L'Abeille

Given the vast expense involved, the opening of a new haute cuisine restaurant in Paris is a rare event these days, especially now that traditional gastronomic categories are being called into question. Does the old notion of haute cuisine, which now usually entails a tab of some €250 a head, without wine, still have any relevance to good eating in 21st-century Paris?

Line-caught sea bass at L'Abeille

Turbot at L'Abeille

One answer is provided by the fact that the best young chefs in town have been using the bistrot as their own launch vehicle for the last 20-odd years, applying the techniques learned in topflight kitchens—and, in sparing quantities, the same luxury ingredients—in contemporary bistrot cooking.

A different answer was offered by the delicious meal I had recently at L’Abeille, the high-end restaurant of the new Hôtel Shangri-La Paris. (The hotel is housed in the former mansion of Roland Bonaparte, Napoleon’s grandnephew, and the restaurant is named for the symbolic Bonaparte bee.) Although the service is a bit overdone and our little amuse-bouche beet salad was alarmingly oversalted and vinegared, everything else was superb. Philippe Labbé, head chef of both L’Abeille and the hotel’s second restaurant, La Bauhinia, is one of the most widely experienced chefs working in France today, with a resume that includes stints with Bernard Loiseau, Gérard Boyer, Roger Vergé and Eric Briffard, and as head chef at the Château de Bagnols near Lyon and the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Eze on the Côte d’Azur.

That background explains the awe-inspiring culinary engineering of his menu. Starters included foie gras served two ways—first in a mi-cuit
terrine with a pleasant and original filling of crushed praliné and ground roasted cocoa beans; and then cooked inside a brick made of salt, sugar and tonka beans, producing a lobe that was firm but still rosy, delicately flavored by the vanilla-like tonka, and absolutely superb.

A main course of lobster, also in two services, was just as wondrous in terms of imagination and the work involved. First, breaded claws were served with a lobster-coral mayonnaise, accompanied by a crab-and-potato liégeois. Then lobster tail came wrapped in delicate parcels of Pontoise cabbage with medallions of foie gras and a black-truffle-spiked butter and potato sauce.

The dazzling performance continued with a stunning dessert by head pâtissier François Perret—a feuilleté of wild strawberries and avocado mousseline, with avocado-strawberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream. Unfortunately the restaurant doesn’t share the vaunted view of the Eiffel Tower and the Seine offered by most of the hotel, but there’s no doubt that, in this case, exclusively expensive haute cuisine remains relevant indeed.

10 ave d'Ièna, 16th, 01.53.67.19.90. website. Dinner only. €200 per person without wine

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of France Today

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Alexander Lobrano’s book Hungry for Paris is published by Random House. www.hungryforparis.com

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