Post by Anne on May 13, 2008 11:20:56 GMT -5
My husband and me went last Friday to l’Auberge de l’Ill in Illhaeusern to have dinner and sleep .
L’Auberge de l’Ill is Alsace’s best restaurant, actually it is considered as a real monument in Alsace . It is located in small riverside village Illhaeusern, somewhere between Strasbourg and Colmar . The auberge has been in the Haeberlin family for more than 150 years and was for a very long time just a very simple auberge where families would go on Sundays to have a lunch of “friture” or “matelote” made with the river’s fishes . Then after WW2, Paul Haeberlin took over as Chef while his brother Jean-Pierre, a painter, took care of the decoration and guests service, and in 1967 they gained their 3rd Michelin star , which they have kept ever since, even though the Chef is now Marc, Paul’s son .
My husband has been there a few times on business meals when we were still living in Strasbourg, but my only dinner there had been when I was …13 . I remember that what impressed me most at that time was that it was the first restaurant that I had ever been to where ladies where given a menu without prices (and how cool that young me was included in the Ladies category !)
Anyway, I thought that 30 years waiting was enough, it was now time to go back ! Especially since they opened a 11 bedrooms hotel located just beside the restaurant some years ago .
Here are a few pictures .
The restaurant, with the terrasse for the apéritif :
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The hotel, built in the style of the local old tobacco-drying barns :
[a href=""][/a]
The Ill river, in front of the restaurant and hotel :
[a href=""][/a]
So on Friday we were off to Alsace, dropped the kids at their grand-parents’ and went to Illhaeusern through the vineyards road .
Our table was located just beside a bay window, so we has a nice view of the river while dining . We could also admire for a long while the resident stork which has its nest on the nearby church and has been sort of tamed by the Haeberlins, so it comes and walk on the terrasse when people have all come in .
Now the most important, I know, the food and wine ! Sorry here, no photos . I was too shy to take pictures of the plates in such a restaurant .
We stuck to Alsace wines for aperitif :a Muscat from Faller, Kaysersberg, for hubby (very dry, but he loved it) and a delicious gewurtztraminer vendanges tardives (my favourite wine after Beaume de Venise) from Beyer, Eguisheim, for me (names of producers is for Mr. Laidback, who said he loves Alsace wines) . We were served little things to eat with, and then came a pre-starter being a thin slice of semi-cooked tuna fish over Chinese-type vegetable, surrounded by a sesame sauce . Yum .
We decided to stick to one single red wine for the whole meal since I don’t like dry whites anyway, and sommelier Serge Dubs (who won the Meilleur Sommelier du Monde contest some years ago and who has been in the house for more than 30 years and designed some of their wine glasses) advised a Chambolle-Musigny .
We both chose the same starter : “oeuf moulé, poché sur une poëlée d’écrevisses, morilles et crètes de coq, tartine croustillante de pinces” . Now « crètes de coq » mean cocks combs . I wasn’t sure whether they were really THAT, I mean, there are many mushrooms for example which have such funny names in French . So I asked the Maître d’H : “Sorry to ask a silly question but …” . Yes, it was real combs from real cocks . When he saw my face, he offered to have the cuisine make the dish without the combs, so we went for this . So it was a poached egg over a foamy soup/sauce (when I say foamy, I don’t mean the fashionable, El Bulli-type of foam, it was foamy for having been whisked for a very long time) with plenty of small morels and crawfishes in the sauce, and a toast with crawfishes claws' content on the side of the plate . We loved this, the sauce was incredibly good .
