Table de grande qualité! Verjus = Quality.
I have been visiting this restaurant since it opened, and the cooking and service keeps improving; but the obsession to source only the best ingredients remains a constant. Yes, the seating at the bar is uncomfortable, and 400 Euros for the menu degustation is steep. It is justified since Verjus never settles for less than top-notch ingredients. If there were a gold medal for the best purveyor of the finest ingredients, I would cast my vote for him!
His emphasis is on fish and shellfish, but I am always amazed here by the quality of vegetables, meat, and cheese too. It is not the quantity, but the quality. For instance, he only offers three to four cheeses, but they are amazing. While writing this review, I salivate mentioning the raw milk sheep blue, regalis, and the raw milk “Le Briard” from the Sainte-Colombe farm.
He recently started working with Roderick Sloan to source amazing shellfish from Norway. Nevertheless, his sources vary. He brings his sardines from Saint-Gilles Croix de Vie in Loire. His excellent pigeon comes from Joel Poirier in Brittany. He buys bread from the Persephone bakery which is close to his restaurant. I have not asked the origin of each ingredient, but I am sure I cannot find them for home consumption. I would have loved to find the same asparagus, peas, and turnips.
Of course, the question is how to combine and cook great products. After several visits I am confident to say that he and his young assistants cook like good Spanish chefs. That is, they don’t overcook. They respect the texture and quality of the products. They know what should be served raw, fresh, or aged properly. For instance, the scallops and razor clams are alive right before they are served, but the turbot or tuna has been properly aged. He cooks his lobster simply by pouring hot clarified butter on it, and it works. His lobster is juicy and sweet.
As a high-end French restaurant, the next question is how they handle ingredients and enhance their taste at Table. Great chefs master the art of preparing fresh sauces, combining the right sauce with the correct ingredient to highlight its flavor. Moreover, it is crucial to combine different elements in a dish in such a way as to achieve perfect harmony. Some great creations possess almost a transcendental quality in the sense that they look simple, but bear the signature of the chef and may not be easily imitated. In my lifetime, I have encountered such dishes only a few times at Chapel, Girardet, Robuchon, Outhier, Senderens, Pacaud, and Passard in France, and Ibai and a few others in Spain.
I will not claim that Verjus reaches similar greatness yet. On the other hand, he achieves remarkable consistency and almost all of his offerings are very good. In my last two visits we only had one dish, the pork belly dish with espardenyes and puntarelle, which was undercooked. The texture was chewy. I don’t think that the two main ingredients, the pork and espardenyes, achieved perfect harmony. This said, pork can work with espardnyes. I remember a dish from the early days of Can Roca when Joan Roca combined espardenyes with pork feet. The textures matched and the two were complimentary. To use a cliché, the sum was more than its constituent parts. I would like to open a parenthesis here. “The land and sea” combinations are part of the traditional Catalan cuisine. In Catalonia, such combinations are based on tradition. Elsewhere and nowadays, it became a sign of “creativity”. Two or three macaroon aspiring chefs are frequently experimenting with such combinations, but they are mostly unconvincing. This reminds me of the fate that has befallen the “tattoos”. Once having a tattoo was a sign of “individuality”. Now tattoos became standard, where one chooses from the blueprints already in store. A similar argument can be made of a colored streak in your hair which is different than the main color. Once it was an expression of a unique style, but now it is commonplace.
I am afraid Verjus is falling in the same trap. In my last visit, after he received the second star from Michelin, he started toying with “creative” combinations. Dishes, such as Langoustines with pig ear and razor clam with veal brain, were not problematic dishes, like the pork-espardenyes combination, but they were not as convincing as his other courses. Before Covid, I have eaten sweetbread and brain dishes separately from the chef, and both were outstanding.
Fortunately, these are the exceptions. We thought very highly of the rest of the meal during the last two visits. The only other meat dish, the pigeon with a rich mole sauce that contained anchovies and beetroot, was outstanding. Honestly, I can’t think of a better pigeon dish in France, and I may order it as full course in my next visit.
There are too many very good vegetables, fish, and shellfish dishes to talk about all of them, so let me arbitrarily select three.
The thick piece of turbot, cut from the bone and full of gelatin, with a shellfish reduction, optimally acidified by verjus, and thickened with saline turbot eggs, was a triumph. Harmonious, balanced, and delicious, this may be a reference point for French style turbot.
Let’s consider a trio: an amazing quality wild oyster from Norway with dill; live diver scallops from Norway with salted butter and a scent of sweet-smelling blur; razor clams with Mallemont asparagus from Grasse, pistachio crumbles and lemon balm oil. Since all three shellfish dishes were of pristine quality, they did not need more than minimum handling and seasoning. Verjus’ comparative advantage lies in capturing the essence of the sweet-saline flavor of shellfish and enhancing it with a light herbal oil infusion and a well thought out garnish. Bravo!
As I alluded above, his lobster is also terrific. The Brittany blue lobster, tail and claw, is cooked simply by the infusion of very hot clarified butter flavored by the jus of the lobster head and shell. The texture is subtle, the meat is very juicy, and the surface is caramelized. The lobster is served with an herbal infusion whose components may change. Besides fennel and parsley, Verjus loves tart, bitter, saline, and crunchy herbs. He typically makes a “remoulade”, or mayonnaise, flavored by sea plants, capers, and nettles. In spring he also includes firm grilled artichoke among the garnishes. His lobster has remarkable depth of flavor.
Desserts have improved here. There is a remarkable chocolate tart with caviar. The sablet au chocolat with ganache is made from excellent Venezuelan chocolate, supplied by Francois Pralus in Roanne. The briny caviar actually works with chocolate, not dissimilar to salted caramel. This is a decadent dessert and apt to end an impressive meal.
EVALUATION: 18/20
