About Michelin Restaurants in France
There’s no doubt that food is an essential, inseparable part of French culture. Since the 17th century, French cooking has become not just an endless source of flavors and aromas but genuine art, no less important than other visual arts like painting or sculpture. And if haute French cuisine has become a kind of religion, approached with reverence, then the Michelin guide is nothing less than its Bible.
And like a Bible, the Michelin guide has its own rules, by which it judges the quality of the restaurants it reviews. True, over the years other guides have appeared, like Gault-Millau, and in recent years crowd-sourced rating sites have joined them too. But despite all that, the Michelin guide still holds on to its almost religious status. And if we take the Michelin guide’s rulings as absolute truth, then at the very top of the world’s culinary scene sit the restaurants that have earned, through great effort, three stars: the highest rating in the Michelin guide.
Eating at these restaurants is seen, even by most Francophiles, as something unattainable and out of reach. The main reason, of course, is the price, which, together with wine, can easily add up to a week in a nice apartment in Paris. And honestly, until recently, I saw these restaurants the way you’d see the crown jewels (something to admire from a distance, nothing more). But my 40th birthday was approaching, and it demanded something special to mark the round number, so for the first time in my life, I looked up at the starry sky of French culinary excellence and reached out to pick a few stars for myself.
Celebrating My 40th Birthday at Roellinger
Of course, with a choice like this you can’t afford to get it wrong, so I turned to Avital Inbar, one of the leading gastronomes I know, a great resource for anyone looking for Michelin restaurants in Paris. Since I decided to spend my last few days before heading back to Guernsey in Brittany, Avital Inbar recommended the restaurant Roellinger (Roellinger), not far from Cancale, and I immediately booked a table there.
The Appetizer and First Courses
The restaurant is housed in a 19th-century building that also serves as a boutique hotel (Roellinger has another hotel in Cancale). As soon as we arrived, the head waiter took us to a sitting room where we could relax on sofas and take our time looking over the menu. While we did that, we were served three appetizers: eggplant, potato and a delicate piece of cod. The three dishes were served in oyster shells, as a reminder of how close we were to the sea and to Cancale, famous for its excellent oysters. The result was three textures and flavors that worked together beautifully. A fitting start indeed for a 40th birthday feast.
After the appetizers, we kept reading the menu and decided to go with the 3-course set menu, which came to about 60 euros per person. Not cheap, but definitely manageable. Since it was my 40th birthday after all, I decided to treat myself to lobster caught not far from there, which made the menu a bit pricier. After choosing our dishes, we were led into the dining room itself, and I was happy to find we got a table by the window with a view of the garden and the sea…
Two kinds of fresh bread (white and whole wheat) were brought to the table along with two kinds of excellent butter (one plain, one seasoned). Both butters came from Brittany, of course, made by Bordier, which Goni Burstein wrote about before.
Luckily, we weren’t left alone with this wonderful bread for too long, and the first courses arrived at the table. But this is where there was a bit of disappointment. First came a Tonkin-style seafood soup. The seafood was, of course, fresh, but there was nothing groundbreaking about this soup. I’ve eaten plenty of soups like it in East Asia, and even in Paris‘s Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement, and they were just as good, sometimes even better. In short, a pleasant soup, but not much more than that.
The second dish was oysters (Huître) in curry sauce. The oysters themselves were excellent, exactly as oysters harvested on the shores of Cancale should be. But the curry sauce was too aggressive for my taste, and instead of complementing the flavor of the oysters, it fought them for attention, which was a shame.
Last but not least was the “gardener’s style” salad that my father ordered, who isn’t known for his love of seafood. The vegetables were, of course, fresh, making for a colorful dish. On the other hand, despite its elegance and freshness, this salad was missing that extra something to create a real “wow” effect (or in French, “mon dieu”). Then again, anyone who orders a salad at a restaurant like this… deserves what they get!
