I am truly blessed to have been able to dine at the #1 hotel-restaurant in the world: L’Epicure, Paris, France. Epicure is ranked the best hotel-restaurant in the world and is nestled in the hotel called Le Bristol Paris. Holding 3 Michelin stars every year and winner of the craftsmen competition in France held every 4 years called Meilleur Ouvrier de France, the renowned French chef, Eric Frechon, believes in making food with bizarre ingredients gracefully put together to make the difference, or vive la difference.
It was already a surreal moment to believe that I was physical in Paris of France, the foodie capital in the world, but another to stand right outside Epicure, hotel-restaurant that holds 3 Michelin stars and is ranked #1 hotel-restaurant in the world..!! IN THE WORLD!! I will try to recall all the details of this insane dining experience to share with you all!!
To make reservations to dine here, you must send them an e-mail to request.. I mean phone call would be too impossible considering it would be logged as an international long-distance call and not to mention the time difference.. The e-mail they sent back was very formal, polite, classy, and respectable. Of course, I couldn’t expect less from the employees that worked here! There is an image to hold up to of course!
Here’s me waiting outside of their restaurant, but inside the hotel. Waiting to be seated.. And did you guys notice my new Celine purse?! My first big girl purchase I did in the city I was just in before Paris: Milan, Italy, the fashion capitol of the world. OH MAN HOW I MISS EUROPE ugh.
Our table had a pretty glass butterfly as one of the ornaments! It’s so cute!! But at the same time, the material it is made of makes it classy. (The flowers are real too BTW).
Here is the decor of the inside of the restaurant. The chairs are very cushion-y and comfortable!
The chinaware is exquisitely beautiful and elegant! The detail to the carvings of the design on the forks and knives are beautiful.
Oh look! They even have a small chair just for my Celine purse to sit on!! That earned extra bonus points from me! I have never dined anywhere nice enough to even have seats for my purses. Celine looks good there 🙂
This is what we were going to have for lunch! This is their seasonable lunch menu and was around approximately 130 euros per person if you guys are wondering. Of course, there will be more served than just what is on the menu.. They throw in complimentary dishes or amuse-bouche (hors d’œuvre) along the way too..
liquefied maraschino cherry/strawberry. This is our first amuse-bouche to start out our meal. I love how the silver spoons are propped on this small stand. Everything about eating at this place was just so elegant and refined. I felt like a lady and was treated like a lady; thus I acted like a lady (believe it or not). How to eat this: just put the whole thing in your mouth and it’ll pop! The liquid inside this thin balloon will burst and fill your mouth with fruity flavors! That’s also 24K gold you’re eating too. Hehe
asparagus soup, guacamole lollipop, and a bread croquette mushroom. Our second amuse-bouche. I just know that you were supposed to enjoy this amuse-bouche from left to right. So first you eat this small little treat-in-a-tiny-cup, which felt refreshing and creamy. Then you pick up this thick toothpick and eat this crunchy treat. Finally, you pick up this small puff-like pastry and pop it in your mouth. (I love dishes that require eating in a sequence)!
complimentary bread for the table.. And this is no just any ordinary complimentary bread..
I took the liberty of taking a picture of a slice of bread for you. There were fruit bits and vegetable bits and cheese inside!! Wow!! This bread was so savory.. You honestly didn’t even need butter with this bread. Hell, I wish I could have asked for more bread but I didn’t want to seem un-classy and wanted to save my appetite for the main course.
