Dear Friends,
For Christmas one of our kids gave us a gift certificate to a 2 star Michelin restaurant in Nice. We have only been to Michelin starred restaurants a couple of times in our lives. Going to a Michelin starred restaurant or a restaurant that aspires to be a Michelin starred restaurant is not like going to any other kind of restaurant. You might choose a regular restaurant because it is casual, convenient, pretty good food, friendly staff and customers; or you might choose a regular restaurant because they make a really good steak or particularly good fish or some sort of ethnic food. Regular restaurants can be inexpensive or expensive. But in a regular restaurant, you know what you will get, and it will not take a paragraph of specialized language to describe what it is.
At a Michelin starred restaurant, it is a total experience: the ambiance, the lighting, the greeting, the aroma, texture and flavors and how they all interact at various times during the experience. To truly enjoy a Michelin starred restaurant, you need to suspend the concept of a regular restaurant and move into a whole new world where all of your senses are involved and where it is the combination and interaction of all your senses that matter. Each individual texture, flavor, aroma and appearance is carefully crafted, but it is the combination and interaction that is critical.
Last week we went to Restaurant Flaveur in Nice. It has two Michelin stars. We had talked on the phone and via email in a combination of French and English, because we had some concerns about the length of the experience as well as the emphasis on fish in the dishes. All of these interactions before we even arrived made us look forward to our experience and eased our concerns. Nevertheless we were not at all sure what to expect.
Our apartment is in Villefranche which is next to Nice, but depending on traffic it can take awhile to get there. We decided that we would splurge and take an Uber. It was a rainy night, and we were nervous about getting an Uber and the traffic to get there. The Uber arrived quickly and the traffic was light so we arrived at 7:20 pm for our 7:30 pm reservation. They pretended that it was perfectly normal to arrive early, and fortunately the next customers arrived 5 minutes after we did.
It is a small restaurant, maybe 8 or 10 tables. We have no idea how many people were in the kitchen, but in the front of the house, there were two: one of the brothers who owned the restaurant and one helper. They presented each of us with a personalized menu. Just a quick aside, in English the word menu connotes a list of the food/drink being offered. The appropriate translation of the English word "menu" to French is "la carte" (unlike English words, French words have a sex. La carte is feminine). The word "le menu" in French refers a group of special choices with a special price. In the case of Flaveur, there is only un prix fixe (a fixed price) menu. You can choose between 7 or 9 courses with a prix fixe for each one. There was also a supplement available for an additional amount. We had the 7 course menu plus the supplement.
Here is a photo of my personalized menu. Jane's was somewhat different because of her desires we told them about in advance.
A couple of words of explanation are in order. It appears from my "Exploration" that there 5 courses plus a possible supplement. Never fear though, some of the headings were divided so we really did get the promised number of courses. In addition, while it may appear that there are several choices under each heading, in reality you get all of the items listed under the heading, usually in a variety of small bowls or plates. The brothers that own and run the restaurant were born in Guadeloupe. The first heading items are an homage to their heritage which they refer to as from the Caribbean. The second heading items are an homage to food of the French Riviera. At the end of the meal you return to the Caribbean. It is all quite esoteric.
The items listed under each heading are in fact virtually every ingredient in the dishes under that heading. While we took many pictures of the dishes, I cannot begin to list with certainty which picture goes with which description. The following photos are in chronological order.
This is the first food that arrived, just a little amuse bouche. The one on the top of the picture is for Jane as it has crab in it and mine has scallops. They had asked earlier if Jane liked crab.
This is a close up of mine.
This is what one course looked like when I had finished it.
This is the butter, sitting on a stone, just in case you couldn't tell.
I haven't mentioned the wine. The wine and liquor is an add-on to the prix fixe. We each started with a glass of champagne - Jane a rosé and I a blanc. Both were fantastic.
Then we took advantage of the four glasses of wine menu which were served at the appropriate time during the meal. Here was our first wine.
This is the fish of the day.
This is the lobster supplement and the wine pairing.
Here is a little something more.
We then moved on to the dessert courses with their paired wine.
Of course at the end of the meal, a photo of the two of us as I prepare to pay the bill. Fortunately, the server was a much better server than photographer.
So while we are on the subject of the bill, the other thing about going to a Michelin starred restaurant is that you need to suspend all concerns or thoughts about money. If you think about all the work that goes into preparing a Michelin starred meal, you can understand why it is so expensive from a cost perspective. We once spent a morning in the kitchen of a one star Michelin restaurant watching the preparation for the lunch service. There were many people working hard all morning at very specific tasks. As an example one guy was poaching quail eggs all morning essentially one at a time so that they all had exactly the same doneness and amount of egg white on them. Those eggs were one small part of a salad to be served with the lunch. The amount of individual effort that goes into every ingredient is incredible. Having said that, you cannot possibly justify the total price of a Michelin starred experience from a value perspective except by comparison to other Michelin starred experiences. Since we didn't have enough of those for a comparison, we just enjoyed the experience and paid the bill. Justifying the price/value ratio cannot be done by any logical or honest process.
One of the concerns we had going into the meal was the amount of time the experience takes. We were assured that the experience would take 3 hours minimum. In actuality it took 4 hours from start to finish. That was a long time for us particularly when it started at 7:30 pm. The service started off somewhat slow as there were times we had no new course for quite a while. Once the experience got going, it moved along at an appropriate pace. I would not go to a Michelin starred restaurant unless you are prepared to spend four hours. If you get frantic about how long it is taking, you will miss a lot of the enjoyment of the experience.
In the end, we are very happy that we got the gift certificate for this experience. We would not have done it without that impetuous, and we would have never had the experience that we had. We certainly would not do it every night or even once a year, but it was a great experience completely different from anything we had previously done.
Thank you for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
