*it rained incessantly for our last three days in France, so none of these pictures are ours
We’re sitting in a spartan room in a faceless dive on the outskirts of Paris, picking at a €3 box of cold meat, handing a bottle of l’Orangina backwards and forwards. There isn’t a single thing in this room that does need to be – hell, there isn’t even a reception downstairs, just a vending machine that spits out room cards for €35. It is an unashamed shit hole.
Thus Laffmo on holiday.
Twenty-four hours earlier we were chasing each other around a six-room apartment-style suite in a chateaux in the Loire Valley. That was free; this is not, and so we’re living like bums. Les bummes.
The chateaux had been fine, and the two-star food pretty decent too – rabbit served three ways with a selection of veg it would like have eaten before taking the wrong turn at Albuquerque, was especially excellent.
That seems like quite a long time ago now, but to be honest it’s nice to have the opportunity to eat a little lighter for the first time in almost a week. The following morning we also skip breakfast and as we begin a slow, frustrating drive into the capital it feels like we’re a little hungry again.
I don’t like Paris. At least, I didn’t in 1998, the only other time I’ve been here. It rained then too; one of my school friends got robbed on the Montmartre; we got chased by older boys in the Parc Des Princes; the Louvre was on strike; lookie-lookie men frightened us at the Eiffel Tower. We managed to get a beer in Le McDo, but that was about the only highlight.
I’ve never been back, so this is a chance for Paris to win me over – the city’s very future almost certainly depends on it.
The fact that a range of its finest restaurants have volunteered to spread their legs for us means its probably in with a better shout this time round. We’re also staying in the only five-star hotel on theChamps-Elysees, although I’d love to know who they paid off to get that rating – honestly, the Marriott is barely better than a Japanese business hotel and three times as expensive. Also, as though to highlight just how insecure they are about their rating, they charge for dozens of extras – as soon as a so-called five-star hotel starts demanding payment for wi-fi, you should be on alert.
Anyway, it’s true that its location is world class, so let’s focus on that.
By the time we’ve dumped our rental car (which thanks to the traffic no longer reads full and costs me another €40) and checked in, there’s barely time for a coffee before we have to make our first appointment.
As we sit down in the darkness of Pierre Gagnaire’s flagshiprestaurant, I don't mind admitting to a childish nervousness. By almost anyone’s standards, this is one of the best restaurants in the world and we’re here on a freebie. In order to meet the dress code, I raided a couple of charity shops at home, buying a £2.50 second-hand shirt to accompany a pair of faded old golf trousers and some smartish boots. Meanwhile, some of the other diners are wearing diamonds bigger than the first minuscule offerings from the kitchen.
These tiny morsels are followed by crab, leeks and pomegranate; goats cheese with salmon roe; golden turnip and beetroot; nettle and fennel purée; and haddock on white bean. Unbelievably, this is only the amuse-bouche: five mini dishes, each as perfect as a baby's toes.
The meal progresses through another half dozen dishes, each mind-blowing in its own way. The highlight is perhaps the salpicon of scallops cooked in a Jerusalem artichokes infusion with a hint of mustard, and a segment of Rubinette apple flavoured with maniguette. It's a firework display of flavour and no exaggeration to say that it's perhaps the single most satisfying dish I've ever eaten. Not that all the courses are so showy: the main, poached guinea fowl with winter legumes and a sage sauce, is essentially meat and two veg.
Two hours later, it's all done and by the time we step out into the cold air, we've got several thousand calories in our bellies and enormous smiles on our faces. It's almost boring to say so, but the restaurant the Guide rated highest was indeed the best one we found all week, anywhere in France.
But that’s just lunch. We waddle back to the hotel room for an hour but can’t get comfortable, so decide to take a very, very long walk to Benoit, the only Michelin-starred bistro in all of Paris. Our meandering amble takes us past many of Paris’ architectural highlights, and, to our surprise, past a gallery out of which a Paco Rabanne's hideous show is being kicked.
This is Paris Fashion Week – that we knew – but we seem to have stumbled across it by complete accident. A series of gangly phantoms totter out into the dusk of evening, looking haunted until the cameras start clicking, at which point they spring to life. They’re not attractive, these marionettes, but they are definitely striking. My favourite is an Eastern European (you can tell by her broad face and sunken eyes) blonde who swaggers out with a fag and a glass of champagne, not giving a haute couture fuck what people say or how she appears on camera.
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| *not her. |
For many of the others, though, it can be quite hard to look at them: the logistics of their 4-foot legs, just a couple of inches in diameter, planted onto high heels seem impossible, especially when they then have to walk over cobbles, wet with the afternoon drizzle. I keep waiting for them to come tumbling down and shatter, like fallen icicles.
We move on and after almost five hours of walking, we’re at Benoit and still not hungry. But it’d be so rude not to at least give it a go, so it’s once more unto the breach. It’s not the best meal, nor the most impressive setting (that went to Le Meurice, another three-star restaurant that we managed to squeeze in before jumping on the Eurostar back home the following day), but Benoit is our favourite restaurant. Why? Well because the waiters are human, you can hear shouting from the kitchen and the soup is prepared inside the dining area, allowing its smell to waft across the room. In other words: this is a real restaurant, not the pompous, rigid exercise that is the trademark of so many other Michelin-starred restaurants. However, because Alain Ducasse backs this place, all of it comes with a guarantee of quality.
As I start to force profiteroles into my mouth, I want to muse on whether or not the Michelin Guide really is important, whether it gives chefs something to aim for, or whether it’s become too biased and infinitely too big for its boots. I want to ponder those and many other things, but I can’t stop thinking about the models from earlier. For all their money and adoration, they’ll never ever get to have a greedy week like we’ve just had, those poor, strange bastards.
