Thursday, April 7, 2011

Europea, my love

For my birthday, the wife took me to Europea. Actually, my all-time dream has been to go to The French Laundry (chef Keller) in California and since that entails paying flight fare and about 300$ for dinner for one, Europea by Jérôme Ferrer was the next best thing.

What to say? It was AMAZING! We loved our fine dining experience! We had the tasting menu which is basically a 10 service meal with a couple extras at the beginning. This menu cost 89,50$ and if you choose to accompany this with wine, the pairing is an extra 64,50$ for 5 glasses. We did not take this option seeing as A: I had quite the party the night before and B: we are not millionaires.

We got there at around 5:30 PM (us oldies eat early :) so there weren't that many people in the restaurant. We went in and immediately there was the hostess to take our jackets and lead us to our table on the second floor right next to the window: a very nice spot. Everyone that worked there seemed to either smile at us or say hello, which was nice. Our waitress immediately brought us the first amuse-bouche which was basically cheese on a stick. But good cheese. Mmmmm.

After that, the feast was about to begin. here is what we ate:
1st course: Lobster cream Cappuccino with truffles shavings
2nd: Mediterranean bass marinated with yuzu juice, rice lettuce
3rd: Giant caramelized scallop, parmesan risotto and crisp, béarnaise sauce emulsion
4th: Seared Quebec Foie gras, root vegetable purée, sautéed chanterelles and chips.
Morel mushroom emulsion, veal jus flavoured with arabica- arpégio coffee
5th: Cornwell chicken, Galanga infusion, Shiitaké vermicelli
6th: Fresh ravioli with ricotta mushrooms, porcini emulsion, grilled Portobello, Alba truffle sauce
7th: Short ribs of Eumatimi Beef, crispy galette of roots vegetables, braised chipolini onions and baby carrot, sweet and sour BBQ
8th: Selection of cheeses
9th: Sweets and deserts (macarons, chocolate and verrines)
10th: Mignardises (barbapapa!, madeleines in a chinese take out box!)

This was, as I just mentionned, a FEAST! WoW! Everything was so good and I we were highly pleased! Starting with the lobster cappuccino: it was marvellous and SO amazing!! The texture and the taste of it were perfect! It was also the first time I ate foie gras and I loved it. I would eat it again any day, in small quantities of course :)They even came up the stairs with the pot where the Cornwell chicken was brewing and showed it to us before they plated! OK, that was a tiny bit exagerated I found but still!

As for the service, we found it very courteous. When you enter the restaurant they take your jacket and lead you to your table. Ours was upstairs on the second floor near the window which we found was a very good spot. The only thing I can say that we didn,t really appreciate is the fact that so many waiters came to our table 9I,d say about 4 or 5) and we found that a bit weird. Also, the table beside ours was so close that when the waitress came to fill up their water, her ass was pretty much on our table. Apart from that, very good, pretty exceptional service.

For the scores:

Food: 10/10
Service: 9.5/10

Prices:

Tasting menu: 89,50$ per person
Wine paring (5 wines): 64,50$ per person

You can also have the discovery menu for 64,50$ (5 courses) or à la carte.

All in all, an amazing culinary experience!


ps: I must mention that someone I know also went to this restaurant, actually for his birthday, and was not pleased at all! he was siting next to the stairs and apparently every time someone came up or went down, the table shook a bit. Also, he claims they served too much wine and that he felt kind of sick when he left because 'the food contained too much fat'. I say, it's your special day, bring on the fat!!!

Europea on Urbanspoon

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