À LA CARTE ❘ TOP TABLES
cue the arrival of chef Paul Pairet, the Shanghai- based expat gastro Gaul who has a Michelin three-star called Ultraviolet, and two other popular tables – Mr & Mrs Bund and Polux – in China’s largest city. Well-known to the Shanghai-based Rosewood Group that now owns the Hôtel de Crillon, Pairet was brought on board to create a sexy French grill restaurant to replace the rather dull Brasserie d’Aumont, the Crillon’s second table. Further emphasising the shift from traditional to something sensual, interior designer Christian Auer, who just signed the interiors for the renovated Hôtel Carlton in Cannes, was hired to give Pairet’s new restaurant an edgy décor. And despite the exasperatingly incomprehensible name of this place – a nonos is a ‘small bone’ in French children’s slang (I don’t understand it either) and ‘comestibles’ means edible things – they’ve both succeeded… or at least they have for anyone who’s willing to pony up for some rather stiff prices.
This page: Paul Pairet helms the oddly-named Nonos et Comestibles at the Hôtel de Crillon
What Pairet has basically done is create a French version of an American steakhouse that also winks at the many years he’s lived in Asia. Among the cooked starters (as opposed to those like caviar, oysters and charcuterie, including a pâté en croûte from the superb Parisian charcutier Arnaud Nicolas, that are served straight up), the Gruyère soufflé and grilled octopus with “chilli- ioli” (chilli-spiked aïoli) are the best choices. When it comes to the meat of the matter, there’s a selection of luxury cuts of beef from France, America, Austria and Japan, but the carved-to- order tableside prime rib is the best choice, if available. For those who prefer seafood, the lobster fricassée, grilled sea bass, sole meunière and black cod Hong Kong style are all good. It struck as cheese-paring to charge extra for sauces when we were ordering expensive cuts of beef, plus the service was slow and disorganised, but otherwise this is a pleasant restaurant in a usefully central location that’s open on Saturday
“WHAT PAIRET HAS DONE IS CREATE A FRENCH VERSION OF AN AMERICAN STEAKHOUSE THAT ALSO WINKS AT ASIA”
and Sunday, days when it’s not always easy to find a meal in this neighbourhood. Desserts are beautifully made, too, including an impeccable tarte à la crème and a Grand Marnier soufflé. Hôtel de Crillon, 10 Place de la Concorde, 8th arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01 44 71 15 17, average à la carte €80.
www.rosewoodhotels.com/ fr/hotel-de-crillon/dining/nonos-comestibles-paul- pairet
LES PARISIENS, PARIS
One of the pleasures of having an intimate ongoing relationship with a great city like Paris is watching it evolve as time goes by. The city also becomes a mirror of how your own life has changed, too, of course, by offering a mellow reflection of your present mated to your past. This was what I was thinking when I turned off the Boulevard Saint-Germain into the Rue Saint-Guillaume, which I first remember from the frosty January day that I got out of a taxi from the Gare du Nord with a huge, ugly suitcase to walk down the street to the Hôtel Lenox, at the corner of the Rue du Pré aux Clercs and the Rue Jacob where I’d live for a month, having just moved from London to Paris to start a job as a journalist at Fairchild Publications, a group of New York-based publications that were then the most influential arbiters of fashion and lifestyle for Americans who cared about such things. Personally, these subjects were of rather little interest to me, but I’d taken the job as my flying-carpet to Paris. Fairchild paid well and would take care of my papers, and it pampered its employees with unquestioned expense accounts as compensation for its murderous deadlines and catty office politics. One way or another, though, I loved my room with its cameo view of the Eiffel Tower, as well as the neighbourhood, which was the epitome of nonchalant Parisian chic and as such a very good school for a wet-behind-the-ears newcomer to the capital like me.
As much as I loved the Lenox, it lacked a restaurant, which was a very serious problem for someone who had absolutely no experience whatsoever of dining out alone in a public setting. At least in a hotel dining room, a solo diner was framed by the obvious explanation of being a traveller. It will come as no surprise that my first attempts at going out to dine solo in this neighbourhood were humiliating catastrophes. At Brasserie Lipp, I was seated near the malodorous
62 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Jun/Jul 2023
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