Arpège — Restaurant in Paris

Arpège - some pleasant surprises, some question marks, slight doubt on hygiene

Arpege is rather popular. Two people tables were all gone and my friend had to invite another her friend in Paris to get a three people table. On the day we went, there were many American visitors; I assume they watched the Netflix documentary. The dinning space was rather comfortable; I like the colour mixture and country house style despite the limitation of the building. Not every restaurant can be like in the Ritz or Le Bristol, obviously.

So, the food: There are many good things to talk about. The dishes here were not the kind of dishes that you have no idea what they were made from. Apparently Mr Passad believes food should look like food, and I agree with that concept wholeheartly. It uses herbs and spices creatively, sometimes bold. I walked in ready to be challenged and I was not disappointed on that front.

Some question marks? Yes. Arpege is sometimes described as slightly controversial and people's talking point was usually about "do we really need that much meat/ do we need to have almost all vegetable in fine dinning". While that's not our issue here. I am from a country with vegetarian culture. I found with all the creativity, it still lacks some variety, possibly due to the chef insist the plants should come from their own garden (but why? it's not like they also grow all the spices and had their own cow/goat for the milk and cheese). We had carrot and beetroot so many times. In Japan or China/Taiwan, we have way more options of greens and vegetarian ingredients. Why not explore on those? Some dishes simply didn't work, such as the white bean with macaroni cheese sauce; the flavour disjoint. The carrot slides sushi was a bit lazy for top chef' imagination; carrot slides have only its colour similar to salmon, that's all; I won't even have a carrot sushi in chain sushi shop. Many vegetables can be used for sushi and Japanese have done that, why not do some research on that?

But the main problem I had, is that I had two pieces of hairs in my dishes in one visit. First one is in this otherwise wonderful salad (as shown in photo). It tasted really nice despite looks so common. But there was a long hair in it! I showed the staff and they replaced the dish. I didn't make a fuss then. Then til the very end of the lunch, when we had the sweet bites for coffee, the puff I took has a white hair attached to it like a tail. Both my two dinning fellow saw it, asked if I want to have another replacement? At this point, I couldn't be bothered. I know if I called the waiter again, I would have no choice but to question how they run their kitchen; it wouldn't be a pleasant conversation and would most possibly ruin the whole experience in the very end of lunch, especially when I have my friend's guest there. I could possibly argue for a partial refund but again that's not really what I usually feel comfortable to do. I am, however, slightly surprise that when I paid the full amount by card, they still asked if I would like to add tips (other same level of restaurants in Paris never asked when I paid by card). It's probably just a routine but it did add up a little bit of negative feeling. I am sure people in their kitchen wear hats? How did those hairs get in? I would suggest Mr Passad to look into the discipline and carefulness in his kitchen. Two hairs for one person in one visit is a...

We had high hopes and expectations like most of the diners do. However our experience fell short being dining at the Salon, the dining room situated in the basement of the restaurant. I can imagine it is a lovely venue if it’s for a private and intimate event, yet the setting of 4-5 tables (each table sits 2-3 people) being “trapped” inside this narrow space, although decorated beautifully with embroidery wall art, didn’t live up to a three Michelin stars restaurant in Paris at all. The vibe of the space felt dead and silent, the lighting was too bright and white, in short, it’s just uncomfortable. One of the tables complained about it and even left the restaurant without finishing the appetizer.

There seemed to be a short of hand situ of servers that three to four of our dishes were not collected as soon as we finished - it literally took more than 3-5 minutes for dishes to be collected. I left for bathroom as soon as I finished one of the dishes and by the time I returned, the dirty plate was still on the table… Water and wine weren’t filled in a timely manner. The pace was awkward, especially more awkward that we were seated at this deadly quiet and uninteresting space. Servers didn’t seem to have time to entertain the guests between courses. No one came to ask us if we enjoyed the food. But we could tell they were very busy and they had to run up and down to bring food and plates back and forth. We get that they wanted to run a casual diner without the formality of the usual three stars restaurants, but the overall service was even less attentive than a small bistro in town.

