus and I think I heard the waitress tell someone else there was some chicken liver in the jus as well. Challans is a particular variety of French duck. Again, very nice.

A good cheese plate. So good that I almost forgot the camera.

Strawberry chantilly - a very, very light and airy version of strawberries and cream, flavoured with elderberry and dressed with its flowers. We had a little glass of elderberry wine liquor with this - sooo good!

The chef's signature dish, Tocino de Cielo - a Touch of Heaven. To be eaten with the fingers, in one mouthful!

Essentially it is a sugar glazed egg yolk on two different types of not-very-sweet meringue - one a disc, the other crumbs. The first time you taste it you are absolutely blown away. After that, it is a very unusual and rich indulgence.