Anyone who has been to PIerre will attest each meal is a symphony of flavours, colours, and textures
Pierre Gagnaire’s eponymous restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2016, yet it feels as fresh and contemporary as the day it first opened. With chef Jean-Denis le Bras and his brigade flying the flag, this bastion of contemporary French cuisine continues to excite with a menu that’s quite unlike any other. As anyone who has been to Pierre will attest, the format of the menu, with its veritable “satellite” of dishes for every listed course, means that each meal will be a symphony of flavours, colours and textures.
Take, for example, the collection titled “Blue Lobster,” which presents the crustacean in a myriad of ways: a fricassée of lobster is coated with an intensely umami coral sauce and thin, translucent squares of flavoured vegetable “films” to create a pop art-esque veil. The delicate flavours of the shellfish are heightened, rather than dominated, by the sweet and aniseed notes of apple and liquorice. The claws, on the other hand, are macerated in a fragrant, grassy coriander oil, the intense green of the herb contrasting with the fleshy lobster while knobs of purple- and yellow-tinged cauliflower florets add a muscular crunch to proceedings. And that’s still not all—there’s a small bowl of lobster bisque, anointed with the bittersweet notes of cubeb berries (a black pepper-like fruit), and more of the lobster meat, made into rillettes.
Your palate will be tickled and tantalised at every turn, each dish small and perfectly formed with so much flavour and fun—our only complaint is that we often wish there were a larger serving of a particularly delicious component. But by the time we leave the dinner table, we always admonish ourselves for thinking such greedy thoughts. After all, in what other setting can you enjoy a parade of not one, two or even three desserts—but six?
Pierre’s Grand Dessert is a signature of the restaurant, well known to sweets fiends everywhere, consisting of a half-dozen petit desserts that play with the fruits of the season. On our visit, ripe figs and apricots were paired with dreamy ice creams and cloud-like mousses, a side of passionfruit giving our palates a much-needed jolt between rich mouthfuls.
The evenings are a more muted affair, with couples arriving for a special meal featuring a kaleidoscope of deliciousness, while at lunch, the restaurant is often full of suits keen to impress business partners and clients with a meal to remember. With the world of flavour presented at Pierre, it’s a wise choice should you wish to seal the deal—romantically or professionally.
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