There are restaurants whose star is barely hanging by a tiny thread. Le Violon d’Ingres is one of them.

Time flies: it has been several years since we had dinner together with Olivier. Taking advantage of the fact that he was in Paris, we decided to do something about it and we managed to get a table at Violon d’Ingres.

Not really a discovery because we had already dined there with friends a long time ago and kept a good memory of it. But since there are almost no starred restaurants open on Sundays in Paris, we did not have the opportunity to discover a new restaurant.

The concept

It is a restaurant of traditional cuisine without any great surprises on the menu. Until 2020 it was the chef Christian Constant who ran the place before selling it and handing over to Bertrand Bluy (ex Les Papilles).

The setting

Again, very classic, but quite surprising for a starred restaurant.

Indeed, no particular effort seems to have been made to give the room a semblance of personality. It also seems to us that the tables were surprisingly close for a restaurant of this category but we will talk about that later.

Obviously the small size of the room is a constraint but it is still a bit crowded.

Another consequence of this exiguity: the toilets. You are condemned to wait for them to become available in a space that is more like a closet and with so little space that when someone opens the door from the room, those waiting inside risk taking it in the face.

This is also where the locker room is obviously located, so it is not supervised.

The menu

It is short, which is usually a good sign.

There is also a tasting menu and it is of course the latter that we will choose.

Le repas et le service

The reception is very friendly, we are installed and the menus are distributed to us rather quickly and the order taken just as quickly.

We will not take the food and wine pairing and will prefer to have two or three glasses of wine throughout the meal. The waiter tells us that he will send the sommelier to come and advise us. In the meantime a bottle of mineral water will do the job.

They bring us gougères with emmenthal and almonds. Not bad but the gougères could have been hot.

Then comes the appetizer: cream of peas, herring roe, mascarpone and bottarga.

Good but it lacks a bit of pep.

Foie gras poached in red wine and red port, gingerbread.

Fine and light in the mouth. The taste of the wine is well perceived. The marriage with the pear is nice. In the end it’s good but nothing to get excited about either.

Scampi ravioli with lemon and combawa on artichoke purée.

Really very good, the taste of lemon is very present and gives a real freshness to the dish.

Red mullet filet a la plancha, crispy saffron risotto, bouillabaisse.

The red mullet was cooked to perfection and the risotto was too dry.

By the way...the sommelier still hasn’t come. We are waiting… Since we had a good aperitif before coming we decided to go light on the wines so it’s not too much of a problem (apart from the fact that it’s a real mistake in the service) and we decide to see when they will realize they forgot something.

Since our arrival the room has filled up and is really noisy, worse than in a brasserie! The conversations of two or three tables can be heard distinctly.

Lamb hazelnut, eggplant caviar with cumin, harissa purée, savory.

Smooth meat, the rest brings a pronounced middle eastern touch. You either like it or you don’t. It reminds me a bit of the lamb merguez at Gordon Ramsay.

Sheep’s milk cheese with espelette pepper jelly

Excellent and very balanced. Really very good.

Strawberries in white dress, basil sorbet.

Light and fresh. Good without being exceptional.

We hardly hear each other and it’s hard to talk to each other, it becomes painful.

Mascarpone cream, roasted coffee, cocoa tuile.

Not too chocolaty, light and fresh.

We will finish with a coffee that will be accompanied by cannelés and cheese cakes.

The cheese cake will be good, the cannelé overcooked.

The bill will arrive with delicious madeleines.

And as you can guess, the sommelier never came.

The atmosphere

The room is noisy, very noisy, too noisy. And when there is noise everyone tries to talk later, add to that a few tables with American customers known for their lack of discretion and you have the final result: very unpleasant.

Not discreet enough for a business dinner, not muffled enough for a romantic dinner…a table that will only be suitable for dinners with friends if you can stand the noise.

The service

The welcome was very pleasant and the service fast, so it was quite positive.

Afterwards,it is inconceivable in a star restaurant that the sommelier would skip a table and that no one would notice.

On the other hand we were served by so many different people that we didn’t know who was in charge of us.

Finally, one of the waiters had the annoying habit of sticking to the back of Olivier’s chair to talk to us, which is frankly unpleasant. Add to that an accent that made it hard to understand over the noise…

We won’t go so far as to talk about bad service, but perhaps a little too casual service.

Bottom line

If I had made this meal for a special occasion I think I would have been disappointed.

The dishes deserve a star. Borderline but deserved.

On the other hand, between the room, the noise, the service, and the cramped toilets, we are at the limit and I am not sure that the quality of the dishes is enough for a long time to mask all the insufficiencies which revolve around.

At certain bill amounts and when one prides oneself on having a Michelin star, the right to make mistakes does not exist and here certain limits were crossed.