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Jotaro's Food Review

A Parisian French Dinner @ Le Relais Gascon

Montemartre, Paris, France - September 2016
On a tour of Europe, while in Paris, we were looking for some good French food. The previous day on a walking tour of the Montemartre district, the guide had recommended Le Relais Gascon. Although we were staying a distance away, we decided to go back to Montemartre and try out the place. And we definitely did not have any regrets as the food was fabulous.

Le Relais Gascon has several outlets, and this one situated at Montemartre was just the right place for hungry tourists who had taken on the steep roads and lanes of the district, and it's fairly near the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, (Basilica of the Sacret Heart).

The restaurant has quite an extensive menu, but with our limited exposure to French cuisine we decided to play it safe and ordered a set menu that include an entree, a main, desserts and the house wine. The good thing is, although this was a set, we could pick our dishes from the menu à la carte.
For our entrée, we selected Escargots. This was served piping hot on a wooden platter and came together with thick slices of baguette.

Unlike the ones which we were used to, the ones here were served with parsley butter sauce instead of garlic butter.

The snails here are of fairly large size. Gouging them out from the shells, the meat was well covered with the sauce. The light sauce went very well, lending a tinge of their flavour to the succulent meat without masking its original taste too much.

Our main - Confit De Canard, i.e. Duck Confit.
It came together with some broiled long beans and a generous serving of soft potato chips. The potato chips were a good touch; slight thicker than the standard crispy potato chips it was soft on the inside. Being fried in the duck oil, it had that special taste.

The portion was an upper thigh; it had been cooked and preserved with its own fat. The cooking was done well with the skin just adequately burn to a light brown. It looked so delicious that we could not wait to dig in.

A slice cut in showed the preserved duck meat to be tender, slightly juicy with most of the oil used for cooking well drained away. It had a good duck base taste, not overly strong on the aroma.

They have selected their ducks well; the skin was thick and yet did not have too much underlying fat. Cooking had been done well too, the skin was adequately soft to bite into without being mushy.
Overall, it was a good balance of meat and skin with good flavours from both.

For desserts - Crème Brûlée.
It was served in a round porcelain plate with a sprig of mint leaf and half a cut of strawberry on top. Here, I had removed the leaves and strawberry to see how nicely the flaming had been carried out to the caramelised top.

The caramel top was a wafer thin layer, imparting just enough sweetness to the soft creamy custard layer below.

A very good meal just for €32-00 inclusive of taxes.