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Sola: a new sun rising in the 5th arrondissement
Emmanuel Tresmontant-2011-01-31
This is the new gem of Franco-Japanese restaurants in Paris! A refined and unusual establishment which you have to experience soon before the word gets out… You’re lucky, Sola only opened its doors in December of 2010. The restaurant is still virtually unknown, but soon it will be too late, the press will have a field day and you will be stuck with a month's wait before you can reserve a table.
Between la Place Maubert and Notre Dame, this small restaurant nestling on the ground floor of a 17th century building is definitely one of the new gems of Parisian gastronomy. As soon as you’ve crossed the threshold, you are immediately struck by a quality of calmness, a real gentleness in the welcome which then extends to the service performed by two lovely young women who serve with slow and accurate movements.
Ly Youlin, the owner is an expert in wines, saké and eau-de-vie. His talent is in having been able to form a highly productive team with the fiery Japanese chef Hiroki Yoshitake at the helm. Aged 30 years, this tall, thin and long haired man who looks like something straight out of a manga, made a tour of the culinary world at least twice before falling under the influence of a young genius named Pascal Barbot, the chef at L’Astrance (3 Michelin stars).
Just like Adeline Grattard (Yamt'cha restaurant) and Shinichi Sato (restaurant Passage 53), Hiroki Yoshitake has acceded to a very particular way of treating produce, whether it’s animal or vegetable, from the master Barbot. It’s a way that consists of taking and serving the product in its naked simplicity (a perspective which sees molecular gastronomy as having said everything it has to say and nothing more...) Here cuisine is no longer conceived as an art of transforming, atomising, pulverising or liquefying but rather as an art of putting the product back into its original element by marrying it with a colour, a spice or a herb with which it has some affinity.
The dishes are presented like paintings, graphic works of beauty such as the poached egg infused with baby vegetables and topped with a cream of petits pois, and adorned with a nasturtium leaf: it’s a marvel of delicacy evoking certain English Pre-Raphaelite paintings. On the palate, the entry is cool and crisp, and very refreshing.
At the very height of refinement, the ceramic tableware, porcelain or stoneware has been tailor-made to suit each dish by the chef’s wife, who is a potter by trade!
The Squid with Chinese cabbage, the smoked sole with confit of baby vegetables, the celery velouté, the guinea fowl supreme with confit and sauce ... All these dishes are fascinating for their simplicity, the harmony of tastes, their accuracy and their total lack of pretension. The cuisine is deeply rooted, evoking a context of forest landscapes, glades and ponds lined with reeds.
The desserts are of the same class - delicious and subtle, like the assortment of macha ice creams accompanied by caramelized hazelnuts. Hironobu Fukano is a true pâtissier who was trained under Pierre Hermé. I wager we’ll soon be talking about him too!
USEFUL INFORMATION
Sola
12, rue de l’Hôtel Colbert 75005 Paris
Tel: +33 (0)1 43 29 59 04
Open from 12 to 2.30pm and from 7pm to 10pm
Closed Sunday and Mondays
Lunch menu for 35 €. Chef’s tasting menu for 50 €
A fine wine list, in particular the Riesling by André Ostertag 2009 at 39 € for a bottle.
