Why do we go to restaurants?
The main reason has to be to enjoy the food, to fulfil our basic need for nourishment three times a day. Then there is the urge to test the restaurateur: how well can they satisfy our desire for food and liquid refreshment, and in how friendly a manner can their staff look after us in the time we choose to spend there? Finally, there is the added attraction, or not, of the restaurant’s location and the views that it can provide.
These are the criteria by which most restaurant reviews are written and how restaurants are judged. But any review of La Tour d’Argent in Paris, which has stood proudly on the sixth floor of a corner building on the south side of the River Seine since the early 20th century, has to turn these normal criteria on their head. And also to consider the position of its owner, André Terrail.
Terrail is the third generation of his family to own and manage this restaurant and by the time he inherited it in 2006, the standards had long been set. When he joined us in the wine cellars on level minus one during our tour with the man responsible for their well-being, Victor Gonzalez, he looked immaculate despite apparently having arrived straight from the airport. Tall, immaculately suited with a colourful handkerchief in his breast pocket, he bowed before raising JR’s hand to his lips. He seems to have taken to heart his father Claude’s statement that ‘nothing is more serious than pleasure’. Terrail must be reminded every day of the weight of his heritage, as are all restaurant customers when they are ushered through the couloir des autographes (shown below) on their way to the lift.
The primary challenge that has faced André Terrail in the nearly 20 years he has been in charge has been that, as far as the normal criteria for judging a restaurant are concerned, they apply to La Tour d’Argent but in reverse.
The views from the restaurant are breathtaking, totally absorbing, and capable of reducing the loquacious to silence. From Sacré-Coeur in the distance to Notre-Dame close by, to watching the tourist-laden bateaux mouches and the working barges below, to surveying practically the whole of Paris, it offers the diner something unique. A hamburger and Coke here would be memorable.
There are items available on the ground floor but not on the sixth. André Terrail’s initial moves were to spread the name of his restaurant where his customers could see it, so today there are, at street level, La Rôtisserie d’Argent, Le Boulanger de la Tour and L’Épicerie Tour d’Argent as well as a bar with light food at ground level on the way into the restaurant. In total there are 60 cooks working under head chef Yannick Franques.
When I asked Terrail whether there was a particular challenge in the establishment’s recent renovation or one area that provided exceptionally difficult challenges, he replied, ‘No, it was all a challenge. Blending twenty-first-century equipment and technology into an eighteenth-century building in the historical centre of Paris is not easy.’
Franques joined Terrail at La Tour d’Argent four years ago from The Ritz hotel, having garnered the extremely difficult MOF (Meilleur Ouvrier de France) letters after his name. As Terrail prepared for his planned extension of the restaurant’s name, brand and history, he briefed Franques to come up with plans to open up the building, modernise the menu, and redesign the dining room and kitchen (below at the back), which is now open-plan and state of the art.
The immediate result of all this planning was a 15-month closure which cost €12 million in a country where worker’s rights are as heavily protected during a temporary closure of any business as when it is operational. But the new additions reflect a restaurant for the 21st century. On the floor below the restaurant is a new apartment which, in return for around €3,000, is yours for the night, a price that includes lunch. And on the seventh floor there is now La Toit de la Tour which from spring to autumn serves as a cocktail bar with what must be stunning views, even better than those from the restaurant. Terrail and his architect, Franklin Azzi, are to be congratulated for their bravery.
The ultra-modern restaurant ceiling is now, appropriately enough, silver. There is a large fresco to the right of the entrance right by a rack that contains an enormous array of different wine glasses and in front of a wall on which are stored myriad decanters. The room itself has been cleared of anything unnecessary — there are far fewer silver duck presses on show than there used to be — to the delight of the commis waiters whose job had previously included keeping them highly polished. The kitchen is now in full view, with the chefs classically dressed in white and each wearing a large white toque.
The menus arrive, encased in the same elegant blue cardboard as the famous wine list, but happily thinner and much, much lighter. They are considerably cleaner and easier to interpret than the menus of old and even include the memorable name of the restaurant’s pastry chef, Bogota-born Mourad Timsih. JR chose courses two and three from the four-course lunch menu (€165) whereas I decided to go à la carte and put their fish section to work.
We both of course realised that the last thing that would happen was that we would go short of food – and, sure enough, we were served with two unannounced courses, after some top-notch amuse-bouches. The first was a bowl of thick, dark-green vegetable soup with a confit egg yolk in its centre. This was completely undone by the next course (to which I suspect not every diner is treated). The plate of foie gras shown above was placed before each of us, the rich, creamy texture of the foie gras outdone by a small bowl of the most intense Sauternes wine jelly that we scraped clean with our bread. The rosemary accompaniment, we were told, was grown on their rooftop terrace.
I’d ordered their classic ‘pike quenelles André Terrail’ as my first course and they were a surprise. Firstly, they are served cold and wrapped in a thin layer of foie gras (no complaints!). But what they presaged was Franques’ predilection for accentuating texture, as the softness of the fish mousse, the foie gras and the mushroom duxelles contrasted with the crunch of the extremely finely diced breadcrumbs underneath. The same happy contrast was evident in my main course, a fillet of turbot on top of a combination of wild chicory, eel and samphire (shown below).
JR ordered the duck after a first course of amberjack with avocado mousse and a Japanese-informed jus. The duck’s taste and distinctive flavour also came as a shock. When she let me have a slice, my immediate reaction was that this is the ‘duckiest’ duck I have ever encountered.
Its meat was intense and dense-textured, full of rich flavours. What goes into their feed at the Burgaud family farm in Challans I have no idea but the end-result is memorable. And they sell. In January 2018, on our last visit, our duck was number 1,160,300. On this visit it was 1,200,730: nearly 40,000 ducks in seven years.
A call to tour the wine cellar precluded dessert other than a plate of excellent petits fours but I would happily return for Timsih’s mousse of sunflower honey with a lemon zest sorbet. With the €250 bottle of wine about which JR will write soon, one coffee and one tea, my bill was €604. After settling up we set off for where the sun never shines and the views are entirely of wine bottles.
We thoroughly enjoyed everything we ate and drank, and the views are exceptional. But I had two misgivings. The first was the absence of women among the waiting staff. When I asked Terrail about this his reply was honest: ‘Although this is a little exceptional compared to the past few months, we are currently struggling to recruit more female staff as they appear to be in high demand at the moment.’
The second concerned the waiter’s outfits and Terrail’s obvious decision to continue the practice of having them dressed in formal attire, including black tails. This is obviously a symbol of continuity for Terrail but I would have thought that an approach to a top French designer would have provided an outfit that was more redolent of the 21st century. It would have also perhaps fit even more comfortably with all the many excellent changes Terrail has implemented so far.
La Tour d’Argent 15–17 Quai de la Tournelle, 75005 Paris, France; tel: +33 (0)1 4354 2331
All photos except for the food images by Matthieu Salvaing.
Every Sunday, Nick writes about restaurants. To stay abreast of his reviews, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