The Main Courses, But First, a Few Words on What Excellent Service Really Looks Like
We finished the first courses, and while we waited for the main courses, let me say a few words about the service. Until you’ve eaten at a Michelin-starred restaurant, you don’t really understand what great service looks like. Sure, you’ve probably run into a waitress in France who never took an advanced course in misanthropy, or a waiter who knows exactly what’s in every dish on the menu, and thought you were getting excellent service. But that’s just good service.
Excellent service is a waiter who knows exactly what you need before you even know it yourself, and is already prepared to bring it to you. Excellent service means waiters who don’t come over a minute after your dish arrives to ask, right in the middle of your bite, if everything’s okay. Waiters at restaurants like this know the answer without asking. They’re present yet absent, seen yet unseen, and they turn the dining experience into a seamless journey, uninterrupted between the senses. Unsurprisingly, the service we got from start to finish at Roellinger was nothing short of exceptional, the kind of service that, even before your first bite, makes you understand you’re somewhere that gives its guests and their culinary experience the utmost respect.
But let’s get back to the meal itself. As I said, the first courses were a bit disappointing, but the main courses that followed completely changed the culinary picture. Let’s start with the lamb dish, prepared two ways. Roellinger is a restaurant that specializes in fish and seafood. But since my father doesn’t like seafood, my parents decided to order this dish (it’s meant to be shared by two).
I admit we were a little hesitant to order a meat dish at a restaurant that specializes in seafood, but luckily our worries disappeared with the first bite. The meat was wonderful, served with root vegetables cooked to exactly the right texture, a perfect accompaniment to the dish. But what really elevated this dish and made it special were the herbs, grown by Roellinger himself, straight from his own garden, which gave the dish a happy burst of flavors that didn’t compete with the meat for attention but simply brought out its quality.
And then came the lobster… Fresh lobster from the waters of Brittany is a delicacy even without a Michelin star attached to it. Sure, the preparation was classic, with no fancy tricks, but good lord, that lobster was delicious! And in the end, as Eric Ziv wrote in his book, the taste of the food is the measure that matters most.
The Final Courses
After we finished enjoying the main courses, the dessert cart arrived. From “50 Michelin Stars” I learned that in restaurants like this, it’s common to bring out a cart like this, letting guests try several desserts instead of just picking one. But until then, I had never actually experienced anything like it myself. And there’s no question, when a cart like this arrives at your table, it’s quite a sight.
As you can see, this is a multi-tiered cart with different desserts on each level. The waiter came over and asked each of us what we’d like. The question that immediately came to mind was how you could possibly choose from such an enormous variety of sweets, but then I happily learned that you don’t actually have to choose, since each of us gets 4 desserts from the cart, which meant that if each of us picked different ones, we could try them all.
For people with a weakness for sweets, there couldn’t be better news. To avoid stuffing ourselves completely, each of us tasted just a spoonful of every dessert, and each one turned out to be better than the last. There’s no doubt this part of the meal simply amazed me. It was hard to believe how every single dessert was just as perfect as the next. So it’s very hard for me to tell you which of the desserts in the photo above I liked best. That said, the pistachio profiteroles were the most photogenic, so I decided to give you a close-up shot of them.
At this point, feeling like I was about to burst, I was served a kind of birthday cake, a gift from the restaurant: three excellent profiteroles (different from the pistachio ones) that I somehow managed to taste, even though I was already about to collapse from sugar overload.
And then, just when we thought that was it, a box of candies suddenly arrived, putting my dietary conscience and my stomach into a Shakespearean dilemma. To taste or not to taste? That is the question!
So yes, with the last of my strength, I tasted the madeleine cookies, which were excellent. More than that, I just couldn’t manage…
And that was it. My birthday meal ended with a generous dose of sugar. In the end, I had a wonderful time, and I feel I definitely got more than fair value for my money. And my message to all Francophiles out there: life is short, so I recommend everyone eat at least once in their life at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. And since life is also unpredictable, I recommend starting with dessert 🙂
If you’re heading to Brittany and want to treat yourself, you can find more information about the restaurant Roellinger here.
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