The best bistro in Paris?
L'Astrance is a wild flower from the Auvergne in France. But Pascal Barbot and Christophe Rohat's Parisian "bistrot gourmand" belies its name. It's about as rustic as a Chanel suit. Since it opened, it has been the hottest restaurant ticket in town. It earned a Michelin star within six months; for dinner it's booked up a month in advance; at lunch it's always full.
In 2000, the partners took over a failed bistro that had gone bust within six months of its launch in the smart 16th arrondissement. Barbot had spent five years with Alain Passard, then moved to Lapérouse, a historic restaurant overlooking the Seine, for his first post as executive chef. Rohat had also worked front-of-house at Arpège. When he won a Heidsieck Monopole prize for the best restaurant business plan, it gave him access to the bank loans the partners have relied on for this project.
Like Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing in London, they launched with an exceptionally good value menu. Before the introduction of the euro, they charged Ffr265 (£27 including service and tax) for an eight-course Menu Saisonnier. That figure has risen to €65 (£42) but still seems a bargain - less than half of what most gastronomic restaurants charge.
The partners began with a skeleton crew: two out front and two in the kitchen, including themselves. For the first year this restricted them to 15 bookings per service. They opened five-and-a-half days a week but closed every three months for a week.
Their next step involved hiring more staff - one front of house, one in the kitchen - which allowed them to serve five extra customers a sitting. Now they operate with four out front and four in the kitchen, for a maximum 50 covers per day. It's a self-imposed limit they won't exceed.
"Bistrot gourmand" is a new tag for an old-fashioned idea. When a young, aspiring chef runs his first business, he may have the skill of Pierre Gagnaire but he won't have the financial clout to compete with premier division stars. In the long term, Barbot is as ambitious to join the elite as any other aspiring chef with a three-Michelin-star pedigree. He won't, he insists, be operating a 25-seat restaurant for the rest of his professional career.
"At the moment, we're looking to consolidate," he says, "but five years from now we'll be moving on. Working conditions here, both in the front of house and in the kitchen, are difficult."
Meanwhile, he's filling a gap in the market. His cooking has the taste and finesse of an exceptional talent but the ambience of the restaurant belongs to a more modest dining-out experience.
More than 80% of customers choose to eat from one of the three set menus, which change four times a year. Barbot never drops dishes, regardless of the season, although others may appear according to the best buys in the market. The à la carte lists only 12 items: four entrées, five mains and three desserts. And Barbot knows exactly how much produce to order every day. "I never," he boasts, "waste anything."
It's a typical bistro formula in principle but in practice, it's quite atypical - a meal at L'Astrance bears no relation to soupe à l'oignon, boeuf bourguignonne and tarte aux pommes. Nobody leaves hungry but each course looks more like a highly designed, very individual appetiser.
This is not fusion. It's French but the emphasis is on linking each taste experience with the next, sometimes echoing the previous dish, often contrasting with it.
Don't assume, however, that it's nouvelle cuisine, nor that it is inspired by the flamboyant tapas of El Bulli. Barbot has always shunned luxury ingredients such as lobster, caviar, foie gras and truffles, although he doesn't rule out using them in the future. "I haven't used them because of their cost," he says, "but I have regular customers who ask me when I will prepare a dinner with truffles for them. It's my job to satisfy them, to give them pleasure, so why not?"
But such ingredients aren't essential to Barbot's cuisine - nor is he limited by it. Having worked for a year in London at Les Saveurs (under Joël Antunes) and for two years in Sydney, he has a broader experience than many of his colleagues in the French capital. He's confident enough to admit that he hasn't a single stockpot in his kitchen.
Paris, he believes, is the ideal place for him because modern, experimental cooking can find its own place there. "There's a public for every kind of restaurant whether it be Japanese, classical or fusion. Chefs come and eat my food who cook very French cuisine themselves and I go to their restaurants and to Thai and to Chinese."
But while the city can supply the finest produce in the world, it's not always able to supply the finest staff. "With France's 35-hour week, why should chefs want to come and work for me when they can find a job in a hotel and do eight-hour days for the same wages. Young chefs, passionate about the finest cooking, are far less common here than you think."
His own style may be setting trends but it's a dangerous one to copy. The tastes are subtle but distinctive - but, prepared by a less experienced chef, they might swing between bland, pretentious or just plain wacky.
His crabe aux fines lamelles d'avocat, a crab and avocado salad, illustrates how deceptively simple his ideas can be. "It's handled," he says, "as little as possible. I'm interested in the shape and colour of the avocado, its texture and the natural affinity with crab. The key to the dish is the freshness of the citrus fruit and afterwards the individual seasoning of each avocado slice with fleur de sel."
Passard taught him never to put an unnecessary garnish on a plate. The slices of toasted chestnut and teaspoon of iris vinegar he serves with a darne of zander give a hint of sharpness that lifts the flavour of the freshwater fish while adding a crunch to it. Instead of a sauce, he accompanies it with a small soup-bowl of anis-flavoured chestnut velouté. Banana slices on the same plate as raw egg, celery and a red wine reduction might sound like culinary madness but Barbot is happy to defend them: "It's autumn, the season of Beaujolais Nouveau, which often has a distinct banana taste to it, so why not put a little in the dish to point up the wine's flavour." The whole dish is a kind of edible joke on the classic oeufs en meurette, egg with a red wine sauce, given a kind of vegetarian twist.
Nor does he shy away from taking risks. A Camembert foam on a poached oyster is typical of his approach to inventing new recipes. His approach is to keep a daybook in which he writes down every idea that crosses his mind - culinary memories, book or magazine recipes, dishes he has seen on menus elsewhere.
He opens a page at random and shows me his scraps of notes: "grilling with vine cuttings", "cooking au bleu", "wheat risotto", "beetroot with beer", "agar agar".
Many of these mental prompts lead nowhere and some dishes don't make it past the initial development stage. He tinkered with the red wine and egg combination over a period of months until it evolved to its final shape. Then he introduced it on a menu where it fitted neatly.
Most elements of his dishes only have a handful of ingredients, and he rarely measures or weighs them. There are no stocks because he prefers milk as his base liquid.
L'Astrance may not really be a bistro but it has the basic characteristics. It depends heavily on the presence of its chef-patron, unlike in Michelin-starred restaurants, where the sous chef is the chef's right arm. Here, the chef-patron's ability to control the taste his customers experience is critical.
Extra care goes into touching up dishes before they leave the kitchen. It may only be a drop of almond oil here or a grating of nutmeg there, but it brings personality to what might otherwise be ordinary.
On the menu
*\ L'amuse bouche Gougères
Salt cod cream
* Crab
Crabmeat, sweet almond oil and avocado
* Apple and mushroom galette
Sliced raw apples, mushroom, maple syrup brick pastry
* Scallops
Queen scallops, apple and walnut coulis
* Oyster
Poached Gigas oyster and camembert foam
*\ Zander
Pan-fried darne, chestnuts, iris vinegar, chestnut veloute«
*\ Oeuf sur le plat
Egg yolk, celeriac, celery, red wine reduction and banana
* Wild duck
Breast confit, spiced bread, pear and chocolate chutney
*\ Chilli sorbet
Mild chilli and lemon grass
* Chocolate
"Biscuit gauffrette", coffee-tansy
