Restaurant Review - l'Ambroisie

Set in a beautiful square which has cloisters, or at least something looking like cloisters, the dining room is similarly elegant. There is a main room, and two smaller rooms, all very pretty and peaceful. The restaurant has perhaps only 36 covers. For amuse-bouche we had a creamy gazpacho soup, at the bottom of which were finely chopped vegetables with a blob of courgette cream as a garnish floating on top of the soup, which had great depth of flavour (10/10). 

Bread was either white (9/10) or (even better) country bread with excellent sourdough taste, a lovely texture and a fine crust (10/10). For starter I had four langoustines on a bed of spinach served in between sesame tuiles with a light curry sauce (very light on the curry). These were superb, strikingly fresh and perfectly cooked (10/10). Crayfish with char-grilled asparagus was served on a bed of cream mousse with mixed green leaves, and a sauce that was supposedly of walnut oil but tasted more like a meat reduction with olive oil. All very good, though not to the standard of the langoustines (8/10).

For main course, Stella had ultra-fresh sea bass, very nicely timed, served with plain asparagus, a tapenade of green and black olives and a cream sauce. Though the sea bass was perfect, Stella felt the dish overall was a 9/10 as she was unconvinced about how the other elements of the dish went together. I had (with food expert Michael Jonsson) a stunning poulet Bresse, a whole chicken cooked and then carved at the table. Both leg and breast of chicken had great flavour, served with a remarkable gnocci (10/10).

We skipped cheese, as according to Michael, a regular here, Pacaud unaccountably uses a mediocre cheese supplier. Pre-dessert was a fine dish of poached cherries, cherry soup and cherry mousse, with a pistachio and almond Florentine (10/10). A very light and fluffy chocolate cake was interesting, yet did not have great depth of flavour – presumably aiming for the originality of it being so light (8/10); this was served with a fine vanilla ice cream. A dacquiose of praline was basically an almond meringue served with wild strawberries (8/10). Coffee was excellent (9/10), served with a nice tray of petit fours: a lovely tart of wild strawberries, an excellent almond tuile, a choux bun with raspberry and vanilla cream, a sponge and chocolate discs with roasted almonds (9/10).

Overall a very fine meal, with some dishes that would be hard to improve upon.