Oktobre — Restaurant in Paris

A very good culinary experience in one of the capitals of food!

Kitchen Galerie Bis (KGB) is a solid great creative place where to experience what the French capital has to offer in terms of culinary experiences.

The place: KGB is a great restaurant placed in the heart of the Latin Quartier in a cozy and quiet street. The style is contemporary and the limited space is made look bigger thanks to a smart use of volumes and mirrors never giving you a sensation of claustrophobia. The only small issue is that the tables for 2 are really close to each other and you have sometimes the feeling you are eating with the people at the table next to yours. Larger tables are allowed more privacy. I may not recommend the restaurant for an intimate dinner of two, but for the rest it is anyway perfectly manageable.

The service: a big thank you to the restaurant for an outstanding service. Friendly and professional with the addition of notes of personalised attention and dedication beyond normal service. You are being asked about tastes and allergies before starting dinner so the chef can play with your plates accordingly. We were showing interest for a specific wine part of the pairing (we didn't take it ourselves due to a full working day the morning after) and we were offered a taste without asking. Really outstanding service full of curtesy and attention.

The food: the food at KGB is creative and influenced by several cuisines of the world both in terms of cooking styles and flavours. We took the 4 dishes menu (again, work the day after unfortunately) and were not disappointed overall. Really good meat and fish. Outstanding desserts. Some questions could be raised regarding the appetizers that had very particular combinations that could not meet the like of everyone. But it always conveys a great attention to ingredients and a meaning. Only note: be careful what you indicate as your preferences at the beginning of the dinner. Menu can vary quite drastically.

The price: considering you are in the heart of Paris and this is creative cuisine with perfect ingredients, the price is really not high. Great value for money. As said we didn't get the wine pairing, but at 34 euro for 4 glasses and 39 for 5, also that option is very well priced. Wines are selected with attention and very good ones. Of course you will get quite recent years (the same wine in older years are much better but also much more expensive).

Overall KGB is a place to recommend to anyone wanting to try creative and outstanding cuisine without breaking the bank. To try and try again at every...

TLDR: Stay away and spend your money elsewhere. Rude service and terrible food. Longer version: Out of a dozen different restaurants we visited in a week in Paris (some good, some great, some exceptional), this one is definitely the worst. This was supposed to be a chef restaurant with so many exceptional reviews, we were really looking forward to eat there. Our doubts began to roll right from the entrance - chip outdated design, too few locals, plastic water glasses (in a chef restaurant!!) - all this should have made us decide to eat dinner elsewhere, but we decided to give it a leap of faith. We were offered with a fancy named appetizer with a glass of champagne. We decided to go with it, and also ordered 2 main dishes (out of 4 available). When the appetizer and the champagne arrived, it was clear that this is not a chef restaurant - the appetizer would shame a food truck and the champagne was one of the cheapest bottom shelf ones. When the waitress arrived and asked if we finished, we told her that the appetizer was not to our taste. She simply took it away and a few minutes later served the main courses. How to describe them? I had a Merlang fish and my wife had a veal. The fish was completely lacking any taste, covered by salty broth and random veggies. The veal was a sliced supermarket veal pastrami covered with a stack of eggplants, tomatoes and !!! canned corn. I guess this was the chef’s vision. Obviously we couldn’t eat any of these, so we asked for a check which arrived within less than a minute without asking any questions. When we asked if we need to pay the full amount, as we didn’t eat anything, the response of the manager was “of course! The food was already cooked!” This is the most bizarre response I ever got in my life in any restaurant around the globe. We payed the check, left, and had a great dinner in a wine bar around the corner. Huge disappointment. Fake positive reviews. Fake food...

We went into this restaurant with high expectations due to it being on the Michelin Guide for 2022. We got there right as dinner service started, so the restaurant was rather empty. However, this did not cause for faster service; rather, it was the opposite. We ordered the 5-course tasting menu, and there were times where we were waiting 10+ minutes between courses. As dinnertime went on, the restaurant filled, and by the end of our meal, we had to wait 30 minutes to get our check while actively trying to flag a waiter down. Also, they charged us €7 per bottle of water.

As for the food, none of us were particularly impressed. The starter of 3 different dishes was unique with fancy-sounding ingredients, but the flavors were muted. I will have to say that the trout dish was particularly tasty, and I did enjoy the ginger vinaigrette, but the other two dishes were just okay. As for the second course, we had no clue what it was. We tried asking multiple times for the server to help explain what it was we were eating, and due to a language barrier and maybe some impatience, we ended up noting it was a "green grain with cuttlefish and Italian spice". This dish was okay; nothing spectacular. The third and fourth courses that followed also echoed the same notes as before, with the food being good, and nothing further.

However, the one thing they did phenomenally well was the dessert. My entire group and I were extremely impressed by the technique of the dessert-maker and the flavors incorporated into the final course of the meal. The sorbet tasted extremely fresh, and the accompanying jam tasted even more fresh. The second half of the dessert plate contained a coffee ganache that paired extremely well with the fruity first half of the dessert. The honey ice cream, chocolate biscuit, and hazelnut crumble all came together in a wonderful combination of flavors, and this dessert easily is one of the best desserts I've ever...