39. Paris - Restaurant yam'Tcha.

There are two ways to look at it!

Either we have been in Paris for seven weeks and 'eaten out' six times at six fabulous restaurants, or we have been in Paris for 50 days and I have cooked 44 great meals at home.

Well, in so far as any home-cooked meal can be great when you are not in your own kitchen.  But I carry my own knives and sharpener, a stirrer, a whisk and a bottle opener, to which I have now added a small set of Peugeot salt and pepper grinders that I found for a song at a catering shop and a chopping board (because I forgot to pack my flexible plastic chopping sheet). I also carry an insulated pouch of dried spices (chilli, ginger, turmeric, cumin, garam masala, etc) because spices here are never fresh and horribly expensive.  So cooking is a serious business. 
And given that I only eat one meal a day (besides my morning yoghurt), dinner is a serious undertaking.  I need to get all my daily nutritional requirements from one meal, which is no mean feat.  Five serves of vegetables (some raw), one serve of protein, a little oil or butter, as little wheat as possible and no sugar. So that is why I have cooked 44 meals at home and only eaten out six times.  Really good food is to die for, but your body can't 'live' on it.

So this is the fifth food review (Passage 53, Spring, Le Chateaubriand, Le pas sage) and there is still one to come after this (Le Chateaubriand 2).

Last week we went to yam'Tcha at 121 rue Saint Honore.

www.yamtcha.com

Yam'Tcha has one Michelin star and is run by Chef Adeline Grattard who trained at L'Astrance and in Hong Kong and who blends France and Asia into her dishes.  France has a traditional tea culture and the restaurant pairs its dishes with a selection of excellent teas.
Our best and only friend in Paris, James says that yam'Tcha has been the 'in' place to go for some time.  Every seat was taken on the Tuesday night we went.

Yam'Tcha moved from its original tiny premises to this redeveloped site around the corner in rue Saint Honore, just a couple of weeks ago. This is the climate controlled wine tasting room; the cellar itself is underground. Strangely, with all the radial sawn timber, the whole building looks very 'Queensland-ish' and we felt quite at home.

The newly created and newly planted courtyard.

Exquisite stemware and very unusual 'dress' plates. The green is a glaze on the plate, not food. These plates were removed and stored once the food arrived.

Out of curiosity, I typed the front page of the menu into my translate app.

'Yam tcha: Enjoy small steamed dishes while drinking tea.'

"It is also the need for a fresh and spontaneous kitchen, punctuated at the mercy of seasonal products to create our menus.'

'A mixed initiation inspired by a popular Cantonese tradition.'

Obviously Google translate leaves something to be desired - but you get the drift.

The restaurant offers matching teas as well as matching wines with each course and has one staff person dedicated to tea making. The first amuse bouche was a lovely tea from the south of China. As this was the only tea we had, I don't know whether the other teas were all from China or not.

As the translated menu (above) hinted, the food is a fusion of French and Cantonese cuisines, but you are going to be disappointed with the information I can offer.  The staff were very prissy and it was extremely difficult to understand either their French or their English. Although they were very good at bowing and saying thank you.

My best efforts worked out that this dish is foie gras marinated in a Chinese wine with morel mushrooms flavoured with tarragon. My friend Google advises that tarragon is a common partner for morels, and that morels are a common partner for foie gras. So I am not too far off the mark.  One down, seven to go.

Brittany lobster with an emulsion of Jura wine and salted duck egg yolk. That is all the information I could pick up but ever-helpful Paul calculated that between one and two lobsters fed the whole restaurant and finally concluded that it was closer to one than two.

This was the best dish we had.  It was a small fillet of turbot topped with Mediterranean oysters in a foam of scallop juice served with fresh peas and coriander. Excellent!  All of the core ingredients were perfect and it was concocted with great skill.

Perfectly roasted and seasoned chicken, both breast and leg meat, with girolle mushrooms and red currants on cabbage which had been cooked in shaoxing wine and black vinegar. Girolle mushrooms are also known as golden chanterelles - they are quite chewy and have a nutty peppery note. 

Chinese soup with rice noodles, smoked tofu and schezuan pepper. Yummy, but it came after the main course which seemed a bit strange.

We were asked if we would like the cheese plate.  Yes, please! was uttered in unison.

The cheese plate was a cheese bao.  Baos are steamed wheat flour buns with either sweet or savoury fillings.  This one was piping hot, filled with melted Stilton and an sweet/sour maraschino cherry.

I don't know why they served these two dishes together because they didn't seem to compliment each other at all. On the top left is a peanut posset with a chilli glaze. A posset is an English dish made with heated, sweetened and curdled cream.  I have a great recipe for a rich, tangy Lemon Posset but this peanut one was rather cloying and the chilli glaze was very sweet.

On the other hand, the marinated cherries with fresh almonds on almond milk sorbet with a hint of ginger was a real winner.  

It is summer here and the berries and cherries have been wonderful and affordable.  We have gone silly on raspberries with a touch of Monbazillac and fresh mint with a spoonful of cream. Nothing better. Fresh almonds are just appearing now. They are nothing like the dried out old roasted things we are used to.  They are fresh, zingy and crunchy with a clean aftertaste and they make the best almond milk ice-cream.

The tea making station was just to my left.  But us traditionalists opted for coffee.

These little mouthfuls arrived before the coffee. One was flavoured with coconut, one with ginger and one with star anise.

One doesn't usually photograph the sugar bowl, but this was more than sugar.  Some granules were chocolate and some were other spices.

I'm glad we went.  The food was extremely clean, very little fat, magnificent fresh produce and skilful controlled preparation. But the dishes seemed to lack gusto.  It was all very refined and careful, delicate and subtle.

Perhaps I'm just not subtle enough to fully appreciate it.