The most reliable thing about dining at Robuchon is the bread. Early in the meal, a chariot, paneled in the kind of lacquered wood you’d find inside expensive yachts, is wheeled over with a dozen breads (baguettes, brioches, rolls in pastel hues), which servers pick as you point or pine.
Not all of bread at Robuchon Au Dome is worth their fill, but they reflect a consistency that outlives Robuchon. My first taste of his cooking — Paris, late 2000’s — was extraordinary, and though few others measured up, it’s unfair to play that card. Because unless you’ve dined at Jamin (I haven’t), the satellites probably never dipped below Michelin-level quality — except in Hong Kong, where it did. Robuchon Singapore struggled with location; Tokyo held impossible standards; London’s Michelin grip kept things tight; New York flitted between okay and great; and no one could complain about Taipei’s Robuchon, given the prices.
Yes, the pommes puree varied (gummy here, gamey there), but the disc of caviar still floats on exactly 72 dots of cauliflower cream. Servers still rush to pull your chair as soon as you glance at the restroom. Service at Dome, as with other Robuchons, is telepathic and balletic. But it’s also among the chummiest.
It lets your guard down, so you forget that food here isn’t what it was when Robuchon Galera was the greatest French restaurant in Asia. That the leather binding of the glorious 17,800-label wine list is starting to fray. And that the scratches on once-pristine china show when midday light hits through that glass dome.
Consider the beetroot — still wincingly sweet on a 3rd visit. Or the morels, which ate limp. The Comte cheese ravioli, which lacked punch, and the parsley oil, imparting little beyond color. Stuffed pigeon and foie-gras tested the limits of sourcing — unclear if it was even a Brittany breed (irony meat, unevenly cooked). And while the white asparagus was sweet and meltingly soft, the dish isn’t emblematic of 3*.
The live piano, though, might be. At times it swells from ‘90s lobby tunes into a soundtrack fit for the climax of a Korean drama, where the protagonist, wallowing in regret, finally repents. There’s still hope.
