Dish du jour — February 28, 2023

In my most recent posting, I included a photo of the elaborate decoration in the restaurant where Jan and I had lunch on February 24, Le Grand Véfour in Paris. But I didn’t show off any of our dishes.

In this posting, I’m going to highlight one lunchtime dish, which stood out for its originality. In fact, it was so original that it was actually startling to eat.

At the centre of the dish, which I had ordered as my entrée, is a simple poached egg. This is something I’ve ordered frequently, and I’ve always enjoyed the sauce surrounding the egg. For instance, in my posting of January 4, I showed off a cocotte egg that was served in a small glass dish and surrounded by a creamy sauce that was chock-full of pieces of black truffle. Delicious, quite savoury, and just the sort of sauce to dip bread into.

The egg dish at Le Grand Véfour was completely different. This is how the menu described it: Œuf mollet, patate douce en fine purée et en semoule, pointe de raz-el-hanout mangue acidulée.

In English, that’s a poached egg with a sauce of sweet potato as well as tiny pieces of sweet potato prepared like a semolina and served as a quenelle, with sweet-and-sour pieces of mango. In other words, this was a tropical take on a normally savoury dish, and it was quite remarkable. The small pieces of mango really were sweet-and-sour, since the sweet fruit had been “acidulated,” or made somewhat acidic. And then the dish was decorated with thin slices of fresh coconut. Have a look:

Flavour combinations I would never have imagined.

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