Christopher Coutanceau - La Rochelle
View of the beach and harbor from our table
Rating: 19/20
Where: La Rochelle, France
When: Dinner for 2 on 19 May 2022
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 250 Euro, Wine Pairing 170 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars (2020-2022)
Why: Phenomenal French seafood cuisine, among the best in the world; wonderful view, great service
Restaurant Christopher Coutanceau, headed by the chef of the same name, is located in the lovely city of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France. Just outside the city's old town and old harbor, the restaurant is located right on the water. The windows have a lovely, unobstructed view of the beach, the ocean and (if you're lucky) a wonderful sunset. Not quite at the level of Mirazur, but this view is among the best I've seen for a restaurant. The dining room is modern and understated, tables at the windows are the most prized.
Dinner is tasting menu only, and the sole choice is whether to enjoy six or eight courses - we opted for the latter. This being a seafood restaurant, accommodating a pescatarian was no problem, it only required a small tweak to a single dish. A wine pairing was also offered, and was generally very, very good, containing great white and red wines and a nice 1976 cognac at the end.
Our dinner began with a green jelly of oyster, seaweed and crustaceans. Light, but flavorful, this was a great start 18.
More amuse bouches arrived: a smoked eel with pickled carrots was amazing - the smokiness and fattiness combined wonderfully with the acidity of the carrots 19+. Monkfish liver topped with what seemed to be fruit gelee came with a sourdough bread cracker. This dish felt too heavy due to the liver, and also lacked flavor 15. Cockles came with a fennel puree, a sprig of dill and a cracker. The clams were excellent with some bite, the fennel puree a great addition having noticeable fennel taste, the cracker merely ok. Overall delightful 19.
Three breads were offered: a nicely baked seaweed bread (that ironically didn't taste of any seaweed), a country bread, and a bread with candied lemon peel. These were nice enough, but not that special. The former two were great vehicles for sopping up the excellent sauces that were to come, the sweet lemon pieces in the third bread were more a distraction in that regard.
The last appetizer was a langoustine tartare, served with a gelee made from the langoustine's tail, and a langoustine chip. The tartare was slightly sweet and creamy, the chip light and similar to a shrimp chip, but amped up in flavor and quality 18.
The first course of the tasting menu was langoustine served with butter and spices, along a side of peas, seaweed, hazelnuts, melisse and duck prosciutto. The langoustine was cooked perfectly, and was very flavorful. The peas were very nice as well, but without an overwhelming pea flavor; the duck added a nice bit of saltiness. (By the way, dropping the duck was the only change made for the pescatarian meal.) The accompanying deep-fried langoustine head was essentially a very tasty cracker. A winner overall 19.
Course two was a collection of seafood (mussels, clams, etc) served on a gelee of lemon and onion, dusted with a powder of paprika, shrimp and chili. The different pieces of seafood all tasted pretty much the same, apart from slight textural differences. The gelee totally dominated the flavor. One of my clams had sand in it. Less might have been more here, letting the seafood speak for itself instead of smothering it in gelee. An example of this kind of seafood medley done perfectly was the wonderful appetizer of fresh, steamed seafood that we had at Alain Ducasse's restaurant in Monto Carlo a few years prior. Thankfully, this turned out to be the only stumble in the tasting menu 15.
A poached oyster was served with caviar and a tarragon emulsion. In the preceding days, we had several oyster dishes where the subtle oyster flavor was drowned out by the accompanying sauces. Getting the balance just right is obviously not easy. And today's dish showed us how it's done. The oyster flavor was predominant in the dish, but both the delicious caviar as well as the very light tarragon emulsion contributed to the overall composition. We sopped up most of the surplus tarragon sauce that was left at our table in a small saucepan - by itself this delicious sauce would have been a 19. The dish as a whole was around 18.
Turbot was served with a smoked hake sauce, and a side of roasted white asparagus with garlic leaves, small pieces of roasted grapefruit and fried fish. The turbot was cooked perfectly, and that butter sauce... omg!! Buttery, a bit smoky, a bit of acidity, probably really bad for you, but oh so delicious. Again, we finished the saucepan of extra sauce left at the table. A clear 20 for that part of the dish. The asparagus had perfect grill-marks, but was otherwise a bit tasteless. The green sauce underneath it was good, but the grapefruit and fried fish pieces were more of a distraction than a fitting addition to the rest of the dish. This would suggest an overall rating of maybe 18 or 19, but with a turbot as amazing as this one, I'm willing to forgive its side dish 20.
