I’d always had the perception that the Michelin-star rating system was kind of like the rating system for hotels – the more stars a restaurant had the more amenities and services you should expect. Jenny and my experience tonight at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon prompted me to come home and look up exactly what Michelin-stars meant because in all honesty I could not see why this restaurant in particular had been awarded two stars.

This is what I found:
– One-Michelin-star: A very good restaurant or pub in its category. The star indicates a good place to stop on your journey.
– Two-Michelin-star: Excellent cooking, worth a detour. Specialities and wines of first class quality. This will be reflected in the price.
– Three-Michelin-star: Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey. One always eats here extremely well, sometimes superbly. Fine wines, faultless service, elegant surroundings. One will pay accordingly!

To date I’ve been to four One-Michelin-star restaurants and one Three-Michelin-star restaurants so I had something against which to measure the Two-Michelin-starred L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon.

Excellent cooking, worth a detour? Well it was hard to judge on our three-course pre-theatre menu but I think on the balance in combination with what we ate and what we saw being plated and delivered to other diners I believe L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon demonstrated excellent cooking that was worth a detour.

Tonight for starters we had a choice between a rabbit terrine and a French onion soup. Jenny went for the former and I went for the latter. We were pleased to see that the rabbit terrine was in fact a terrine and not a pate as we’ve had in other restaurants. The terrine was served simply sliced (about 1.5cm thick) with a small side salad. I could see that the terrine was very meaty and I’m sure tasted quite lovely, though Jenny was happy to leave the lard that surrounded it behind. My French onion soup was presented to me in one of those soup bowls with a large outer rim. The waiter first placed an empty bowl down in front of me with only three little fried croutons topped with cheese and onion and chopped chives sitting it in. He then proceeded to pour in the soup from a small tiny bottle. The soup was admittedly very tasty but only filled the bowl, which was about 20cm in diameter, about 1cm high. You know that I’m already starting to talk about portion sizes. Nice but not really anything here that separates it from other good French restaurant.

Our choice for mains was between fried pollock and suckling pig. Of course both Jenny and I went for the pig. Again, what we received was very simple. A slice of the suckling pig about 2cm thick and perhaps 15cm in diameter plated. It was covered in some sort of brown gravy and topped with some green (I think a fifth of a gem lettuce.) On the side, in a separate dish, we were served with some attractive looking polenta. The pig was extremely tender though it was extremely fatty around the edges. The flavour of the meat itself, though, was gorgeous but I would have been much happier with a more generous portion. The polenta was extremely delicious though I’m not quite sure what went into it. Again, nice food but again I didn’t think anything that separated it from any other good French restaurant.

Still feeling quite empty we headed to desserts where we had a choice of sweet of the day or cheese. The French waiters had twice explained to us what the dessert was but we only caught that it was chocolate something or other. The cheese was Roquefort. Cheese as a dessert is not really my thing and even though I don’t generally like chocolate dessert I still preferred it over the cheese. I was not disappointed. The dessert had quite complex layering: on the plate was a mound of cocoa/sugar, then we had a bowl within which lay from bottom to top chocolate liquid, mini maltesers (think of those things you get in muller corners), chocolate mouse, chocolate late crumbles (fantastic!) and white chocolate ice cream. I’m sure there was also something else in amongst the layers but I couldn’t identify it. This was then topped with a chocolate “lid” (with sprinkles of gold dusting) and a mini chocolate disk with the name L’Atelier stamped on it. Considering I’m not a chocolate dessert fan I really enjoyed our finale and probably for this it deserves some recognition. Like Jenny I was seriously tempted to lick my bowl and plate clean but restrained myself in favour of good taste. 🙂 The dessert (le chocolate sensation) lives up to its name.

The pre-theatre menu didn’t not have a wide variety offering only two choices for starters, mains and desserts (for desserts it was dessert of the day or cheese…) so probably on that alone I would say its excellent cooking though not worth the detour (except for the chocolate dessert above.) On the other hand the food from the a la carte we saw being prepared looked fabulous and it is clear that great attention to detail is paid to not only the plating but the production of the individual ingredients making up the dishes. If you’ve seen the website you know just how attractive some of the dishes are so for that I have to give it to the restaurant for the “worth a detour.”

Specialities and wines of first class quality? We didn’t drink any wine so can’t specifically comment on that but I’m sure the restaurant delivered. As for specialities. Again difficult to judge on this but from the looks of some of the dishes coming out from the kitchen I’m sure there were quite a few of those dishes. The dessert was pretty special in my opinion.

This will be reflected in the price? Definitely yes. Our three-course meal was £25 which, around London, is pretty reasonable I guess for a restaurant of this class and establishment. I do protest, however, to paying that much for the quantity of food that we got. A little bit over-priced in my opinion. However, the measure is not value for money but that the excellent food etc. is reflected in the price so a most resounding yes for this criteria. Just as a side note starters ranged, from what I could see, from £12-£19 and mains from £15-£44 and desserts were a flat £10.

So on those criteria I think the Two-Michelin-star is totally justified. However! Yes there is a however. I don’t know how service is measured in the criteria. For a Three-Michelin-star the service should be faultless and I think this is definitely where L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon is let down and why probably it has not been given that next star. Front of desk were good, the maitre d’ was good, and at first our head waiter was okay. He did that thing I absolutely hate – asking what drink we wanted before we’d even had a chance to settle in and look at the menu. In fact, we hadn’t even been given a menu at that stage!! so I asked for a drinks menu. At first he simply gave us the wine menu which required me to further ask for a non-alcoholic drinks listing. After about ten minutes he finally supplied this after giving us the excuse that the bar man was going to come over and explain what he could do for us. What the? So, first bad mark for service. Bread was brought to us soon after that which was fine. But no butter! We asked for the butter and again that took about ten minutes to produce. By then our starters had arrived so it was a bit awkward – do we eat the bread do we start on our starters. Second bad mark for service. Finally, the third bad mark for service was the lack of attention that we received. In a place like this you expect that there will be a waiter or waitress hovering around waiting to either sweep up your plate as soon as it was clear you’d finished or at least hovering around in case you need their assistance. Neither of these things happened so that when our mains were delivered, they had to be placed down near other diners, and our starters cleared before they could serve us our suckling pig! Also, getting the attention of any of the wait staff proved almost impossible. It wasn’t like they were being rude, because when they did serve us they were perfectly friendly and ready to answer our questions, its just that for the most part they just weren’t there. On the plus side no one fussed about me taking photos. Heh heh.

From an aesthetic perspective I found the restaurant very attractive but as one review has pointed out its like you’re in a bento box! I wholeheartedly agree because it was all kind of black laquer with minor splashes of colour (mainly red.) I loved all the plastic fruit around especially the giant apple at the front. We were sat on the ground floor around the kitchen so it was actually pretty cool to see what the chefs were up to and also to see what everyone else had ordered. One of the chefs in particular was highly energetic – and he only looked about 17 years old!

The bill for the two of us came to £63 which included the 12.5% service and one diet coke, one diet beer and two three-course meals (set menu) and with both Jenny and I actually considering going to get something else to eat to top-up so to speak so its hardly cheap. I’m tempted to come again to try one of the découverte menus to explore some of the more creative dishes L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon has to offer however it may take me a while to save up my pennies to get there.