I started putting together this trip idea back in February as Joanna’s work prefers to get a 6 month notice for PTO as she works with patients. In July, I had the realization that since we were spending time in France, we should make reservation at a Michelin star restaurant. For those who have heard of this rating but are unaware of the origins, the first Michelin Guide was compiled in 1900 by Michelin Tire founders and French industrialist brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin. The aim of the guide was to create a demand for automobiles, and therefore, Michelin tires. So yah, the tire company is one of the leading expert fine dining reviewers in the world.

I’ve only been to one Michelin “recommended” restaurant, Chercher, an Ethiopian restaurant in Washington DC, but I had never been to a 1, 2, or 3 starred one yet. I decided on making lunch reservations for Maison Rostang a few hours before we planned to leave Paris to close out this chapter of the trip. I didn’t want to go TOO ALL OUT and settled for this one because they had a 2-star rating as a classic French cuisine restaurant instead of the full 3.

Considering we needed to dress somewhat fancy for the occasion and we had to check out prior to our reservation, I found a locker store near the Eurostar train station. The online reservation was €15 for the day and they email you a pin code to enter the building and one for your designated locker, which made moving around incredibly convenient fitting all our stuff in one single locker.

We arrived at the restaurant on time and it felt they treated us like royalty. The waitstaff were in pressed suits and extremely polite and attentive with their service where it almost felt like watching a performance happen every time they served you a new course or took away an empty plate. When we first sat down, they immediately offered either sparkling or regular water and pulled out the fanciest glass bottles of water I’ve ever seen (I later regretted this seeing on the bill they charged us each $10 for water. FOR WATER!)

I almost felt overwhelmed with the first bite of every new course. The flavors and textures were amazing and it was just an incredible 2 hour experience.

Here’s a short description of each of the courses we had. I won’t go into too much detail because I’m just going to make myself and you very hungry

  • First course: Tuna club sandwich, Fresh radish in gelatin, Corn…something – fun textures, the sandwich was perfectly toasted on all sides and was creamy in the center.
  • Second course: Crab with terragon ice cream – You could eat this in one bite and it had so much going on. Cold savory ice cream on top with a crisp vegetable wrap (almost like cucumber), and tons of shredded crab meat in the middle.
  • Fancy bread and butter served out of a log – not sure why a log but the crust of the bread was deliciously crusty and the butter tasted fresh with sea salt chunks in it.
  • Appetizer: grilled and glazed blue lobster with French green beans topped with lobster ice cream- the top thing we ate in the entire meal. The lobster had a natural sweetness and was served on top of this herby green sauce. The green beans had a nice consistency and tasted very fresh. It’s so strange to have a cold savory ice cream but it totally works!
  • Main course 1: guinea fowl marinated in gin with zucchini flowers stuffed with chanterelle mushrooms – loved the chanterelle mushrooms and wish they served more with the dish. The zucchini flowers were like delicate pouches filled with tender vegetables. The fowl was in between a chicken and a duck breast, was hoping the skin would be crispy though.
  • Main course 2: pike fish souflée with lobster cream sauce – this dish was served with puffed rice that you mixed in with the sauce. Everything had great flavor and texture but the souflée got to be a bit too rich about 75% of the way through.
  • Dessert 1: crispy chocolate cigar made with tobacco leaves, Hennessey cognac mousse, and marsala ice cream – 2nd best thing of the meal, I almost didn’t order it but they served the dessert out of a cigar box which made it so much more dramatic. I can’t believe they incorporated real tobacco leaves in with the crunchy biscuit outside. You can taste the smokiness but it’s not overpowering. Really liked the ice cream paring with this. Very fun dish to eat.
  • Dessert 2: white and yellow peaches poached in black currant bud syrup, fresh almond pesto, peach sorbet with black cardamom – The craftsmanship of this dessert was so impressive, each peach layer was cut so thinly it was almost transparent. Really liked the lightness of it to cut through the heavy meal, however the almond pesto was a bit too grassy for me.
  • Dessert 3: mango passion fruit paté and dark chocolate with sea salt served over cacao nibs – just friggin delicious, I have nothing else to say
  • Dessert 4: blueberries on filo dough – crunchy exterior, tart fresh blueberries that popped in your mouth

I hope you enjoyed my photo descriptions, I’m running out of steam and taking things less and less seriously as it’s 4am and I want to get this blog done and I haven’t told you about the crappy train situation yet lol

Overall the meal was amazing and I basically felt like Ego in Ratatouille today.


...until they brought the $200 bill

You know how yesterday I was saying how much I was struggling with French? I’m pretty sure it’s started clicking today when I saw this sign and I was able to figure out what it said right away.

Also, other weird French food thing: Chinese dumplings are called “raviolis” here

We finished lunch a little after 2pm, our train out to London was 4:15, so we planned to be at the station by 3:30 to make it through customs and onto the train. I did not anticipate that the entire terminal would be locked down because there was an unattended bag found in the middle of the station. Police came with k9 units and blocked off an entire area preventing people from boarding their trains. This entire thing took about 45 minutes and people were not allowed to start moving again until a few minutes before our train departed. I can’t believe they didn’t delay the departure but the ticket agents were able to put us on another train leaving 2 hours later.

Due to the shut down in activity, there was a back log in immigration allowing people to leave France and enter the UK before boarding the Eurostar. This is all because of Brexit and it seemed like everyone hated this new layer of bureaucracy. I heard one Brit say “I love a good queue but this is chaos.” I also let a woman go ahead of me in line and she said “Thank you! Well you certainly aren’t from Paris.”

We were in line for just over 2 hours and thankfully they were able to delay this train for an additional 45 minutes to allow for the bottle neck in the line to loosen up so people to get on. I completely fell asleep a few moments after the train started moving. I didn’t realize Joanna had taken this pic until I started pulling photos together for this post haha.

We got to the London train station about 2.5 hours later and now that I think about it, I think I left my spare phone battery in the seat pocket in front of me 😓

I wanted to find platform 9 and 3/4 but we were way too tired at this point AND to top the day off I still had Japanese class at 10:30pm London time/4:30pm central time. We grabbed some cheap convenience store sandwiches to balance out the the luxurious meal we had today and to cut out searching for food later.