It is at “Royal Evenings” invited by Louise Bourrat, the latest winner to date Top chef. And not anywhere since we are at Ladurée, a tea room best known for its macaroons, transformed for six months into an ephemeral restaurant for the duration of an unprecedented collaboration with the young winner of the M6 show. “Louise brought her ideas but we really refined this menu together”, confides to 20 minutes Hadrien Lorotte de Banes, the executive chef of Maison Ladurée.
“When I enter rue Royale, in Paris, love at first sight is immediate between the Marie-Antoinette style and me,” says Louise Bourrat. The velvet and the fringed lampshades invite you to relax and a certain trickery emanates from the leopard-print benches…” We expect the Top Chef winner to bring a touch of madness to this gently classic address, her punk attitude.
In this regard, it’s quite successful with an evening menu inspired by The Great Gatsby, Alice in Wonderland and the Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola to quote the chef’s cultural references. Clearly, a succession of mounted pieces and neat plates, full of flowers.
Octopus and Harissa Rose Hot Dog
To start strong, cocktails are adapted to each of the four small royal bites offered as appetizers (but we do not advise you to chain the cocktails at this stage of the meal). Among these appetizers, our favorite: the octopus and rose harissa hot dog, served in a black bao bun. It’s explosive and much more convincing than the nun with brown crab and creamy poppy that follows. The pastry piece certainly looks very pretty on the plate, but the taste of brown crab fades under too thick a choux pastry.
The royal highlight of the evening is rather the matured duck with spices, hibiscus, lavender, turnip, radish, lovage, on two plates to present the poultry on the one hand barely seared, on the other hand confit. There are flowers everywhere. It’s beautifully made, elegant and truly delicious.
Honor to sweet tooth for the rest of the evening with coconut rice pudding, jasmine sorbet and yuzu. A minimalist dessert in its round shape and its meringue finery which, for once, does remind Marie-Antoinette pecking macaroons at Sofia Coppola. It is both very pretty and very good.
And then, we end with a two-tier platter of fairly classic sweets, a tartlet, a small biscuit, an iced candy… Not enough to upset the table, but it’s a nice way to end a meal that will cost you 85 euros, without drinks. For a “royal evening”, it’s almost a bargain.
For those who wonder if the selfie with Louise Bourrat is included in the price, we will warn that the champion of Top chef is not present every evening, far from it, because it continues its activities in Portugal. But the executive chef of Ladurée assured us that she will be back on May 17 in order to make some adjustments with the team, taking into account the first feedback from customers.