Update 24/02/2009 As Le Figaro announced today, Marc Veyrat is giving back his 3 Michelin stars.
My dinner in La Maison de Marc Veyrat last week was like a breath of fresh air – so different from what most of other 3 Michelin stars in France can offer. You just can’t forget such experience – not only because it’s not cheap (dinner – 368 € per person, breakfast- 79 € per person), but also because everything was delicious, creative and, most of all, entertaining.
Coming from Savoie, Marc Veyrat interprets savoyard specialities such as deconstructed tartiflette served in a “tetra pak” box.
Or “disappearing noodles (without flour or eggs) with Cardamine sorbet” that are “melted ” in front of you. (I guess it was cheese from Savoy )
But what Marc Veyrat is really famous for is using wild herbs and plants in his cooking. He is probably the pioneer in this sphere, and to be honest, I’ve never seen such a deep knowledge of wild flora in any other restaurant in the world. Some mixtures turn out to be incredibly good tasting like for example “deconstructed wild asparagus, passion fruit, rosemary foam” that was a very unexpected symbiosis of all these ingredients.
Or “soupe d’ici dite chinoise”, if I remember correctly, included deconstructed linen and stock. It reminded miso soup- one of my favourite dishes that night.
Molecular cooking techniques were used all along with the dinner. The culmination was when a container of liquid nitrogen was brought and the chef himself sprayed the mixture (i think it was passion fruit and citronelle juice) that only in a matter of seconds materialised into kind of meringue.
The most unbelievable part of Marc Veyrat cooking though is that he barely uses any fat. The very first dish, “virtual yoghurt with acha juice ” (Please keep in mind that the descriptions of the dishes in this post don’t appear in the same order as they did in the restaurant. You can see the whole menu here ) had only 5 calories in each pot of yoghurt and in fact tasted like foie gras.
The less “deconstructed” and more conventional dishes included ” egg with a foam of maize, injection of caraway seeds”.A tribute to Mexican tastes. Excellent.
Noble lake fish (don’t remember the exact name as we asked to change féra du lac by some other lake fish) served in the piece of wood.
“Poached lobster with wild thyme sweet”. The wild thyme sweet gave an incredible explosion of tastes.
“Beef with watercress syrup “My least favourite dish from the menu-maybe also because it was the last…
After skipping the cheese we went for the desserts that are made by Marc Veyrat’s daughter Carine. They were all quite classical but outstanding at the same time.
And the main desserts.
I still live with my memories of the dinner and, indeed, you don’t go to La Maison de Marc Veyrat only to eat- it is more of an experience. The cooking of Marc Veyrat can be called intelligent and extremely well thought of- a beautiful representation of the Savoy region tastes, nature and culture.
