Guy Savoy

Guy Savoy Paris review at-a-glance

Awards: Three Michelin Stars

+The lunch menu is a reasonable price to try Guy Savoy’s cooking.

-There were some technical missteps that were surprising.

-Dishes were generally very simple, making the technical mistake more glaring.

Rating: 88/100

Verdict: I will preface that this is a review of the cheaper Guy Savoy lunch menu. If you visit and order the €490 dinner tasting menu I am sure you will have a better experience. However, based on the food I was served, it is hard for me to recommend Guy Savoy. Making concessions to use cheaper ingredients is almost assumed when you order a cheaper Parisian lunch menu. However, I expect those cheaper ingredients to be prepared properly and presented precisely.

That was not always the case at Guy Savoy. Technical slip-ups occurred, highlighted by the relatively straightforward cooking style. If you don’t put much on the plate, you need to make sure it is perfect. Unfourtantly during my meal, it wasn’t.

Price I Paid: €125 for three course lunch prix fix

Date Visited: November 2017

Value: 13/20 (lunch menu)

Guy Savoy Paris Background

Unlike some of his Parisian peers, three stars did not come quickly to Guy Savoy. After training at some of the most prestigious kitchens in France including Troisgros, he opened his eponymous restaurant in Paris in 1980. While he received the first star only a year later and a second in 1985 the third star proved more elusive, coming 20 years after opening in 2000.

Guy Savoy’s cooking style is definitely on the classical side but with more whimsy than something like L’Ambroisie. I found most dishes were quite simple, both in presentation and components. This is a challenging style of cooking as there is not much for the chef to hide behind. When you give me a plate with a few slices of veal, jus, and potato puree it better be a damned good piece of veal. When it worked, like the artichoke soup, this style of cooking really worked. When it didn’t, like the veal, its failures were equally as noticeable.

Guy Savoy has quite an array of menus. The full 13-course tasting menu clocks in at €490 which is rarefied air even for Paris where most three stars charge ~€370. A la carte is not much cheaper. For those without the means or desire to spend so much on a meal (like me), the restaurant offered a special lunch tasting menu at €125 which had to be prebooked online. I visited back in November 2o17 before I really started with the blog in earnest so I apologize for the iPhone 6 photos.

What we ate at Guy Savoy Paris

For the starters, we both wanted to try Guy Savoy’s famous artichoke soup with black truffles and parmesan so the kitchen kindly split our starters into two portions so we could both try the soup and our other selection. The soup was superb, likely one of the best soups I will ever have. Tons of umami flavor from the parmesan, earthiness from the truffles, and a pronounced artichoke flavor enhanced by chicken stock - what more can you want from a soup? Even better than the soup was the truffled brioche it was served with. Fresh out of the oven with bits of truffle, the heat from the bread melted the black truffle butter and created a decadent bite. The servers replaced my half-eaten roll with a fresh one to avoid the injustice of eating some of this wonderful brioche at less than optimal temperature. The inside of the brioche seemed a tad under but it hardly mattered. While the taste of the dish was excellent, the presentation was sloppy with the soup coating the rim. Obviously, it is always difficult to avoid a little soup on the rim of the bowl rim somehow three stars usually find a way to manage.

The other starter appeared to be a pure concession to the lower cost of the lunch menu - Bresse chicken terrine, which also had layers of foie gras and artichoke hearts. The terrine was paired with a truffled vinaigrette and a garnish of salt and pepper (am I supposed to season my own food?). This felt far more like a bistro dish than a three star, definitely on the dated side. The terrine itself was on the dry side and lacked remarkable flavor despite using a top-class bird from Bresse. The vinaigrette helped a little but was not enough to make me enamored with this dish.

While the starts were ok, the meal veered off course for the entrees. I had veal which was overcooked. The kitchen must have known this before sending it out - it was served sliced, the temperature of the meat plain to see. The server almost seemed to realize this - dropping the dish off and asking “is that cooked to your liking?”. I should have sent this back but assumed the kitchen would not send out overcooked meat. I was wrong. In the end, this was essentially meat and potatoes and the meat was not done well. A very disappointing showing from the kitchen. Would they serve such a poor dish if you order the more expensive tasting menu?

My wife had red mullet with liver sauce, spinach, and confit tomato. This was a tricky dish to score. The fish was cooked accurately and the sauce was deeply flavored from using the mullet’s liver. All this flavor was expertly balanced out by the vegetables, the spinach and confit tomato offering up a nice bite. The only issue was neither of us actually cared for the taste of the fish. Red mullet has a very distinct taste which the kitchen embraced instead of running away from. We have had plenty of mullet where we enjoyed the taste but I can’t say that was the case here. Lovers of red mullet will find this dish the peak of culinary perfection. Those with a more tepid view of the fish will find it much less enjoyable.

Desserts were the strong suit of the meal, perhaps because pastry offerings are typically the same whether you do a proper tasting menu or a lunch prix fixe. I had poached quince with granny smith apple ice cream and sable biscuit. As you can tell from the picture, this had a stunning presentation with a sugar-blown apple filled with apple ice cream and surrounded with some thinly sliced raw apple and poached quince. The result of all this technique was a very balanced dish with lots of pleasing contrasting textures. My wife had a dessert showing off variations of grapefruit which was also very good, the natural bitterness of the grapefruit expertly balanced out by the sweetness in the desert.