The dinner of a thousand details: A feast in Paris illuminates fine dining expectations in California
by Richard Foss
When I reminisce about memorable dining experiences at French restaurants, some people recoil from the idea. An image develops in their minds of stifling formality, complex etiquette, and a procession of mysterious, complex dishes. They fear they might not be sophisticated enough to understand the aesthetic, much less relax and enjoy it. In vain do I try to explain that at most modern French restaurants the only neckties visible are worn by servers or managers, the welcome is as warm as in any upscale restaurant, and the cuisine is rooted in the idea of enhancing natural flavors rather than smothering them in sauces.
I have now had the kind of meal that those people fear, but not here in Los Angeles. My brother and I were in Paris last week and dined at the Tour d’Argent, a famed eatery that has been serving since at least 1860. Statesmen like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, authors such as Ernest Hemingway, cinema stars like Charlie Chaplin, and countless less celebrated folk seeking extraordinary experiences have flocked here for meals that last at least three hours and are served with extraordinary ceremony. I packed a suit and tie on a vacation trip, something I wouldn’t usually do, because their website and numerous reviews mention the dress code.
We were disappointed to discover that formal dress is no longer enforced, and nearby tables were populated with people wearing designer jeans and open collared shirts. This was in sharp contrast with the staff, some of whom strut around the dining room wearing frock coats that were everyday streetwear in the 1890s. There is a hierarchy among the servers that is hard to penetrate. Some wear tailcoats with and without aprons, others have standard coats with or without aprons, and the aprons are different colors. A small army of servers move continuously and purposefully, bearing food, tableware, and wine in one direction, used dishes and glassware in the other. We tried to figure out what each garment meant by watching what the people in question were doing, but kept losing track because there was so much going on.
We were also distracted by the stunning view of Paris through the floor to ceiling windows of the seventh floor dining room. From our table we could see the restoration work in progress on the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and the fascinating jumble of hundreds of years of architecture that is a feature of the city center. The interior doesn’t distract from this panorama and doesn’t try — there is an expanse of royal blue carpet with widely spaced tables, each bearing starched white tablecloths, silver candelabra, water cups, charger plates, and a crystal statue of a duck. Duck is a specialty of the Tour d’Argent, and the birds are embroidered on the linens, embossed on the menu cover, and represented on serving trays and glassware.
The roast duck on the seasonal menu is served with a cinnamon-olive tapenade and artichoke and chive puree topped with a potato tuille biscuit.
Diners are welcome to order from the a la carte menu, but servers strongly recommend selecting either the six-item traditional menu for 440 Euros per person or the five item seasonal menu for 360 Euros. My brother ordered one, I ordered the other, resolving to share so that we could enjoy 11 items of haute cuisine. As it turned out, we had many more than that, because those menus don’t list the amuse-bouche, appetizers, and other tidbits served between courses.
The first items to arrive were a scimitar shaped plate with six bite-size starters, flanked by rough dark stone squares bearing little multigrain biscuits topped with meat jelly and what looked like a tiny garden of chives and almost microscopic flowers. Each bit of greenery was purposefully placed, and we imagined someone in the back with tweezers and a magnifying glass who painstakingly arranged these over 50 times a night. The little, one-bite amuse-bouches were a beet chip topped with beet puree and a shard of pickled onion, a stuffed olive crowned with fresh dill, and a tartlet of vegetables topped with a basil leaf. These fit together thematically, each with some natural flavor and a contrasting pickled or herbal accent. The whole assemblage was visually arresting at the same time as it teased you with a set of vivid but ephemeral flavors, which was exactly as this course should be.
The next item we both received was a bowl of pureed white asparagus on a bed of coconut milk, topped with a little toasted coconut and what tasted like a dash of ground cumin. This surprising combination was completely successful, and though my brother usually avoids asparagus, he devoured every bit and proclaimed that it was the first time he had ever liked asparagus. It was paired with glasses of the house Champagne, an absolutely splendid combination.
After that our meals diverged, and for the next course I received caviar atop a potato cake over chive juice, served with a mother of pearl spoon that was engraved with the restaurant’s logo. My brother received a John Dory fish quenelle over red caviar in sorrel sauce, topped with a sprig of watercress. I had a sole filet over spinach and herbs submerged in lobster sauce, in which the sole flavor was mostly obscured — the only dish of the meal that had that problem. My brother’s next course was one of the more visually arresting of the meals, a soft boiled egg that had somehow been crusted with herbed crumbs, served over pureed artichoke with Middle Eastern seasonings and pieces of artichoke heart. I received a lump of foie gras studded with big pieces of black truffles, served with three kinds of jam and an excellent seeded roll. The presentation was simple, a stark contrast with most other dishes, as though to say that the classic needed no embellishment. His was paired with a 2020 Pouilly-Fusse, mine with a 1997 Momus that was delicious with the musky, fatty flavors.