But look at these two sticks of butter!!! The left Christmas tree-like butter was salted; the right was unsalted. NICEEE: very considerate for all taste-buds and health diets.
pineapple tomato with vanilla seeds from Bourbon and olive oil, pineapple tomato sorbet and oxalis flowers. I wasn’t expecting this type of appetizer. To be honest, I’m so used to the more savory and hot appetizers. This was more refreshing, cool, and sweet. However, after eating it part way, one of the waiters taught me to sprinkle some salt on top. Now this solved all the mysteries in my taste buds!! It felt more right that the salt complemented the sweet and sour-ish appetizer. It all fit together!
royal seabream just salted and marinated with fresh mint, light jelly of cucumber water and yuzu cream. This was INSANELY good! It was refreshing, cool, and savory at the same time!! The texture of the cucumber water was so light, refreshing, and jelly-like. The royal seabream was very soft. This was just so, so good.
and to take a break from our main course, they offered us a huge basket of bread. Oh my. I was so lucky that we were the first table for them to offer the bread to that way I was able to take a picture of the complete basket. I made our table pick one of each bread so we could try each other’s. But honestly, it didn’t matter. They kept coming back and offering us more bread. And it is not just at this restaurant, but everywhere in Paris.. How come all of their bread is always so hard?
Now back to the main course.. FINALLY I’M STARVING STILL.
cod fillet – cooked “meuniere” with buckwheat butter and hazelnuts, mousseline of potatoes, watercress juice. I feel like everything about this restaurant serves all your proteins, carbs, and fats in the same dish in the most non-traditional way ever. I realized that the salmon is my protein, the white cream spot on the side was the potatoes, and the green sea was my vegetables!
And you know this is a top restaurant when they automatically give you an extra small bowl of the potatoes and sauce in case you wanted more.. So that you don’t even need to ask. Yess!
veal sweetbreads seared golden, braised with amaretto, red onions compotee with fresh almonds. Did you notice that little onion guy on the right there? Hiding slightly behind my veal sweetbread? It’s so cute! I like to believe the presentation was purposely to mimic a small mushroom man; so cute. The sweetbread on top was golden and sweet and crunchy. The veal underneath was the softest velvet ever.
And now let’s take another break! onto our platter of fine seasonal cheeses!
Look at my face in pleasant dismay! This is now cheese wonderland for me!! Yippee! And yes, I tried ever single one 🙂
It may not have smelled so awesome to the regular nostril, but to me it was heavenly.
Each cheese plate was placed in the order you were supposed to eat clock-wise: from less heavy/dense to the more.
Now pee-break time! At every fine restaurant, I always make a trip to the bathroom to inspect it (not to mention I also have a small bladder). So let’s see how the restrooms look like at the best hotel-restaurant in the world shall we? 😉
A little resting area in the restroom!
I even took a picture of the door handles! Wow! Looked so nice! I wonder if it were packed with germs or always cleaned on the regular haha. 😀
Okay now back to food: the dessert round!
I actually think this wasn’t one of our desserts we ordered from the lunch menu: instead, it is one of the amuse-bouche used to cleanse our palate to start the dessert round! Tasted fruity and sweet, with small mandarin oranges nestled in that purple soup.
strawberries from the field frosted with farmer’s cream from Normandy, strawberry juice and pearls. Once you try to crack that ice cream-like scoop on the right, it was like frosted over. The texture wasn’t what you would expect!
apricot from Roussillon roasted with vanilla, oriental sorbet, chantilly with bitter almond milk. I love how the desserts here can also be soup-y cold! On the left, you have some kind of rustic like twig that is edible; the texture was kind of like chocolate.
It isn’t over yet.. Throughout our meal, I would see the other waiters wheel around this small little box to the tables. We were wondering what was inside it but could never see the inside; just the back end of it. Finally.. it was our turn.. and boy were we in for the treat!
AHHHH! I chose one of everything!
I know it didn’t look like much, but by this point, I was overly full.
And here’s a picture of us!! 🙂 <3 <3 Looking back and blogging about this dining experience, I still can’t believe we were there! Ever since I was a foodie, I have always dreamed about and told people about this one restaurant that I would want to try if I ever traveled to Paris. I can’t believe that it actually happened! I made it happened!! This place was so amazing in all areas possible: the food, the service, the decor, everything. To imagine that there are hundreds of even more other exquisite restaurants around the world!
