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The New Guy Savoy
Paris -- What a joy it is to follow a career, watch
a chef constantly grow, evolve, excite, create, and
recreate. Guy Savoy is not someone to settle. His passion
for food, his huge appetite for art, his hunger for
new wines all merge seamlessly in his newest recreation,
a brand new décor, concept and cuisine at the
flagship restaurant that bears his name.
Open since late August, the "new" Guy Savoy
retains much of what we loved about the old: service
that may well be the best in Paris, wine excitement
that you seldom see in even the best of establishments,
and a cuisine that is 100% HIS. And each dish signed
with a touch of Guy's special shade of green: The green
of a giant basil leaf, the green of a thick broccoli
purée, the green of a baby leek, the green of
a tender artichoke.
Why is it that the first thing you put in your mouth
at the beginning of a meal is so often the taste you
remember the longest and love the most? The first of
a series of brilliant new dishes from his new menu was
the best: Imagine a clear glass soup bowl aglow in bright
reds and greens, offset by clear see-through jelly that
carries with it the perfumes of the sea. Tiny fillets
of Mediterranean rouget (little red mullet) and meaty
lisette (baby mackerel), giant leaves of basil and lipstick-red
rounds of tomatoes, seem to float about in a clear sea-scented
jelly - cool and smooth and refreshing - and then, plop,
the waiter adds a brilliant green touch, a bright seaweed-scented
sorbet. I wanted to don a swimming suit and jump in:
For me, it was like the last taste of summer that I'll
remember all winter long. (And the dish itself shows
clearly Guy Savoy's evolution, evoking his famous oyster
dish that's teamed up with a sea-scented gelatin.)
Equally exciting but marred by a heavy hand with the
salt cellar was his new trio of meaty, gorgeous langoustine
- those lobster-like sea creatures that have the texture
of a puffy cloud - on a creamy bed of broccoli purée
with tiny, crunchy broccoli flowers.
The menu offered a lovely summer-fall transition, with
first of season girolles (chanterelles), and a presentation
that shows off Savoy's cleverness and ability to keep
things simple and sublime at the same time. He posed
a mound of the tiniest, most intensely flavored mushrooms
in a puddle of wild mushroom juices, topped them with
a paper-thin, lace-like potato cake, then a crispy,
crunchy slice of the thinnest of grilled Spanish ham.
I would kill to be able to replicate his combination
of rare duck breast and seared foie gras set on a bed
of baby spinach. Team this with a tiny lace-like cookie,
flavored with chocolate and black pepper, and sauce
made with a trio of vinegars, and you have a marriage
made in heaven. Here, color, texture, aromas blend to
create a composition that could become a French classic.
(The dish, alas, was marred by another overdose of salt.)
Dessert was a sheer and seamless as the rest of the
meal, with a creation that again asks us to pay attention
to textural pleasures, with great contrasts of smooth
and crunchy: A lovely apple compote dotted with crunchy
bits of chestnut, embellished with paper-think slices
of dried apples.
The décor of the new room is sophisticated,
harmonious, warm, and comfortable. Warm woods, cozy
touches of leather, abbreviated use of stone come together
to create what Savoy calls "an auberge for the
21st century."
Guy Savoy
18 rue Troyon
Paris 75017
Tel: 01 43 80 36 22
Fax: 01 46 22 43 09
reserve@guysavoy.com
Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday. All major credit cards.
980-franc menu. A la carte 800 francs, including service
but not wine.
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