Le Paradou

Having spent the past couple of years in the relative obscurity of Great Falls, Va., biding his time and wowing the locals with his Asian-accented French cooking, Yannick Cam has returned to downtown, setting up shop on the edge of the Penn Quarter. And even as Le Paradou represents the return of the peripatetic Cam to the city, it also represents the return of a dining aesthetic that a lot of us had presumed extinct. Men are required to wear a jacket at lunch and dinner; whether it is also recommended that they possess a full head of silver hair, I can’t say, although you would be hard put to find one who didn’t fit that description. Waiters in starched, dark suits and ties stand at the ready at their stations, arms folded, surveying the dining room like Secret Service agents. The staff, scrupulously trained, is solicitous verging on obsequious, yet all the same largely tone-deaf to the sometimes off-putting quality of its formality. Cam does not lack for artistry. No one in town pays more attention to color, and no one has as distinct a palette. In an era of big, bold flavors, Cam opts for the quiet revelation, lacing his dishes with tiny explosions of flavor. He bands his roasted sea scallops in thin strips of Parma ham and applies thick, impastoed swabs of parsley sauce around it on the plate. The ham intensifies the mild, juicy scallop, while the sauce, a verdant, almost iridescent green, and with a startling vegetal power, ushers the whole thing into spring. Roasted pigeon is paired with a couple of nubs of seared foie gras—a natural match, given the essential mineral character of the bird—but after the velvety lushness fades, it’s the notes of cumin, and the port-soaked dates, that assert themselves. But with the decidedly nonretro prices Cam insists on charging, he’s inevitably inviting comparisons with the likes of Citronelle, Maestro, and Il Laboratorio, and the fact remains that Le Paradou is too frequently underwhelming to be regarded in their company as a destination restaurant. Yes, you can expect to be wowed, just not often enough to warrant your continued affection for a place as stiff and austere as they come.
—Todd Kliman, December 3, 2004