Goust: Restaurants in Paris

Boston-born but an assimilated Parisian after more than 25 years, one of the questions I’m most often asked by visitors aware of my gastronomic vocation is where they should go for a ‘special’ night out in the city. It’s a query I take very much to heart as well, since I vividly remember my woefully occasional trips to the city as both a threadbare student and then a publishing junior before I moved here.

During those pennywise travels, I always wanted at least one special meal when I came to Paris – even if it meant tinned soup for a week back home, I was in Paris after all, and the idea that I’d make the wrong choice filled me with horror for both my wallet and my palate. So this year I’m delighted to have a new address that I can unhesitatingly send people to for excellent food and wine served with attentive charm in a stylish setting: Goust.

This new restaurant by Enrico Bernardo, one of the world’s most distinguished sommeliers, intrigues with the modish modern décor of its Napoleon III vintage dining room and even more with its food-and-wine pairings. Many restaurants suggest the same, but here they work to perfection.

Young Spanish-born chef José Manuel Miguel (he’s from Valencia, worked at Martin Bersategui in the Spanish Basque Country and was most recently with Eric Frechon at Le Bristol) does brilliantly original tasting menus – including dishes like riso alla Bomba, the short-grain rice from the fields around Valencia, with chopped razorshell clams, a good gust of pimentón and a citrus foam or duckling breast with shiso leaves, and Bernardo chooses a pour that makes each course even more stunningly eloquent.

The menu changes seasonally, and even though it’s a set menu, they do ask if you have dietary restrictions when you’re seated; that said, it’s probably best to indicate anything you can’t or won’t eat when you book, and do book way in advance, because this place is the season’s big hit in Paris.

 

GOUST

10 rue Volney, 75002 Paris

+ 33 1 40 15 20 30

www.enricobernardo.com

Closed Sunday/Monday. Lunch €35, Prix fixe €75, €130 (with wine), à la carte €85 (with wine)

 

Restaurant columnist Alexander Lobrano lives in Paris. His book Hungry for Paris is online in the France Today bookstore.

 

Originally published in the June-July 2013 issue of France Today.