La Table de Colette — Restaurant in Paris

Very good restaurant, with options for menus, tasty food and good wines to go with them. I found the dishes creative and modern. The service was also pleasant and attentive, making our weekday 3 course lunch go by almost too quickly. Was happy that they were able to change some ingredients based on preferences of one in our party, who really enjoyed the meal. My only critique is that they add the option, and verbally emphasise, for a tip can be added when paying the bill with pre-selected options of percentages to choose from. This creates an expectation to tip, which is a practice I have only seen in tourist areas (been living in France for a decade, never seen a restaurant outside of a tourist area offer this option). However, this is totally unnecessary - tipping is not required in France as servers are paid a living wage and service is included already on the bill. If a person chooses, they leave a few euros - not 10-15% of an expensive bill. This extracts extra money from the client, who is already paying a lot for a nice meal (especially if it is a tourist who is also dealing with exchange rates!), and guilt for people who have to, in front of the server, choose no tip. For a high end restaurant, i am truly surprised at this practice given both the amount of money it represents and the ‘bad taste’ it could leave on the way out. Thought about giving a lower star for this (I wish 4.5 was an option!), but I think its unfair to the rest of the experience - but wanted to note in hopes that the management reviews this unnecessary and...

The best quality of this establishment is the service team, a bunch of young, enthusiastic, professional and friendly individuals. The food however is problematic. We were presented with another discovery menu proclaiming the chef’s mission statement for eco sustainability. The amount of chefs injecting in their menu the desire to save the world these days is staggering. And that would be perfectly fine if their primary mission, that is to achieve culinary excellence, was delivered first and foremost. Alas, at Colette’s table, too much emphasis is put on the lofty aforementioned intent but too little is bothered by the intricacies of precise execution, leading to a generally weak outcome, confusing subtlety for blandness, and bestowing upon an increasingly bored yours truly with overcomplicated flavour and texture combination sorely rewarded by imbalanced taste profiles. The tiny wine list hits barely above the food experience, with a confused selection (uninspired champagne, confidential entry level wine labels and a big no man’s land in the upper mid market label category (between 100 to 200 euros) where great labels usually abound. I did manage to pick a decent burgundy Finally the dining room design betrays a dreadful lack of imagination, confusing minimalism with plain boring wall tiling work and an atrocious set of pendant lighting fixtures fitted with glaring light bulbs bathing the entire dining room in an unpleasant halo of yellowish light that dissipates whatever remnant of colours each dish may have held in the first...

Lately, after finishing my challenge of testing all the Michelin Stars in 365 days and retesting morts of them multiple times (follow me for reviews and updates), I’m also testing the Michelin Guide without stars. I’ve heard about this one several time so I really wanted to give a try.

Sweet Brittany and vegetables. A quick review. 2 things interesting here. The important and obvious: The focus on the vegetables. Which means that the side dish will be the fish (in my case, but it could have been meat) and the main plate about the vegetables. So it’s quickly obvious that you’re in a vegetables centered restaurant. It’s also eco responsible, it’s logical and comes with the territory. The other point that stands out is that the chef has a sweet taste. The plates are a bit more sweet than your average. It’s not a problem because it’s naturally done. It would contrast with other vegetables centered chef that could play another register but does go along with some fully vegan restaurants that are also on the sweet side.

It’s a very solid Michelin, at night i suspect it becomes a top tiers, a real...