As a main dish, we had a “volaille de Bresse rôtie à la broche accompagnée d’un petit baeckaoffa aux truffes, cuisses sur salade en deuxième service » . This dish is for two people to share . So they first bring you the full spit-roasted Bresse chicken for you to admire, and then they cut it and serve you the breasts in a sauce with truffle bits in it . With it we each received a baeckaoffa (an Alsacian speciality – and mine too ! – normally made with marinated meats plus vegetables, served in a special earthware terrine dish . But here the baeckaoffa was mostly made of thinly cut tender vegetables – of course, this was the vegetable to go with our meat – in a truffle sauce, served in the traditional terrines except that the terrines here were small individual ones) . After that we each got a second plate with the legs and wings of the chicken over a salad . I must admit that I had never had Bresse chicken before : the meat was juicy, incredibly tender, it had absolutely nothing to do with the organic, farmhouse chicken that I normally buy . We were really happy with our choice, even if I felt quite full when we were finished despite the fact that the chicken was a very small one .
So no cheese . Dessert for my husband was “assiette du croqueur de chocolat”, several little chocolat things on a plate – I remember a soft biscuit cigar stuffed with white chocolate and cherries I think … My dessert was carpaccio-thin slices of pineapple, with a small French bread-type of biscuit in the middle, this being topped by a pinacolada sorbet . The pineapple was quite remarkable, I don’t know what they had done with it but it was not “normal” pineapple, I think that it was slightly candied and maybe dried too . Unfortunately it had been sprinkled with very tiny bits of I think candied ginger (which is too peppery for my taste) and of basil . The bits were so tiny that I couldn’t take them off, so I ate only part of the pineapple and gave the rest to hubby, who enjoyed it . Then after dessert the usual little pastries and chocolates .
Except for this thing with the pineapple, which just didn’t suit my taste so it is not their fault, the meal was perfect . Some people (including my mom) say that l’Auberge de l’Ill is too classical cuisine, but this is classical at its best . Service was perfect too, not stiff at all, friendly but with exactly the right distance . Everything was so flawless, we were really surprised when chatting with the Maître d’H before leaving and he told us that everyone was very distressed because old “Monsieur Paul” was dying . Actually, on the next evening my husband heard on the TV news that Paul Haeberlin had just died …
Anyway, we walked the few steps to our hotel and slept until we were awakened the next (early) morning by the village cocks (obviously not the ones that the combs were taken from ;D) . We had a nice breakfast on the terrasse of the hotel, made the photos that I posted above and left to pick the kids and have lunch at my in-laws before going back home .
L’Auberge de l’Ill is Alsace’s best restaurant, actually it is considered as a real monument in Alsace . It is located in small riverside village Illhaeusern, somewhere between Strasbourg and Colmar . The auberge has been in the Haeberlin family for more than 150 years and was for a very long time just a very simple auberge where families would go on Sundays to have a lunch of “friture” or “matelote” made with the river’s fishes . Then after WW2, Paul Haeberlin took over as Chef while his brother Jean-Pierre, a painter, took care of the decoration and guests service, and in 1967 they gained their 3rd Michelin star , which they have kept ever since, even though the Chef is now Marc, Paul’s son .
My husband has been there a few times on business meals when we were still living in Strasbourg, but my only dinner there had been when I was …13 . I remember that what impressed me most at that time was that it was the first restaurant that I had ever been to where ladies where given a menu without prices (and how cool that young me was included in the Ladies category !)
Anyway, I thought that 30 years waiting was enough, it was now time to go back ! Especially since they opened a 11 bedrooms hotel located just beside the restaurant some years ago .
Here are a few pictures .
The restaurant, with the terrasse for the apéritif :
[a href=""][/a]
The hotel, built in the style of the local old tobacco-drying barns :
[a href=""][/a]
The Ill river, in front of the restaurant and hotel :
[a href=""][/a]
So on Friday we were off to Alsace, dropped the kids at their grand-parents’ and went to Illhaeusern through the vineyards road .
Our table was located just beside a bay window, so we has a nice view of the river while dining . We could also admire for a long while the resident stork which has its nest on the nearby church and has been sort of tamed by the Haeberlins, so it comes and walk on the terrasse when people have all come in .
Now the most important, I know, the food and wine ! Sorry here, no photos . I was too shy to take pictures of the plates in such a restaurant .
