Jacques Faussat was a small place on a quiet street with white tablecloths, American music in the background, fresh flowers, art on the walls, exposed bricks and decorative wood walls.  Chef Jacques Faussat who received one Michelin star in 2004 was originally from Gers.  He started the restaurant in 2002 and called it La Braisiére.  In 2015 he redecorated the space and named it Restaurant Jacques Faussat.  He strives to keep it simple with no more than 3 products on the plate and to choose seasonal products to serve.  At lunch, they offer a 3-course tasting menu which you can add to or substitute with, all for a price.  The price on the side was if you order it by itself and the substitution charge is noted for the various courses.  Of course, you can always just order a la carte but it can work out better sometimes with substitution, depending on what you want.  Wine pairings are also available.  One interesting thing was the rock on the table with a bar code.  It held the menu but also you could use it to pay and they gave you the option of splitting the bill.  Although this was a smallish place it was not as cozy as many of the others we went to.  At lunch, several business meetings seemed to be taking place which made it fairly noisy.  It was good but not great.

Set-Up

 

Food

Amuse bouche was a mushroom tart with a totally thin crust and creamy mushroom interior.  Also a veal paté with sauce gribiche (cold egg sauce) and vinaigrette ‘sandwich’ between two crisp crackers.  Both were quite good.

 

Another gift from the kitchen was a vegetable-wrapped dumpling filled with haddock in a celery bouillon.  The warm soup was good as was the dumpling.

 

Duck from Gers with leek fondue and leek chips was in a broth like Ramen.  The dumpling, of sorts, was filled with duck and sitting on well-caramelized leeks with crispy leeks on top.  The leeks had wonderful flavor but unfortunately overwhelmed the duck.   There were lots of textures and tastes in this one but it was more onion than duck.

 

Bread service was slices of brown bread which were fine.

 

To the lunch menu we added an order of his signature Potatoe Millefeuille and foie gras with truffle juice, which we split.  The very soft potatoes were layered with the foie gras and covered with truffle sauce with a salad on the side.  The truffle had more odor than taste but was nice.  The salad did help break up the richness of the dish.  It was good but I was glad not to have a whole order of it.

 

Meat of the day (lamb) was with turnip madness – golden turnip with Grandmother’s Ras El-Hanout, turnip puree and confit with spiced caramel and a daikon pickle veil.  The turnips were to be in several different ways to go with the roasted lamb, which was packed into a circular shape.  Most of the fat had been cut out of the lamb or rendered in cooking but it was nicely browned on the exterior.  It came with a well-reduced lamb jus and was seasoned with Moroccan herbs.  The turnips were fun and I especially liked the caramelized ones.

 

For dessert, we substituted the Pear hot soufflé for the listed one, as it’s another of his signature dishes.  It came with finely peppered pear coulis, pear confit and vanilla poached pear Brunoise with long pepper ice cream.  This was pears on steroids. If you like pears you’ll love this dish.  I happen to be a fan of pears and so I really appreciated the strong wonderful flavor here.   The souffle was doused with pear sauce at the table instead of the usual cream and then pear pieces were in the side dish with the ice cream.  I mixed it all in and had a fine dessert.

 

Final treats were raspberry/blackberry jelly which was very sweet and a chocolate bonbon with peanuts which was the better of the two.