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A Star Cooks for the Stars
Michelin Three Star Lunch
PARIS -- So what do you do when you’re a Michelin-three star
chef and the renowned travel guide decides that you should cook for
a few of your colleagues? Well, not a few actually. How about 47
of the 49 Michelin three-star chefs in Europe. Yes, all the French
men and women who share your stardom, along with those from England
and Spain, Germany and Holland, Belgium and the Netherlands. Not
to mention Italy and Switzerland.
If you are Alain Ducasse – as was the case at a lunch on Tuesday,
October 26th at his three-star restaurant in Paris’s Hotel
Plaza Athénée --- you don’t try to impress the
chefs and the Michelin masters and a handful of journalists with
sparkles and summersaults, fireworks and cartwheels. Nor do you play
it safe. Much to chef Ducasse’s credit, he chose to create
a seasonal menu that was at once classic and creative, ultra-modern
and surprising, well-paced, and most of all satisfying.
That morning, as I strolled towards the restaurant along the Seine
-- a brilliant, blue-skied day, autumn leaves crunching beneath my
feet and happy-making music blaring from the Bateaux Mouches along
the river -- I tried to divine what might be on the menu. For sure
caviar, truffles, langoustines, sea bass, scallops, and some sort
of game. As to not play favorites, the wines would have to include
a selection from some of France’s best wine regions. There
would for sure be Champagne, the obligatory Bordeaux, and for certain
a Burgundy.
The purpose of the lunch was to say farewell to the guide’s
director, the Britain Derek Brown, who retired at age 60 this summer,
and to usher in his successor, the 42-year-old Frenchman, Jean-Luc
Naret. It was also a very nice reason for a very nice party. And
that it was.
You would have to be remarkably blasé not to be moved by
the sight and energy of all this gastronomic talent gathered in one
spot: There was the father of them all, Paul Bocuse of Lyon seated
next to the day’s star, Alain Ducasse. The well-known where
there – Paris’s Alain Senderens of Lucas Carton, and
Jean-Claude Vrinat of Taillevent, as well as some of the newer, lesser
known, such as Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck in England, Raffaele
and Massimiliano Alajmo of Le Calandre in Italy, and Martin Berasategui
of his eponymous restaurant in Spain.
Bubbly nectar poured from clear-glass jeroboams of 1995 Champagne
Deutz “Amour de Deutz” got the party going, sipped with
elegant bits of smoked, deep-fried eel dipped in a tangy sauce tartare.
At table, we began with a tiny turban of raw, glistening pink langoustines
topped with an exquisite dollop of the finest caviar, all set in
a pool of pungent langoustine jelly. I have gone on record as saying
I am not a fan of raw langoustines – I prefer the pillowy fluff
of the delicate shellfish lightly cooked – but I think that
Ducasse may have made a convert. Here, the sea met the sea, chilled
and full of personality, it was a dish that married absolutely perfectly
with the 1976 Lanson Champagne, a choice that both surprised and
pleased everyone at my table.
“We’ve forgotten the flavor of old champagne,” noted
Senderens, bemoaning the fact that few have true cellars anymore,
and if you are aging wine, Champagne is probably the last wine you
think about.
The nearly 30-year-old champagne had a minor, nutty hint of maderization,
but its positive, hugely acidic punch made us embrace all the more.
No one wanted to give it up until along came my favorite sip of
the day, a white 2001 Château Pape Clement served “en
aiguière,” or out of single- bottle, handled carafes.
I rarely think about drinking a wine by itself, but one sip of this
elegant, forward wine, made we want to forget food for a minute,
or may two or three. A blend of 45% Sauvignon Blanc, 45% Semillon,
and 10% Muscadelle, it’s an elegant wine rich with aromas of
citrus and orange marmalade and one that surely tastes grand in its
youth, but can also age 20 to 30 years.
But eat we did, and the food and wine marriage here was equally
perfect: Set upon a foundation of wild cèpe mushrooms, Ducasse
planted a trio of the freshest and plumpest of sea scallops, flanked
by three precise slices of fresh mushrooms and showered with ultra-fragrant,
generous shavings of fresh white Italian truffles. Brilliant in its
simplicity, simple in its brilliance, this very original creation
harked back to what Michelin CEO Edouard Michelin noted earlier that
day: “Creativity is when you don’t have to copy.”
With such perfect starters, this would sure be a hard act to follow,
but follow he did with a refreshing rectangle of sea bass set upon
a bed of citrus, paired with a 2002 Chablis from Domaine William
Fèvre, served in magnum; and a modern rendition of the classic
lievre a la royale, roborotive in its traditional versions, here
light and surprising in the Ducasse version. Presented in two services – the
first in rosy rare strips of “rable,” teamed up with
colorful rectangles of pumpkin and rounds of whole baby beets, the
second like a soft and succulent jelly of leg meat --- the dish brought
gasps of pleasure from top stars at the table.
“He’s in a class apart,” declared Vrinat, while
Senderens pronounced the dish “A beautifully modern
version of true classic.”
The delicate richness of the dish matched well with the acidity
of the 2000 Volnay 1er Cru Les Caillerets from Domaine Bouchard Père
et Fils, served in magnums.
Dessert was as light and welcome as can be: A colorful pastel blend
of mangoes and passion fruit bathed in a lemon-vanilla cream, and
a touch of coconut meringues, paired with a sweet 2002 Muscat de
Frontignan, Cuvée Belle Etoile from the house of Domaine Peyronnet.
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