Food was great - however not jaw-droppingly amazing. The three of us had the tasting menu, two having the standard menu with fish and meat courses, and I had the vegetarian menu. First though, the bread was cold, not delicious, and there’s no (vegan) butter or any seasonings for it. The madeleine served towards the end was cold and tasteless as well. Very disappointing have to say. The other courses, some hit some miss. We did very much enjoy the thinly sliced beet carpaccio, the butternut squash rosemary soup, and the charred cabbage was mind blowing.

The fact that we were seated in the Salon made the whole dining process feel terribly dragging. The lighting was too bright that we were so alerted and unrelaxed the whole time. You couldn’t help but looking at the other diners from the table right across and next to you, and you saw that they were looking at you too… Locking eyes with each other to share the mutual tiredness telepathically. Two of the tables requested to move upstairs for the whole evening and finally they went up for their dessert courses, which made the space even more tired and deadly, but we were glad that we finally finished our meal and about to leave. It’s just sad that we couldn’t wait to finish everything and leave asap.

Chef Passard was surely one of the kind. He came greet us when we first arrived, and we saw him and chatted him up upstairs at the entrance when we were about to leave. He’s genuinely warm and vibing, unfortunately such charming character didn’t translate to the Salon downstairs. The Salle upstairs was a completely different vibe - moody yet lively - somewhere you expect a fine dining restaurant to be like. Well I guess we just had ourselves to blame that we booked the Salon thinking it’s a unique venue at the very...

Extremely disappointed, especially with the poor quality of service. A few examples: I asked for the sommelier for a recommendation on pairing, but instead the waitress came back, without a wine list, and issued her single recommendation when I tentatively mentioned leaning towards a Viognier or a Chablis. This was the first hint that we should not have opted for the dejeuner du jardinier and would be treated like riffraff. 2.Even though we are a bilingual couple and I mentioned that I could translate from French to English for my husband if he did not understand it all, the waiters insisted on delivering all information in French then in English, which would have been fine if translation had been accurate. For example, "cassis" became "blueberries" instead of "blackcurrant". Even though we were not dignified with the service of the sommelier, he did spend 10 minutes at the (too) close table to ours chatting loudly with the two patrons about soccer, with his posterior extremely close to my plate. I could not believe we were in a Michelin starred restaurant! After the chicken arrived, we noticed that we had been given knives but no forks! It took us a while to get the attention of a waiter and get our utensils. A little later, in English since the staff insisted on addressing him in English, my husband noticed that his fork ( This was on the next dish) was totally bent, making it very uncomfortable to eat. we were shocked but my husband kindly decided to inform the waiter so they could dispose of it and avoid future embarrassment. In Plain English, he said: " This fork is bent. You should not keep it". This was misunderstood by the waiter, who assumed my husband was a redneck who was trying to hold on to his fork for the next dish. So my husband received this insulting answer: "But Monsieur, don't worry, You can give me your fork and you will get a clean fork with the next dish. We change the forks with every dish". He thankfully stopped short of adding " You unsophisticated plebeian". Amusingly, our next table neighbor told his friend: "Even I had understood what he said". Space is really tight for an establishment of this renown. To access the restroom you have to walk down a narrow staircase trying to pass servers going through the same narrow passage. The bathroom itself is tiny and you may get hit while exiting it to access the even tinier sink. This is not any better than a small "bar tabac"'s restroom; definitely not up to the standards of any fine dining restaurant, let alone a Michelin starred one! 7.Food was average to sub par, especially the sushi de courgette with geranium leaf oil, where the sodium was so overwhelming I felt I was eating at a Chinese fast food. The ile flottante coffee ice-cream with creme anglaise was as ordinary as any you would have at a cheap brasserie. The texture of the macaron cassis/rhubarbe was unpleasant...To finish on a positive note, the oeuf chaud et froid and the oyster were indeed very good.This is definitely not making up for the rest of our...