In Paris’ era of “fine,” I have indeed found most fine dining these days to be meh at best. But Cypsèle gives me hope. Each and every bite of my recent lunch there was surprising but never challenging. Richness was present but never over-powering. The dining room was cozy and homey, but the service was as impeccable as any I’ve had in a Michelin-starred restaurant. If I had to describe the meal on the whole with just one word, it would be enjoyable – emphasis on the joy. And this was quite clearly the result of a phenomenal amount of work going on both in the front and back of house.
This restaurant is located on the Ile Saint-Louis, right in the heart of the city. This, co-founder and sommelier Quentin Loisel explained to me, stemmed in part from the fact that co-owner Chef Marcin Król craved the innovation of the trendy Right Bank, while he himself was searching for some of the poise and tradition of the Left. They met, quite literally, in the middle – and in so doing, they have created my new favorite restaurant in Paris.
The menu here changes every day, twice a day, which seems like an inordinate challenge (and one that, if I may be so bold, doesn’t quite seem necessary. But I’m not the chef, and there were no stumbles, so what do I know?)
On our visit, we began with a series of mises en bouche. The first was a lightly poached oyster of an exquisite brininess with just the right note of sweetness. A beurre blanc sauce lent richness, but it wasn’t nearly as thick as most, and it therefore did not overpower the delicacy of the seafood. A bed of cucumber noodles lent some vegetal lightness. All in all, it encapsulated Chef Król’s product-driven approach with phenomenal aplomb.
Next came a trio: a tempura-fried bit of veal was as silky as custard within the thin layer of batter, and the pairing with a housemade cod roe bottarga lent a lovely umami depth.
A small bit of tender eggplant pleasantly highlighted the nightshade’s bitter notes in a way that made me see the vegetable, something I eat often at home, in a completely new light. It was draped with a silky sheet of veal carpaccio and settled in a bed of lactic buttermilk.
Finally, a light and foamy bowl of corn soup with parsley oil tasted like corn distilled. I can describe it no better than in saying it was surely the corniest corn I’ve ever had in my life. And in France, that’s saying something.
The bread service united a delightful housemade sourdough laced with red Camargue rice…
….with a quenelle of perfectly softened, exquisitely lactic Breton butter embedded with salt crystals.
At this point, I was already charmed – and then our first course arrived. Red mullet was stuffed with foie gras and sat in a puddle of torched yeast sauce with a small pile of spinach alongside. The mullet was silky and just barely cooked, and the richness of the foie and the sauce paired perfectly with the shellfish sweetness of the fish itself. This dish has apparently appeared on the menu only about five times since they’ve opened, and yet guests regularly ask about it. I guess we got lucky!
The next course was listed as the first course on the menu, but one bite made it easy to see why a change was made. This dish of green beans and raw squid was fresh and vegetal, the perfect palate cleanser between the rich bites before and after. It was seasoned with a generous dusting of crushed pistachios and pistachio oil, a pairing I’ve never seen elsewhere. Each element lent a different brand of sweetness to the whole: the char-cooked, caramelized, end-of-season beans danced with the silky raw squid and the nuttiness of the pistachio. It was delicious all on its own, but it also provided the perfect onramp for the meat course.
This plate united several textures of duck: two slices of toothsome, pleasantly gamey magret sat alongside a bit of nicely roasted thigh and a lovely, charry surfaced piece of tenderloin cooked perfectly rare within. A wedge of butter-fried bread was topped with a duck liver parfait laced, I believe, with port, and a quenelle of mustard-infused pistachio sauce was topped with just a touch of fermented nectarine. A small pile of sautéed mustard greens added a bit of relief to this delicious plate, which impressed me far more than most meat courses in a tasting menu.
Dessert was stalwartly seasonal: a plummy play on a Saint-Honoré with reine-claude compote and both yellow and black mirabelles wedded with a judiciously clove-infused chiboust.
I loved the pastry… but I loved the little quenelle of pine nut ice cream it came with even more.
The mignardises, too, were an ode to the season: Two halves of jammy poached fig were united with whiskey zabaglione, bay-infused shortbread lunettes sandwiched around the blackberriest blackberry jam I’ve ever tried, and two chewy cherry caramels it was impossible to eat neatly unless you licked them right off the paper.
This lunchtime prix fixe costs 85 euros, and it’s available even on Saturdays, which is a rarity. At dinner, the prix fixe costs 145 euros, and while I’d love to try it down the line, lunch was so enchanting I may have to come back to try it again. (I can rest assured that it will be completely different!)
On the whole, I found Cypsèle both playful and refined, both true to ingredients and unapologetically technique-driven. And it’s no small detail to add that I also found the front-of-house staff to encapsulate the expertise and harmony between being omnipresent yet never overpowering, which really makes the experience as awe-inspiring as it was.
…Can you tell I’m smitten?
Cypsèle – 11, rue des Deux Ponts, 75004
As a sharer of the repast, having 50 years of experience in haute cuisine, I would rank this meal as possibly the best I’ve had- and that stems from the sublime combination of flavors that seemed to remain even after the bite was consumed. The service was terrific.