Pierre Gagnaire — Restaurant in Paris

The bread was very good, and was replenished throughout the meal. The absolute highlight, though, was the salted butter they brought out. This was astonishingly good - the perfect salt level, melts in your mouth, and addicting. I had to stop myself from eating straight butter from the butter knife. It paired with the bread so well.

We decided to get one appetizer and one entree among the two of us, and split it. This isn't as outrageous as it initially sounds, because the appetizer we picked (Scallops from the truffle menu) comes with 5 different dishes, and the Langoustine entree that we got comes with 7 dishes.

Interestingly enough, we had to kind of argue with the waiter to allow us to choose this. She really wanted us to get two entrees, because she thought what we got wasn't going to be enough food (it ended up being more than enough).

A really cool thing that they did here was bring a card displaying what dishes they brought out, along the ingredients in those dishes. It really helps track what's in the dishes as you're eating them.

Eventually, about an hour and half after we sat down, the main courses were brought out. As mentioned, these were 5 scallop dishes and 7 langoustine dishes. We each shared half of every dish - so I got to try half of all twelve.

The scallop dishes were very much a mixed bag for me. The damier was not something that I liked - particularly because the plain truffle squares just tasting very bland and with a hard texture. The dishes that I really liked was the broth flavored with truffles, and most particularly - the cannelloni marine - which was a bunch of seafood stuffed inside a cannelloni shell. This last one was incredibly good, and easily my favorite scallop dish of the night.

I liked the langoustine dishes better. Of these, my clear favorites were the large langoustine seared in brown butter, the fried langoustines, and especially the raw langoustine. In each of these, they were cooked perfectly. It did suffer from the same problem that I'll discuss later - that the dishes began to taste similar to one another.

We did not expect that they would bring out an entire section of cheeses, a total of 12 pieces, or 6 per person. I did not like any of these cheeses, except the brie.

The dessert was probably the best part of the meal - which is not a surprise as it's what they're known for. Unlike the previous set of meals, each dish was very different from one another, and tasted worlds apart - but all retained an extremely high level of quality. The licorice cake was my favorite, with the milk mousse on the side of the bowl being the highlight. The chocolate dish, containing all different types of the flavor, was another strong contender. Not to be slept on was the blood orange dish, which combined with the cold coconut parfait to create a textural & temperature combination that was delectable.

The total cost ended up being 350 euros per person, or roughly 380 dollars.

This is the second Michelin-starred restaurant I've been to, the first being Santa Elisabetta in Florence (**). Given that, I was expecting this to be a step up from that place (since this is a three-star), but I have to say I don't think it was - on the contrary, I think I prefer the Italian one.

There are a few reasons for that. For one, for about half the price, I got a good amount more food at Santa Elisabetta. Also, the experience there was just better. The plating was superb, the environment was amazing, and most importantly, the food was take-your-breath-away good.

This place excels on the margins. It beats the other restaurant easily in terms of service - the service here is spectacular. The variety of the dessert is also excellent.

None of this is to say the food isn't good. It's obviously some of the best food I've ever had. I enjoyed my experience very much overall, and this is in the top five to ten of restaurants i've ever been to, but it didn't live up to the hype for me, which is the part I'm...

This is my second day in Paris and my second meal in a Michelin star restaurant... Yesterday was a disappointment but today's was amazing.... The service is personal, attentive but not intrusive. Just right. The pace of serving dishes is good... Not draggy As for the food, out of this world. I tried the tasting menu and it was so so good. The first dish was crayfish in Macvin wine... The crayfish is so sweet and tender, slightly buttery with a hint of white wine....amazing. Expecting more... 2nd dish was a single oyster bathed in consomme of fennel with some wild mushrooms. The oyster is sweet, contrasting with the interesting consomme and the texture of wild mushroom makes this dish wonderful... If the first 2 dishes are good... The 3rd is out of this world! The blue lobster swimming in a foamy bisque is amazing by itself... But when eaten with the accompanying filette of tumeriv, black garlic and cauliflower... The flavors exploded in my mouth... Amazing... The next dish was a slight disappointment... The wild abalone was slightly tough although the combination of roasted foie gras and young rabbit liver was amazing... Never had the combination before... The 5th dish was red mullet covered with a thin piece of octopus and puree of sea urchin. The combination sounds weird but it works somehow... Lovely... The last dish was the milk fed lamb.... It was good but not comparable to the first few dishes... Not surprising enough... Just good.... By now, i am filled to the brim.... Next comes 6 courses of desert... Yes SIX! Each was good but by this time...i am really too full. Overall, excellent...

There’s a certain expectation when you walk into a Three Michelin Star restaurant. Precision, balance, flavors that work together like a symphony. At the very least, competence. Pierre Gagnaire didn’t deliver on any of that.

I went for the four-course lunch menu. The amuse-bouche was fine—nothing remarkable. The first course? A confused mix of flavors that didn’t blend well, but I could let it slide. Then things went downhill.

The second and third courses were genuinely awful. Not in a “this isn’t to my taste” way, but in a “how did this make it out of the kitchen?” way. The cockles dish was aggressively bitter, drowning in fat with no balance—no acidity, no sweetness, no depth. Just bad. To top it off, I bit into a shell fragment. In a Three Michelin Star kitchen, that’s unacceptable. I sent it back.

The next dish had the same problem—overwhelming bitterness, this time from a mushroom that completely dominated the plate. Again, inedible. Again, I sent it back. That’s when the manager started circling. Not in an apologetic way, but in a defensive, interrogative way. Like I was the problem for expecting edible food.

The fourth course was passable—still carrying that signature bitterness, but at least I could get through it. The desserts? Nine of them. All good, a bit excessive, but fine. It felt like an overcorrection, a last-ditch attempt to salvage an otherwise disastrous meal.

The service? The waiter was wonderful—attentive, professional, everything you’d expect at this level. The kitchen, on the other hand, was not. This isn’t what Three Michelin Stars should be....