Most days, 11th arrondissement restaurant Robert is known for its contemporary plays on classic French food and its natural wine list. But every so often, Australian Chef Peter Orr pulls out all the stops and hearkens back to his past experience working at Nahm in London to bring authentic Thai food to Paris.
I’ve been to one of Orr’s Thai lunches before, so I was excited to try a recent one-night-only pop-up dinner, with a set 45-euro menu and a parade of dishes I had never encountered before.
As at the Thai lunch, Orr got the ball rolling with an assortment of appetizers. On this plate, we were served a crab and pomelo miang wrapped in betel leaf as well as cubes of sweet-and-sour pork belly. My dining companion fell hard for the former, with its effortless marriage of sweetness, acid, and nuttiness. I, meanwhile, was partial to the (perfectly-cooked) latter, which boasted just the right hint of spice.
The third appetizer would prove to be my favorite dish of the night: a scallop topped with sweet chili jam. It boasted a delightful crunch from the phenomenal amount of fried shallots stirred through the topping.
Next, we dug into a series of four dishes, each of which would prove to be spicier than the next. The mildest – and a close contender for my favorite dish of the night – was this salmon salad with herbs, onions, and salmon roe. With a slightly sweet dressing and the ideal balance of acidity from the pickled onions, it was a refreshing dish to come back to when the heat of the others became a bit insurmountable.
And I do mean insurmountable. I’m a chili freak, but neither I nor my Indonesian dining companion could manage more than a few bites of the hot-and-sour soup with mussels without coughing. I picked the plump mussels out of mine (and enjoyed every morsel), but I ultimately had to leave the broth behind.
The chicken jungle curry, by contrast, was nicely balanced with pronounced heat and other flavors. It tied with the salmon salad as one of my top contenders thanks to its complexity and the tender bites of perfectly cooked chicken.
This spicy relish was tasty, but this plate proved the most welcome for its assortment of raw crudités and pork rinds, which we snacked on intermittently to help cool our tastebuds.
Dessert at this summer’s pop-up was not my favorite part of the meal, but this time around, I loved it. A rich, dense, moist coconut cake was paired with palm sugar custard and a quenelle of mango ice cream. A sprinkling of toasted coconut flakes added texture and even more rich coconut flavor.
This Thai night wasn’t quite as much of a party as the summertime lunch, where we spilled out onto the street and sipped wine and beer in the sunshine. But, especially for spice heads, it was just as delicious. I look forward to the next one!
Robert - 32, rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 75011