Guy Savoy

I'd been wondering whether I should add a category of "restaurants" here and last night tipped my decision.

On a Friday night where we had nothing in particular planned, my DH suggested we go to a nice restaurant. We really enjoy the fine dining experience, and tend to hit 2 and 3 star Michelin restaurants a few times a year. I suspected it wouldn't work out - seeing as he made the suggestion at 6pm for that same night and we had nothing reserved. But, it is a vacation period in Paris, and after 20 calls he found a table at Guy Savoy at 10pm.

It was excellent. We took the "menu prestige" option which is a tasting menu of many courses to give us a taste of several of Guy Savoy's most famous dishes, and we were not disappointed. This is a chef who really knows how to ge the most out of each ingredient and taste. There were many courses but my favorites were :

Myriad of Young Peas - the essence of the fresh baby pea, in gelee, in the peas themselves, and the play of textures from peas to gelee to poached quail's egg to the little sprouts on top. Divine.

Cold steamed land and sea assortment - amazingly good fresh steamed veggies presented very dramatically over steaming dry ice. By far the best simple vegetable dish I've ever had. The "sea" mention came by way of a very original oyster vinaigrette which was deep and oceany and amazing (and I don't like oysters).

Soup of artichoke heart and black truffle - very good, one of his famous signature dishes, but I found it less amazing than some of the other things. The mushroom and truffle brioche that was served with it was out of this world however.

Crispy sea bass in vanilla spice - was probably the best fish dish I've ever had. The fish was perfectly cooked, extremely flavorful, and the sauce was absolutely out of this world. Vanilla but the flavor was only complex and savory, no hint of sweetness.

There was also a half rock lobster (very good, but nothing particularly surprising about it) and duck magret with foie gras (the foie gras of course I didn't eat but as usual my DH doesn't complain to have a second portion of foie gras).

The cheeses were really good - I particularly liked a fresh goat cheese, a Corsican sheep's milk cheese that was covered in spices, but the knockout was a 2004 cantal.

The desserts just kept coming - but I'd seen that from tables around us (one of the advantages of a late seating is seeing the end of the meal of earlier tables) so I'd done my best to save room. The desserts from the menu were a "Strawberry Textures w granny smith apples" and it was another fabulous example of Guy Savoy's ability to highlight and magnify the essence of an ingredient - it was fabulous. Less surprising was the chocolate fondant layered w praline, but then again I'm never a big fan of praline. On the sweets cart - this is in addition to the two small desserts served in the Prestige tasting menu, mind you - there were many things to tempt us. I tasted the sorbet au petit suisse (a yogurt sorbet) and raspberry cheesecake and a nut cookie and had a few bites of my DH's fabulous choice of rose rice pudding.

In all, a great experience. Restaurant was very good, not stuffy, service excellent. We had a great champagne upon arrival and the white wine was outstanding. I really liked the red demi that we had as well, but it was mainly well-adapted to the duck - on it's own it didn't have the complexity of the white.