Luxeat

Michel Bras

 

Many of the Michel Bras restaurant reviews start how it’s complicated to get there. Aubrac region is one of the most difficult to access regions in France. Once you get to Rodez,by train (a journey by train from Paris can take up to ten hours) or by plane,you need to drive to Laguiolle town direction and then drive up to the Michel Bras restaurant/ hotel built in the dramatic scenery of Aubrac mountains. When I visited the restaurant at the end of this April, the mountains were still covered with thick layer of snow and buried in white fog. White was all I could see trough the large restaurant windows!

Le Gargouillou

 

In the image -  "Le Gargouillou", the most famous dish created by Michel Bras. I didn't expect that such simplicity can be that mind blowing. Each and every vegetable and herb had it's distinctive flavor and texture. A beautiful voyage in the fields and the gardens of Aubrac.. More to come soon..

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester

 

 

From my experience, the higher you go up North, the less spectacular are Alain Ducasse 3 Michelin restaurants. I am joking of course,but  so were probably  the Michelin inspectors who awarded Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester 3 Michelin stars.

Saturne in Paris

It seems that the Saturne (17 Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires  75002 Paris,tel. +33142603190 ) chef focuses more on how beautiful his dishes look rather than how they taste. Raw mackerel, sea urchin and cauliflower starter sounded great but tasted bland and boring, same as the monkfish with leeks and mâche salad. I don't want to  judge a restaurant by going there just once, but what I've had at Saturne was  so forgettable I might as well forget to return there...

Viajante

 

If there is one restaurant in London "worth a trip" from another city or even another country it is Viajante. The restaurant is located in East London, in Bethnal Green Town Hall which has been partly transformed into a hotel. The Edwardian and Neo- Classical building is grand and beautiful and when you enter the restaurant you immediately face the open kitchen where the incredibly talented Nuno Mendes and his team cook. 

Viajante, which in Portuguese means "traveller", is about cooking without borders. No borders between the kitchen and the dining room ( the chef and the sous -chefs serve some of their dishes themselves), no borders among the team. Every week the sous-chefs create their own dishes that are approved or not by Nuno Mendes. Viajante is not a laboratory where food is some kind of art or experiment though. What I liked about what happens in this restaurant kitchen is that every morsel was original (and sometimes completely new to me), yet delicious. Somehow I could eat this food every day and never get tired.

 

Thai explosion II amuse bouche - a tasty sandwich with chicken mousse and lemon grass. (I didn't understand why it was called "explosion" though as it was not spicy or anything like that..)

Epicure (Le Bristol)

 

I've already posted about this restaurant a few times, so I won't review it again, but for me Epicure (formely Le Bristol) represents a 3 Michelin stars restaurant how it should be. Everything, from the palatial surroundings, delicious food to the impeccable and smart service was a perfection.

Images after the jump

OAD's Top 100 US restaurants 2012 is out

 

Manresa in Los Gatos is  the number 1!  You can see the whole list here

Red Medicine,LA

 

Heirloom black carrots with guava, dulse ( red algae) and tamarind

Vietnamese inspired Red Medicine in Los Angeles rose to  yellow press fame when one of it's owners Noah Ellis took a picture of The Los Angeles Times food critic S. Irene Virbila before telling her to leave the restaurant.Personally I don't think if it's the best way to treat your restaurant guests, especially that your chef(Jordan Kahn) is so brilliant and you would have probably  received  a positive review anyway. (Umami burgers' Adam Fleischman is one of the partners too.) 

Crispy spring rolls,dungeness crab,lime, pea pods,fines herbes,chili

The food at Red Medicine is something in between Momofuku (NY )  and Noma (Copenhagen). The only "proper" Vietnamese dish I had was dungeness crab spring rolls which were  fresh, crispy and as fine as spring rolls could be. "Heirloom black carrots with guava, dulse ( red algae) and tamarind"  was my favorite, memorable and rich in flavors. Pork with caramelized black vinegar, goji berry, spring onions and dried almonds was so tender  you could almost eat it without using a knife; and the marbled Akaushi beef went perfectly well with the freshness of  crême fraîche sauce ,garlic chive, cashew,lovage and charred cucumber.

I see only one problem with this restaurant - it is 9000 km too far from where I live !

3 Michelin stars pot-au-feu

 

This is the traditional French beef stew pot-au-feu, imagined by the very talented Eric Frechon (Le Bristol, Paris) . It was the ultimate decadence of tastes and textures. The rich and luxurious dish was served in three services: bone marrow with celery purée,croutons and black truffle ;oxtail, foie gras,truffles and pot-au-feu vegetables  millefeuille;pot-au-feu and shiitake mushrooms broth. French high - end gastronomy at it's best!

The grand disappointment by In-N-Out

I don't have enough words to express my disappointment by the In-N-Out burger in Los Angeles. Everybody raves about how fantastic it is and how it's" the best burger in LA" , but unfortunately even McDonalds burger tastes better as far as i remember. The meat was especially bad- tasteless, dry and not salty enough.Maybe I was unlucky that day, but for the time being I'll stick to Umami (which was as good as one year ago!)

In-N-Out

Umami