Off the Map

During my first 10-day trip to France, my partner had bought me to “only” four Michelin restaurants during our 10-day trip. This is just a quick review for these four restaurants — all four of them are one-star Michelin in 2023, some have had a few years of Michelin while one just got it in 2023; two locate in Paris and two in the gastronomical capital of France — Lyon. It’s interesting how the top two of my favorites are actually fusion cuisine rather than classic french foods 😀

TL;DR

• Restaurant Alan Geaam, Paris (RECOMMEND)
• Restaurant Miraflores, Lyon (Good)
• La Mutinerie, Lyon (Good)
• Le Sergent Recruteur, Paris (Meh)

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MY FAVOURITE MICHELIN SO FAR — Restaurant Alan Geaam

• Cuisine: Lebanese/French
• Location: 19 Rue Lauriston, Paris, near Arc de Triomphe
• Chef: Alan Geaam, who opens Restaurant Alan Geaam in 2017, and have had 1 star ever since 2018 (why is this restaurant not a 2 star with it’s presentation, taste and service??). He also has a few other restaurants and a workshop/office in the Marais
• Overall Review: Creative presentation, delicious food (a must..!), extremely beautiful and tasty desserts, fun and interactive experience, and servers who tried their best to explain all ingredients, cooking method in English

I. Fun Starters:

• Man’ouche tile with zaatar

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II. First Course:

• peanut with foie gras and combawa (plated in peanut really tricked me!)
• vegetable oyster, sea urchin tarama and sea grapes
• langoustine (norway lobster), green anise mayonnaise, kadaif (crispy layer) (hidden under the rock!)
• hummus, almond crumble, lemon caviar (lower left)

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III. Brioche, tree-shaped butter made in-house and spice mixes!

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IV. Second Course (my favorite dish, very refreshing and a great variety of flavors, texture)

• variation of butternut, soujouk spices, black honey
• marigold black falafel with smoke eel, virgin chickpea tahine emulsion (their famous dish)

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V. Main Course

• Lobster with taouk spices, pressed artichokes — very crispy and delicious! like chips, and grape molasses
• Lamb, eggplant textures, toum and muhammara sauce

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VI. First Dessert

• lemon, lovage sorbet, labneh and pollen — so exquisite…
  • kumquat/lemon shaped white chocolate is full of juicy, sour liquid~
  • knock the sugar glaze with wooden spoon, eat sorbet with meringue (I forgot what was inside tbh)

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VII. Second Dessert

• coffee and cardamon, vegetable sorbet and button mushroom — so unique, mushroom as dessert!

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VIII. Third Dessert

• bottom layer: mango, passion fruit and star anise compote – drink it up from the tube like toothpaste!
• middle layer: creamy chocolate-cinnamon shortbread
• top!! Mouhalabieh flower, white chocolate

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Menu.

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Restaurant Miraflores

• Cuisine: Peruvian/French
• Location: (NOT in the Peruvian city Miraflores ha) 112 Boulevard des Belges, Lyon
• Chef: Carlos Camino
• Overall Reviews: Just like how the restaurant is named after a district of the Lima Province in Peru, which is also one of the wealthiest districts with upscale shopping south of Lima, the dining experience also takes you on a “Journey through Peru”, of its history and its nature.
  • Good story-telling: the squid dish, Pota smoked with Palo Santo, Ganciale, nikkei sauce, is inspired by Japanese cuisine. Just when I was wondering how Peru is influenced by Japan, the server told me there was a few waves of migration of Japanese to Peru. It turns out that Peru is the first Latin American country to set up diplomatic relations with Japan and it has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after Brazil. Japanese started the migration to Peru and worked as contractors on sugar planation as early as the 19th century.
  • Taste: However, some dishes’ flavor (e.g., spice) and ingredients (e.g., ants) are a bit out of my comfort zone. The server did explain all dishes in English, but was not able to answer more beyond what she has prepared as the direct translation as the servers at Restaurant Alan Geaam could.
  • Creativity/Uniqueness:
    • Red chili pepper-shaped butter is unique to the Peru experience
    • Chefs picking up mint and other herbs from plants on the counter looked fun
    • They bought a shave ice machine common on the streets in Peru to make shave ice for our desserts, again, sticking close to the “journey of Peru” theme
    • Oh! This is also the only in the four that has specialty cocktail with Peruvian ingredients in their Apéritif, which tasted strong and good.

