Disclosure: I was a guest of the property for this meal.
I spent years of my Paris life on the Left Bank, but ever since decamping north of the river, I find myself staying local more and more. So I was really excited by the opportunity to venture back into the 15th, where I once lived, to try out Pilgrim, a one-Michelin-star restaurant helmed by Chef Masaki Nagao. Formerly of Vantre and Le Clarence, the Japanese chef offers an inventive approach to contemporary French fare with a particular focus on excellent-quality French meat and fish.
The dining room is airy and spacious, with a a minimalist, Japanese inspiration in the décor, and the bustling central open kitchen definitely offers a pleasant but not obtrusive show. It’s the ideal space in which to discover colorful dishes plated with true artistry.
At dinner, there are a few tasting menus on offer: four (89), five (120), and seven (155) courses. At lunch, meanwhile, you can either order from a three-course menu (55) with a few choices, which on the day of my visit featured starters like beef tartare with clams and mains like fish of the day with peas and pil-pil sauce. Or you can opt for the four-course tasting (75), as I did.
On this visit in mid-July, we started with an amuse-bouche of house-made breadsticks and Datterino tomato gazpacho. And honestly? This kind of fell flat. Don’t get me wrong: The flavor of the gazpacho was phenomenal, tasting of fresh summer tomatoes with a pleasant whisper of garlic. But the other major component of this dish was also whispering when I wished it would yell: peaches. They were crunchy and barely tasted like anything.
The grissini were fine but nothing to write home about, and moreover, there was something old-fashioned about the foamy texture of the soup, which felt a bit… 1994. There was a welcome layer of stracciatella at the bottom, which proved nice way to add a touch of richness, but ultimately, I was underwhelmed by this dish – and the dishware looked underwhelmed too, given the tired state of the porcelain.
But things immediately got better. Way better.
The first starter was undeniably my favorite dish of the meal. A generous slice of just-charred Breton tuna was settled atop an estival combination of part-dried Datterino tomatoes, fresh and fermented apricots, and a few wisps of pea shoots. Combined with the daring smoked mozzarella base (who says you can’t have fish and cheese?), this dish sang, no screamed summer.
The tuna challenged any previous use of the word velvety with its absolutely melt-in-your-mouth texture, and the combination of fruit, smoke, and fish felt like an encapsulation of the season on the plate. There were, nevertheless, a few old-fashioned touches that reinforced my assessment of the amuse, like the reliance on cubes of gel, which the plate really didn’t need. But the red shiso-apricot sauce enlivened the ensemble and contributed gorgeous color. I resisted finishing this dish just so that I could savor it for a few minutes longer.
The next plate was tasty but comparatively less extraordinary. Here, brill was paired with celery root and a marinière-inspired sauce generously seasoned with lovage, dill, and chives. The herbs and lovage – especially the dill – were lovely for adding a bit of brightness, and there was something shellfishy about the ensemble that I really liked.
The fish itself was perfectly cooked, but the rich sauce seemed to slightly overpower its delicacy slightly. And the brunoise of celery root suffered the same unfortunate fate as the peach: crunchy and lacking in flavor. While a handful of cubes yielded and were so sweet I would have sworn they were pear, most were undercooked and uninteresting.
Once the fish was gone, however, I went to town on the rest of that sauce with the excellent crusty country sourdough.
The next dish was exquisite both in appearance and in flavor, as you can see from the image at the top of this post. Coal-grilled pork shoulder was served with a beautiful array of sauces and condiments arranged like an artist’s palate: a peppery, fresh watercress sauce, a sweet-and-sour date and yuzu purée I adored, a sweet celery root purée (which was delicious… but since when is celery root a summer vegetable?) and a fried bit of celery root, which proved the most successful produce item of the day. (But more on that in a sec.)
The real pleasure of this dish came from marrying the exceptionally porky pork with each condiment for a real journey of pairings and flavors. My favorite bite was the bit of pork belly (even porkier than the shoulder) with a bit of the date-yuzu condiment, which ticked all of the sweet, savory, and sour boxes of the perfect barbecue sauce. And the rich jus glazing the plate was just exquisite.
The peach pavlova dessert was visually stunning, but it suffered the same fate as the amuse: That peach brunoise was under-ripe and crunchy, which felt all the more criminal seeing as I had such amazing peaches at home in my own fridge. There were a handful of pieces that had a bit of yield and tasted of something, but most seemed there just for decoration. Luckily, that was not the case with the rest of the dessert’s elements: An exquisite meringue with great flavor and balanced sweetness and a peach-verbena coulis did most of the heavy lifting, and I ended up clearing my plate.
While I ultimately had more delicious bites at Pilgrim than middling ones, the pervasive produce problems gave me pause. In a day and age when plants are finally getting their time in the spotlight, it felt quite old-fashioned to have such a quality-driven focus on proteins (which were, it must be said, excellent at every turn) and such a lackluster approach to the fruits and veggies that accompanied them. It ultimately felt out of step with current trends in Parisian dining, and not in a way that I liked. Compounded with the space, which looked a bit tired (especially in the bathrooms and on the stairs), I came away with the sense that Pilgrim might need a bit of TLC to reach its fullest potential.
Dommage… because that tuna really was something else.
Pilgrim – 8, rue Nicolas Charlet, 75015 Paris