Warning: This review is written backwards from my usual style since I was possessed by the Walcott Gibbs, circa 1936, devil; he's the guy who parodied Time Magazine's style saying "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind...Where it all will end, knows God!" [Walcott Gibbs 1936]
Go? I dunno, it's very pricy and the prix-qualite is not very good.
The bill: with a bottle of the absolute cheapo supremo (42 E, a Minevois), two lunch "menus", two coffees (8 E each for mediocre stuff) and no bottled water, our bill was 162 E.
Madame's desset was (I thought) a rather mundane but serviceable strawberry compote on a scoop of vanilla ice cream with kirsh jelly and I had an interesting and inventive dish that was called a pistachio flan with toasted pistachios and ice creaam and (when we inquired) a wonderful paper-thin leaf of sugar. This was the highlight of the meal.
For mains, she had a terrific piece of skinless half-cooked salmon that I must say was one of the highlights in salmon eating and I had a ball of beef cheeks with a black sauce I thought would blow me out of the water - unnnnh unh. The veggies were all OK, but so?
For starters she had the white asparagus with a mousseline sauce that was OK and I ordered the interesting sounding jellied shellfish with winter squash, urchin "tongues" and algae but there was none (the waiter had no clue of such on taking the order) so I settled for the banal, you could get-it-anywhere, microtomed scallops with a lime and mango sauce and some strange twisted Sister, no, maybe this was the famous urchin "tongues", tough and tasteless but intriguing-looking.
The meal started off auspiciously enough with an amuse-gueule of jellied beet with (could I have heard correctly?) Rocquefort sauce, no, but maybe yes.
The 52 E "menu" is impressive, lots of choices, interesting choices, but the wine prices were outasight. Hey it's got a star, even though from my quick look at the chefs' name tags and visages none of them was Tateru Yoshino, which I learned later from web comments is not unusual at lunch or dinner.
This place is cool, really cool and I'm sure it's had a coat of paint, but it looks the same as when we four came in 1997 when it opened to great acclaim
Stella Maris in the 8th, at 4 rue Arsene Houssaye, 01.42.89.16.22, closed Saturday noon and Sunday, is a place "our gang" frequented after it opened, marvelling at the cooking, especially of fish, at reasonable prices, by its founding chef Tateru Yoshino.
So when my wonderful ex-co-host from the website whose name will not be mentioned, read in A Nous Paris and Pudlo that Shimpei Oie had moved from it to the Bistro Volnay and the original four had a super meal at the B.V. a few weeks ago, said ex-co-host from the website whose name will not be mentioned, said to me "Let's go to Stella," and I thought "Yah, whoever is now cooking should be tested." Unfortunately, she was refrring to the Brasserie Stella in the 16th, down the street but made the reservation at Stella Maris, so there/here we were.
Now does that answer all your questions and isn't it fun to read a review backwards.
"No," I hear you saying, "OK, it was just an experiment."
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