Next were pieces of squid and octopus fried in olive oil and served on a red pepper coulis, with olives, green beans, leeks and marinated artichoke. Added to that were a fish soup seasoned with saffron, as well as grated cow milk cheese on top. On a separate plate, deep-fried cuttlefish was served with a dip. We should have eaten the latter right away when it was hot, but even lukewarm it was great, crunchy seafood, similar to what you'd expect in stellar fish and chips (maybe 19 for this part). The fish soup together with the red pepper coulis was amazingly delicious: sweetness, saltiness, acidity, a perfect flavor balance, 20 if rated individually. The squid was cooked to have a nice, solid bite, but without any hint of rubberiness. Rarely have I seen squid cooked this well. The octopus was nicely soft, almost creamy, even better than the Pinxtos we had the night before in San Sebastian, and those were already very good. Overall 19.
The final savory dish, and one of the chef's signatures, was "The Humble Sardine", consisting of all parts of a sardine. On our plate, we found sardine tartare, marinated, smoked and grilled sardines, fried sardine bones, sardine mousse and dollops of vinegar made from sardine heads. In an accompanying bowl we were served sardine juice (think: soup) with enoki mushrooms and tapioca pearls. Starting with the latter: taste-wise, this would fit right into a meal in Japan, maybe with the flavor intensity toned down a bit. Lovely, and a 19 by itself. On the main plate, the sardine vinegar was amazing, full of flavor, and its acidity a great complement to the other, by necessity oilier, sardine preparations. The sardine bones were a perfect crisp, and the tartar wonderful with the vinegar. I liked the smoked sardine slightly more than the marinated one, but both were excellent. The only part that didn't work for me was the sardine mousse (called "sorbet" by the server), it was too creamy and heavy, and didn't have as much sardine flavor as the rest of the preparations. Overall, it’s no wonder that this is a signature dish for the restaurant - a truly amazing tour de force of using just a single ingredient to create a complex course 19.
An optional cheese course came next. The cheeses we chose were uniformly excellent - today must have been our lucky day. We particularly liked a chablis fermier. The accompanying crackers were delightful, we only disagreed on whether the plain ones or the seeded ones were better (I voted for plain).
The pairing of a cocktail made from cognac, yuzu and verjus was very nice - a good transition to the sweet part of the dinner.
Desserts started with a smoked haddock sorbet (I can't make this up), served with grilled buckwheat and citrus (kumquat, orange, grapefruit), and dusted with smoked haddock powder. A cracker that looked like fish bones (but was made from buckwheat) was on the side. The sorbet by itself tasted very distinctly of smoked fish/haddock, but eaten together with the rest of the dish, the citrus flavors dominated, making this an excellent, light, first dessert. I thought that this was a winner, and a truly audacious one at that. Few people would think of adding smoked fish to a dessert, and even fewer would get the balance right to make this work (the dessert chef reportedly went through many iterations). Tastewise maybe a 18, this deserves a 19 for pure chutzpah. My wife disagreed, she hated the haddock flavor in this dish, so be warned.
Chocolate and nori were married in the final dessert. A chocolate pastry was topped with chocolate sorbet, nori foam, lemon and chocolate shavings. Next to it was a nori sorbet topped with a hot chocolate mousse and cocoa nibs. There was a tad too much nori in the nori foam, but otherwise this was very good, the chocolate sorbet in particular excellent. The chocolate mousse was the best part of the dish, nice and heavy with lots of chocolate, the nibs adding crunch and a touch of savoriness 18.
A selection of mini-desserts concluded the dinner. Delicious strawberries with an excellent herb sorbet were amazing 20.
A chocolate dessert followed and it was inspired by an "eclade", a traditional, local dish of wood-fired mussels. No mussels here (although you wouldn't put it past this dessert kitchen), just chocolate with a smoked milk mousse, cognac sorbet and hot cognac. Very smoky indeed and a tad bitter - very, very good 19.
Chocolate served as a small bar, flavored with seaweed and salted flowers (not pictured) was too sweet for me, serving the chocolate without the adornments might have been better 16.
Finally, a caramel (not pictured) with salted flowers from the nearby Ile de Re was very soft and buttery, but I couldn't make out any of the flowers 18.
Overall: Amazing cooking, deftly balancing different flavors. The ability shown here in marrying widely divergent ingredients (fish in a dessert?!), and in making a complex dish from a single ingredient (a sardine) is astonishing. I also loved that the dinner was seafood only while showing endless variety - a real ode to the ocean. You didn’t miss meat for a second. Beautiful view, great service, great wine pairing. A truly three star meal 19.
Wine pairing and tasting menu
PS: The beautiful old harbor near to the restaurant just asks for a leisurely walk or run. Especially nice to stretch the legs if (like us) you just drove all the way from San Sebastian.