#blahvsfood: 22 years after going vegetarian, Arperge continues to be one of the world’s most path breaking restaurants…

Arperge is one of the world’s most legendary restaurants, a restaurant that has retained 3 Michelin stars for close to three decades now, and one that paved the way for the vegetarian fine dining revolution we see from Noma or Eleven Madison. It was already a globally renowned restaurant in 2001 when Chef Alain Passard turned his back on cooking with meat to focus on vegetables, celebrating French produce and the food grown on his three farms. This led to understandable consternation, messing with the canonical French gourmand meal of a fish and meat course, nose to tail cooking, and expensive, luxury products. The idea of a 3 Michelin star restaurant replacing foie gras and grass fed cows with carrots and turnips and celeriac, but charging the same prices and aspiring towards  the same renown seemed sacrilegious. But chef Alain Passard pulled it off. Not only did Arperge retain its three stars, it has held them every single year since that epochal year of change over two decades ago.

Vegetables or the day 

Over the years, Chef Passard has dialled back on the vegetable fundamentalism and you do have a few seafood and meat options. But the focus is clearly vegetarian cooking and a tasting menu never has more than two courses that use meat or fish. 

Warm and cold egg 

The other unique approach at Arperge is that the menu changes every single day and for every single diner. Every Michelin star restaurant goes into a season knowing what it will cook every day. There maybe changes for a dish or two, but the majority of the dishes stay the same or are selections from a pre-planned and pre-trialled group of dishes. At Arperge, the food that is cooked depends completely on the produce in the market on the day. Yes there are a few dishes that need to be there almost every day like the cold and warm egg, a marvel of temperature and texture and one of the world’s great egg dishes. Or the vegetarian sushi where olive tapenade is used to create an intense umami hit with the rice. But almost every dish is decided on the day depending on what Passard decides. He is almost unique among the world’s great chefs for cooking in the kitchen almost every day but you really cannot deliver this level of improvisation and creativity without a virtuoso in the kitchen every day. Even if two tables both order the tasting menu (called the chef’s surprise menu) there will be a difference between the courses at each table, and even the servers don’t always know what food will be served at each table until it comes to the pass.

Vegetable sushi

This kind of high wire cooking act is impossible to pull off for any restaurant of any size anywhere in the world. To do this and maintain 3 Michelin Stars every year for over two decades is a level of genius that very few chefs in the restaurant world have ever reached. We use words like master and legend easily nowadays, but in the case of Chef Alain Passard, these words seem to be inadequate to do justice to his courage, audacity, inventiveness and ability. 

Shallot 

We ate:

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  Cold and warm egg 
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  3 kinds of Ravioli in tomato consommé 
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  Vegetable palmentiar 
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• Sushi with olive tapenade and perfumed carrot
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  Zucchini soup with chantilly 
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  Taboulleh (grapes and other things)
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  Sweet onions with lettuce 
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  Minestrone soup with smoked eel 
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  Vegan Beetroot tartare with fake egg 
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  Shallot tarte tartine with anchovy mousse 
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  Strawberries and raspberries with ginger honey and a raspberry sorbet 
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  Profiterole with Fig leaf ice cream and sage dust 
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  Petit fours