Restaurant Pic
Restaurant Pic Review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin Stars
+Beautifully presented food with really smart uses of spices, the crust on the squab being particularly nice.
+Flavors have lots of finesse, plenty powerful but in a subtle, smart way.
Review Rating: 94/100
Verdict: On my visit to Burgundy and the surrounding region I visited three of the area’s most storied restaurants - Pic, Troisgros and Lameloise. Each of these restaurants celebrated one of the joys of France, world class restaurants with long histories located in the middle of nowhere. Of the trio, Restaurant Pic was the clear best of the bunch.
Anne-Sophie Pic and her team showed great skill and eye for flavor, not just in their impeccable sourcing of France’s finest ingredients but also by bringing in flavors and spices from as far abroad as Japan and India. The culmination of all of these efforts are dishes that are both pleasing to the palate but also exciting and unexpected. I can’t comment on if Chef Pic’s original restaurant in Valence is better than her more conveniently located outposts in London and Paris but what I can say with confidence is that I am glad I made the pilgrimage to Valence. Anne-Sophie Pic is a chef that knows how to be bold in the kitchen but without losing harmony in her dishes.
Price I paid: €180 for 4-course lunch
Value: 14/20
Pic Background
Pic’s long and storied history, most of which is closely linked with the Michelin guide, is what drew me to the restaurant. The restaurant was opened by the Pic family all the way back in 1889 and earned three stars in 1934 very shortly after the Michelin guide. Over the years and multiple generations of Pic’s in the kitchen the number of stars has fluctuated but never completely disappeared - the third star was lost in 1946, regained in 1973 and held for 22 years before it was lost in 1995. Current chef Anne-Sophie Pic took over the kitchen in 1998 and returned it to its rightful place as a three-star restaurant in 2007, a position it has retained ever since. This long history is front and center when you walk into Restaurant Pic in the form of a long display cabinet with the yearly France Michelin guides dating back to the early 1900s.
While Anne-Sophie Pic achieved her initial success at her family restaurant in Valence she has since expanded her reach quite considerably with two-star restaurants in London and Lausanne as well as a one-star in Paris. On the more casual side, she also runs a bistro in Valence named Andre and even runs a cooking school. Despite all these successes, Restaurant Pic remains the crown jewel of the empire and the only one of the chef’s restaurants to have earned three-stars.
The restaurant itself is housed in the five-star hotel of the same name which is also run by the Pic family. While the hotel looked quite nice inside and I am sure exudes excellent service, I am not sure I would be looking to spend €250 a night to stay in downtown Valence.
The restaurant offers menus of varying lengths from a short 4-course menu for €180 to its longest tasting menu which comes in at €340. For weekday lunch they also offer a short three-course menu for only €120. I went with the 4-course menu and, while my wallet appreciated this decision, I wish I went for the longer menu given the skill displayed by the kitchen during my meal.
What I Ate at Restaurant Pic
The meal kicked off with a signature amuse-bouche of Chef Pic that features many variations of thinly sliced carrots, carrot jelly, and orange and rose-flavored yogurt. Kicking a meal off with carrots is a bold choice but one, that for me, was only executed somewhat successfully - it provided a good introduction to Chef Pic’s cooking but the flavor was just ok with the carrots not being as dazzling as expected.
It being spring the menu dutifully included an asparagus dish where the most seasonal of spring ingredients had been marinated with masterwort and then barbecued while wrapped in citrus leaves and served with an ice cream that had been flavored with cedrat panache citrus. Perhaps my taste buds were dulled by the many dishes of asparagus I had this spring but I found the dish rather boring. While an immense amount of effort went into the dish I think it was lost on me - the asparagus was certainly firm and juicy but did not jump off of the plate in the way it needs to when you present it front and center as if it was a piece of meat.
The second course was one of Anne-Sophie Pic’s signature dishes, Berlingots filled with lightly smoked Banon cheese and served with a watercress consomee. Chef Pic designed this dish from top to bottom, shaping the pasta after the candy of the same name so each bite of pasta had the correct ratio between pasta and filling. This well shaped pasta is then filled with a mixture of Banon and mascarpone cheese which has been heated to a high temperature to give it a nice smooth consistency. Rather than pair these heavenly morsels with a rich sauce, Chef Pic’s delicate sense of flavor came through in the form of a light watercress consomee which also featured bergamot and ginger that highlighted the natural spiciness of the watercress. Outside of this consomee, much of the dish’s flavor came from the Banon cheese in the filling. Banon cheese is a soft goat’s cheese from the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region of France which is aged in chestnut leaves that impart a nice woody flavor on the cheese that came through clearly in the dish. This was a more subtle signature dish than say the Spaghetti, Truffle and Cream at Le Cinq but not necessarily less successful.
The main course was Squab from Drome that had been marinated in seaweed and crusted with cacao nibs and pepper and served with a red wine jus. This dish, which combined French cuisine and Japanese ingredients, would have been more at home at a restaurant like Victor’s Fine Dining than Anne-Sophie Pic but I am glad it made its way into my meal. The squab was marinated in tsukudani (a Japanese confit made up of kombu seaweed, wakame, sake, mirin and dashi) and then crusted cacao nibs and Tellicherry pepper from India. The crust was great but the real star was the marinade which gave the squab some nice hints of umami. All of this was brought together with a rich red wine squab jus which had tremendous body and flavor.
In lieu of a cheese board, the kitchen produced a very successful bridge from savory to sweet in the form of Brie de Meaux emulsion flavored with vanilla (left) which was part dessert and part cheese but all delicious. There was also a little sweet bite with a sable esque biscuit and pineapple foam which was refreshing and well balanced, the perfect follow-up to the rich brie.
Since it was spring I went with the dessert featuring Gariguette strawberry and pine tree buds and I was glad I did. A masterpiece in plating and taste. Careful use of yuzu complemented and enhanced the perfectly ripened strawberries with the pine bud offering another dimension of flavor. Particularly impressive on the presentation front was the faux strawberry on the left. Made of sorbet and complete with small dimples and edible stem, it was even more elegant than the fine dining standard of a quenelle. Gariguette strawberries have a limited season each year and Chef Pic put them to good use.