We stuck to Alsace wines for aperitif :a Muscat from Faller, Kaysersberg, for hubby (very dry, but he loved it) and a delicious gewurtztraminer vendanges tardives (my favourite wine after Beaume de Venise) from Beyer, Eguisheim, for me (names of producers is for Mr. Laidback, who said he loves Alsace wines) . We were served little things to eat with, and then came a pre-starter being a thin slice of semi-cooked tuna fish over Chinese-type vegetable, surrounded by a sesame sauce . Yum .
We decided to stick to one single red wine for the whole meal since I don’t like dry whites anyway, and sommelier Serge Dubs (who won the Meilleur Sommelier du Monde contest some years ago and who has been in the house for more than 30 years and designed some of their wine glasses) advised a Chambolle-Musigny .
We both chose the same starter : “oeuf moulé, poché sur une poëlée d’écrevisses, morilles et crètes de coq, tartine croustillante de pinces” . Now « crètes de coq » mean cocks combs . I wasn’t sure whether they were really THAT, I mean, there are many mushrooms for example which have such funny names in French . So I asked the Maître d’H : “Sorry to ask a silly question but …” . Yes, it was real combs from real cocks . When he saw my face, he offered to have the cuisine make the dish without the combs, so we went for this . So it was a poached egg over a foamy soup/sauce (when I say foamy, I don’t mean the fashionable, El Bulli-type of foam, it was foamy for having been whisked for a very long time) with plenty of small morels and crawfishes in the sauce, and a toast with crawfishes claws' content on the side of the plate . We loved this, the sauce was incredibly good .
As a main dish, we had a “volaille de Bresse rôtie à la broche accompagnée d’un petit baeckaoffa aux truffes, cuisses sur salade en deuxième service » . This dish is for two people to share . So they first bring you the full spit-roasted Bresse chicken for you to admire, and then they cut it and serve you the breasts in a sauce with truffle bits in it . With it we each received a baeckaoffa (an Alsacian speciality – and mine too ! – normally made with marinated meats plus vegetables, served in a special earthware terrine dish . But here the baeckaoffa was mostly made of thinly cut tender vegetables – of course, this was the vegetable to go with our meat – in a truffle sauce, served in the traditional terrines except that the terrines here were small individual ones) . After that we each got a second plate with the legs and wings of the chicken over a salad . I must admit that I had never had Bresse chicken before : the meat was juicy, incredibly tender, it had absolutely nothing to do with the organic, farmhouse chicken that I normally buy . We were really happy with our choice, even if I felt quite full when we were finished despite the fact that the chicken was a very small one .
So no cheese . Dessert for my husband was “assiette du croqueur de chocolat”, several little chocolat things on a plate – I remember a soft biscuit cigar stuffed with white chocolate and cherries I think … My dessert was carpaccio-thin slices of pineapple, with a small French bread-type of biscuit in the middle, this being topped by a pinacolada sorbet . The pineapple was quite remarkable, I don’t know what they had done with it but it was not “normal” pineapple, I think that it was slightly candied and maybe dried too . Unfortunately it had been sprinkled with very tiny bits of I think candied ginger (which is too peppery for my taste) and of basil . The bits were so tiny that I couldn’t take them off, so I ate only part of the pineapple and gave the rest to hubby, who enjoyed it . Then after dessert the usual little pastries and chocolates .
Except for this thing with the pineapple, which just didn’t suit my taste so it is not their fault, the meal was perfect . Some people (including my mom) say that l’Auberge de l’Ill is too classical cuisine, but this is classical at its best . Service was perfect too, not stiff at all, friendly but with exactly the right distance . Everything was so flawless, we were really surprised when chatting with the Maître d’H before leaving and he told us that everyone was very distressed because old “Monsieur Paul” was dying . Actually, on the next evening my husband heard on the TV news that Paul Haeberlin had just died …
Anyway, we walked the few steps to our hotel and slept until we were awakened the next (early) morning by the village cocks (obviously not the ones that the combs were taken from ;D) . We had a nice breakfast on the terrasse of the hotel, made the photos that I posted above and left to pick the kids and have lunch at my in-laws before going back home .