I received an invitation from Alexandre Richardot, the director of sales and marketing at Hotel du Louvre, to dine at Brasserie Bocuse last month.
Paul Bocuse, who died in 2018, was one of the most celebrated and innovative French chefs in the late 1900s. His first restaurant, L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges, opened in 1965 outside of Lyon, and put Bocuse on the culinary map, receiving three Michelin stars and has miraculously maintained them ever since. Bocuse was also one of the pioneers of nouvelle cuisine. He went on to open many restaurants around France and near Lyon, plus opened a cooking school to train chefs in his cooking style, but never opened a restaurant in Paris. In a bittersweet gesture, Bocuse’s son Jerome Bocuse, wanted to honor his father’s legacy, and finally open a restaurant in Paris. His desire was to introduce Parisians to the Lyonnaise cuisine in an informal brasserie setting, so he can tempt them to visit their restaurants in Lyon.
It was a perfect match to open the brasserie in the newly renovated Hotel du Louvre, one of the classic, Paris hotels.
The festive dining room dressed up for Christmas, had typical French brasserie details such as red leather banquettes, brass railings, tile floors, and crisp white tablecloths and linens but in a more streamlined, contemporary style.
I brought Vincent with me and we were seated by the genial staff at a corner table. The menu was filled with some of my favorite French standbys and it was hard to narrow it down. Should I have snails or onion soup or sausage for my starter? I finally chose a true Lyonnaise dish, the traditional salad of poached egg, frisee, lardons, and croutons. It was a near perfect version of the salad except it was overdressed and the vinegar from the vinaigrette was overpowering. Vincent savored the house-made foie gras with crisp, haricots verts perfectly cooked.
I am probably one of the last holdouts who still likes French dishes in cream sauce, which during wartime, was a practical solution to compensate for inferior, tough meat. Blanquette de veau is one of my favorites, so when I saw Bresse chicken with cream sauce and morel mushroom sauce on the list of Signature Dishes on the menu, I knew it was calling my name. In case you didn’t know, Bresse chicken is one of the finest chickens you can buy in France and has very strict government parameters on how they are raised and fed. They are free range birds which are raised for at least four months and eat a special diet.
The tender, juicy meat had a bit more of a game taste, which gave it distinction from just another roasted chicken and the cream sauce, although thick, was not so rich as to distract from the taste of the meat.
Even though I prodded Vincent to have pan-fried sole Meuniere (so I could taste it), he stayed in his culinary comfort zone and had a satisfying salmon with a refreshing, more spring like sauce of sorrel, which is hardly ever offered on menus anymore.
Dessert was a lemon tart, with swirls of meringue on top and Vincent had an assortment of house-made ice cream and sorbet.
The service was excellent, and we could clearly see our waiter’s goal was to please without fawning all over us.
Going downstairs to use the rest room was a stroll through Bocuse memory lane, with tons of photos of the star chef and his international roster of celebrity guest diners plastered on the walls.
Brasserie Bocuse
Hôtel du Louvre
1 Place André Malraux, 75001
https://www.hyatt.com/fr-FR/hotel/france/hotel-du-louvre/paraz/dining?src=prop_gmb_seo_brasseriedulouvre
Open every day for lunch and dinner
I am pleased as punch to have my friend Lisa Anselmo as my guest on A Bite of Paris. Lisa is the founder of Save the Paris Cafe/www.savethepariscafe.com, a website which celebrates the Paris café and the preservation of them, which in recent years has been threatened by rising rents and cultural changes.
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https://youtu.be/Jyt4wx3K8ZQ
