Alain Milliat - It's In the Juice

It's a juice bar, it's a tea shop, it's an elegant restaurant, it's a boutique, it's a human being.  A person could go crazy, hypnotized by the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in the upwardly mobile 7th and coming across the  corner establishment on rue de Grenelle, Alain Milliat.  Yes, it is all these things, including a Telerama recommended stop for Saturday brunch with the 'mamies et papys.'

Four of us met up for dinner (on reservation, of course) a couple of rainy (aren't they all?) Friday evenings ago in our handsome attire, not really knowing what to expect.  What we found was a place that looked like this, and those are indeed Alain Milliat juices lining the walls (actually, I 'found' the photos as well, online):

 

As Co. and I awaited our dinner companions, we were chatted up, and chatted up, and chatted up, by the server who apparently was really lonely until we arrived.  Part of the chatting involved convincing Co. that she simply must try an Alain Milliat mandarine juice.  I would have joined her, but with so much alcohol in the world, who has time for juice, except on top of whatever I'm eating for dinner.  When I asked Co. earlier today for her assessment of said juice, she said, "It was good," then she said, "It was high quality," and then she said, "It was excellent."  The moral of this story, I guess, is that the AM juices really grow on you.  Fortunately, our dinner companions arrived just in the nick of time.  After some confusion about the 'menu degustation' vs. the ala carte selections, Co. and I opted for the menu and our companions ended up with half the selections we took, only twice as big, so I guess it evens out, except on the bill which turned out to be twice as expensive for us.  As my elegantly-scarved cohort later moralized, "It all evens out in the end."

The food was very good, which is all you really want to know anyway, am I right or am I right?  Well, in my humble opinion, you will probably not be disappointed, and may, depending on your whims, well be quite delighted.  First, the offerings:

And now, what some of the offerings looked like, decoded:

This colorful entree was the marinated lotte and it was terrific, so good that it's worth looking at a second time, with different lighting:

 

This all-natural mushroom dish was a creative preparation, although rather skimpy on the mushrooms, especially relative to the non-menu degustation plate.

  This delicate salmon filet was light and vaporized.

 

For my money, this canette and yams dish was the pinnacle.

 

A humble, yet satisfying, bonus cheese dish for the menu degustation, with a well-appointed confecture - bread, cheese, confecture, wine - could anything so simple be so French?

 More evidence that the young, creative neo-bistrot chefs of Paris (in this case, the Brit Jon Irwin) forego the traditional cake and tarte dessert offerings for more oddball glace, fromage, praline, etc. concoctions, and this one, with its - do I remember this correctly? - cucumber/cumin ice cream was very, very nice.

As mentioned, you get more dishes, but less quantity, with the menu degustation (65€), so if there are a couple things that really, really tempt you on the blackboard, go ala carte (34€).  One of our companions was quite impressed by the cauliflower risotto, which is not pictured here, mainly because I didn't want to embarrass her by leaning over her plate with my tablet camera.  We ripped through a couple bottles of a very fine Morellino di scansano, one of several reasonably priced reds on the wine menu (34€).  

ALAIN MILLIAT

159 rue de Grenelle

75007 Paris

tel: 01 45 55 63 86

Website: http://www.alain-milliat.com/en/the-restaurant

Worth the Wait: Spring Lives Up to the Hype

                                                                              

And they say it's difficult to get a reservation at Spring.  I think I started trying back in 2009, so that's what, 3 years, give or take several months, and in the grand scheme of things, that really isn't so bad, is it?  I guess I should mention that my attempts have been limited to potential Friday evenings, a notoriously difficult slot for a reservation in the space-challenged, New York Times-reviewed neo-bistrots scattered throughout the French capital.  Nonetheless, my dinner last night, with Co. in tow - or rather, the other way around, as this was her treat, and her successful reservation snag - attests to the fact that one can indeed have a meal at Spring, even without pulling any strings, if one tries hard enough and has a lot of time on one's hands.  As Lenin once observed, the two trump cards of a Bolshevik are patience and irony, a good way of summing up the end of one battle and the launch into another (Septime, but that's another story altogether).  (I hope you caught the Alain Resnais reference there.)

If you are a regular reader of this blog, as I certainly hope you are, you may remember that Spring's reputation was originally established  at a much smaller venue around Pigalle in the 16th, now occupied by La Vitrine.  (If you think it's difficult to get a reservation now, imagine what it was like when Spring could only cram 16 diners into its space, a venue that Le Figaro once anointed the hardest to reserve table in Paris.)  In July 2010, Spring moved to a 17th century building in the center of Paris, where its success has reached new heights.  Once Co. and I rang the doorbell at 6, rue Bailleul, a leisurely 10-minute walk from the Forum Les Halles, we were ushered into the elegant two floor restaurant, cozily seating about 22 on the main floor, and about another 20 or so in the more secluded downstairs floor.  Everything is elegant hardwood, metal, and stone, a nice juxtaposition, perfectly reflecting the melange of subtle ingredients in the Daniel Rose-led open kitchen, first thing you see upon entering.  I like the idea of the locked front door - good way to keep out the riffraff, i.e., the tourists who had read glowing reviews of the restaurant and decided to just drop buy and get a table ('try back in another few years, we should have something by then').  We were seated at a perfectly placed table overlooking the staircase and in close proximity to the kitchen.  Okay, that's stretching it - given the relative size of the kitchen and the main dining room, everybody is in close proximity to the kitchen, which I would have to guess is exactly the way Monsieur Rose prefers it, because dining at Spring is not only about the food, but also about the performance of preparing the food.