Black sturgeon caviar is served over a potato “blini” on a bed of chive and sorrel sauce, with a mother of pearl spoon.
By now we had seen some patterns emerging in food, environment, and service. With very few exceptions, nothing but the small vegetable garnishes were in their natural state. Our food arrived as discs, cubes, spheres, anything but what it looked like when it was on a farm, ocean, or forest. Every dish, no matter how small, had multiple layers of flavor — a broiled oyster that might have been delightful straight from the salamander was instead topped with capers and tiny specks of chopped seaweed, robed in a Viognier wine sauce. The dominant aesthetic was for visually arresting melanges of color and shape that invited you to look at the deep detail in each item. This was magnified by the dizzying array of specialty plates and cutlery that were presented ceremonially as each course arrived and whisked away when finished. There are oddly shaped plates that are used only for the egg dish, for the foie gras, the oyster, and more. A server told us that left handed cutlery was available, and a staff member watches to see which hand people pick up the menu with and distribute it accordingly. Details upon details combined to create a cumulative sense that every possible desire had been anticipated and would be fulfilled.
With one exception, the service was choreographed with similar precision. At each change of plates, staff members glide to the table as though on casters, deliver the food item perfectly level, announce what it is, wait the merest moment for questions, and then depart. If you have questions, they’ll stay exactly long enough to answer them, but they will scurry to their next task. The evening before we dined at the Tour d’Argent we had dinner at an old inn near Notre Dame, and our boisterously entertaining host chatted with everyone, sang a few songs, and encouraged a general bonhomie. He was perfectly in his element, but wouldn’t last five minutes as a server here. The one person who did chat with us at length was the sommelier, who commands a cellar with more than 200,000 bottles of wine and apparently knows every one of them. His conversational style was pedantic and reserved, though when he talked about a particular vintage he enjoyed, he became more informal and engaging. We found his pairings artful except for a 1993 Haut-Brion that we thought too bland for the course it arrived with.
The celebrated duck arrived in two styles, for me a cylinder of pressed meat in Madeira wine sauce with potato gratin, topped with a bit of caramelized foie gras and a vegetable chip, accompanied by a wedge of potato gratin. I had ordered the classic menu, and this was a modern arrangement of classic flavors, superbly executed. My brother received roasted duck breast with a dusting of caramelized ginger – the only item of the meal that actually looked like what it was — along with cinnamon-olive tapenade, eggplant and spinach caviar topped with a potato flour tuile biscuit, and a little cylinder of minced duck meat and chopped vegetables over an artichoke puree scented with vadouvan, the French version of curry spice. The restaurant has been numbering the ducks they served since 1860, and the meat on both our plates was from number 1,185,017. The people at several other tables enjoyed the same one, because there are a lot of small, rich portions available from one duck.
The famous duck cards have been handed to diners since 1860.
I could go into all the rest of the items, rhapsodize over the lemon custard with balsamic citrus and basil sorbet, or speculate whether I really could replicate the roasted pineapple with vanilla cream, lime sorbet, and rum sauce, but I think you get the idea. It’s more important to mention that at the end of that meal, we were surprisingly not feeling stuffed. Sated, yes, and ready for a walk back to our hotel and an appointment with our mattresses, but not gorged.
The portions and flavors had been beautifully calibrated to provide a richly varied experience that was worthy of contemplation. The closest experience I’ve had to date were dinners at the Checkers Hotel in Downtown LA when Thomas Keller was cooking there and at The French Laundry in Napa, but both were different because they had a California feel — more whimsical and multicultural, more items that expressed natural flavors more simply, less artisanship just for the sake of showing off.
The question that you may be asking yourself is whether it was worth the $1,224.02 that showed up on my brother’s credit card statement? If a meal that you are certain will be remembered for the rest of your life, and that changes the way you think about dining, is worth it, then yes. I’m not too likely to go back, but I’m very glad that we did it.
The Tour d’Argent is at 15 Quai de la Tournelle in the 5th Arrondissement of Paris. Reservations absolutely necessary, at tourdargent.com/the-tower. ER