Telephone: 00 33 01 45 55 61 44
Address: Eiffel Tower, Paris (nearest Metro station, Trocadéro).
Price: Eight-course menu dégustation, €120 per person (without wine).
Open: All week. Lunch, 12.15-1.30pm; dinner, 7.15-9.30pm.
Wheelchair access to second level (via elevator).
'Punt and Dennis" may be the world's unfunniest typing error, but the world's most accurate orthographical mistake was in Canada, spelled out in neon letters, 20 feet high. "Come to the revolting restaurant," read the huge sign at Calgary airport, and although it was supposed to say "revolving", that burnt-out section of neon tube did not lie. It was indeed revolting and, as I gloomily ate, I plotted my elaborate revenge, which would involve renting the top apartment of a nearby block of flats and unfurling a huge fluorescent banner in the window reading "Don't go beyond ordering the menu - it's technically not food." Once every 20 minutes, the diners would rotate slowly past my message and I reckon that, before long, the management would have paid me thousands just to go away.
Ever since then, I've avoided high-rise restaurants that boast of "a breathtaking view", because very tall buildings are usually madhouses. People go to the top of them just so they can put coins in a powerful binocular machine and peer down at the people on the pavement where they'd been standing moments earlier, and you can see thousands of them doing just that every day in Paris, atop the Eiffel Tower. However, the tower's Jules Verne restaurant has an enviable reputation, so I recently queued up on a freezing cold day, waiting for the elevator to take me to the second level of this truly phallic building. And I say that because, like a penis, it retracts a full 15cm when it gets cold (well, that's how much mine retracts, anyway).
When I last ate here in the late 1990s, I didn't like it one bit, and I initially feared I might loathe it again. The black leather and steel decor smacked of the 1980s, the place is long overdue for a refit and the sommelier was so appallingly condescending that I soon found myself asking, "Do you live anywhere near the rue de Remarks? It's off the rue de Bastard." But, otherwise, everything was faultless, from the phone call I'd received that morning to confirm my arrival at 12.30pm (the restaurant is always fully booked) to head chef Alain Reix's impressive eight-course menu dégustation, which weighed in at an impressive €120 (£84) per person (and that's without wine). The opening superposition de foie gras de canard with leeks, langoustines and truffles was a triumph of balance, geometrically and gastronomically, served with a brioche that was studded with little saline bombs (potential stroke victims should note that sea salt is used very liberally throughout the menu). The fine gelée à la crème de crustacés resembled a silky jelly roll with a caviar mohican hairdon't, lying on a paper-thin bed of consommé jelly (a recurring theme throughout the lunch), and to accompany those first courses, I selected an intoxicating Premier Cru Mont de Milieu 2001, at a sobering €95 (£66) a bottle. Still, I like to drink as I dress ... Chablis.
The petit pain stuffed with crab meat that followed looked like a pint-sized Chinese moon bun, floating in a rich sauce (a crème légère aux crevettes, reminiscent of my friend Pam Beckwith's rich and sublime parsnip soup), and I realised that all the courses I'd eaten so far had been served in Chinese-style vessels. The leaf-shaped plates were totally impractical, because knives and forks won't rest in them and are continually trying to escape from the table, and by the fourth course I was almost tempted to join them, not because the quality of the cuisine was diminishing, but because my gastronomic stamina was. Fortunately, I found my second wind just in time for the Japanese-influenced ravioli with scallops and enoki mushrooms, followed by an avocado sorbet that somewhat defeated its own purpose, because the oily fruit had turned it virtually into ice cream. After which came a tournedos de biche (a doe steak, quite rightly cooked far from pink), and an ornate fines feuilles au chocolat noir caraibes with quince, resembling the very hat that Carmen Miranda once swore she would eat.
Only the final course was disappointing, a crème brûlée aux épices douces. As you may know, crème brûlée is not really a French dish at all - it was invented in Cambridge - and this was a parody of the real thing, being more like an egg custard without the pastry. But for all that, I felt like wrapping myself in the tricolour and setting myself alight, because the food had been as exquisite as my view over the sections of this great city that were rebuilt by Haussmann on rational and majestic lines during the Second Empire, with grandeur above and order below. Inside, all the diners seemed to be purring, particularly the many Japanese who eat here (honeymoon couples, I suspect). But be warned. Before we left, I toasted my guest loudly with the French phrase "chin-chin", thinking that this was chic. In fact, it was rather insensitive, since I've subsequently discovered that "chin-chin" means "penis-penis" in Japanese.
