Making a mark – Alain Ducasse and Romain Meder at the Plaza-Athénée
A generation ago, there were no three-star Michelin restaurants located in hotels. No one ever explained why not – it just seemed to be an unwritten rule. That changed after Alain Ducasse took control of the kitchens at the Louis Quinze in Monaco in the early Nineties and now there must be something like 20 or so around the globe. It’s an expensive business acquiring them – hoteliers have been known to spend hundreds of thousands on haute cuisine restaurants with oversized cookery books, often in the vain hope of acquiring them. These days, especially when it comes to Palace Hotels, such as the Plaza-Athénée, the Georges Cinq or Le Bristol, they are an essential marketing tool. Strangely enough, it is not to satisfy the taste of the guests. One hotelier confessed to me “If you created a restaurant solely to appeal to your guests, you would end up only serving club sandwiches and hamburgers.” No, they are a marketing tool to entice guests from other Palace Hotels to visit you and, he added, “That is the best way to get new clients into our bedrooms”. It seems to be working at the Plaza-Athénée as fully a quarter of the diners at Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée, are from other Parisian Palace Hotels.
The Plaza-Athénée is the chicest of the grand Parisian Hotels. It is located at Ground Zero in the fashion world, with LVMH opposite and Christian Dior and Hermes just down the road. Most of the more well-known models stay there during Fashion Week and the tall lady having breakfast who looks like Naomi Campbell actually is. Given this well-established niche that the Plaza-Athénée occupies, it was considered quite daring when Alain Ducasse decided to reopen the signature restaurant in 2014 after a lengthy renovation, by excluding all meat from the menu and instead, opting for a cuisine of “naturalness”.
The customer reaction in the first year was not very approving, after all, if you have become accustomed to their version of ris de veau or pate en croute, it is quite a shock to be told you must instead be satisfied by the trinity of fish, vegetables and cereals. I admit that I was also one of the sceptics to begin with. Given that at that time, Ducasse already had three stars at the nearby Le Meurice, another Palace Hotel, I suppose I put his new approach more down to the need to take a different approach for the sake of novelty rather than ideology. However, Ducasse is nothing if not up to speed with every international trend in haute cuisine. I don’t know how often I have tried the latest fashionable place in Shanghai, Cadiz or Copenhagen, only to be told “Oh yes, we had Monsieur Ducasse here only last week”. Apparently, he has the best intelligence network in the culinary world as he always keeps in touch with the chefs who train in his kitchens and work around the globe.
The actual restaurant looks like a docking station for a space ship, with three white pods in the middle along with a white overhanging shell on the side. It feels slightly clinical and futuristic but I suppose that is the intention. Anyway, his philosophy of naturalness couldn’t be more on message now. Also, as much as he professes to want to work with humble ingredients to show their true colours, it is hard to beat the signature dish of caviar surrounded by a wheel of sturgeon bone marrow.
For those who find this too rich, he also has a version with chickpeas. The following dish was a string of four scallops along with a slice of cauliflower gratineed tart – it works because of the supreme quality of the simple ingredients.
Another unadorned dish was a slice of perfectly cooked turbot with mussels and “pomme de mer”, or potatoes actually grown on the seashore.
There was also a superb pasta smothered in black truffles and a flambeed lobster – hardly humble ingredients but cooked in a way that allowed them to express their flavours and textures to perfection. There is definitely a backlash against the multi-course tasting menu as only five dishes were served on the night I was there, which is a welcome sign of sanity returning to haute cuisine. This trend is obviously catching on – Richard Ekkebus of Amber, the most acclaimed European chef in Hong Kong, recently announced that he was removing all meat from his menu along with gluten and dairy.
Romain Meder, Ducasse’s head chef at the Plaza Athénée, doesn’t want to go to those extremes, although all of the bread is made from rice flour, hence gluten free. There are bound to be more chefs experimenting in this way and to a certain extent, if a large proportion of your clients are from the fashion world, perhaps they are more at ease with this philosophy than most. The most critical thing to always bear in mind, as one famous Scandinavian chef said to me, that regardless of how he cooks his food, it must be yummy. The Plaza-Athénée certainly wins on that score.
Alain Ducasse at the Plaza-Athénée www.alainducasse-plazaathenee.com/en
Lunch menu with wine £180 per person
Dinner £350 plus wine