Le Clandé, ex-Clandestino, pre-Virtus is a place I ate at in the fall of 2012 several times when it was touted as a pop-up - well it's grown-up and is a big-time resto now, but next month will emerge chrysalis-like as Virtus in the same space with the same chefs as today - Chiho Kanzaki and Marcelo Di Giacomo, while the former chef Masayuki Shibuya, ex La Gazzetta and Bigarrade, flies away to the Left Bank with the Clandé brand.
Colette and I were eating with a full-time friend but part-time ex-pat, who seized on the 3-beet salad with fresh goat cheese, which was really tasty, while Colette had an equally powerfully tasting veloute of broccoli with mascarpone cream with citrus, and I had innovative "beignets" of asparagus with a classic Béarnaise sauce, which, naturally, I thought was the winner.
Then Colette had the pork filet mignon (with terrific veggies) which was tenderness itself while our friend and I had the mushroom risotto with both cooked mushrooms and sliced raw ones, very very good.
To wind it up, Colette ordered a wheat crumble with apples and caramel beurre-sale; our friend had the sacher biscuit (a mi-cuit chocolate like fudge) with meadowsweet ice cream; and the chefs, thinking I might go hungry served me a puree of passion fruit with coconut yogurt and coconut.
With a bottle of nice Langedoc, a bottle of fizzy water, superb bread and 3 coffees, our bill was 136.50 E or 91 E a couple.
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