Esens'All - A delightful return

We leave the hotel at 6.55pm and undertake a reverse route from this afternoon, catching the metro 4 and changing on to the M2 to the Roma station and walk to the restaurant.

We arrive at Esens'all at 7.25pm for our 7.30pm booking and we are the only clients for the first 50 minutes of our meal.

We first visited Esens'all in 2012 during our last European trip - Drew had read about it on TripAdvisor and it was a wondeful experience - we even blogged about it here.

The place is much lighter and brighter 11 years on, but apart from that Laurent is still doing his magic. When we were last here the place had not been open a year. One more change, the options are now five or seven courses, it was six and eight back then. One thing hadn't changed Laurent discusses your preference or dislikes in advance and then he creates the menu influenced by that. Having treated us so well 11 years ago we left him to his own choices. 

Lauret, doesn't only cook the food, he also serves it and gives detailed insight into its provenance and how it fits with his food philosophy. 

The Amuse Boche was Ravioli with mozzarella, basil and oregano and micro-flowers olive oil, the overall experience was light and zingy. 

Our first course was Goat's cheese and smoked salmon with fish roe offering a pop of salt, all in the shortest pastry I've ever tasted. It provided a real comfort and a feeling of delight and joy. Food should always be so amazing. Unfortunately, you are going to have to take our word for it, as I didn't stop eating long enough to take a photo!

The bread course was freshly cooked focaccia and pain de campagne, these were served with a soy butter. The butter had all the flavour of soy sauce but with a richer background notes as it is made into a butter. We were cheeky and asked for another set of breads so we could use up the butter.

Our next course was shrimp with four types of tomato in seasonal oil with roasted seemed seeds, linseeds and aniseed served with microflower and herbs. It seemed like a tomato would be very happy to be a part of this dish. 

I'm afraid with Lauret spending so much time with us, I've not been doing well on the photos. I missed the shrimp and tomoaroes dish, but at least you can see that the bowl and the cutlery was very pretty!! 

Next came a dish Lauret asked us to guess at. This is how it looks:

The powder tastes and acts like gel in the mouth, full bodied and rich. Yes, it is powder on the spoon, but the moment it goes into the mouth it gives a creamy mouth feel, nothing less than culinary magic. We identify the flavour of kaffir lime leaves in the dish, but (unlike the French couple who arrived and had it a little later than us) we didn't recognise the foie gras, it had been frozen and then crushed. The third taste is coco bean powder, a hint of chocolate. The combined flavour is such a delight I wish the dish would never end - wonderful.

Our next course was fresh peas, smoked eel, puffed rice, egg (lightly boiled), roe and verbena sauce. The lemonyness of the verbena works well with the eel, the pea has a savoury flavour and the puffed rice and a crispness, the just cooked egg could have been gloopy, but in this chef's hands it has become a sauce which draws out the flavour of the peas and meaty eel. 

Our fish course was a lightly steamed cod with Jerusalem artichoke, white peach, poppy seeds foam and microflowers and microherbs. Drew reminded me that my sister warned me off poppy seeds as they could come up on a drug test - but as I wasn't planning to have a drug test I was happy to eat the juicy flavour which enhanced the delicacy of the cod.

Our meat course was a breast of duck, black carrot cooked in cumin and sesame seeds, sweet potato mash and black garlic sauce - again a combination that I wouldn't have thought of putting together, but which when combined makes for glorious eating. I wonder if the chef has dreams where he makes up these dishes - when I ask, he says he has a book beside his bed and whiteboard in his kitchen, so he can catch the thoughts when they come through his mind. I'm so glad he does.  

The pre-dessert is a sesame and chia seed crisp with raspberries, strawberries, pomegranate, melon and blackberries served with mascarpone and an herb ice cream. The flavours are fresh and light, as intended the pre-dessert combines savoury flavours with a hint of sweetness.

Our dessert is a chocolate ganache with black peppers and paprika ice cream. Yes, read that again and allow the idea to enter your mind, the food was as unbelievable as it implies. All the flavours seemed to be the opposite of what you might expect in a dessert, the chocolate was spiky with black pepper, the ice cream did indeed taste exactly like paprika, not a flavour I've ever associated with ice cream and the caramel wasn't a sugar feast but a flavour of star anises and clove. 

There isn't a flavour I'd not tasted before, but in combinations that I can barely believe even after I've eaten them.

The world-famous chef, Escoffier said that what made French cuisine special is the ability to use simple ingredients and transform them by artful techniques, Lauret exemplifies this in everything he creates. It is great reminder, as this holiday comes to an end, that it is not the number of waiters or even meeting the chefs than make for good food, but creative ideas executed to perfection. We are so lucky we can expereince delights like this.

We finish with an espresso each

and leave at 10.15pm, arriving back at the Holiday Inn at 11pm.