I eat mostly fish and vegetarian these days but every once in a while I crave a juicy steak.
Jean-Francois Clavier, the owner of a company Archibald Gourmet which imports Wagyu beef to France and Jean-Francois Celbert, owner of the upscale Josephine Restaurant and Boulangerie have teamed up to serve a Wagyu tasting menu. I was happy to be invited two weeks ago to experience the menu and satisfy my meat craving.
Wagyu is a breed of Japanese cow that yields a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat, producing a high quality beef with increased marbling. The most well known Wagyu beef is Kobe, which sells for about $400 a pound.
The five-course menu starts off with a platter of two appetizer meats, a thinly sliced dried version of Wagyu beef aged six months with Jamaican pimento and a sliced rum steak with a mélange of pimentos, dried and aged for one month with sprigs of rosemary, both created by Archibald Gourmet. They were served with excellent thick slices country bread with honey and smoked salt, a specialty of Josephine created in collaboration with Benoit Castel and my favorite French butter, Bordier, hand churned from Brittany.
Next up was a decadent platter of Cote de Boeuf (similar for filet mignon), the signature beef of Archibald Gourmet. The meat was served rare but not bloody, so I chose the ends, which were cooked almost medium and better suited my taste buds. In general I find most French beef is tough and hard to chew but the beef that day was succulent, easy to chew and digest. I usually like some kind of sauce with my beef such as Béarnaise or just strong mustard but the beef was so flavorful it didn’t need it. Side dishes included frites, divine potatoes au gratin and a mix of green vegetables served in copper pots.
Full and happy from the last course, a selection of seasonal cheeses from fame fromager Jean-Yves Bordier was served.
Last but certainly not least was dessert, the largest chocolate éclair I’ve ever seen, surely in the Guinness Book of Records.
I chatted with the two Jean-Francois’s for a bit in between courses. Josephine is a very successful enterprise with over 30 employees. The ground floor is a busy boulangerie and patisserie and upstairs is a popular lunchtime restaurant for local workers and businessmen and women. Archibald Gourmet supplies meats to some of the top chefs in France.
There’s a special table for the Wagyu beef tasting menu, which seats up to six people with drapes around it so it can be sectioned off as a private dining experience.
The minimum reservation is for two people. The cost is 75€ per person, which I think is a bargain for the quality of the food and the amount of courses.
La Table Archibald Chez Josephine
Monday to Friday 12:30-2:30PM, reservations a must and a minimum of two people and maximum six people.
69 Ave. Marceau, 75116
Metro: George V or Alma-Marceau
You can book a reservation on line
https://www.archibaldchezjosephine.com/
or call + 33 6 87 50 04 63
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OMG!-look at this eclair
Jean-Francois Clavier, left and Jean-Francois Celbert, right
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