Espadon - Ritz Paris

75001 PARIS

16/20
Remarkable Restaurant

10 PHOTOS

Chef Eugénie Béziat

Cooking French | Gastronomic

Services Accomodation | Disabled access | Private parking lot | Terrace | Valet parking

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

290€ à 380€

Gault&Millau's review

16/20

Remarkable Restaurant After two and a half years' closure of L'Espadon, the legendary Place Vendôme luxury hotel has revamped its gastronomic offering. The former room, with its baroque ceiling, is now dedicated to breakfasts, and a long corridor leads to the brand-new space next to the Hemingway bar. This modern, no-frills space, with its open-plan kitchens, plant decor and crystal herbarium, boasts a dreamy terrace overlooking an incredibly soothing garden. While the table layout is not perfect - some diners, with their backs to the room, are partly deprived of the show - the strong point remains the attention paid to every detail of the ambience: numerous chiaroscuro effects, and the intensity of the lighting at each table increased while the menu is read, then immediately lowered. Eugénie Béziat, chef and mastermind who, after studying literature, worked for the likes of Michel Guérard and Michel Sarran, brings a new breath of fresh air to the table, building a bridge between Africa, where she spent the first eighteen years of her life, the Mediterranean and the palace world. Her explorations reflect an approach to world cuisine that reconciles continents, trends, the cuisines of rich and poor, and short supply, while respecting the codes of contemporary haute cuisine. The metamorphosis of vegetables from the kitchen garden of the Plaine de Versailles will delight gourmets who appreciate a cuisine that takes care of the earth and people. A sensory voyage into a world that the Ritz had never explored before. There's no à la carte menu, but you can choose between two formulas, with five or eight courses, the names of which are known in advance. This cuisine, which cultivates contrasts, seduces with its unexpectedly intense interplay of produce, aromas, textures and flavors. Vegetable-meat parity is played out with black onion with balsamic notes, cooked in a clay crust and staged by pedestal table service; it is paired with tender poultry breast contised by a stuffing with a discreet lemon flavor. This is echoed by a superb tartlet of poultry thighs and citrus fruits of unprecedented delicacy. And the signature dishes, with their scathing flavors, go on and on, not without audacity and insolence. The order of the meat and fish dishes is reversed to emphasize the power of the flavors. For example, the main course is a blue lobster from Brittany served with bissap, very powerful and reduced, a little too sweet, but which goes wonderfully well with a glass of red wine. On a satellite plate, spinach ballottine stuffed with attiéké, a manioc couscous, is accompanied by a full-bodied lobster bisque. Among the starters, rather than the rusticity of radishes combined with peanuts and cardamom, we preferred the delicacy of this warm oyster paired with delicately burnt brousse and a Brède Mafane coulis. For dessert, we were delighted with the "quince - walnut - brioche" composition, beautifully presented and with its three textures - jellied, glazed and poached - all very delicate, even if the bread-flavored brioche didn't provide the gourmandise we'd hoped for. Guillaume Delvert, a sommelier with six years' experience at the Ritz, is on hand to advise on the sumptuous cellar, presented in three different volumes. The attentive, mostly female service team, whose gentle touch matches the ambiance, understands that a restaurant is a theater, even if some actresses overplay their roles on this moving stage, courted by an international clientele.

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