We found the now scruffier head chef leading the choreography in the kitchen from note one.  Allow me to digress.  It’s not hard to understand the popularity of Facebook.  Yes, I know, countless sociologists and popular culture pundits have opined the obvious – social networks offer us the opportunity to connect with heretofore unprecedented ease blah blah etc. blah.  And as one of those pundits myself – in my non-Mortstiff persona – you can add me to the club.  But let’s face it Facebook fanatics, Facebook is all about ‘face’ in its three most obvious facets:  narcissism, exhibitionism, and voyeurism.  What does this have to do with a review of Spring?  No bloody idea.  Just joking.  I was thinking about those three purely human needs as I pondered the recent explosion of open kitchens - seen in my previous reviews of Yam 'Tcha and L'Agrume, most notably.  Based on my limited exposure, I think chef Rose is in no small part an exhibitionist, noisily instructing, demanding, urging, joking, crooning, and otherwise chatting to his team throughout the evening.  We speak English here - Monsieur Rose and the wait staff, all bilingual of course, but at Spring, English rules.  Which is why I tried my darnedest to stick to French, being the cynical contrarian Bolshevik that I am. And then there are the diners, and let's face it, we are the voyeurs, checking out our fellow lucky devils --the night of our visit, apparently heavy on the well-heeled, well-coiffed American side - who also somehow managed a Friday night table, but more so, the hard-working team in the (multi-language) kitchen.  You ever watch those cooking shows on TV?  This is much better. 

Time to move on to the 76€ fixed-price 4-course dinner.  No carte to ponder, only the pithy description of the meal-to-come from one of several servers.  You take what is offered, although Spring - like most of the other neo-bistrots - is flexible when it comes to dietary restrictions, allergies, and what-not.  For example, well-informed in advance that I do not eat veal, I was offered a pigeon alternative.  Apparently, I wasn't the only one, as it appeared that about half the patrons also opted for the bird. And I could have sworn I heard Mr. Rose mention a party of vegetarians on their way. (Good luck with that.)  Things got off to a light, relatively forgettable start, with four amuse bouches brought to the table: two petite roasted potatoes, a small plate of cucumbers and radishes in salt, a very flavorful tapenade, and a triangle of butter for the two large-sized rolls.  Our bottle of Saumer (2010) Germain Roches Neuves quickly followed, one of the handful of reasonably-priced bottles (35€) on the extensive (and otherwise pricey) wine carte.  At its bargain basement price, the red excelled.  This was followed by a first course of fish soup, accompanied by a lightly batter-fried sextet of rouget.
      

Aside from a few miniscule moules, the highlight of the soup was the ample use of fenouil - the herb and the meaty white crunchy chunks of the slightly sweet plant.  Fish soup in late June may not compute for the reader, for whom 'spring' means something more than a trendy restaurant in Paris.  But when Cole Porter penned 'I Love Paris in the Springtime,' he couldn't have had the current weather in mind - rainy, windy, and cool - enough reason for me to don my dark shirt, suit coat, and leather coat before embarking on the evening's mission.  In Paris, unfortunately, these days 'spring' is a restaurant, not a season.  So on this particular Friday night in the middle of June, a hot soup seemed more than a propos.  Co. was less impressed than I was by this opening act, but those herbs really hit the spot for me, and the fried rouget was an inspired accompaniment.


Next up, a hefty langoustine on a bed of peas, and embellished with a modest dollop of lemon confit.

 

I hate to have to trot out that over-used bromide, 'melts in your mouth,' but I can't think of a better way of describing the langoustine.  This dish was followed by the main dish, the aforementioned veal (or pigeon) dish.  Both dishes were identically prepared, save the meat.  Here's what the pigeon looked like:

 

The succulent meat was accompanied, in part, by girolle mushrooms and a hefty spoonful of memorable mashed potatoes.  As I wolfed this course down, I kept hearing Co.'s tsk-tsk at my aversion to veal, content as she was with the well-prepared slab of veal and accompanying ris de veau (sweetbreads).  The four-dish dessert came in two stages - two small bowls of chocolate and strawberries, followed by a cherry tart and Greek yogurt sorbet.  These were consumed in utter silence - they were more than worthy of our complete attention, as noteworthy desserts should be.  

That about wraps it up.  To keep the bill under the two-century mark (it clocked in at a reasonable 187€), we eschewed end of meal cafe, perfectly content to empty the final drops of the Saumer.  As we donned our outer garments, I gave a thumbs-up to a bemused Monsieur Rose and, as we made our way back out into the now rain-free Paris night, I couldn't hold back a little grin that patience had paid off.  I may be the last blogger on the scene to finally make it to the highly-touted Spring, but guess who's review is now the most up-to-date?  Ironic, n'est pas?

SPRING              

6 rue Billeul

75001 Paris

tel: 01 45 96 05 72

website: http://www.springparis.fr/