Restaurant Verjus, Paris, France

We picked Verjus pretty much at random via a listing in Le Fooding, and boy did we ever win.

At dinner, Verjus only offers a tasting menu, which in June made brilliant use of early-summer French veg, cooking in a modern American style – it’s a killer combination.  I can’t remember a meal that was so infused with the essence of fresh green veg. Meat & fish were there, and were very good, but it seemed always somehow ensconced in a halo of fresh and green.

The meal was a really interesting counterpoint to dinner at Le Chateaubriand a couple of nights earlier.  Both were brilliant, but in very different ways. Whereas Le Chateaubriand takes you to places you didn’t know existed, Verjus makes you happy to be alive and eating.

We heard a few suspiciously American accents floating around and upon asking learned that the proprietors were in fact Americans.  The story, we learned, is that they had started out doing at-home cooking, but when the waiting list for their dinners started reaching into the hundreds, they decided it was time to open shop in a proper restaurant.  Presumably, Paris is pleased that they did.

The photo, sadly, does absolutely no justice to the beauty of the food.  Go check out their website for some proper images.