Our dinner out

We had one night where our friends were busy, so we decided to go out for a nice dinner. I've heard there are a lot of good restaurants in Paris, and Ronnie picked out a few that had a Michelin star. I don't know why a tire company is rating restaurants, but I know this is a big deal, especially in France. Food is where the rubber meets the road, I guess.

So we made a reservation at a place called Le Violon d'Ingres, run by a  chef named Christian Constant. I wouldn't normally remember that kind of thing, but his name is all over everything. Like the plates and glasses have a double-C logo and stuff like that. As I said, it's clearly a big deal. I don't think he plays the violin but I guess Ingres did. We realized once we were taking the Metro over there that it was around the corner from an apartment we'd rented for a memorable trip here with the kids about 10 years ago, and by memorable I don't mean great. I don't want to talk about it.

But it's a nice neighborhood, near the Eiffel Tower, and the the restaurant is pretty, with lots of mirrors. There was no coat check or rack, but they had commuter rail-type racks up over the banquettes where we put our coats, which we both found a little odd. We sat down and had a really nice meal. By that I mean the food was very good and the service was great. There was absolutely nothing stuffy about it; our waitress was friendly, and not only was her English good, she had a great, kind of teasing sense of humor. She let us taste our wines before we bought a glass, and then let us taste again the second time, even though it was the same wine from the same bottle.

Beautiful presentation of the salt

Most of the service was done by that woman and a young man with glasses who never said anything, but quickly brought us interesting breadsticks and spiced almonds. Then came the amuse bouche, a cream of scrambled egg (I'm sure it sounds better in French) with minced chanterelle mushrooms floating on top. Rich-tasting but very light, and still good even though I'd had scrambled eggs, without the cream or mushroom parts, for breakfast.

Cream of scrambled eggs with chanterelles

My starter course was called Spider Crab Jelly with Creamy Rock Crab and herb infusion. Yes, it was that. The jelly was definitely not the predominant part- lots of crab and something creamy (cream, perhaps?) and caviar on top. Very tasty and fun to eat too. The orange dots, salmon eggs I presume, were very resilient and fun to try to pop.

Next came the main course, which was called Supreme of sea bass, crispy almond crust and curried oil and peppers. I tasted no curry, but it came on a bed of very fresh, perfectly cooked spinach. I don't know what "supreme of" means under any circumstances and it looked kind of like a pastry to me, but none of that was bothering me. 

I should note that one of my daughters is a serious Yelp food reviewer who would probably be disappointed with my food pictures, but it was all I could do to get myself to photograph my food in the first place. Meanwhile, almost everyone around us was on their phones constantly. For some reason I really wasn't expecting that here but it's definitely here.

Finally, for dessert I had something modestly titled The Fabulous Christian Constant chocolate tart. It was really good. Don't know if I'd reach back into my own bag of words to find "fabulous," but it was really really good. It was the only thing I couldn't finish, which was met by multiple questioning comments by the waitstaff. 

I should expand on the waitstaff beyond that, because they were excellent in every regard. My favorite was the young man with glasses who never said anything (I assume he was not permitted to) but was the one to bring and abruptly take away the breadsticks and almonds and then the (great great) bread itself. The bread was great but the butter was better. He was the most thorough scraper of crumbs from the tablecloth of anyone I've ever seen. It took him 2 or 3 minutes to finish the job, and I know it wasn't just because we're messy (and I certainly am) because he did the same thing to the table next to us as well, which they didn't notice because they were on their phones.

I'm not mentioning Ronnie's food here, I guess because she's not writing this and also because we didn't take pictures of it (and as we all know, if you didn't photograph it, you didn't eat it). But her food was excellent as well.

So we thought we were done, but before the bill came, so did an extra little treat, a burnt sugar cookie and some crunchy chocolate stuff. Here's a picture, but it's not great because chocolate looks like poop unless it's in a rigidly defined shape like the tart.

This stuff was really good. I'm a sucker for burnt sugar in general and this was the proper balance between crispy and sticky. The chocolate poo was good as well. The bill came and we were ready to leave, but before that, out came the silent guy with a basket of still-warm madeleines. Mmmm. We waited but nothing else came, so we left.

I can't say it was the best meal I've ever had, but it was a terrific all-round experience and I'd certainly recommend the place.