Géosmine, 71 rue de la Folie Méricourt, Paris 11 -- Second visit
I’m doing some follow-up visits on some of the restaurants that were new to me this autumn. My report on my first visit to Géosmine is here.
The outside, and the ground floor, which is also where I sat before:
Through the glass, you can see into the wine cellar (this already was a feature of the predecessor restaurant at this location, Botanique).
At lunch, you can either order a tasting menu or à la carte. I am not enthusiastic about tasting menus, so as before I stuck to the carte.
All wines on the list are organic, biodynamic, and/or natural. The talented and enthusiastic sommelier Vincent Glayman delivering my bottle of 2019 Marsannay blanc from Bruno Clair, a Chardonnay from the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy:
The wine was excellent. I chose a bottle, even though I was dining alone, because this wine would go with everything I would order and I could (by French law) take away what I didn’t drink of the bottle. The wine was rich but with underlying acidity, spicy, and delicious. Arguably, it deserved to be a premier cru (Marsannay does not yet have any premiers crus, but that should be changing soon).
Amuses bouches looked identical to those on my first visit, but two of them were different:
A both lunches, the sticks were made from buckwheat (sarrasin in French — and if you haven’t had pain sarrasin from a really good bakery here like The French Bastards, you’re missing out). The smoked eel/sabayon tart looks identical to that from the last time, but instead of pistachio, there was onion (dried or fried, I think), which gave a different overall take, more assertive and more play among the elements. And instead of a cuttlefish cream to dip the buckwheat sticks into, there was a black garlic sauce, creamy and refined.
For my entrée, I took the chou pointu:
This dish consisted of fermented (and then braised) green cabbage and fermented cucumber with herb mayonnaise and small pickles. It was a delight on the palate with the creaminess of texture provided by the mayonnaise and the vegetables contrasting with the subtle acidity from the fermentation.
All the main courses sounded delicious, but once I heard that Saint-Pierre (John Dorry in English) was available, there was no choice to make — it is my favorite fish (and not all that common) and moreover, it was combined with cèpes (which along with morels, are my favorite fungus, leaving truffles far behind).
It was served with a parsley sabayon and pluma ham, and the cèpes were both cooked and raw. (For some reason, despite the rainy summer, cèpes have been extremely rare in markets and on restaurant menus this fall.) Well, there’s nothing more to tell you other than each bite was a symphony of flavors with great clarity and precision.
To continue with my wine, I chose the heart of Neufchâtel cheese with Italian roquette and pistachios:
The cheese was extremely flavorful and went well with the wine as well as contrasting with the spicy roquette. As for the roquette, the pistachios were ground and included in the dressing, which gave an extra delightful textural dimension to the salad.
As mignardise, a beetroot marshmallow, same as on the previous visit:
Chef Maxime Bouttier, the mastermind behind the great food here:
On a somewhat sunny Saturday afternoon when many Parisians were still coming back from vacation, the restaurant was not completely full, and those who were there included many foreigners — near me, an American couple, a couple of older gentlemen from Switzerland, four people mostly speaking German (three apparently were German and a fourth was American but spoke excellent German), and so forth.
The bill:
This includes a full bottle of wine, half of which I carried home, so the real price for the meal was 115€.
And if you go, don’t miss a trip to the loo. I’ve never taken a picture of a toilet before, but this one was worthy of its photo:
Apparently, the water tower was designed to make people appreciate how much water they were using on each trip to the toilet.
I can only repeat what I wrote after my first visit:
Géosmine is producing food at the highest end of quality in an informal setting. I strongly urge you to go, and I will certainly be back soon.
Géosmine
71 rue de la Folie Méricourt, 75011 Paris
Tél: 09 78 80 48 59
Thursday-Monday lunch and dinner
Métro: Parmentier, Oberkampf, République