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Menu

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La Mutinerie

• Cuisine: French (modern?)
• Location: 123 rue Bugeaud, Lyon
• Chef: Nicolas Seibold (apparently who has worked in some other prestigious fine-dining restaurants such as Le Negresco, La Dame de Pic, Ledoyen and Têtedoie)
• Overall Reviews:
  • Taste:
    • BEST (softest, butteries) brioche with well-aged butter (really, best of all four Michelin restaurants)
    • very refreshing lobster bisque, highlight and most unique of the night! I never thought I would use “refreshing” to describe lobster bisque, but I think it’s because they use celery and marigold ice to go with the bisque
    • Japanese element is of course included: Ikejime Halibut! Very soft fish accompanied by sauce with hint of dashi
    • creative “cheese”! When I saw cheese on the menu, I thought it would be plain and boring like how Le Sergent Recruteur or our hotel happy hour had it, sliced cheese, but still wanted to try it as “it’s the french thing to do”, as my partner says. But La Mutinerie definitely did not take the easy or classic route, they shredded, grinded, mixed various types of goat cheese together, drizzled with honey and crispy pollen. Very delicious and totally worth the extra 15 euro
    • Some dishes were creative while the others were more classic/predictable, with simple ingredients and straightforward cooking method (e.g., potato with caviar tasted like mash potato, and the chocolate creme brulee dessert tasted like chocolate mousse)
  • Ambience: It has a more family-style, approachable, chill vibe rather than upscale, typical Michelin style. However, the wait time and gap between dishes was wayyyy too long.. We got in 730PM, got out 11PM…
    • this is the only restaurant that shared their menu AND the source of ingredients, which is usually considered secrets

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Menu

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Le Sergent Recruteur

• Cuisine: French (traditional)
• Location: 41 Rue Saint-Louis en l’Île, Paris
• Chef: Alain Pégouret
• Overall Reviews: Their set course menu’s main course is chicken (I thought it would be chicken breast which I do not like), I opted to order preferred appetizer, main course instead. I did not even order dessert as I was extremely disappointed by that time already. In another word, my reviews could be very biased and purely based on my own orders (or fault).
  • Service: That day’s specials, 2 appetizers and 2 main courses, are not on the menu so I cannot see the ingredients. I asked the server for recommendation, and followed his recommendation. BUT, it turned out the appetizer and the main course specials he recommended, had 90% of the exact same ingredients (please refer to photo), so I basically had the same dish twice, given I couldn’t “swallow” the main course’s main at all. The server’s recommendation was the first disappointment
  • Taste:
    • I thought sweetbread is just lamb, my fault not reading the translation closely, it is lamb pancreas/thyroid…When this main course came, I took a few bite, it was way too gamy for me to take another bite
    • Similarly, trying to be open-minded and adventurous on authentic, traditional French cuisine, I ordered rabbit as another main course. The rabbit was equally, if not more gamy, and bone dry. Although, my partner did think both courses are not bad (His original words: I think it’s good, it’s just that we don’t like traditional French food). It’s just me I guess. But there are definitely other ways to make these two ingredients tastier. La Mutinerie above, had veal sweetbread as one course, it tasted fatty but delicious and not gamy. I know veal vs lamb which is famed for its gaminess is not exactly apple to apple comparison, but still…How a Michelin one star still cook both main course with such gaminess perplexed me
    • after the main courses, I was too disappointed to order dessert and honestly just wanted to go home (Alan Geaam as the first Michelin we tried in France set too high of a bar). They brought on three desserts. First was quite innovative, cilantro sorbet. Good presentation, decent taste, but very risky. Second was just well plated fruits if I have to be honest. And last was some chocolate tarts, nothing special there either. I have nothing to complain about because these are just all free desserts
  • Ambiance: the tables are way, way, way too close. So close that we can hear the whole conversation of tables next to us. The lady on the right, even had the following conversation with me while her partner was in the restroom:
    • “Where are you guys from?”
    • “San Francisco”
    • (looking at me) “Did you grow up in San Francisco?”
    • “No, I grew up in China”
    • “Ah… no wonder… I saw the way you used fork and knife, it doesn’t look… (what’s the word she used? it’s on the line of) traditional/typical…”
    • “oh how so?”
    • (slightly flustered) “it’s just… different”
    • (I have encountered this type of convo so many times) “ah.. as you know, we don’t grow up using knife and fork, we use chopsticks. So I am trying my best haha”
    • “oh….” and looked like she just realized sth.. apparently she didn’t think of it before she started talking
    • the lady on the left hand side, definitely heard this whole convo, how could you not when you are 30cm away from each other? She glanced at us both and got back to her food in silence. Later on, my partner said the RHS lady was just trying to be nice and tried not to say I have an accent. Yeah ok, what’s the point of pointing out the either the table etiquette or accent at all though? Anyway, back to my earlier thought, the tables were too close and restaurant was quite loud as the night fell.

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